Brett Bodine on Andy Evans

BRETT BODINE (#11 Close Call Phone Card Ford ) I don't know if everybody got a chance to see USA Today, our announcement that Andy Evans and Team Scandia have taken a 50 percent interest in BDR Motorsports, which now will be named Scandia/Bodine Racing, and we are very excited about the future of our company. What Andy brings to our race team is insurmountable in the effects it will have - the financial impact along with the engineering impact from his Indy Car teams, sports car team and of course, his drag race team. Along with the marketing background and ability to obtain appropriate sponsorship for our company in the future, this is just a great opportunity for myself my wife, Diane, and our race team to join forces with Andy Evans and his group. What will be first significant step of things that need to be done? We're going to look at our team from top to bottom, and try to improve the weak areas, upgrade it as much as possible. The way I see this really showing its effects is maybe in the 1998 season, because this gives us an opportunity to really prepare for the switch from Thunderbird to Taurus, and it will really make an impact for the start of 1998 with tremendous preparation and doing all the things that need to be done to get much more competitive in Winston Cup. Its been no secret we've struggled since we've taken on this race team. We've had some financial problems brought on by sponsorship troubles, and we're going to address all that and evaluate our situation with our current sponsors. We'll make decisions on down the road of what things we're going to do improve with our race team. Is this deal's psychological lift be a help going into the Bud at Glen.? I'm not ashamed to say that its been hard for me to concentrate on the driving and making the race cars run faster when you're trying to be the glue to hold the whole thing together. A race team is a lot to handle when it is funded correctly and financially in a good position, but when it has some problems in those areas, it really becomes a handful, and that's the way its been for some time with our race team. We're going to be in a position where we don't have to worry about that and can make sure we're concentrating on the appropriate things. Does racing here at the Glen -have an affect on your motivation and pressure , being so close to Chemung? As we saw last year, Geoff (Bodine) turned his season around here, and we enjoy the home court advantage. I can't think of a better place to come to, to make this announcement and have our race team in a much better frame of mind from top to bottom, from its owner its driver all the way down through its crew and staff. We're coming here with a lot better feeling about the future of our race team. I'm really hoping we can have a good run this weekend, especially considering our best finish this year has been a sixth at Sears Point on the other road course, and Watkins Glen has always been a much stronger place for me to perform on, so I'm really looking for good things out of our race team this weekend. On his Brickyard run - We felt very good about our race. The driver made a little error about halfway through the race. He bounced the car off the fence and kind of screwed up the car's handling, but due to a few cautions, we got a chance to adjust the car and get it back in a more competitive situation. We were able to pick up quite a few spots from that point on. At that point we were about 35th, and we made it to 18th before the checkered flag flew, so we made a good charge there the second half, after having to do some serious repairs to the car. We bent the front suspension pretty significantly, and the car was a real mess to drive, but the guys did a great job getting it repaired and back in a much more competitive situation.

What does Andy Evans bring to the team? Andy and his whole organization bring a tremendous amount presently out of reach for our whole race team. Not only the financial stability to get us back in order in that respect, but also the engineering and things that his other race teams already have in place that we can take advantage of immediately. We don't have to go out and hire somebody. We can just use the people that are on staff for the Indy Car team to help us out. The marketing department and marketing people he has working are tremendous staff that can help get the sponsorship situation cleared up, and that's what its going to take for this race team to continue on and grow, Andy has a very ambitious game plan for IMSG(International Motorsports Group), and now we fall into that game plan. I think we're one more piece of the puzzle that he's been looking for and we really fit together well. What we needed and what he needed was a well positioned package and I think its really an opportunity on both sides to do what needed to be done. How long had he deal been under negotiation? I met Andy Evans a week ago yesterday face-to-face. We met at his race shop in Indianapolis, and immediately, we just shared so many of the same ideas, needs, and directions, it just fell together quickly. It's so perfect, the way it worked out, its hard to imagine this was the wrong thing to do by any stretch of the imagination. We had been discussing it internally, that it was probably what we needed to do. We had talked to a couple of other entities about it, but Andy was really ready to go, and wanted to do it, had a passion to do it and he saw the passion of what I wanted to do and that was to get back to the front of the field of Winston Cup racing. We shared so much desire to make the situation successful, that's why we really hit it off right away.