Teams Fighting Over Crewmen and drivers: Joe Gibbs’ teams are being criticized by rivals, some from the Roush camp, for hiring away crewmen in the middle of the season and by car owner Bill Davis for attempting to sign BGN driver Scott Wimmer. Wimmer’s contract with Davis was up at the end of the season until he signed a new one with Davis four days ago. Gibbs said that Wimmer began talking with him when Wimmer started worrying about Davis’ plans for him next season. “A couple of weeks ago Steve Desuza, who runs our Busch program, was walking out of the race track and asked Scott ‘Hey, what’s your situation for next year?’ ” Gibbs said. “Scott volunteered to him ‘Hey, I don’t have anything. I’m concerned. We’re down to a few cars, and Bill hasn’t re-signed my contract for next year. So I have nothing. I’m worried.’ Basically what we said to him was ‘Can we see that contract to make sure that’s the case?’ And Scott sent the contract to us, and sure enough that was the case. The contract had run out a couple months ago. At that point we started discussions with him. And I guess Bill got upset about that and jumped back in it and re-signed him. That’s fine with us. We have a policy here that we don’t talk to anybody under contract. And we didn’t. So we don’t think we’ve done anything wrong or unethical. I’m going to try to get with Bill this week. I’m going to call and see if I can come up and have a meeting so we can talk this out, because this is important. It’s important to me to keep a good relationship with the other car owners.” Davis was irate over the situation and had a vigorous discussion with Gibbs. Mike Brown, general manager for Davis: “We (Davis and Wimmer) had all verbally agreed to go forward, and we were working on all our different sponsorship scenarios, to see if we’d be Busch racing or Cup racing with Scott. A lot of the team owners that we respect … called us and said ‘Hey, what are y’all doing with Scott? If you’re not going to go forward with him, we’d love to speak with him.’ We told everybody who called us that we planned to go forward with him, and they respected that, and they left him alone. Greg Zipadelli, crew chief for the Gibbs-Stewart team, says that Rockwell, which has sponsored Richard Childress’ Busch team this season, called Davis’ team to get Wimmer’s phone number, apparently to try to put together a sponsorship package to shop around. Davis has sponsored Wimmer basically out of his own pocket this season. Zipadelli pointed out that Davis didn’t offer Wimmer a new contract until the overtures from other teams were made. Gibbs also declined to talk about the Rockwell sponsorship. On the issue of crewmen moving one team to another, Gibbs seems to attract a number of men looking to move on. The latest addition comes from the Jeff Burton-Roush team – top tire changer Mark “Hollywood” Armstrong. But then Gibbs has long had a reputation for having one of the best places to work on the tour. He guarantees his men at least one day, sometimes two days a week off, a luxury in this sport and one that is appreciated by crewmen with families. Gibbs is also offering nice wages, according to crewmen in the garage. That combination has at times earned the ire of rival car owners. Zipadelli says that crewmen move all the time: “We just lost two fabricators to Cal Wells, but you don’t see us crying about it. They’re moving over because they’ll be getting … more money. But this time next year they’ll probably be laid off, just like the last bunch. “I’m tired of people bashing us. We shouldn’t be criticized for trying to make our team better.”(more at the Winston Salem Journal)(9-2-2002) And more at Ford Racing: Signed Or Not, Wimmer Prompts Davis, Gibbs Talk(9-3-2002)
