Life in the Fast Lane

Business is more demanding than ever, more perilous than ever - and faster than ever. Every company is rushing to launch the next great product, to seal the next big deal. No company knows what's waiting around the next corner.

It sounds a lot like auto racing.

Ray Evernham knows a little something about business. He's a key player in an enterprise that generates millions of dollars in annual revenues, and he's lectured audiences of business executives from DuPont, Digital, and Ingersoll-Rand. But Evernham knows even more about racing. He's widely considered to be the premier crew chief in NASCAR, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing. Over the past five years, he and his team have steered the DuPont-sponsored No. 24 car and its celebrated driver, Jeff Gordon, from anonymity to unprecedented success in the Winston Cup Series - the big leagues of stock-car racing.

Evernham and Gordon burst onto the Winston Cup scene in 1993, when Gordon walked away with the Cup's Rookie of the Year honors. In 1994, Evernham was named Crew Chief of the Year. And in 1995, Gordon and Evernham hit the jackpot when Gordon won the Winston Cup Championship, the culmination of a grueling race for points that stretches from February to November. Gordon, then just 24, was the Winston Cup's youngest-ever champion. After garnering 10 wins in 1996 (good for second place that year), he and Evernham teamed up for another Winston Cup Championship in 1997. Their $4.2 million in prize money set a new record for total regular-season earnings in one year of racing. During their six years as a team, Evernham and Gordon have celebrated 37 victories, including wins in NASCAR's major races - the Daytona 500, the Coca-Cola 600 (three times), and the Brickyard 400 (twice).

Gordon's sudden dominance, combined with his youth, charisma, and leading-man looks, has made him the hottest commodity in the fastest-growing sport around. He's everywhere: on Leno and Letterman, on People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People list. And on many Sundays, he's in victory lane. He gives much of the credit for his success to Evernham and to the pit crew known as the Rainbow Warriors. (Crew members wear rainbow-striped jumpsuits.)

Gordon is the star attraction, to be sure. But it's Evernham, 41, who pulls the whole act together. It's Evernham, an indefatigable perfectionist, who ensures that the No. 24 car - a 700-horsepower Chevrolet Monte Carlo - is the fastest on the track; who leads the daring pit stop that takes place with 20 laps to go; who pushes the Rainbow Warriors to be the best crew in the business, week after week.

Fast Company visited Evernham at the Hendrick Motorsports complex in Harrisburg, North Carolina, just north of Charlotte. In between signing autographs, speaking at a sponsor's lunch, and fine-tuning the No. 24 car, Evernham took time out to reflect on what it takes to finish first: painstaking preparation, egoless teamwork, and thoroughly original strategizing - principles that apply to any company that understands the need for speed.

New teams should do things in new ways

One reason we got off to such a fast start when the Rainbow Warrior team was assembled five years ago was that, right from the beginning, we dared to be different. I didn't hire anybody for the team who had Winston Cup experience. Racing is racing; the right people can figure it out. I wanted people who had the desire and the intelligence needed to excel.

When you have a team with different kinds of people, you get a chance to do things differently. We came up with innovative ideas about the mechanics of the car - about things like suspension components and shock absorbers - partly because we didn't know any better. And we hired a separate crew to work solely in the pits. Traditionally, the same mechanics who worked on the car all week also suited up on Sunday to work as the pit crew. The car was the number-one priority: People relied on horsepower and driving talent to win the day. But I believe that the crew should be as important as the car.

We were also the first team to hire a coach specifically to train and rehearse the pit crew. People laughed at the way we trained: rope climbing, wind sprints, guys carrying each other on their backs. People said, "What in the world are you guys doing?" I'm sure that it all looked funny, but it worked. Typically, we pit in 17 seconds or less - about a second faster than other teams do. In one second, a car going 200 MPH travels nearly 300 feet. So right there, we gain 300 feet on the competition.