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Ganassi’s strike group wants to rack up enough victories to claim the championship. Mike Hull is the team “XO” — Executive Officer in military terms. For Hull, all this yammering about BOP isn’t worth a tinker’s dam.
“BOP is a give-and-take situation all the time,” Hull said. “As an example, we were at the Roar test and it’s funny matching up the field with a theoretical, which you have on the screen in front of you and IMSA has the same information in front of them, and the completion of the lap is fun to watch. We’ve never been a team that is crafty enough to work on BOP.”
Here’s why BOP doesn’t matter much.
“We’re a race team that just goes out there, lays it all out and does it,” Hull said. “People think that’s a statement not based on fact, that we’re being deceitful, but that’s not the case. The Europeans are much better at the game than we are, but the results prove out that we’re a good racing team and that’s the counterbalance for BOP. The one thing that sanctioning bodies, whomever they might be, they can’t BOP race craft.”
The final element in team success is the driver. Hull chuckled after hearing about Ganassi’s conversation with NASCAR Hall of Famer Leonard Wood, when Wood said of his driver: “If we wasn’t running good, we needed to work on our car.”
That, says Hull, “is the way it is with any front-line driver. The more you have the opportunity to continue to run that driver, it’s a good reminder that it’s not all about you. The part that it’s all about you is what the Wood brothers did during that era. They worked by themselves in that category. They had Richard Petty to deal with all the time. What they did was they listened to their driver. They listened to what their driver wanted, what their driver needed and I think that teams that consistently run at the front, win races or championships.
“They go hand in hand. That’s what they do well,” he added. “They don’t come in with a pre-conceived notion of this is how the car needs to be. They want the driver to tell them what he or she needs to get the most out of a car on a given day. That’s what the Wood brothers did a long, long time ago. That’s probably the link to modern day race teams and race teams from different eras of racing.
“I think what Leonard said to Chip was really awesome. He was just a racing guy who understands how to remain on the practical side of execution to get it done.”
Mark Rushbrook is Ford’s global director of Ford Performance Motorsports. IMSA GTLM as an important part of the company’s performance image.
“The competition is why we are in the series and in this class, GTLM,” Rushbrook said. “We sure want to race against the best in the world. To be on the track and competing against Ferrari and Porsche and BMW and Corvette is exactly what we want to be doing.”
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