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Friday, August 10
Cheever: Change of goals for team
By Eddie Cheever Jr.
Special to ESPN.com
| |  | | | Cheever |
It's been a very bizarre season for Cheever Indy Racing. Every team, especially the ones that have finished high in the championship like we did last year, started the season with high aspirations of winning the series title. You always have to make sure that everyone is motivated to do that.
Our whole focus was on getting the new Infiniti 35A up to speed and we've done that. We have much more competitive machinery than we did last year, but we've lost a lot of points on silly things.
Due to the season we've had so far, we've had to change our goals a bit. We've crashed a lot of cars, and the mechanics have had to repair and build a lot of cars. The accident with Eliseo Salazar in Richmond cost us a race, and the accident with Greg Ray and Scott Sharp in Texas cost us a race. It's frustrating and it takes a toll on your enthusiasm, but we have a very strong team and we've always managed to get through adversity.
Our focus now has got to be on winning as many races as we can. We would like very much to finish in the top-three in the championship, but the only way we can do that is to win at least two more races. That's a tall order, but the Infiniti 35A has been doing very well, and we're just taking it one race at a time. We have been very strong on 1.5 mile ovals and we have three of them coming up, starting with Kentucky Speedway this weekend.
The worst thing that a team can have is slow machinery, and we don't have that. The cars are running very, very well and we've dramatically improved our whole approach to races. When we won in Kansas last month, we were the fastest on the track, we missed the pole position by almost nothing, and we were the fastest in the pits. It was a good race, and we are trying to emulate that every time we go out for the rest of the year.
Cheever Indy Racing has had a chance to regroup in the past couple of weeks since Nashville. We bought a new car and rebuilt another one, so we're in good shape. I wish we could have been in the condition we are in now at the beginning of the season, but it just didn't turn out that way.
By this point in the season, everybody gets tired, but the wear and tear on the individuals is not so bad. This is what we're paid to do.
The past six months have been the hardest we've ever had to face as a team, and our organization is much stronger as a result of those rough times. At the beginning of the season, we were all half asleep. We didn't have an engine, we hadn't done enough testing, and we were way behind where we needed to be. Now we're lean, mean, and aggressive. We're driven to succeed.
IRL driver Eddie Cheever Jr. owns and drives the No. 51 Cheever Indy Racing Infiniti car. He will be providing a diary to ESPN.com throughout the season. Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories
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