[h=2]Hull celebrates 25 years with Chip Ganassi Racing[/h] Friday, 23 June 2017


By Marshall Pruett / Images by Abbott/Boyd/Ehrhardt/LePage/Levitt/Miller/Streck/LAT, IMS Photo

Chip Ganassi Racing managing director Mike Hull started his journey with the team exactly 25 years ago today, June 23, 1992, and what an amazing run it has been.
CART IndyCar championships, Indy Racing League titles, IndyCar Series championships, Indy 500 wins, Grand-Am Rolex Series titles, Rolex 24 at Daytona wins, 12 Hours of Sebring wins, and even a victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans have been captured during Hull's tenure with the Indianapolis-based team.
The 25-year mark, a rarity for anyone with a single racing team, is a point of pride for Hull, and in typical fashion for the California native, there's a good story on how it almost never happened.
"I went to work with Jim Hayhoe to run Jimmy Vasser through the Indy 500 in 1992," he told RACER. "I was kind of upset with IndyCar racing because of the way that I got let go at Patrick Racing, and I just wasn't really sure if I wanted to continue with IndyCar racing. We were in the garage next to Chip's team at the Speedway and Tom Anderson, who was running Chip Ganassi Racing, talked to me a bit about talking to Chip about coming to work there. They were wanting to move into a direction of running two cars full-time, and they had a deal at the time to run Robby Gordon in eight races during the season."
Click on the thumbnails below for larger images from Mike Hull's CGR career.




Richmond, 2004


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Anderson, an immensely respected figure in the paddock, looked after CGR on his own. Founded in 1990 with Eddie Cheever as its lone driver, engine partner Ford was interested in funding a second car for Gordon alongside Eddie Cheever after the 1992 Indy 500.
"They were trying to put together a second program that would roll into a full-time program in 1993, but I told Tom I wasn't sure that I really wanted to do it, although I appreciated the offer," he said. "I'd known Tom for a long time prior to that anyway. I couldn't say we were really good friends, but we certainly understood each other well. Our careers were somewhat similar, being from California and going through the open-wheel system."
Ready to take a break from IndyCar, Hull almost missed out on the CGR opportunity, but Anderson maintained his pursuit.
"I think it was the day after the Speedway was over, I was in the garage trying to get everything organized to pack – Jimmy crashed in the race pretty heavily and broke his leg, so he wasn't going to race for a while, and things were going nowhere," he said. "I had my car there, I was loading all my stuff up to go home. Tom came over there in the morning and said, 'Would you come over to the building and talk to Chip?' I again said, 'No. I'm not sure that I really want to do it.' He said, 'Well, I'd really appreciate it if you'd come and talk to Chip because it will get him off my back.'"
Twenty-five years on, the favor to Anderson has turned into one of the sport's great relationships between a team owner and an employee.
"I went over there and sat down with the two of them," Hull said of the chief mechanic opening. "It was a great meeting. Chip, he's the same today as he was then. He always is looking forward. He's always trying to figure out where he needs to go next. He had a plan. I had a lot of time for that, but Tom was there. I said to Chip, and Tom was sitting there, 'I'm not going to take this job to displace Tom.' I said to Chip at the time, 'If that ever comes to pass, I'll walk out the door at the same time as Tom.'
"Chip said, 'I want somebody to come and work for me that can organize and that can put together a competition organizational plan of people to be supported by the shop to run two cars full-time. That's the job I'd like you to do. Tom will run the business. He'll do all the things he has to do to manage Chip Ganassi Racing. What I want you to do is look on the competition aspect and organize the people in all the rest of that.' I said, 'OK. We'll do it.'"

 

Known for his uncompromising ways, Ganassi had a reputation in his early team ownership days for ruling with an iron fist. It's possible that with age, and time, the Pennsylvanian's fist has softened, but not by much. Countered by Hull's comparatively mellow ways, the two men have found a happy medium while working from different ends of the personality spectrum.
"In those days, and I think I'm being dramatic by saying this, but Chip was very volcanic," he added. "There were ashes everywhere. Tom was so good managing that side of what was going on. He was so good at being patient and taking it, but yet doing a really good job with everything that had to happen to make the team better. I had a great degree of appreciation for Tom and still do."
Hull worked as Michael Andretti's chief mechanic in 1994, then rose to become team manager when CGR went to two full-time cars for Vasser and Bryan Herta in 1995. When Anderson left to run Adrian Fernandez's new IndyCar team at the end of 2000, Hull was promoted to his current role as managing director. Without Anderson as a buffer, Ganassi and Hull established a closer bond – one that continues to serve them today.
"I think that we have a lot of confidence in each other, and we're very aligned on what is the most important thing for Chip Ganassi Racing," he said. "The fact that Chip is still hands on, he's still interested in what we do on a daily basis. The fact that he comes right to the point ... You know what? That's the best person in the world you can work for.
"Because you know what that person would like to achieve, and what it does is it drives you to do that, to get that done for that person, right? That has never changed with Chip. I think at the beginning with him, with Tom in 1990 when they separated from Patrick Racing, emotionally and financially, it was a big step what Chip did there, and he had to find sponsorship. He had to find money because he wanted to hire the best drivers. He wanted to have the best people. That's never changed."
The size of CGR has grown exponentially since Hull arrived 25 years ago, but he says the key ingredients – the one thing that has separated the team from most of its open-wheel and sports car rivals – remains the same.
"We've achieved a lot of success because everybody was treated the same," he said. "It was very much a people business, and that included the drivers, when I got here. The drivers were part of that people profile, and it's always been about the people. From the very first day I walked in the door, Chip has always emphasized how important the people are to the end result, to the product.
"I think that's what's in common from the very first day that I walked in the door, but the reality is with people, what you have to do is you have to engage all of them and that's the hard part, right? Chip provided the resource. We provided the people. Then, getting the people to prioritize their daily action is the key to long-term success.
"The fact that Chip has provided us different programs shows that we're not a one-dimensional race team. We've been able to promote people from within, and they have upward mobility based on their skillset with the new programs we have. We have, as an example, a Ford GT program. That's 30 people on the payroll, full-time. Many of them are ex-IndyCar guys and some are not, but many are from inside the organization that moved to a parallel program. That's a big part of who we've become."
With all he's achieved, Hull has been given numerous opportunities to go out on top – to retire after a major championship or meaningful win. So, why is he still here, ready to climb onto the timing stand and call race strategy for Scott Dixon this weekend, and then head off to Watkins Glen next weekend to oversee the Ford Chip Ganassi Racing IMSA team?
"Because you know what happens with me? Just about every time I think, 'Maybe I should fly fish and go play golf a little more, start taking it easy,' Chip finds a new program, and I love that," he said with a laugh. "When we rolled over in the Grand-Am Series in 2004, we were a bunch of open-wheeled guys that had never gone sports car racing. What happened there is we're looking at the whole thing thinking, 'Man, can we do this? Are we OK with this? Should we hire a bunch of ringers to help us?' We vacillated a little bit there.
"Then, we realized that we're wasting people and built it up ourselves and went on to have a lot of success there. The same was true with the Ford GT program the way it is now. It's the fact that when given the opportunity with this group of people we've worked with, we could achieve whatever we set our mind to achieve together. That's what I like about it. That's why I haven't stopped racing. The fun part is not to win a race. The fun part is to win every day with what you're doing and getting people to win together every day, so that by the time you get to the racetrack, it's easy to them."
Although the 25-year mark is far from a finish line for Hull, he couldn't help but take stock of how far he's come and who's made the long ride possible. If we're lucky, more celebrations will be held in the years to come.
"When you start out as a young guy and you get to working on racecars and around racing, you don't just want to be in the race. You want to be in the part of the race that lets you win. I'd have to say that I've been lucky enough to be in that race for quite a long time, and it is all due to Chip."

 

Video starts with Brian Hurta and ends with 2 guys who actually like Mike Hull LOL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fca8PJdVceI