Ever wonder how Jack Roush and Robert Yates hooked up to start RoushYates Engines [1]?
A new video from the shop features the two former adversaries along with company president Doug Yates talking about the circumstances under which the award-winning engine shop started.
[2]It wasn’t too long ago that all NASCAR owners built their own engines. Through consolidation efforts–led either by the manufacturers or escalating cost concerns–there are now only a handful of builders suppling engines for all the Chevy, Ford and Toyota teams in the top three NASCAR divisions.
Roush and Yates were fierce rivals in the late ’90s. They even laugh about a showdown in private vehicles trying to fit through the one-lane tunnel at a track. Yates had just opened a large shop in the Charlotte area, and Roush was thinking of moving his operation to North Carolina. The two agreed to meet to discuss a merger of engine-building talents, and it not too long after RoushYates engines had the front row at the Daytona 500.
Today, RoushYates builds engines for many of Ford’s racing ventures, including the EcoBoost that powers the new GT [3] endurance teams. The only disappointment of the video is the lack of fresh snapshots from inside the shop. We’ve seen many of the scenes before in other RoushYates videos [4]. As engine enthusiasts we would like to see a 7-minute video on the shop’s high-end dyno room, or a long look at Spintron testing or development work. Still, it’s good to the hear the story about how two tough-minded engine builders came together.
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