Elton Sawyer and Patty Moise went about their business as racecar drivers while they were dating and racing against each other throughout the 1990s.

The couple, who began dating after sharing a ride to a race in Georgia in April 1990 and were married later that year, never saw their relationship as that big of a deal. They treated each other as competitors on the track and as husband and wife off of it.

Patty Moise and Elton Sawyer say they had no problems racing each other while dating or married. (Chad Fletcher/NASCAR Illustrated)

They didnt face nearly the spotlight that will shine on Danica Patrick and Ricky Stenhouse Jr., NASCARs new power couple, as they race in the Sprint Cup Series this year.

But Moise and Sawyer are proof that it is possible to race the person you love without a problem.

We raced each other hard and I knew he would race me clean and I would race him clean, Moise said in a phone interview Tuesday. We never got a chance that we were going for a win. I dont know what would have happened then.

All is fair in love and war and racing.

Sawyer and Moise are still married after 22 years. Sawyer, now 53, enjoyed a longer career than Moise. They raced against each other 58 times in what was then called the NASCAR Busch Series.

For us, it really didnt seem that big a deal, Sawyer said Tuesday. We went out and raced. We both shared the same profession and we dealt with it that way.

It was different more for the other competitors, probably. For us, it seemed normal. It wasnt anything out of the ordinary.

Patrick and Stenhouse were good friends while racing in the Nationwide Series the past three years and revealed last week that they are dating. They will race under a bright spotlight this year as both of them move to the Sprint Cup Series full time and race each other for rookie of the year.

Both have said they dont expect their dating to have any affect on how they race on the track, but their now-public relationship has raised numerous questions and sparked spirited debate among fans.

Sawyer and Moise said they didnt feel pressure to race each other harder just to avoid any perception of favoritism in the give-and-take world of racing.

Youre really focused when youre in there and in terms of how I would think about another car I was racing with, I would think about it as far as, Was I chapped with that person or not? Moise said. Or what was my experience in the past racing around that person?

On the rare occasion I got to race Dale Earnhardt, I would always try to find something else to dig down deeper to race because he was my hero. But other than that, you just dont think about it that much.

In other words, as Sawyer put it, it was business at the racetrack.

We raced each other just like it was another car on the track, Sawyer said. Her goal was to win races and things of that nature, and mine was the same. That was how we approached it.

It must have been going quite well. Weve made it (together) for 22 years.

Sawyer said his biggest adjustment to dating a competitor wasnt on the track. It was off the track with the added publicity and spotlight their relationship attracted.

She was used to the spotlight, more of the attention and things of that nature, Sawyer said. I wasnt in the limelight. I had a pretty successful short-track career but I was still trying to get my Busch Series career on track.

I was just another guy in the field trying to make it work. One thing I had to get used to very quick was I was starting to get a lot more media attention for dating, and being married to, one of my competitors.

It actually wasnt the first time Moise had dated a competitor. She said many years earlier when she was road racing, she had dated another driver but they were too competitive off the track to make the relationship work. She had no problems with Sawyer.

Having him to talk to after a race or bounce ideas off of, whether it be something about the car or a team member or somebody youre trying to hire or work with was always such an asset, Moise said.

Him understanding all the different things and the time involved to make it work was always a plus.

The couple doesnt compete against each other anymore.

Moise, 52, hasnt been involved in racing since working as the executive producer for the racing reality show NBS 24/7 several years ago. She raises horses and competes in equestrian eventing.

Sawyer doesnt compete in equestrian events. He doesnt know where the steering wheel or the brakes are on horses, Moise said. A former Red Bull Racing executive, Sawyer is the director of race operations for the Action Express sportscar race team.

Sawyer had two series victories in his career with three top-five finishes in the points standings. Moise had a best finish of seventh at Talladega in 1995, and her best season was the year she began dating and eventually married Sawyer, finishing 22nd in points in 1990.

For Sawyer, there never was any jealousy if his wife beat him on the track.

We had a joint bank account, Sawyer said. So all the money went into one account anyway.

It didnt bother us one bit if one of us was doing well, it was good for all. If she had a great day, I was like, Man, thats awesome. Thats more money in the bank for both of us.

Moise laughed at Sawyers answer and agreed that there was no jealousy as far as their results on the track.

It has a lot to do with the relationship you have, Moise said. Elton Sawyer has been the best thing to ever happen to me. Hes my best friend. He makes things fun.

So even when I was having a hard day at the racetrack, where I felt kind of beat up by the world or whatever, there was a real comfort factor having him and our relationship.

It would be tough to find anyone in the NASCAR industry who isnt happy with the look of the new 2013 Sprint Cup car .

The only problem is trying to get enough parts and pieces to build them.

Teams have had a hard time getting hoods and decklids to build the new Sprint Cup car. (NASCAR Media Photo)

Teams are scrambling as they try to build cars for the 2013 season, with the words hood and decklid making crew chiefs cringe.

NASCAR decided late last year that it would switch to carbon fiber hoods and decklids for the new car. Each manufacturer is producing its hoods through a vendor (it is considered a piece that must come from the manufacturer) while NASCAR decided that all decklids the only piece of the bodies that are the same for each manufacturer must come from the same source.

But getting those pieces has been a challenge for teams.

The shortage of hoods and decklids has put nearly every team behind in building cars for the 2013 season. More than a dozen teams had to leave last weeks three-day test session at Daytona early after a 12-car wreck damaged several cars . Most of those teams didnt have backup cars and many teams left the test because of the fear of wrecking or damaging their only Daytona car.

Michael Waltrip Racing crew chief Brian Pattie said Thursday that each of the three MWR teams has only six cars built so far compared to 10 at this time a year ago.

The decklids are being produced by Composite Resources, a Rock Hill, S.C. company that primarily works in the aerospace and military industry and which won the contract through a bidding process. The company is active in sportscar racing, owning Core Autosport, which competes in the American Le Mans Series.

The company can make at least 50 decklids a week and this past week was able to boost production to 70, according to owner Jon Bennett.

We started production of the decklid in mid-December, Bennett said in an e-mail. Production has been on a steady ramp up since we started. We know the teams need decklids ASAP to provide ample time to get their racecars built for Daytona and races that follow.

For the moment, we are following NASCAR's lead on production targets and releases to teams. Our production has steadily increased from 12 decklids on week one to our current 50-plus per week.

Bennett said the company is working around the clock six days per week (three shifts a day) and expects that type of production through February.

NASCAR Vice President of Competition Robin Pemberton said that up until this week, the decklids were being distributed equally among Cup organizations no matter how many teams each organization had. Starting this week, decklid distribution is based on the number of teams the organization plans to field in 2013.

With approximately 100 decklids being produced every two weeks and about 35 full-time teams, that means those teams would get about three decklids per organization every two weeks. The decklids are the same no matter the type of track teams run at, so teams dont need different ones for different tracks.

The decklid is an area that is very important to the car, Pemberton said. Over the past few years, it was becoming a science project, whereas if a decklid can distort a certain way during a run, during the afternoon, it generates more downforce.

That being said, then they became a piece that was only made for a race or two races, then it was thrown out. So that got to be labor intensive. It was not predictable. It wasn't fair for some teams that had more resources than others that could afford to do that week in and week out when other teams could not.

As far as the manufacturers, they are trying to work with their teams to get them enough hoods. The carbon fiber hoods had to go through strength and fire-resistant tests at NASCARs research and development center and that approval process took time and slowed down manufacturing.

Because of the strict approval process and because it is a structural piece, NASCAR also wanted to have limited vendors in order to ensure the structural integrity. That spurred the decision to have each manufacturer choose one vendor, said Toyota Racing Development Sprint Cup manager Andy Graves.

Five Star Race Car Bodies is making the hoods for Chevrolet, Roush Industries is doing them for Ford teams and Crawford Composites is manufacturing them for Toyota. All of the manufacturers have had long-standing relationship with those companies.

Toyota teams are getting a minimum of eight hoods a week and Graves decides who gets them. Teams have requests in for how many hoods they need.

Theres a series of things, not all of them fall on NASCARs shoulders, Graves said. A lot of them fall on ours as well in wanting to make sure we have a product sufficient for the track.

Its tight. Supply is limited right now. Its uncomfortable for the teams and we understand that and we apologize to them for our portion of the delay.

Graves estimated that each team (car) would need at least 10 hoods to get through the season. A team could take a hood that is damaged and see if Crawford will repair it instead of the team having to buy a new one.

Chevy Racings Sprint Cup program manager Alba Colon said Chevrolet has distributed hoods to all of its teams and it depends on the situation of each team as far as how many they get. She said every team has a schedule of when they will get hoods.

Trust me everything will be OK, Colon said. The teams are getting the hoods and they will have plenty of hoods. That is not an issue. Everybody is a little bit anxious but it will be OK. We wont be having this conversation in five weeks.

Graves said he believes Crawford has added extra shifts and by mid-March, the Toyota teams should be well-stocked with hoods.

We felt it was more important to take the time, to make sure all the rules were 100 percent correct and were going to be the best for the series in the long term rather than rushing through it early on, Graves said. Thats created a lot of heartburn and some issues for the teams.

We understand it. Its not great, but once we get through the first couple of months of the season, we wont hear about those issues anymore.

Ford officials declined to comment for this story.

I dont think theres a reason for people to be worried or concerned in the industry, Graves said. Weve been running the same car since 2007 and theres been this huge supply. Now all of a sudden, theres a radical, different approach to how we construct bodies, the shape of the body, some of the materials the bodies are made out of and it took longer than any of us wanted to settle in on the rules.