By The Commish

Two years ago, Robbie Reiser was Crew Chief of the Year when Matt Kenseth won the last Winston Cup trophy. This week, with Kenseth mired in the mid-twenties in the points, rumors are circulating in the Nextel Cup garage that his job is in jeopardy.

Tony Stewart’s temperamental outbursts have been well-documented. But it’s worth noting that after almost every eruption of Hurricane Tony, he’s come back to win a race, his team led by crew chief Greg Zipadelli rallying behind him to support their embattled driver.

Bobby Labonte’s struggles have been well-documented. Since the sudden, and still-unexplained, departure of crew chief Michael “Fatback” McSwain last summer when Labonte was in 6th place in the standings, his #18 team has been in a tailspin. The promotion of team engineer Steve Addington to Labonte’s crew chief has, so far, not solved the problem.

In an inexplicable turn of events last summer at Infineon Raceway, Robby Gordon’s pit crew left the lug nuts untorqued on his race car not once but twice after reports that there was dissension in the 31 team ranks. Shortly thereafter Gordon made it known that he would be leaving his Richard Childress Racing team to strike out on his own.

Fan favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr. was swearing as recently as last autumn that he didn’t want to race if cousin Tony Eury Jr. wasn’t calling the shots on his car. In possibly the most publicized off-season shakeup in Cup racing, Earnhardt Jr. and teammate Michael Waltrip traded not only crew chiefs but crews and cars as well. This spring, Earnhardt Jr. and new crew chief Pete Rondeau have struggled to learn to understand each other’s needs while Earnhardt Jr. publicly questions DEI’s commitment to providing him with championship equipment.

The common denominator in all these stories: chemistry. That’s the word used in the Cup garage to describe the relationship among a driver, his crew chief, and his crew. Like many such terms, it’s hard to define but easy to see—and yet it’s an element that fans misunderstand, over and over. When a race team has it, it can survive, no matter what its on-track results. When the chemistry fails, even the best driver and personnel struggle.

Jeff Gordon fans should know this dilemma well. For the first six years of Gordon’s Cup career, he had Ray Evernham calling the shots, leading to three championships and a number of records. When Evernham chose to leave the team in 1999 to head up Dodge’s return to Cup racing, fans mourned openly, “knowing” Gordon would never be the same. To this day, when Gordon struggles, internet forums are overwhelmed with boo-hooers saying “If only Ray were still here” or words to that effect.

What that boo-hooing shows, though, is a fundamental misunderstanding of how a race team’s chemistry works. The crew chief, after all, does far more than make the calls on race day. He must oversee the construction of all the team’s cars and work with his most important teammate, the car chief, to see that safe and fast cars are built. He must maintain liaisons with his engine shop, his chassis shop or supplier, and a team of as many as 60 employees. He has to schedule tests and somehow stay in communication with his driver, who may spend a day or less in the shop each week because of sponsor commitments. Today’s NASCAR also requires him to do TV appearances, media interviews, probably share data with teammates or allied teams, all of which leads up to 18-hour days in the race shop and three to four days a week on the road. The toll this takes on family life, stomach linings, and hairlines usually burns a crew chief out in less than a decade; the average of a crew chief with a top Cup team now is four to six years.

A crew chief, a car chief, a driver, their teammates -- all of these are people. And people change. The Ray Evernham—Jeff Gordon—Rainbow Warrior alliance dominated NASCAR from 1995 to 1998 because their chemistry gave them a mutual trust and respect that allowed them to exceed their individual abilities. Gordon let Evernham make all the calls on the car and focused on giving him maximum feedback on what the car was doing—the feedback that led to his reputation as a “whiner” on the scanner. Evernham ruled his shop with an iron hand and hired outsiders to come in on the weekends to serve as the pit crew—to the point where Gordon didn’t always know the names of the guys who changed his tires at the track. This “compartmentalized” approach worked until other race teams were able to copy HMS’s methods and catch up.

But there were signs before Evernham went to Dodge that the chemistry in the 24 shop was changing. Several of Evernham’s best employees — Chad Knaus for example — had hit the glass ceiling at HMS. They had ambitions to be crew chiefs or car chiefs but HMS had no openings to promote them into. So when they were offered opportunities elsewhere, many took them. Evernham himself wanted more than to call the shots for the best team in racing — he wanted the challenge of owning and running the team. Gordon, maturing as a driver, wanted more input into his setups and crew than Evernham wanted to give up, leading to several spats on the radio (and reportedly a few in the shop as well). When Evernham left the team, Gordon’s entire hired-gun pit crew left for Robert Yates Racing, taking a better offer as free agents. Suddenly, the chemistry of the Rainbow Warriors was no more.

The situation with the 24 team in 2000, its rebuilding year, is a lesson in how chemistry has to be rebuilt. Some shop insiders wanted Frank Stoddard as the new crew chief, thinking that his intensity and drive would be a match for Evernham’s. But Gordon, asserting his new equity stake in the team, opted instead for the lower-key Robbie Loomis, Richard Petty’s long-time crew chief and the man Dale Earnhardt had been unsuccessful in recruiting to chief the #3 car. The driver wanted a crew chief who would listen to him—and whom he could trust. Gordon and Loomis then made an equally important change in their personnel philosophy — now the over-the-wall crew would be recruited from the regular shop personnel, fostering a tighter unity among driver, crew, and crew chief. As Gordon fans know, the 2000 season was a transitional one; Gordon won only 3 races and finished ninth in points. Loomis has said that it took him half a season to be able to “read” Gordon when he was looking him in the eyes, and a few more months to be able to read Gordon’s voice over the radio.

It took time to rebuild the 24 team’s chemistry, but it’s hard to argue with the results-- a championship in 2001 and top-five finishes ever since. The team has been in almost constant flux—giving up key members to form the nucleus of Jimmie Johnson’s team, suffering through the turmoil of Gordon’s divorce, losing key crew members to the high-price bidding wars now rampant in the Cup garage, suffering tragedy on a mountain in Virginia. And arguably, it is chemistry that has held the team together. Gordon’s first words on the radio at the end of a race are almost always to praise his race team; his crew chief is equally quick with his “Great job, driver; great job, pit crew.” In recent seasons, observers have noted how quick Gordon is after qualifying and races to mention the contributions of his crew, engine builders, and car chief by name—a real change from the Evernham days. The chemistry of this 24 team is very different from that of the old Rainbow Warriors—but it is equally as strong.

If recent NASCAR trends hold true, crew chiefs like Loomis, Reiser, and Zippadelli ought to last about two more years before burnout and an inevitable staleness take their toll. And then once again their teams will begin the battle to establish a new chemistry and regain their success. In the meantime, when a favorite driver struggles, fans will still blame the crew chief, as if he is singularly responsible for the driver’s results. What they should be looking at, instead, is whether driver, crew, and crew chief continue to trust and believe in each other. Set-ups can be fixed; chemistry, once lost, can never be regained.

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