Sprint Cup crew chiefs have the career life expectancy of a Jeb Bush campaign manager.
There are grease stains in the garages that last longer than the fellows in charge of them.
It has been reported that there exist only five driver-crew chief tandems who have been together for the past three full seasons, pointing to a startling rate of attrition among the gents who sit high on pit row and direct the strategy and mechanics and the very fate of their race teams.
Sure enough, another season began with great, tumultuous change in the driver-crew chief roster. When the dominoes finally stopped tumbling, a dozen teams had shaken up their leadership.
Danica Patrick had her third different crew chief in three years (Billy Scott), still seeking the right mix that might produce results over mere curiosity.
Carl Edwards finished fifth in the Sprint Cup points standings in 2015, winning twice and compiling 15 top-10 finishes — and still made a change, to Dave Rogers.
Brian Pattie went from David Ragan to Greg Biffle; Matt Puccia went from Biffle to Trevor Bayne; Bob Osborne went from Bayne to rookie Chris Buescher.
So churns the tidal flow of constant change in the ranks of racing. You know you are a real racin’ fan — or in dire need of a diversion — if you can name one-quarter of the current driver-crew chief combos coming to Atlanta Motor Speedway this weekend for the Folds of Honor/QuikTrip 500.
If all this reminds you of any other fragile relationship in sports, you are not alone.
“It’s exactly like a coach-player relationship,” Joe Gibbs said. He should know, having won Super Bowls coaching Washington and spending the past 24 years owning a race team.
Only coaches might have Supreme Court-level job security compared with the crew chief of today.
What teams look for in a crew chief can be so heavy on intangibles, so ephemeral and elusive in nature that it’s little wonder the search is so difficult, so constant.
When it works, the driver and crew chief become as tied together as an old married couple, whose success is community property. When it doesn’t, well, as they are prone to say in this sport, “The driver gets all the glory and the crew chief gets all the blame.”
Said one-time crew chief Larry McReynolds, who left pit row for the relative stability of the Fox broadcast booth: “Everybody is looking for that magic combination like we’ve seen with Chad Knaus and Jimmie Johnson for a number of years, most recently with Rodney Childers and Kevin Harvick. Throw in last year the combination of Adam Stevens and (2015 Sprint Cup champion) Kyle Busch. Everybody’s looking for that magic combination, and it’s hard to find.”
Knowledge of which end of the wrench to hold is helpful, but when people in the sport begin talking about what they look for in a crew chief, inevitably the requirements turn more personal than that.
“It’s that chemistry — they pick those people on their team. It’s them being able to understand people, motivate people, being able to work with people. It’s a people deal — that’s what they’re in, more than technical or mechanical,” Gibbs said.
So it was at the beginning of this season we were regaled with stories of offseason bonding sessions between crew chiefs and teams that had nothing to do with going fast and turning left. Like Patrick and Scott going curling (trying out the winter “sport,” not doing each other’s hair).
Patrick foresaw many good things as a result: “It’s going to make for a good year, a fun year, a good vibe,” she said in the offseason. “When you’re positive and healthy that rubs off on everything else.”
“When I look at the drivers I had the most success with I don’t think it was coincidental that it was drivers I had the closest relationship with. I look at Davey Allison most notably, he was my best friend,” McReynolds said. His relationship with the late Dale Earnhardt was not quite as cozy, although McReynolds still says the reports of their bickering were overblown.
And when considering the elements of a successful driver-crew chief synergy (don’t often see that word in racing stories, do you?) a psychic connection might also be helpful.
“Imagine a crew chief and it’s like you’re blindfolded in a dark room, the only information you have is what your driver is telling you. So I’ve got to be clear on that and he’s got to understand it,” Bayne said.
The shuffling within the Gibbs team certainly yielded immediate and impressive returns. Can there be a much better debut for a driver and his new crew chief than winning the Daytona 500? Denny Hamlin and his guy Mike Wheeler had a very good day Sunday.
“He’s my guy, he’s going to be my guy until I retire, there’s no doubt about that,” Hamlin had said of Wheeler even before his first victory in the big race. The two go way back, Wheeler working as a team engineer throughout Hamlin’s Cup career, and had a long-standing handshake agreement that one day they’d work together even closer.
“I think a lot of it is we’re friends first; him being my crew chief is a mere sidebar to our relationship,” Hamlin said after the Daytona win. “So, this is one that I’m very proud and happy for him.”
Let us pronounce them driver and crew chief, and may they have a long and fruitful union — at least until the first big bump in the road.
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