December 13th, 2010 
T.C. There is no question that in order to have success in racing, a team needs to have both a great driver and a great crew chief. We are witnessing one such pair right now with Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus. Apart, they are both good enough that they would probably still have success, but together they are seemingly unstoppable. There is no question that the really great drivers are able to do more with less, and there are instances of great crew chiefs making okay drivers look great. But for a team to be considered elite, they need to have both. So my question to you is, what is harder to find, a great driver or a great crew chief?
The success of NASCAR over the last few decades has ensured that there is no shortage of talent coming up on America’s race tracks. Kids are getting into racing at younger ages, and parents are leveraging their own assets to help fund their kids’ dreams. The days of drivers making it to the big leagues on talent alone are probably over, which makes finding the cream of the crop very difficult. Now, unless a driver is bringing funding to the table, most owners won’t even bother.
Finding really great crew chiefs is no simple task either. In today’s NASCAR, crew chiefs aren’t head mechanics anymore. They need to know everything there is about the race car, be able to effectively strategize for every possible outcome of a race, and be somebody who others will follow. Crew chiefs also need to serve as a cheerleader for their driver and make effective personnel decisions. In order to find the best guy for the job, owners will search high and low both inside and outside of their own organizations. He may come from the engineering department with a great resume, or he could be the young kid sweeping the floors. We’ve literally seen it all.
So knowing what we know about both drivers and crew chiefs, which is more difficult to find? That great steering wheel holder, or the guy he yells at on the radio?
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I was re-reading Peter Golenbock’s NASCAR CONFIDENTIAL just last night, and your column struck a chord with what Jimmy Makar said about being Dale Jarrett’s (who married Jimmy’s sister) and Bobby Labonte’s crew chief. Both were/are talented drivers, but he felt that he and Bobby worked better together because they communicated extraordinarily well. They were, essentially, on the same wavelength. I think that’s what JJ and Knaus have worked into – that marriage of minds where you can say anything and know you’ll work through it. That’s the crucial element, aside from good driver, good crew chief, good equipment, enough funding, and a great shop behind your car. Those three final pieces don’t create the chemistry between crew chief and driver, however. The two of them have to do it.
I agree that it is important to have both a great driver and a great crew chief for ultimate success like the 48 car has had for the past 5 seasons. However, combining a great driver and a great crew chief do NOT automatically guarantee success. Just ask Darrell Waltrip about his time working with Waddell Wilson, both of whom were at the tops of their games at the time. The chemistry just did not work and relatively little success was the result.
I have noticed also that some driver/crew chief combinations work amazingly well, yet the driver or crew chief never hit on that type of combination again. Ray Evernham never really clicked with any of his drivers after leaving Hendrick (yeah, he was the team owner, not crew chief – so what was the deal with the ‘crew chief by committee’ that Bill Elliott had back then?). Paul Andrews never hit on a winning combination like he had with Alan Kulwicki. Davey Allison and Larry MacReynolds were magic, but Larry never really clicked with Dale Earnhardt. Even Dale Jr. and Tony Eury Jr. haven’t done diddly since separating.
In addition, we’ve seen that most of the time the magic cannot be recreated. Darrell Waltrip worked with Jeff Hammond while at Junior Johnsons and Hendrick achieving ultimate success, yet they could never recapture the magic when Jeff came back to Darell’s team years later.
I believe that having a great driver and a great crew chief are important, but they also have to be in sync with each other, enjoy working together, and each has to be ‘in the right place’ in their lives at that exact time for the magic to happen.
It’s hard to name a great CC who didn’t have a great driver. Flip side, a driver didn’t become great without an excellent CC.
There is one current driver that seems to be able to win in almost anything he hops in regardless of series or CC… Kyle Busch
What’s more important? The left half of the seatbelt or the right? Answer: all that matters is how they come together.
Great topic for discussion, TC!
It’s hard (and critical) to get a good driver, a good crew chief & a great team to pull it all together. This is why JJ will win in 2011.
Yeah. What Kaoscapt said. Look back at the history of great drivers and you will most often find a crew chief who “clicked” with that driver. Richard and Maurice Petty. Jeff Gordon and Ray Evernham. Dale Earnhardt and Kirk Shelmerdine. Even going back to when the car owner was the de facto crew chief, David Pearson and Glen and Leonard Wood. Curtis Turner and Smokey Yunick. Or Tim Flock and Carl Kiekhaefer.
The magic can best be described using the word “chemistry” but it takes a bond between driver and crew chief, and the ability of one or both of them to lead a team, to create a consistently winning combination.