Just how much impact can moving people around within the same organization have?
It might be surprising to find out.
Hendrick Motorsports is the latest to test the crew-swap module, though with their own flair. In the offseason, team owner Rick Hendrick opted to make some internal shifts in his organization — a realignment so to speak — in an effort to spark the three teams that are not five-time defending NASCAR Sprint Cup champions.
Hendrick, known for his ability to successfully partner drivers and crew chiefs, had to deal with a precarious balancing act in making the changes. He wanted to improve the efforts of four-time champion Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Mark Martin without negatively impacting the continual title efforts of Jimmie Johnson.
So Hendrick switched the drivers to new crew chiefs, moved Earnhardt Jr. into the same shop as Johnson and left Chad Knaus and Johnson with their proven partnership.
The realignment has sparked excitement and enthusiasm among not only the six major players in the move — Gordon and new crew chief Alan Gustafson (who most recently worked with Martin), Earnhardt Jr. and new crew chief Steve Letarte (who worked with Gordon), and Martin and crew chief Lance McGrew (lately of the Earnhardt Jr. team) — but also Johnson and Knaus.
Everyone believes this is the necessary ingredient to move Hendrick back into a powerhouse role this season.
After all, this is the organization that in 2009 saw Johnson finish just ahead of Gordon and Martin in the standings. Last season, though, only Johnson and Gordon made the Chase for the Sprint Cup while Martin and Earnhardt Jr. were well off the pace. Only Johnson went to Victory Lane.
Now, all are hoping that the changes spark a greater contribution from everyone involved — and more wins across the board.
“I feel like the important thing is we didn’t go outside of these walls of this complex and our folks to make any changes,” team owner Rick Hendrick said. “We just felt like that was kind of a realignment that would spark some energy and some enthusiasm going into the 2011 season. So far, it’s not like these guys haven’t worked together, it’s not like they haven’t spent about as much time with the crews that they were partners with, so I think from a standpoint of not kind of just shuffling the whole deck, this was a move we feel good about.
“So far, in practice and the chemistry, it’s not like an outsider coming in, I think we’re poised for a really good year and I would be really surprised if all four teams aren’t better going into ’11 than we were in 2010."
Everyone seems certain and confident that will be the case — even Johnson, who looks forward to having to fend off his teammates in an attempt to gain his sixth consecutive championship.
“I think with some motivation from Rick toward the end of last year," Johnson said, "it fired up all the departments here at Hendrick Motorsports going into the offseason, the changes have stirred some things up as well and there’s a lot of hungry people walking around these hallways.”
Historically, it seems that swaps such as these do, indeed, enhance a team’s effort, especially early on.
Martin, a veteran of similar moves, says that's because of the attitude of those involved. Since everyone at Hendrick has so firmly embraced these changes, they should aid the group as a whole. While he points out that he can’t comment on how it impacts other people, he personally feels a personal boost.
“It makes me really get engaged because I feel I’m behind, I’ve got to go, we’ve got ground to make fast, we’ve got to move, so it gets you up on the balls of your feet and that’s what it does to me,” he said. “That’s what I’ve done every time there’s been a change. I didn’t look at it, slide down in my seat and say, ‘Well, we’ll see how this works.’ I get up and it’s like, ‘I’m going to make this work.’ And that’s where I am.
“I think that the unknown pushes you to be more engaged and push yourself more and do more. That’s certainly where I think we are right now. The excitement and enthusiasm in the (No.) 5 team is something that rivals the excitement and enthusiasm the 5 team had two years ago. You can’t sustain that. We had it last year, but it wasn’t the same as it was when it was the first time . . . That’s worth something. That’s not everything, but it’s worth something.”
Gustafson agrees.
He joins the others in pointing out that most of these drivers and crew chiefs have worked together for years anyway as Hendrick’s group shares information and meets as a unit often. So it’s not like any of these men are strangers to one another.
Now, they are just all stepping up their game another notch.
“It causes everybody to refocus and to re-center and to bring that enthusiasm,” he said. “You do see that a lot. They key is . . . you’ve got to generate that determination and enthusiasm when you just went and ran 30th (and) things aren’t going right.”
That, he says, and being 100 percent committed to the effort, are the things that bond a driver and a crew chief. Some, though, will face more pressure as they make that transition.
That is perhaps no more the case anywhere than with Steve Letarte, the man leading his team with Earnhardt Jr. now instead of Gordon.
While there was certainly pressure associated with attempting to get Gordon a title — Letarte has spent his entire career with Hendrick and was on board for each of those championships — that accelerates now as he and his group work with NASCAR’s most popular driver.
Letarte, though, doesn’t focus on that. Instead, he’s already intent on the competition side of things — and on getting Earnhardt Jr. back into both Victory Lane and the Chase.
Like all the others in the shop, Letarte believes things are looking better from the start — and the realignment could offer the extra boost needed to gain new ground.
For now, though, Letarte is taking things one step at a time.
“Our first goal is to make the (No.) 88 relevant . . . We want to be front and center on the radar,” he said. “We want to go down, we want to be fast, we want people to see that we’re fast, we want to lead laps, we want to become relevant in these races and I think the best way to do that is to have good race cars. I think if we do that, then, yes, we feel we can win races.
“Yes, we feel we need to make the Chase, that’s our goal. But the first thing we need to do is be relevant.”
