Crew chiefs return as push toward Chase heats up

BROOKLYN, Mich. -- Steve Letarte has two children, and watching them play sports leaves him standing uneasily on the sideline, jittery over his inability to help. That's how the Hendrick Motorsports crew chief has felt each of the last six race weekends, as he's prepared No. 24 racecars only to roll them into the team transporter and hand them off to someone else.

"I can do everything I can Monday through Thursday to prepare them, give them my notes, give them my ideas, [tell them] 'This is how the last race went, this is how the next race might go,'" he said. "But when they leave and come out to the racetrack, they're kind of on their own. People make all this about communications, this and that, [but] this is way too competitive a sport. The only way this can be handled is to be handled at the racetrack by really elite guys."

Letarte, crew chief for current Nextel Cup points leader Jeff Gordon, is one of those elite guys. So is teammate Chad Knaus, the mechanical mind behind reigning series champion Jimmie Johnson. But they've both been on the bench since the June 24 race at Infineon Raceway, when they were saddled with six-week suspensions after the front fenders of their racecars failed initial inspection. Friday at Michigan International Speedway, they returned -- a little wiser, and welcomed by their respective teams.

And just in time, with four events looming until the Chase begins Sept. 16. Gordon went winless during the stretch, although his team, led by car chief Jeff Meendering, did record top-nine finishes in every event to virtually assure a spot in the 10-race playoff. Ron Malec took over for Knaus on Johnson's team, which fell from fifth to seventh in points during that stretch after low finishes at Indianapolis and Pocono.

"We did a great job, but I still think we were off a little, and a little is a lot in our sport," Johnson said. "I'm hopeful that going into the Chase, we'll be able to get back the rhythm this team's capable of being in."

Gordon's team never really lost its rhythm, continuing to churn out top-10 finishes the way LaDanian Tomlinson churns out yards. He now has 20 in 22 starts, the lone blemishes a 12th at Atlanta and a wreck-induced 41st at Charlotte. What the No. 24 team missed was Letarte's penchant for making sometimes risky calls pay off on race day, a factor that's been key in some of Gordon's victories.

"In the long term, we're pretty excited about having him," Gordon said, "I think for the championship, his confidence and his leadership is really going to pay off."

As in, immediately. Spurred by his crew chief's return, Gordon turned a lap of 189.026 mph around the 2-mile oval Friday to claim his sixth pole of the season, this one for Sunday's 3M Performance 400 (watch video). Johnson wasn't far behind, placing seventh with Knaus back atop the truck.

Yet that doesn't mean there isn't a readjustment period after so many weekends apart. Gordon joked that Letarte needed to go back to his motor home and call in updates over his cell phone, as he's done for the past six weeks. The suspensions may have forced other members of the two Hendrick teams to assume additional responsibilities, but that may not necessarily be an advantage in a sport where communication is so important.

"If anything, it takes away a little bit," Knaus said. "Obviously the driver-crew chief communication level is something that you always want to continue to maintain. Six weeks off, that starts to break down a little bit. But it does give the guys that come to the racetrack the opportunity to feel a little bit of pressure and have a little bit of weight on their shoulders, and it makes them stronger for sure. I don't know if it's necessarily a good thing, but it doesn't necessarily hurt either."

Added Letarte: "It's never a good thing not to be at the racetrack. You want to be here every week. You want to be in conversation with your driver, your head in the window net. That's kind of how you build that communication level. At the same time, it's forcing guys on our teams to maybe open their horizons and see some more challenges, and I think that's going to make our team stronger. But you definitely don't want to be away from the racetrack. This is what we do."

And part of that job includes trying to squeeze everything they can out of NASCAR's technical tolerances, which become further narrowed in events featuring the Car of Tomorrow. The suspensions doled out to Knaus and Letarte -- and to Tony Eury Jr., suspended six races for tinkering with the rear wing brackets on Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s car at Darlington -- comprised a strongly-worded warning from NASCAR against messing with the COT, which returns for next weekend's event at Bristol.

The Hendrick crew chiefs seemed to get that message. But if you're looking for outright contrition, think again.

"I'm sorry for what happened," Knaus said. "But for the reason that it happened I'm not sorry, because what we did was not something that we thought was bad. We didn't feel like we were breaking the rules. We've said that a million times. I stand by that, that's the case. We've heard it from top to bottom from the highest at [Hendrick] to the drivers to anybody else to ourselves. We don't feel like that what we did was anything wrong. In NASCAR's eyes, they feel that we did do something wrong so I don't feel any regret, remorse or anything like that. Am I sorry that I missed the races? Am I sorry that I wasn't there? Absolutely. It's painstaking not being here. But regret or remorse? No. That's not even an option."