Cool Addington the ice to hard-charging Busch's fire

DOVER, Del. -- Qualifying hadn't even finished yet, but Steve Addington had to go. With his driver on the provisional pole position, the Sprint Cup crew chief hopped on the company plane that team owners Joe and J.D. Gibbs had thoughtfully left for him in Dover, and winged down to his hometown of Spartanburg, S.C., to watch his daughter Ashlyn walk across the graduation stage at Boiling Springs High School.

It was a trip he wasn't sure he'd been able to make. "We might have a problem," he told J.D. Gibbs last month when he learned of the conflict. But Gibbs told him to go anyway, and to take the company plane, making for an unexpected but emotional reunion on the football field Friday night after the event.

"After the ceremony, we got to walk out on the field," he said. "And when she saw me, that was cool."

But that's Addington, the most easy-going of the hard-nosed competitors on the Sprint Cup circuit, the complementary ice to driver Kyle Busch's fire. Busch, who dominated Sunday's event at Dover International Speedway for his series-leading fourth victory of the season (read more), can be a handful -- emotional and opinionated, outspoken and vilified. He gets booed unmercifully for the sin of being good and knowing it. On Friday after the garage closed, some yahoos actually sneaked in with the cleanup crew, broke into his No. 18 hauler, dumped their cooler on the floor and stole his helmet. Although the interlopers were eventually caught and the hardware returned, the episode goes to show that every day with the points leader can be an adventure.

• Video: Victory Lane at Dover

With Addington, every day is like a sip of sweetened iced tea. He's an old-school mechanic, dating back to his days building dirt cars with fellow South Carolinian Jason Keller. He always seems unruffled, his M&M's -- or in Sunday's case, Combos -- jersey hanging on his lanky 6-foot-4 frame. Some crew chiefs have to be forced to take a day off. Addington left for his daughter's graduation while qualifying was ongoing, and his No. 18 car was in first place. When he came back the next day, it was third.

"It's interesting the way [the guys] match up," Joe Gibbs said. "The crew chief, that's a tough thing. Crew chief-driver, we look around inside the pit wall over here at how often guys stay together very long. They have an unusual relationship, because Steve is very laid back, very even, and Kyle obviously at times will sound off. That's a great combination."

It rubs off. The cool crew chief oversaw a pit crew on Sunday that knocked out a series of sub-13-second stops and kept Busch out front, crucial on a track like Dover where track position is so important. Near the end, as Busch was completing a performance that saw him lead 158 laps and key Toyota's first tripleheader weekend sweep, the message from spotter Jeff Dickerson was a mellow one: "We're just chilling now," he told his driver over the radio. "We're just chilling."

Addington always seems to be chilling. And when it comes to managing the hard-charging Busch, his approach is a simple one. "I just let him go," Addington said. "He learns for himself on how to slow the car down. He wants me to fix it to go wide open, and it's just, you can't do it. We work on it, and he puts it to the point where it works. That's why it works so well."

It's been nearly flawless to this point, Busch proving to be the missing link on a team that's always had plenty of potential but little success. Addington won 10 races with Keller in a decade on what's now called the Nationwide Series, and moved into NASCAR's premier circuit with Bobby Labonte in 2005. After a winless season, Labonte moved on to Petty Enterprises, and J.J. Yeley got the call from Gibbs. Two even leaner years followed.

But that championship campaign of 2000, and the race wins the No. 18 car accumulated under former crew chiefs Jimmy Makar and Michael McSwain, cast a long shadow. In the grandstand, fingers were pointed at Addington. No more. These days, with the best driver in NASCAR behind the wheel, no one is questioning his ability to set up a car.

"It's awesome. That's the bottom line, it's awesome," said Addington, who already has more top-fives this season (nine) than in the past three years combined (five). "There are a lot of opportunities out there, a lot of guys who are really good guys who work hard. It's the people you put yourself around, that you have around you, that work hard for you. You put the right driver in the mix, and it works. It's an awesome feeling. You come to the racetrack, and it's fun to get up and go to work in the mornings. It's fun to go to the racetrack and know you've got a shot to win every race you go to."

As Joe Gibbs can attest from his football coaching career, sometimes the best way to manage an athlete is to take a hands-off approach. Maybe that's why things have seemed to click between Busch, a driver who just wants to go fast, and Addington, a crew chief who more times than not just lets him. "There's great chemistry there," Gibbs said. Every now and then, Addington has to pull in the reigns. Busch doesn't seem to mind.

"He's got a good aura with the team," Busch said. "All the guys on the whole team respect him for all that he knows, for all that he's done in this sport, for as many years as he's been around. The same goes for me, too. I respect him for what he's accomplished in this sport. Even though it doesn't look like much on paper, he's definitely done a tremendous job, and obviously he's still doing it this year."