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The behind the machines: Q&A with Chad Knaus and Alan Gustafson
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It comes down to this. One race to decide a championship, more specifically the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship.
Right now Jimmie Johnson is seemingly in control. Johnson has a 108 point lead over second place Mark Martin and will only need to finish 25th or better to make history as the first four-time consecutive champion in NASCAR history Sunday night at Homestead.
But while Johnson does have a sizable lead, the championship isn’t a given. There have been nine times that Martin has gained 108 points on Johnson. The most recent time being only two weeks ago in Texas, when Martin’s fourth-place finish combined with Johnson’s 38th due to a crash, resulted in a net gain of 111 points.
If anything goes wrong Sunday, one bolt breaks, a car setup is missed, or an engine blows, the championship may very well be ripe for the taking by Martin.
Behind both drivers are the teams that build those cars, determine those setups and ensure every nut and bolt is in place. Those crews are led by the crew chiefs that make it all happen.
Tuesday Jimmie Johnson’s crew chief Chad Knaus and Mark Martin’s crew chief Alan Gustafson met with the media ahead of this Sunday’s season finale at Homestead. Here are the highlights.
Looking back, how do you view 2009?
ALAN GUSTAFSON: It's been a real successful season for us. You know, getting Mark on board was obviously a huge step in the right direction, and being able to win five races and contend down to the wire for the championship and have a shot at Homestead has been good. It's been a great season, and the guys have accomplished a lot and really looking forward to going to Homestead. It's a really fun track to race on.
Going there with a shot is… even though the shot is not as good as we want, it's still a privilege to have that opportunity to contend and win a championship and go down there as put as much pressure on Chad, as much as possible, even though it's not as much as we want it to be. But go down there and have some fun doing that.
CHAD KNAUS: We've had a really good season, obviously. I think that with Alan and Mark running as competitive as they have this year, very similar to when the 24 car was running as well as what they were a couple years ago, having that internal competition I think has really helped our team and helped our company, actually, to rise to a better level. I think that's evident with the way that all of our teams are running, especially at this stage in the year. The 88 is running well, the 5, the 24 and the 48 are all battling each and every week. So I think that having the two teams battling for the championship and then with the 24 car right there on our heels, I think it's raised the production of the whole company up a bunch. So we're real happy with that.
Real pleased after coming off of Phoenix with a great win there. Jimmie did a fantastic job, the guys did a great job with the car, so I'm really looking forward to Homestead. We've been competitive there in the past. We haven't gotten a victory there. We would love to get an opportunity to do that, and just proud of the position we're in right now. It's really nice.
Chad, Ray Evernham won three titles and went into ownership. Do you have any aspirations for stuff like that or management, or is being a chew chief where you want to be long-term?
CHAD KNAUS: I’m getting an awful lot of those questions for whatever reason the last few weeks. I don't know. My initial goal when I first came into the Cup Series was to obviously become a crew chief and win races and win a championship and then move on to an ownership role. I don't know if I want that now or not. I think it would be foolish of me to try to think that I could be an upstart team and try to make something like that happen.
You almost have to have an affiliation with somebody to do that. If you look at Tony Stewart and the way he got into Stewart-Haas and that deal all came together with the support from Hendrick Motorsports, that deal will work. To start from an outside company I think would be a pretty lofty goal, and I don't know if, after realizing what it is that we've got here at Hendrick Motorsports, I don't know if I would ever want to race against it. It's a pretty amazing place.
Just I don't know. We'll just have to wait and see. But the likelihood is probably slim at this point.
First for Alan, and then if Chad will follow up, Alan, can you put your finger on what Chad and Jimmie have that nobody else seems to have? And after that, if you will, Chad, will you address what about Alan and his operation has impressed you in these last couple years?
ALAN GUSTAFSON: As far as what the 48 has that nobody else has, that's a really tough question to answer. If I could answer that, I'd be working really, really hard to figure out… or to implement that or whatever it is. But I can tell you that they work as hard or harder than anybody else in the series consistently, and they're both at the pinnacle of the sport, both Chad and Jimmie, and they have assembled a great team and do a great job keeping a great team even when they have some rollover, which in professional sports is inevitable, they can fill the voids really well.
But the things that they've accomplished, and I know firsthand racing in this Chase, this is the closest I've ever been to them in my career, what they've been able to go do is extremely, extremely, extremely difficult. I've given everything I have and my team has and Mark has, and I think we've had a great season. Right now we're falling a little bit short. Hopefully for us that can change. I don't wish any bad luck on them at Homestead, but anything can happen. I do want to make the point that what they've been able to accomplish over the last four years and what they've done in this Chase is really remarkable.
I've heard some people bring the Tiger Woods analogy into the equation, and you sit there and you think about that, and that's probably one of the best ways to summarize how good they are and have been able to be over the last four years.
With that being said, we're not going to stop. At Homestead there's going to be another season in 2010, and we're going to gear up as hard as we can, and that's the position we want to be in. Each time you fall a little bit short, you learn, and I think we're getting better, and I think we're going to do whatever we can to reach that point sometime, too.
CHAD KNAUS: I think if you look at the 5 car, the thing that's impressed me the most, and not even this year, it's obviously easy to put a brand on what the 5 car has been able to do based on the 2009 season. But I think if you look at the tenacity that Alan and his team has had with different drivers, different circumstances, they don't give up. They have a never-say-die attitude.
I think if you look at where they were at at the beginning of the season with a couple of DNFs, whether that was from an accident or from an engine failure, they never even blinked an eye. Yeah, they were upset and they were discouraged, but they never gave up hope that they were going to make the Chase and man, they came back with a force. I think that if you look at the 5 car, they're probably one of the most technically advanced teams that we've got out there. Their engineering staff is second to none. They do a very good job of facilitating tests, looking at seven-post data, gathering intel and using that information.
I think Alan is the smartest crew chief out there. I've been saying that for a couple of years now. And I think it's just a matter of time before they get their chance, and it very well could be this year. We're hoping obviously from my side of things that it's the 48 car, but I can promise you, if we have something go down, they're going to be there to pick up the pieces.
This question is for both of you. Ray Evernham said that in order to be a really great crew chief you've got to have the willingness to kind of give up the other portions of your life while you're doing it. Do you find that's true, in order to be really dedicated to the team, that you have to let some other things go?
ALAN GUSTAFSON: Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a balance, and those are decisions that you've got to make. I think the point to all that is somebody is going to do it. Somebody is going to dedicate their life 24/7, 365, to their trade and their sport and their craft and they're going to continuously get better.
You've got to make a decision in your life at what point in time is enough enough or when are you going to quit or is there ever a point when enough is enough. That's difficult and something we all have to balance out.
The flip side of that is I think you can go too far and lose your sanity, and that can be just as bad of a distraction as not working hard enough. You've got to balance it out, and there's a lot of ways. I think the one thing that we really look at here at Hendrick Motorsports is how we can be the most efficient and optimize our time and not waste time because time is so precious to us, either being here at work, at the racetrack or on vacation with our families or whatever it is that we're doing. We try to get the most out of every second of every day. And I think that's the key, because you've got to be able to balance it out.
But to Ray's point, you've got to dedicate the majority of your adult life to it and your good years to be the best. Chad is the best right now, so he could give a lot of insight into that, I'm sure. But from my point of view, yeah, it's very taxing.
CHAD KNAUS: I think, again, a lot of what Alan says is right. But I think he's a good example of you don't have to do that. I think that Alan has… he's got a wife, children, house, he does stuff with his family, and he's extremely successful. So I don't think you necessarily have to have that.
I know a lot of us have given up things like that, family life, children, lost wives. I mean, there's been a lot of things that have gone on through different crew chiefs' careers, but I don't think it's necessarily the case that it has to be that way. We do a good job of empowering the people that work with us to carry a lot of the load.
In 2005 I really dedicated everything I had to that year to try to win the championship, and we came up short, and Mr. Hendrick and Jimmie showed me at the end of that season, look, you can't do this; you can't do it at the level that you're trying to do it. It wasn't the level of success, it was the level of intensity, because it was like what Alan said, I was losing that edge that I had and I was beginning to flame out.
I think that now a good crew chief, a really good crew chief, probably does a better job of balancing his home life, his life away from work and his life at work because that's the only way you're going to get the proper balance to where you can be successful in both, so you can be successful in both because you can't have one without the other and probably be fulfilled.
This is for Alan. How is working with Mark Martin different from other drivers you've worked with?
ALAN GUSTAFSON: Mark has got obviously a lot of talent. He's a great person. I think the biggest thing; his professionalism is above considerably above everybody else I've worked with on and off the racetrack, the way he works at his trade, the way he communicates with the team, the way that he works with his teammates. Everything he does, he is very, very professional, very dedicated to what he does, and he does it in a really positive way.
I know it's a really broad statement, but his professionalism is very impressive, and that allows you to focus on what's important. You don't have to worry about things that aren't important. You can worry about what's going to make the cars go faster, the communication of the team, the communication of the engineering staff, help work with the pit crew, help work with our teammates and other drivers, other crew chiefs and other drivers to get that dialogue going to where we can get as much information as possible, and then process it correctly.
He does a fantastic job with that. You know, he's a great teammate. He's just a great person to be around. I think Chad would say the same thing. He's a great complement to our organization. He helps all the drivers, helps all the teams, helps management, everybody. He's just got a great perspective on racing and how to go about things, and we're really fortunate to have him here at the company.
As a follow-up, because of his experience, has that been an asset there with the younger drivers at Hendrick, but with Mark's experience because of the testing policy that has been in place this year, has that benefited Hendrick?
ALAN GUSTAFSON: Yeah, I think there's no question about that. I know it's benefited the 5 tremendously, and I think that's flowed over to other teams. He knows what he needs and what he wants. He's got a great feel for a racecar, and he can give us the information. Not that he's going in and saying, hey, I need this or I need this, but he will say I need my car to do this and he feels like this is happening, that it make this happen and that's a result of X, and then we can go back and diagnose all that stuff.
There's been a lot of times during the year that the 48 and the 5 have been very similar or the 24 and the 5 have been very similar. All four cars have been similar. To watch Mark have the dialogue with those other drivers…and when you get a guy like Mark Martin and a guy like Jimmie Johnson on very similar equipment, getting their feedback is just priceless. It allows us to take things so much further, and like you said, with the lack of testing, you don't have that benefit if you have a rookie driver or drivers that don't have the experience or the intelligence level or the ability that those two have. They're two of the best.
So it's really neat to be involved with that, when you get the four talented drivers we have, get them on similar equipment and then listen to how each one of them will dissect the car differently, and I think Mark does as good a job with that as anybody.
And Chad, would you mind commenting, please, if Mark has benefited you this year, as well?
CHAD KNAUS: I think Alan really hit on it all. Mark is a fantastic talent. I've been a fan of Mark since I was just a child. My father and Mark used to run ASA together, so I've got photographs of myself and Mark when I was like six and he was, like, 18 or something like that, 20 years old. So that was kind of neat to be a part of this deal.
I think he brings great experience, not only from a motorsports side of things but life experiences. Obviously he's older than we are, so he's done more and he's experienced more things. He really pulls out good information out of the other drivers. It's real easy, especially with what we've got going on now with different tires, and obviously we hate to compare cars still, but with this car that we've got, there's only so much you can do to it before the driver just has to say that's about as good as it's going to be and I have to go through with it and drive it.
And I think when we get together with Mark as a group, a lot of the drivers will come in discouraged and be just like, man, that's all I've got or even Mark could possibly do that. What ends up happening is they start to discuss it, and they're like, wow, that's what my car is doing, too, and they start to feed off of that and then Mark starts to influence those guys, just like, you know, guys, we can get through this, we can do this.
He's got such a good spin on things. It's never done. You're never done working on it. It could always be better. It's just time to go race.
And I think he brings a lot of that mentality to where we're like, look, we're going to work on it until the last lap of the race and try to make it better. He's got that desire that not a lot of people have.
Chad, I'm wondering, heading into this weekend at Homestead Miami Speedway, it's the only track on the Chase schedule that you guys haven't won at, and I'm wondering if the reason is mainly because you're going in protecting a lead, or is there something else about that track that you guys haven't quite figured out yet?
CHAD KNAUS: Well, I think if you look at it, we've had obviously both scenarios play out there. We've had races that we've had to win to try to win the championship, we've had races that we needed to go in there and just be protective and try to make sure we didn't lose it.
So I think that we haven't hit on exactly what it is that we need there, although I feel like our package going into Homestead this year is probably the best that we've had yet, so I'm excited about that. I think we can go in there this weekend with the aggressiveness that we need. We sat on the pole there a couple years ago. I think it was 2006. I think we can go down there and battle for the pole and hopefully get ourselves in position to race for the win.
But you know, we're not going to do anything silly, either, to take ourselves out of contention or out of a place that we can possibly win this thing. So we're just going to have to play it by ear and hopefully we can be in a position to race for it and hopefully win this thing. It would be awesome. But obviously the big prize has to be the thing first and foremost on our minds.
Alan, Rick Hendrick as a guy, what is it about him that just promotes an incredible sense of loyalty that we see out of the employees from the drivers and crew chiefs to everyone we see in the garage area? There's just something about Rick Hendrick that you guys want to do well for him.
ALAN GUSTAFSON: Well, I don't think there's any person that I've ever met who was more compassionate and who treats fellow human beings better than Rick Hendrick. And I think that's the key for me personally, and that's all I can speak on.
I know when I started here in the chassis shop, basically - I don't want to say a nobody, a nobody is a nobody, but nowhere on his radar, he treated me like I was the best crew chief in the world or the president of Lowe's or whatever you want to say. He was extremely, extremely good to me, and he has been, and he's supported me through thick and thin, and he's supported me in tough times.
One thing that stands out in my mind when we've had issues on the racetrack or we had performance issues last year, there's a lot of owners who would have went right to the crew chief, and we see that week in and week out. We've seen that happen this year. But he had faith in me, and he stood behind me. I will return that favor ten times over. I think that's the key.
It's not - there's not any magic. The fact is he's willing to do more for people, for his people, than basically anybody else is. And he's willing to put himself second time and time and time again for his company and for his people, and we all sincerely appreciate that, and we want to return the favor to him because he treats us so well.
I think he genuinely enjoys bringing good things and happiness to people's lives, and he does a great job of it. So he's just a super- special person. The world would be a worse place without Rick Hendrick in it. He's just a great guy and somebody you will do anything for because he will treat you the same way.
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