Friday Martinsville Notebook

Friday Martinsville Notebook

Notebook Items:

•           Johnson Sticking With Knaus

•           Patrick Embraces Crew Chief Change

•           Kenseth A Man Of Few Words

Oct. 24, 2014

Jimmie Johnson has no desire to change crew chiefs

By Reid Spencer

NASCAR Wire Service

MARTINSVILLE, Va.—Now that he’s eliminated from the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship picture, Jimmie Johnson plans to spend as much time as possible working on his effort for 2015.

On several occasions, including Friday at Martinsville Speedway, Johnson has referred to likely changes on his team next year.

“This does open up an opportunity for us to work on ’15 from a personnel standpoint and even from a 2015 test plan,” Johnson said before opening practice, in preparation for Sunday’s race (1:30 p.m. ET on ESPN).

But Johnson made clear that, as far as he’s concerned, potential changes to the No. 48 team do not include crew chief Chad Knaus. The six-time champion did concede, however, that the day will come when Knaus is no longer on his pit box.

“Yeah, that day is out there,” Johnson said. “I think a crew chief’s lifespan is much shorter than a driver’s. They live in dog years, and drivers can carry on much longer. I’ve been accused of being loyal to a fault in the past—that’s me. I have no plans or desires to make a change. When Chad decides he’s had enough of being the guy on the box, it will be his decision to step down.

“As far as I’m concerned, we’ve made it 13 years in this thing. I want to see it go as long as it can. We’re honest with each other and know each other well enough to work through the bad times.

In what has been a difficult year for Johnson, despite his three victories, radio chatter between the driver and crew chief has been strained on occasion, to say the least.

“It might not be pretty, and I’m sure you guys have heard things on the radio that got your attention,” Johnson said. “We’re like family, and we fight like family. We can call each other out on that stuff, and you only hear a piece of it on the radio.

“There is plenty more that goes on behind closed doors and in meetings. It’s more of a time frame of when Chad says, ‘I’ve put in my time here as crew chief, and I need to slow down a little bit.’”

But until that day comes, Johnson won’t be pushing for a change.

DANICA PATRICK EMBRACES CREW CHIEF CHANGE

Though she has shown obvious progress in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series this year with Tony Gibson on her pit box, Danica Patrick on Friday expressed an open-minded attitude toward the crew chief and team changes that will take Gibson to Kurt Busch’s car and Daniel Knost, Busch’s current crew chief, to Patrick’s No. 10 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet, effective after Sunday’s race at Martinsville.

Gibson is an old-school racer who worked as car chief on championship teams of Alan Kulwicki and Jeff Gordon and as crew chief for Steve Park, Michael Waltrip, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Ryan Newman before taking over as pit boss of Patrick’s car near the end of the 2012 season.

Knost is an engineer, more typical of the background of crew chiefs Patrick worked with in the IndyCar Series before transitioning to NASCAR racing. So does the change reflect a move Patrick felt she needed to take to sustain her progress in the sport?

“I’m not sure,” Patrick reflected. “I think that things had started to definitely take a nice turn in a better direction the last part of the year, and so I was open-minded to anything. Like I said, ultimately, at the end of the day, these decisions are not made by me, so I feel like things have been going in a nice direction, but, again, there’s a bigger scale of things going on than just me.

“So the rearranging took place, but I’m very open-minded, and I’m not scared of change. I definitely am one that believes you can’t know if something could be better unless you try it. So I’m ready for the challenge and the change and the possibility of it being better than what it is.

“I am afraid of changing my hairstyle, though—I have never done that.”

KENSETH A MAN OF FEW WORDS

Asked how he felt about advancing to the Eliminator Round of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, Matt Kenseth summed it up in one word during Friday morning’s question-and-answer session at Martinsville Speedway.

“Good,” Kenseth said, and that was it.

“Could you elaborate on that?” asked the moderator.

“Great,” Kenseth deadpanned, then smiled broadly.

That Kenseth made it to the final eight in the Chase is something of a surprise, given that the driver of the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota hasn’t won a race this year.

But with a spot in the final four on the line, Kenseth would like nothing better than to break his drought on Sunday at the .526-mile short track, where he matched his career-best finish with a second-place run in last year’s Chase race.

“To be able to win at Martinsville, especially the way it was my first however many years coming up here, would definitely be a career highlight,” Kenseth said. “Honestly—which none of us is this lucky—but if you got handed a menu before the season started, winning a race at Martinsville would be in my top two or three wishes, for sure. 

“That would certainly be a career highlight. I haven't been real close to winning here except for last fall. We had a pretty good shot. We just had too long of a run at the end there and Jeff (Gordon) got by me. Certainly that's something I want to do.”

Of course, there’s an added incentive this year. A victory in any of the next three races, at Martinsville, Texas or Phoenix, guarantees the right to race for the Cup title in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.