NASCAR Crew Chief Musical Chairs
As expected Dale Jr’s. preferred crew chief is getting a head start on next season. Earnhardt crew chief Tony Eury Jr. and Junior’s cousin, will leave DEI early and start his new job at Hendrick next month.
You don’t have to smack me with a 2X4 to the nose to make me believe that wasn’t coming. With the team out of the Chase there’s not a good reason to stick around.
As a sidenote to this move, it’s a damn good thing Dale Jr. is out of the Chase. If he were in it and Eury Jr. still made the move the conspiracy nuts would have an entire “sedition smorgasbord” to eat from. As it is they got nothin’.
Well, almost. They still have phantom yellows and still claim sugar has been poured into Jr’s gas tank and it’s possible that will gain strength with Eury not around to “keep’em honest.”
Cue the music, (8) (8) (8) … STOP!
Oh hey look, crew chief Gene Nead has lost his seat atop the warwagon for Robby Gordon Motorsports.
Hardly surprising for team that shows little unless the weeks event is at a road course. On the ovals the #7 is mid-pack at best so Nead is gone and allegedly looking to the Woods Bros for another job.
Gordon reportedly is interested in Peter Sospenzo to replace Nead as crew chief of the #7 team. Sospenco has previously CC’d for Penske Racing, the #44 Chevys driven by Terry Labonte in 2005 and also Joe Nemechek during his stint at Hendricks Motorsports.
Most recently Sospenzo was employed at Ginn before the DEI merger and is party, along with Richard Labbe, to the lawsuit filed over his contract termination.
AN OBSERVATION: I’m sure you’ve seen the fans complaints, “why do teams recycle drivers?” Most often it happens with drivers that are, shall we say long-in-the-tooth, they get shuffled from team to team with little regard to their “use by date.”
I’ve never seen the same complaint about crew chiefs yet they get moved from team to team as if they were baseball managers. An MLB manager goes 7-32 and he’s gone and rehired somewhere else by the end of the month. A NASCAR crew chief goes 0 for 20 with no top tens he gets canned and is picked-up before the year is out by someone else looking for lightening in a bottle.
It makes no sense to me, where’s the new blood? Put someone new in that chair as the music stops.
NASCAR. NEXTEL Cup, Sports, Robby Gordon Motorsports, DEI, Auto Racing, Motorsports, Full Throttle
Baseball manger’s excuse for losing: “It’s not me, it’s the prima donna players”. Crew chief’s excuse: It’s not me, it’s the crappy equipment”.
Most manager’s and crew chiefs are hired for their management skills and personnel skills. If the player’s can’t play and the equipment won’t go, is it their total fault? No, but they inevitably are the first to pay the price for a lack of team performance. It’s the obvious and easy way out to start over.
Joe Torre was a “bum” as a manager before winning four titles for the Yankees, now he’s a sure hall of famer. Did he get smarter over the years? Maybe some, but it’s always about the team, not the manager or crew chief.