By Lee Spencer
Lee Spencer is a senior NASCAR writer for FOXSports.com.
If race teams entered the season believing that stopping the Hendrick Motorsports juggernaut was an impossible mission, there wouldn't be any reason to show up.
Certainly, organizations like Roush Fenway Racing, Richard Childress Racing and Joe Gibbs Racing haven't been working around the clock since the 2007 season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway to throw in the towel this year.
Like Hendrick Motorsports, RCR was the only other organization to qualify three teams for the Chase for the Cup last season. Clint Bowyer not only transferred into NASCAR's championship playoff, but he prevented HMS from sweeping the top three point positions by stepping up his game and earning five top 10 finishes — including his first career NASCAR Sprint Cup triumph — during the final 10-race stretch.
Bowyer's crew chief, Gil Martin, said that Childress is willing to provide his teams with whatever resources are necessary to continue the organization's Chase pace. To that end, two of the greatest areas of concentration for RCR are testing and pit crew training.
"We've got a lot of things in progress right now," Martin said. "We've implemented a test team and we're gearing up for a fourth team. In turn, that will help us as the season rolls on. Richard's going to give us whatever we need to move up the ladder.
"We had a good season last year, but everything went perfect for it to happen like that. We had good runs with no problems, but we've got to get better. We're going to do that by adding better personnel and spending the cubic dollar. That's what it's going to take."
In an effort to achieve their lofty goals, Childress added new testing and pit crew training facilities to his Welcome, N.C., campus. RCR is currently looking for the right person to head up its testing effort, but recently hired Matt Clark as the pit crew coach. Clark was instrumental in developing the crews for HMS' Nos. 24 and 48 cars over the past five years.
Over at Ford's super team, Roush Fenway Racing, Jack Roush announced the promotion of Robbie Reiser from Matt Kenseth's crew chief to general manager at the end of last season. The consensus from RFR is positive regarding the decision for Reiser to oversee the operation.
"There are definitely some differences around the shop," said Matt Kenseth, who is now led by team engineer Chip Bolin. "Things are definitely getting run different than what they did before. I haven't noticed a change as far as performance or morale or anything like that yet, but certainly I think he's dragging it in a different direction and I think we'll definitely be better in the long run."
Kenseth, who has been a formidable opponent against the Hendrick machine — and not finished worse than eighth since 2002 — feels that preparation and uniformity among the teams will make RFR stronger.
"Those guys are so good," Kenseth said. "They've always been good, really. You just have to figure out how to do things better than they do it. You've got to try to make your cars better. You've got to try to call races better. You've got to try to do the whole thing. You've got to work on the whole thing, from driving the car to setting it up to pitting it, to everything. We've just got to try to dot all your I's and cross all your T's and do everything the best you can to beat those guys. Right now, they're the guys you're looking at that are on the top that you're trying to knock off, so I don't think that's really any different than any other year.
"I think the main thing is they're trying to make stuff more of the same is because the current car, there are so many rules and regulations that you can't really build different cars. There are a lot of things you can't really do much different, so you should be able to make all the cars within the shop real similar and the setups should all work real similar, so we're just trying to get everybody kind of more on the same page than maybe what we did before because there are less things we can do to customize it to your own driving style and that type of thing."
When Greg Biffle's crew chief, Greg Erwin, arrived at RFR in June, he felt at a disadvantage because "an aerodynamic baseline" did not exist for the COT that he could build on and grow. With Reiser in the GM's seat, however, Erwin feels the veteran mechanic can micromanage the teams and establish a common game plan.
"With his new position, Robbie has moved the GM's role closer to the race teams," Erwin said. "I've seen a difference already. This is the most confident I've felt entering the season in a long time."
Like Childress, Erwin has made changes over the wall as well. With the exception of the No. 16's catchcan man Ryan Dextrase, Erwin has overhauled the entire pit crew. Mike Klein is the new jackman. Kevin McDowell will carry rear tires for changer Kyle Power. Colin Pasi will carry front tires for Brian Bottlemy, who graduated from the RFR Busch squads with gasman/shock specialist Billy Manchester.
While the other teams are tweaking their programs to catch up, defending championship crew chief Chad Knaus refuses to rest on his accomplishments. Hendrick Motorsports hired Greg Morin from the Five On Five Off crew school to be the new pit crew coordinator. Knaus also acquired Mike Lingerfelt (front tire changer) and Jeremy West (rear tire changer) from Yates Racing to crew the No. 48.
Despite winning the last two Cup titles, Knaus knows his team can always improve.
"There's a multitude of reasons," Knaus said. "You have to realize we run well at Charlotte — we have since 2002. But we don't run the same set up every time we go back. You have to continually evolve. The 24 car had a need — their rear tire changer had an injury last year and he had to quit changing tires — so they needed a replacement.
"We had an opportunity to get to tire changes from Robert Yates Racing that have wanted to come change tires for us. They became available, so we opted to take the two guys that had been working together at Yates and put them on our team and take Timmy (Ladyga, the rear tire changer) and put him on the 24 because he's a proven commodity. He does a very good job. It helped everybody out. It was a good time to make the move."
Knaus doesn't mind having a target on his back, but he'll make sure it's a moving target.
"That's good," Knaus said. "That's why we continuously improve our chassis, keep improving our crews and strategies. We try to do that to keep these other guys chasing us. That's why Rick (Hendrick) hired us, obviously. He wants to make sure we have the best product out there.
"We're approaching the season the same way we did last year, with the 24/48 shop going out there to be as competitive against the competition as it possibly can and not really concerned about racing each other."
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Hendrick vs. Gibbs? Don't count out Roush
By Reid Spencer, Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service,January 30
LAS VEGAS --It's no surprise to Jimmie Johnson that the Toyotas of Joe Gibbs Racing have been strong at preseason tests at Daytona and Las Vegas.
The way he sees it, NASCAR's new racecar has made Gibbs' transition to the Camry significantly less difficult.
The defending NASCAR Sprint Cup champion isn't ready to say, however, that 2008 will boil down to a duel between the Gibbs and Hendrick cars. Instead, Johnson is casting a wary eye toward Roush Fenway Racing.
"I really think -- and we've talked about it a lot -- that this is the best year for a team to move over to a different manufacturer," Johnson said Tuesday during a break between test sessions at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. "We don't have the flexibility -- manufacturers don't have the flexibility -- to show what they can engineer, build and bring to the track.
"With that in mind, I think you have to unfortunately rule out some of the manufacturer influence and think of the race team. We know that Gibbs is strong. I think the Hendrick cars ... we've been good, but I don't think we're where we want to be yet. We're still learning and developing some things.
"The one that has really impressed me is the 99 car with Carl (Edwards). Those Roush cars have been good, especially Carl. He's been real fast, not only for one lap, but over the course of a run, he's been really impressive and, I think, the best car so far."
Edwards backed up Johnson's assessment by posting the top speed (184.256 mph) in Tuesday morning's session.
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Teams working to stop Hendrick juggernaut in '08
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