Inside the Garage: No. 5 crew chief Alan Gustafson

Perhaps the greatest measure of Hendrick Motorsports crew chief Alan Gustafson's flexibility and ability at team and driver management has come this season, as the young chief mechanic has teamed with an even younger driver, 22-year-old Kyle Busch, to form a Chase for the Nextel Cup threat for the second consecutive season.

What magnifies Gustafson and Busch's achievements in Hendrick's No. 5 Chevrolet are the fact that some time this season, Busch fell out of favor with the team owner, could not come to an agreement on extending his contract and ultimately will leave the organization for Joe Gibbs Racing -- all the while maintaining a qualified position in the Chase.

Gibbs signs Busch

Kyle Busch has signed with Joe Gibbs Racing to drive the No. 18 Chevrolet beginning in 2008.

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Q: Kyle Busch has announced where he's going now -- but the fact that was going to leave the team after this season has been no secret for a long time. And it doesn't appear it's affected your performance all that much, has it?

Gustafson: Right, and all it means is that we're all professionals and we want to be successful for each other, as well as for ourselves, as do Kyle and I. We've got a great race team here and a great shot at making the Chase and a great shot at contending for the championship.

So I think all of us understand that and appreciate that fact and we're going to do what we've got to do. So nothing's going to change, and nothing will change that.

Q: At Hendrick Motorsports how much talk has there been about what the No. 5 program will be for 2008, when Dale Earnhardt Jr. joins the organization? And has your role definitively been spelled out?

Gustafson: Yeah, I mean, there's been a lot of talk -- and the 5 is the original [Hendrick car]. It's a very important team to Hendrick Motorsports and Mr. Hendrick. We've got great sponsors. So it's very important to us that car continues to be in the top 10 and contending to win races and championships. We're working through those things and I think we're real close on all that stuff and hopefully we'll be able to get that out in releases.

There are a lot of positive things. The 5's where I've been for a long time and where I plan on being for a long time, so I think we'll get all that straight and get that going here in the next couple weeks.

Q: In general, how are you looking at these last four races leading up to the cutoff for the Chase, as you're now in eighth, almost 230 points clear of 12th?

Gustafson: They're very important races. You want to get yourself [ready]. We're not necessarily on the bubble, but we're not comfortable, either. So you want to be very consistent. But you want to not only get in the Chase, but you want to carry some momentum into the Chase.

You want to be on a high going into Loudon [first race in the Chase] -- you want to have had some good runs and to be clicking and get out of the gates well. These races, it's kind of like the Chase has started already, you know?

There's that kind of intensity and that kind of pressure and that's good. You get used to it, you get into the Chase and you get going. (Continued)