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.

Q: With Michigan and California being intermediate tracks in these last four before the Chase, have you selected your cars for each race, and do you have different cars or are you going to try to re-tread them, if you will?

Gustafson: We've got a car that we've had quite a bit of success with, and we've re-skinned it -- put a new body on it -- and kind of made it our next version of the old car. We had it in the wind tunnel and it was really good. So it's going to Michigan, and the plans are, if everything goes according to plan, we'll run well at Michigan and turn around and take it to California.

We're going to have another new car going into the Chase, so we're kind of rolling out our next version of cars that we think have a little bit better downforce numbers and things, so we're trying to get geared up, get in the Chase and have a little bit of an advantage.

Q: What's your key for a Michigan setup to have the best performing car you can have?

Gustafson: The key to Michigan, which is a real slick track that really gets hot in the summer, is you've got to turn the center of the corner and you really have to get off the corner well and that's the key -- to really put the power down onto those long straightaways.

We were decent there the last time we were there, but we really weren't where we wanted to be because we lacked some grip. So we're going to work real hard on getting the car to turn through the middle of the corner and to be able to use all the power onto the straightaway.

Q: Strategically, what's the key at Michigan and will you look at this race any differently than you would have considered the Michigan event in June?

Gustafson: Yeah, at Michigan, I think the first thing that comes to mind with everybody is fuel mileage. That racetrack, with the amount of laps and the configuration of the track, fuel mileage always comes into play.

They've changed the fuel cells, to a smaller one that's 18 gallons everywhere, and different things happen and it's always a fuel-mileage race. So you look at that and you look at being real good on a long run. And I think we actually gambled a little bit on fuel in June -- we took a risk. And I'm not sure we'll be as quick to take that kind of a risk now, as tight as it is [in the points].

But we've prepared for all that and we've prepared for a hot, slick track and we've got to be good on long runs. It's a fun place to race and we've got to get Chevrolet back in Victory Lane up there.

Q: When you have the car where you want it, do you cover it up, or is it the tendency to keep working, even if you're risking losing track of where you are?

Gustafson: I think you're always working to get it better. When I first came into crew chiefing this car, three years ago, you'd get to a point where you thought you were pretty good and you were like, 'Aaah. I think I'm just going to leave it. I think we're good and we've got a chance to win.'

Then you'd go out there and you run 10th and everybody's caught up to you and passed you a little bit. So I learned pretty quick you can't ever sit back -- even in the race. Richmond was a big lesson, last fall. We led 250 laps of a 400-lap race and finished second to [Kevin] Harvick when we got beat with two laps to go.

So you can never, never rest -- you always have to try to get better.