Hendrick crew chiefs find strength in differences

FORT WORTH, Texas -- Chad Knaus gets to work at 6:45 every morning, arriving at the Hendrick Motorsports shop with his shirttail tucked in, his face shaven, his mind completely focused and expecting each of his crewmen to appear the same way. Steve Letarte struggles to get moving in the morning, and prefers to swap stories with other employees and nurse a cup of coffee until about 8:15.

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Steve Letarte

One is an ultra-intense gearhead who feeds on data and is obsessed by performance, the other a more carefree people person with a wife and kids back home. The respective crew chiefs for Nextel Cup championship contenders Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon are the best of friends, men who play golf and go to dinner together, and have worked side-by-side for much of their professional careers. They were both raised as the sons of racing fathers. But they go about their business in very different ways, playing opposite but complementary roles for a Hendrick team on the brink of its seventh title at NASCAR's highest level.

"Chad is really more like an engineer, more into looking at the squiggly lines from the data ... and really about the nuts and bolts and advancement of the car," Johnson said. "Whereas Stevie works with that stuff, but is probably stronger on his people skills. You have Chad kind of cracking the whip, pushing the guys, driving technology, and Stevie coming through the shop loving on everybody and making sure everybody is in good shape and just smoothing things over from all the extra hours and the hard work. So in some ways they have a good cop-bad cop role they play in the shop, where Chad is pushing and Stevie is showing the support and the love that they need after working so many hard hours."

It works. Entering Sunday's event at Texas Motor Speedway, the eighth in the 10-race Chase for the Nextel Cup, Gordon leads Johnson by nine points. Their next-closest pursuer, Clint Bowyer, is 111 off the lead. The Hendrick teammates are in this position because of skill, luck, and two crew chiefs who work well together despite personalities and tactics that stand in stark contrast to one another.

Letarte, Gordon's crew chief, is a 28-year-old New Englander with two children who dabbles in real estate, doubts whether he'll be in the same position 10 years from now, and likes the Patriots' chances against the Indianapolis Colts. Knaus, Johnson's crew chief, is a 36-year-old super-focused Ray Evernham protégé and Illinois native who likes powerboats and snowboarding, but has had to force himself during the past two seasons to take more time off. Letarte began by sweeping the floors at Hendrick while in high school, while Knaus was calling shots as a crew chief for his father's late-model car at 14.

They're far from Gordon and Johnson, two drivers who often seem mirror images of one another on the track as well as off. Yet Letarte and Knaus, who were both members of Gordon championship teams in 1995 and 1997, have forged a friendship that's just as strong.

"I think Chad and I are about polar opposites," Letarte said. "He's a very intense guy, he's very quiet, very reserved, very to the point. I'm the opposite. I'm more colorful, more energized, louder. We're just complete opposites. Even when it comes down to our work style, he's a lot about the car. He's all about the technology and the details, and I'm much more about the people and that side of the organization. That's why our structure works well at the 24/48 shop, because we get to lead the shop together as a group, and he takes on some projects for the team and I take on others. I think it balances out well."

Knaus grew up the son of a driver who raced against Mark Martin, Rusty Wallace, Dick Trickle, and other short-track legends of the Midwest. He grew up around racetracks, but at 18 took an office job designing drainage systems for a mechanical engineering firm in Ohio. It was a 9-to-5 gig, with a 9:30 a.m. coffee break and most of the day spent hunched over a drafting board. Knaus lasted for six months.

"That was about all I could take," he said, laughing. "I had to go back into racing. I couldn't handle it."

He arrived as Hendrick as a 20-year-old assistant in the body shop. Evernham was in charge of Gordon's team back then, and the former crew chief's intense, no-nonsense style rubbed off on Knaus. A tire changer on the original "Rainbow Warriors" crew, he left Hendrick briefly to crew chief for Melling Racing and help Evernham develop the Intrepid for Dodge's return to Cup racing in 2001.

"I think Ray and my father had a similar mentality: Do it right, or don't do it at all," Knaus said. "I worked with Ray for the first five years of my Cup career, and that had a lot to do with the mentality I have now. You show up for work, you're shaven, you're on time, you're ready to work, and you work until the work is done and then you go home. That's how you do it."

When Hendrick started a fourth team for Johnson and needed a crew chief, Knaus got the call -- much to the surprise of Gordon, who co-owns the car.

"When somebody said to me, 'Chad Knaus could be a good fit for this new team we're starting,' I laughed at him," Gordon said. "I said, 'You mean the Chad who used to work in the shop? Who made him a crew chief?' I admit, I was wrong in that one. [Team manager] Brian Whitesell gets the credit for that one. He made that call, and Chad has surpassed anything any of us ever expected."

Letarte was 16 when he started working at Hendrick part time, sweeping floors and cleaning parts. He gradually climbed the ladder to tire specialist and mechanic, becoming Gordon's car chief in 2002. While Knaus was influenced by Evernham, a crew chief with sometimes steely demeanor and brilliant technical mind, Letarte found his mentor in Robbie Loomis, an expert manager of people who guided Gordon to his most recent championship in 2001. When Loomis stepped down to become vice president at Petty Enterprises following Gordon's Chase-less 2005 season, Letarte was the natural successor.

"Stevie is more carefree. He takes more of a lax approach, makes the guys laugh and things like that," Knaus said. "I'm probably a lot more structured, the guy who says, hey, tuck your shirt in, make sure your collar is up, you didn't shave today, things like that. But it works well, and everybody in the shop understands that we have that dynamic that works really well together. It's just like what we had with Loomis. He was very similar to Stevie, and that's probably why Stevie is the way he is. I like putting structure out there and making sure the guys are on time and doing those things. Stevie might come back and smooth is out a little bit later with a joke."

Knaus is the kind of crew chief who beats himself up over calls that don't work out, who will go back and review tape in an effort to improve his performance, who obsesses over issues until they're taken care of. Letarte is the kind of crew chief who tries to leave work at work, who prefers to move on rather than dwell on mistakes, who sees the pressure and the grind of the series and wonders about one day moving into team management.

"I'm kind of an easy-going guy," said Letarte, whose father works for Chip Ganassi's team. "I deal with stress differently than other people. I definitely feel it. I kind of deal with it on the inside. On the outside, I'm much more colorful. I think a free spirit is a good way to describe me. I like to work hard, I like to win, but at the same time I've learned a lot about life, especially in the last few years, with our plane crash, and I've started a family and now I have children. I hope the fans don't take this the wrong way when I say it, but racing is just a race. It's our job. I live it, dream, it, believe it, it's all I do. But when I leave Texas and fly home, I'm going to hang out with my kids. When I wake up Monday morning, I'm going to go to Phoenix. Texas is over, move on."

One is the good cop, the other the bad cop. One is the car guy, the other the people person. Yet those differences have never led to contention between Letarte and Knaus, two opposite ends of the crew chief spectrum who complement one another.

"We do a very good job, I think, of separating business and friendship," Letarte said. "When we get to the shop, it's all about business. We've made a commitment to the shop and a commitment to ourselves and the team that we're going to agree before we do anything within the team. I think that's the only way you can ask people to act as one group. The leaders of the team have to agree, and we do a good job of that."