NASCAR's crew chiefs face many impossible decisions (cont'd)

Crew chiefs are put in an impossible position. Owners and sponsors expect -- and demand -- that cars go fast. Yet when every team is locked within the same technical box, the only way to squeeze extra tenths of a second out of the car is to experiment with areas that may or may not be completely covered by the rules. You know every other crew chief is going to do it, and if you don't, you're going to fall behind. So you massage, you finagle, and you hope you don't get caught.

They have to make a choice: risk being suspended, or risk getting fired.

Penalties announced

Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson were hit with severe penalties on Tuesday following their infractions at Sonoma.

• Complete story, click here
• Same penalty, different effects
• Menzer: Precedent already set
• Video: TNT's Matt Yocum

"It's a tremendous amount of pressure. I talked to Steve and Chad on Friday afternoon, and the hardest part is, you want to give your driver the best equipment possible. Your car owner wants you to do it. You owe it to your sponsor, because they're giving you so much money to come out and do these things. And then at the end of the day, if you're pushing nine things and somebody else is pushing 10 things, you're going to get beat," said Loomis, Gordon's crew chief for five years.

"The good thing is, the car owner and the driver, they appreciate the crew chief and they understand just how hard the job is -- until they get in trouble. Then the crew chiefs are on an island, and everybody's looking at them going, 'Well, why did we do that?' Because we're trying to win."

Which is exactly what the Hendrick Motorsports duo of Knaus and Letarte was trying to do last weekend, when they toyed with a 10-inch piece of the front fender. There wasn't a template that covered that area, so they thought they were in the clear. They were wrong. NASCAR caught it anyway, and parked Johnson and Gordon for all of Friday's on-track activities. Suspending the drivers doesn't seem feasible -- they barely see the car before it's unloaded for the race weekend, and they're the ones fans buy tickers to watch. So the crew chiefs pay the price.

"I'm not going to skirt responsibility for anything that happens to the car," Letarte said. "That's my responsibility. I sign the inspection sheet stating [that] it's my responsibility. When it goes [onto] the racetrack, it's the driver's responsibility. I think it's a real clear-cut line and an unfortunate part of the business, but it's a part of the business that we've all grown to love. We love racing, and to be a part of this sport at this level, I think it's just, you've accepted it."

No wonder some crew chiefs, even gifted ones like 12-time race winner Matt Borland, eventually decide to get off the treadmill and work in team administration. Drivers can pop into the shop about once a week; crew chiefs might as well set up a cot in the break room. You win a race on Sunday, you have about 16 hours to enjoy it before you have to start worrying about the next week. Knaus was once so consumed that his Hendrick Motorsports team basically had to order him to take one day a week off. After Johnson won the title last year, he allowed himself to celebrate for about a week before turning his focus to preseason testing and preparations for 2007.

"You know, what I found when I was Jeff's crew chief is, you just have to enjoy everywhere you go every moment of the day," Loomis said. "You can't wait for an off weekend or wait for a Wednesday, you just have to enjoy where you're at and make the best of it. It's a tough job. I tell people all the time, the job that Steve Letarte has, the job Chad has with Jimmie, the expectations on those guys, they're tremendous. It's not a pressure anybody can relate to until they've done it."

But hey, they get a free pickup truck. And some manage to carve out a wedge of personal satisfaction among the unrelenting stress and the unrelenting schedule and the unrelenting pressure to win.

"There are so many good things that come along with being a crew chief in the Nextel Cup Series, and one of them is to be able to come to the racetrack with something you can actually hold as your own, with your team, being the leader of those guys," Knaus said. "The bad things that come about -- the difficult times, whether it's bad races or things that you have through the inspection process to being sent home -- I'm not saying it was worth the risk to get in trouble. I'm saying it's worth having the downs because the highs are so good."

The opinions expressed are those solely of the writer