DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- He had grown up a fan of drag racing, had enjoyed a little tractor pulling or mug bogging from time to time, but his NASCAR knowledge was limited to Cale Yarborough, the legendary driver who hailed from his home state. So when his advisor at Clemson University called Chip Bolin and suggested the engineering graduate student pursue an internship at Andy Petree Racing, Bolin had to ask -- who's Andy Petree?

Chip Bolin

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He didn't know that Petree, now a television analyst for ESPN, had won a pair of championships as crew chief for Dale Earnhardt before starting his own organization. He didn't know anything about Ken Schrader, the driver of the No. 33 car at the time. He didn't know much about stock-car racing, period. All Bolin knew was that he was competitive by nature, and he wanted to do something with his engineering degree other than design robotic manufacturing systems.

So the accidental crew chief was born.

"The more I worked on it, the more I enjoyed it," said Bolin, who became crew chief for Matt Kenseth after last season when Robbie Reiser took a management role within Roush Fenway Racing. "I'm a pretty competitive person to start with. The instant gratification of being able to do something and run it that weekend and see if you pass or fail, and then do something and see if you pass or fail, it's my pace. I can't work on something that's three years in advance -- work on this robotic system or set up this manufacturing line. I'm more, let's try this, it's either going to work or it's not."

Now the 33-year-old native of North, S.C., is calling the shots as only the second crew chief Kenseth has ever had. Bolin may have grown up far from the snowbound late-model tracks in Wisconsin where Kenseth and Reiser learned their trades, but he's been around them long enough that his vowels occasionally drop into a distinctly upper Midwest tone. "You sound like a Yankee," a relative told Bolin when he was home for the holidays. That's understandable -- he's been with Reiser and Kenseth since they joined the Roush fold in 1999, working as team engineer on a unit that rapidly became one of the tightest-knit in the sport.

The transition is fully expected to be a smooth one. Bolin worked as interim crew chief early last season while Reiser was suspended for technical violations prior to the Daytona 500, and was on the pit box when the No. 17 car claimed its first victory of the year at California Speedway.

"Chip has been there," Kenseth said during the first session of Sprint Cup testing at Daytona International Speedway. "He was our original team engineer in '99 when we put this thing together and ran a five-race deal, [and] started full time in 2000. He's been there a long time. We know each other really well. We haven't made too many other changes on the road crew. So it's really not, so far anyway, that different than what I'm used to."

And Reiser, in his new position as general manager of Roush's five-car operation, will never be far away. He and Kenseth won 16 races and a championship in their eight full seasons together, and have a personal friendship that goes back much further than that. Owner Jack Roush thought so much of Reiser's managerial skills that he wanted to spread the level of efficiency he saw in the No. 17 team across the entire organization. (read more)

"It's not like he packed up his stuff and moved over to Hendrick or Evernham or something," Bolin said. "He just moved to a different office. But every morning he's standing there with a work list for me, just like always, saying, 'This is what you need to make happen today, so don't forget about it.' It's really helpful. He's always done a really good job of keeping us pointed in the right direction. He's not going to give up on the 17 [team] at all. It's really helping me to learn the job faster, because he wants to see us succeed more than anyone else."

But the former crew chief and the current one are not the same person. Reiser, in addition to being an old-school car guy, was renowned for his skills in managing logistics and personnel, the very reason Roush promoted him. Bolin is the consummate engineer, the kind of person more accustomed to managing data than people. Now, he has to do both.

"Chip has always kind of been the technical side of the team -- Robbie's brain, my brain, however you want to say it," Kenseth said. "He's always been kind of the engineer holed up in the back, looking through numbers, testing stuff and doing all that. That really hasn't changed. We haven't really changed his role that much. So it's definitely a lot, lot different. Robbie is more the organizer and the hands-on guy, all that kind of stuff, where Chip is more still trying to do the engineering and figuring out how to make the cars go fast as well as trying to take over a lot of the duties that Robbie did day-to-day. It's a little different approach."

Bolin is learning to assimilate his old and new roles. He has the luxury of a veteran squad, whose least experienced member has been with the team for three years. And there's always Reiser, ready to extend a few words of advice to a co-worker who originally thought he wanted to be a veterinarian, paid scant attention to NASCAR before landing his first job in the business, and somehow turned into a crew chief.

"Robbie is a lot more of a people person than I am," Bolin said. "... The technical side of it, the cars and the parts, that's not going to change, because that's what I was doing anyway. The part of it that I have to learn is taking into consideration how to get things accomplished with the group that you've got. He's doing a really good job of keeping his eye on me, and making sure that I'm a step ahead of the game. He'll sit me down and say, 'This is going to start happening, you need to be prepared for it. You might want to inquire about this, it's coming up really quick.' He's doing a really good job of coaching me, because he really wants to see all of us succeed, just like everybody else."