Bruce named crew chief for Wallace, No. 66 team

MOORESVILLE, N.C. -- Rusty Wallace Racing on Wednesday announced that Trip Bruce has been named crew chief for Steve Wallace and the team's No. 66 entry, effective immediately.

The team further announced that after leading Wallace to his current top-10 ranking, former No. 66 crew chief Dale Ferguson has been promoted to the role of lead engineer for the organization. Ferguson will also serve as Wallace's race engineer for the remainder of the 2009 Nationwide Series season.

Steve Wallace

"This move allows us to further strengthen the human capital which our team possesses," Rusty Wallace said. "Trip is a proven champion in the Truck Series; when we found that he was available, we looked at this as a way to add yet another high-caliber individual to the foundation that we've built with Dale Ferguson and the rest of our team.

"Dale has done a fabulous job for our organization; he stepped into the crew chief role in some pretty tough circumstances last year. Despite that, he came through and put our No. 64 car in the top-10 at the end of the season. This move allows Dale to focus on a lot of research and development projects that are vitally important to our team. He will be an even greater part of our organization than ever."

Bruce helped lead Johnny Benson to the Truck Series championship last year for Bill Davis Racing and was with Benson this season at Red Horse Racing before the organization shut down their team.

"I'm very excited to be a part of this organization," Bruce said. "Rusty and his group have put together a very impressive Nationwide Series organization; other than [Joe] Gibbs, they're the only team with two drivers in the top-10 right now. All of the parts and pieces are here to win races; I'm looking forward to the challenge of putting it all together and making that happen."