Nationwide crew chiefs of JGR return with a bang

No one expected Joe Gibbs Racing's Nationwide Series garages at Auto Club Speedway to be festooned with balloons and streamers this past Friday morning as practice opened, but with two key members of the organization back at a race track for the first time in six months, a celebration certainly was in order.

It was pretty cool that a low-key party was organized and carried out west. Low key, because in many ways, the consistent performance level fostered by the No. 18 Toyota's crew chief, Jason Ratcliff, and his counterpart on the No. 20 Camry, Dave Rogers, had never abated when their NASCAR licenses were suspended this past August.

Joe Gibbs Racing

Nationwide cars (2008)

	18	20
Starts	22	35
Wins	10	9
Top-5s	16	16
Top-10s	18	26

Ratcliff and Rogers never lost their titles as heads of Gibbs' two Nationwide racing operations. But since NASCAR hit them with indefinite license suspensions for a rule infraction during a post-race chassis dynamometer test at Michigan, maybe something worse happened to two guys who are nothing if not hard-core racers.

They couldn't go to official events at the race track. NASCAR kept them away from 10 races through the end of the 2008 season; and then JGR president J.D. Gibbs made good on the team's promise to one-up NASCAR's punishment by holding both men out of the 2009 opener at Daytona.

Even though NASCAR had allowed both men to be re-licensed in normal fashion as 2009 opened, they still were at home when their teams sparkled, again, during Speedweeks; so there was no mistaking the joy in both men's hearts when they were interviewed in California, their 11-race suspensions over.

Of course, just what the competition faces this season, assuming both crew chiefs stay on the right side of the line, was borne out by the 18's driver, Kyle Busch, winning the California race to assume the lead in the Nationwide standings, while his teammate this past weekend in the 20 car, Joey Logano, finished third.

Logano had nothing but praise for having Rogers back at the track, saying the veteran mechanic's input was critical in having his car coming to the front at the end. Busch, who practiced for only 15 minutes in the final Nationwide session, said the same about Ratcliff. (Continued)