RELATED: At the shop with Chip Ganassi Racing
CONCORD, N.C. — It’s an ideal time to dream about season-long goals at Chip Ganassi Racing, with both of its Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series entries in the early stages of the postseason hunt. Placards welcoming their employees into the playoffs are constant reminders in the 185,000-square-foot shop.
A NASCAR championship would be a first for the 59-year-old Ganassi, who has enjoyed multiple titles as a car owner in other motorsports disciplines. But it would also mean something else to Chad Johnston and Matt McCall, the crew chiefs for Ganassi’s No. 42 and No. 1 rides.
“It’s probably going to mean whiplash,” Johnston said with thick deadpan, recalling Ganassi’s physical exuberance atop the No. 42 pit box for Kyle Larson’s victory last month at Michigan International Speedway.
“Poor Chad’s still wearing a neck brace during the week trying to recover,” says McCall, the third-year crew chief for Jamie McMurray.
Being grabbed by the shoulders and jostled by their team owner is a side effect that both Johnston and McCall would gladly accept, so long as a championship was part of the equation. Both teams opened their postseason quests on solid footing last weekend at Chicagoland Speedway: Larson finished fifth to hold second in overall points, and McMurray recovered from a spin to take 10th place, moving him up five spots to 11th in the Round of 16 standings.
While there’s a vibe of excitement to the final 10-race stretch, there’s also an element of status quo to the preparations. The same checklists and duties remain, even as the pressure ratchets up, and Johnston says he hasn’t done or said much differently to change up the approach that’s served the organization well for the 26-race regular season.
“I think that’s the beauty of here. They’re all pretty self-motivated,” Johnson says of his crew. “We all came into the year looking to go to Homestead for a chance at the championship and anything less is going to be a disappointment. It doesn’t take much motivation on their parts. They’re all pretty self-motivated, and they hold themselves accountable, so it’s a really good group to work with. They’re willing to do whatever it takes to make the cars better.”
For Larson and his team, that approach netted four regular-season victories. For McMurray, McCall and Co. on the No. 1 Chevrolet, the group is still searching for that first win of the year, having ridden a formula of balance and top 10 efforts into the postseason field.
“To not have won a race right now, it is hard for us to be super-positive, right, because we’ve been able to run top five, top 10 somewhat consistently, but to be able to put a full race together and get a win is still … I think it’s pushed our guys harder,” says McCall, who called his 100th premier-series race as a crew chief last Sunday. “We’re positive we can get the results we’ve been getting. We just need to improve that.”
If there’s need of further reminders that the team is capable of achieving big-prize goals, Exhibit 1 and 1-A sit just inside the entranceway to the shop’s main floor — a pair of No. 1 Chevys still covered in race-track grime from McMurray’s landmark 2010 victories in the Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400.
There’s room for more history-making cars in that white-walled foyer, something longtime CGR project manager Chris Clark says he can almost taste for the first time in more than a decade. Before the operation’s recent performance spike, Chip Ganassi Racing’s closest challenge for a NASCAR championship dated back to Sterling Marlin’s injury-shortened 2002 season.
“I think for where the organization was about two years ago, to get it to the level we are, it should mean a lot to everybody in this program company-wide,” says Clark, who has 20 years of experience at Ganassi. “Everybody’s pushed pretty hard for the last year and a half to get to this level, to make the goals and push through to get into the (Playoffs), so to get both cars here, it’s big for us right now as an organization.”
Even if it means a post-Homestead trip to the chiropractor for its crew chiefs.