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LOUDON, N.H. — Second verse, (much) better than the first.
Joe Gibbs Racing made a pit crew swap to Kyle Busch’s No. 18 Toyota team heading into the NASCAR Playoffs, moving the No. 19 crew of teammate Daniel Suarez over to the 2015 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series champion’s pit box.
Last week at Chicagoland Speedway there were a few bumps in the road in the postseason opener. Busch led a race-high 85 laps in the event but came away with a 15th-place finish after an unscheduled extra pit stop that stemmed from a loose right-rear wheel. To make matters worse, the team was hit with a penalty for coming over the wall too soon. Busch needed to perform a pass-thru as penalty, and was unable to recover.
Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway was a completely different story for the 18 crew, as Busch won the race and there were no discernible miscues to be seen on pit road.
“Pit stops are a key to the sport. They have been for as long as I’ve been involved, and they’ll continue to be I assume,” crew chief Adam Stevens said after celebrating his team’s third win of 2017. “You know, we had a couple hiccups last week, and like I said pre-race, loose wheels happen, they happen to everybody, and then we made a mistake serving our penalty.”
A leader is one that has a certain degree of accountability, and Stevens showed such leadership.
“I put as much of that on myself for not covering all my bases communicating with a new group of guys. I could have done a better job, and it bit us.”
Stevens continued to explain that the move was a calculated decision made over the course of the season as the team assessed many aspects. With eight races remaining, the team has to be pleased with the response to last week’s misfire — after all, winning cures all.
“Moving forward from that, you know, they’re trained professionals,” Stevens said. “They’re the best in the world at what they do, and we made that decision based off of months and months of data and lots of meetings and lots of heartache, and we’re not going to unmake it based off of one week’s data.
“I think it showed today that that was a good call, and I think the guys did a great job and rose to the occasion, and I expect nothing less of them the rest of the year.”