Addington: ‘One day we want to have two championship-caliber teams’
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The addition of a second team at HScott Motorsports should benefit the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series organization in the long run.
But it has to survive the short term first.
“The Daytona deal is not hurting us a bit,” said Steve Addington, competition director for the Spartanburg, South Carolina-based team. “That West Coast swing will be our biggest hurdle just as far as parts and pieces.”
Addington, who also serves as crew chief for Sprint Cup sophomore Justin Allgaier, said the group planned to field two entries for this month’s Daytona 500, before expansion resulted in the addition of a second full-time team with driver Michael Annett.
But after the season-opening race, and a quick trip to Atlanta, the Sprint Cup Series swings west for three consecutive stops — at Las Vegas, Phoenix and Auto Club Speedway.
“We’re getting there; the cars are going together pretty quickly. Everybody in the shop has pulled together and we’re just making it happen,” Addington said.
Allgaier, 28, finished 29th in the group’s first full-time foray into Sprint Cup competition, with three top-20s, including two top-15s, in the final five races of the 2014 season.
Annett, meanwhile, finished 33rd in the final standings while competing for Tommy Baldwin Racing with a best result of 16th at Talladega. At HSM, he will field the No. 46 Chevrolet and be paired with veteran crew chief Jay Guy.
Addington has been around the block, having won races with Kyle Busch (12), Kurt Busch (4) and Tony Stewart (4) before landing at HScott.
A technical alliance with Hendrick Motorsports, and for 2015 Stewart-Haas Racing as well, provides the team with parts and pieces, the chassis and bodywork. Even information from simulation programs will be available.
What was missing, Addington said, was the race-weekend feedback necessary when teams are in scramble mode to make changes to their cars in an attempt to dial in speed and fine-tune the handling.
“We didn’t have the open database with them, so going through practice and things like that, post-practice was kind of tough being a single-car team not having any additional information coming in — just from a tuning standpoint, what the drivers are feeling to be able to have that quick information coming to you,” he said. “We would get it eventually … but it was ‘OK second practice starts in an hour,’ we just didn’t have anybody to lean on.
“I think with having two cars, to have a post-practice debrief at one of the trucks to go over … Justin to have somebody to lean on or talk to about what he’s feeling in the car really quick is going to be huge for us.”
Scott, who began his ownership tenure in the sport in 2011, said while the timing for expansion wasn’t ideal, “you don’t really get to pick when an opportunity walks through the door.
“Just having two teams isn’t where we want to be,” he said. “We want to have two competitive teams. One day we want to have two championship-caliber teams. It’s kind of a step in the road.”
Addington admits the team struggled last season, but believes there was progress as the series began making trips back to tracks for the second time. Part of it was Allgaier’s comfort level; part of it was simply catching up after starting from scratch.
Few teams catch lightning in a bottle. SHR’s Kevin Harvick and crew chief Rodney Childers did, making the move during the offseason of 2013 and winding up with their first Sprint Cup championship.
“But they have a lot of years in the business,” Addington said. “With Justin being a rookie, it was a learning process for him.
“The second half of the season I felt we made huge improvements. That comes from better preparation; that comes from having better parts and pieces than what we started the season with; the cars got a lot better. A lot of stuff evolved from the first of the year. We didn’t have a single car in the shop when I took the job; we wiped the plate clean and started from the ground up.
“We made huge improvements for such a small group and I’m really proud of everyone.”