Letarte leaves Hendrick, begins new job

“The toughest part was probably getting the race started,” Letarte said. “I had to give my last instructions to Dale. That was a little tough, and then the boss said his piece on the radio, which I really appreciated. And that made it tough because that’s a guy I look up to. Something you really weren’t expecting.”

The boss, Rick Hendrick, gave a shout-out on the team radio to Letarte, who won 15 races for his organization.

“Buddy, thank you for all the years,” Hendrick said. “You’re an inspiration to everybody at Hendrick Motorsports, and we wish you nothing but the best.”

Hendrick’s words meant a lot to Letarte, who has learned to prepare for almost every situation as a crew chief. But this one was out of his control.

“The rest of the weekend, you can mentally kind of compartmentalize,” Letarte said. “Understand it’s coming. Get prepared for it. But when someone like the boss gives you that sort of pat on the back, that’s hard to take. It was an emotional last weekend.”

Following a 14th-place finish with the No. 88 crew uncharacteristically a little off, Letarte told Earnhardt he would see him soon and then headed to the airport with his family. Leaving the garage hadn’t set in for him yet.

“I think it won’t be until this week where the alarm doesn’t continue to go off at 6 a.m. or 5:30 to go to the shop,” Letarte said. “That’s when it will probably set in. When the emails go from the mid-100s down to the single digits with questions, I’m sure that is when it will start to sink in that we’re not preparing for the 2015 Daytona 500.”

On Tuesday at the 48/88 shop, Letarte cleaned out his desk and left a winner sticker on new crew chief Greg Ives’ computer. Along with the photo, he wrote: “Cleaned out my office today. Left this sticker for the new guy. I expect a lot of these next year Greg &@DaleJr #winners.”

As he begins his new career, one of his first acts was taking his kids for ice cream, writing: “So even freezing temps don’t keep my minion and piglet from wanting ice cream. #DadNight #WhyNot.”

In addition to recounting his final time atop the No. 88 pit box for Dale Earnhardt Jr., Letarte analyzed the pit strategies of crew chiefs Darian Grubb with Denny Hamlin, Rodney Childers with Kevin Harvick, Todd Gordon with Joey Logano and Luke Lambert with Ryan Newman.

“What we had was four guys that have worked 35 weeks to try to win a championship, battling it out on the race track, battling it out on pit road,” Letarte said. “How more fitting could it be than at the end we had one on no tires (Hamlin), one on two tires (Newman), one on four tires (Harvick) and one have some trouble on pit road (Logano). That’s the sport. It’s a total team sport.”

Letarte congratulated “a very good friend of mine” Childers, who pulled out back-to-back clutch performances at Phoenix International Raceway to get into the Championship 4 and Homestead-Miami Speedway to win the NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship.

“Talk about a Game 7 managing decision,” Letarte said. “Those guys made it, and the pit crew executed it. And then Kevin Harvick went out and did it on the race track, and I think they crowned a very deserving champion and that’s what the sport needs.”

After 10 years as a crew chief for two of the most popular men in the history of the sport — Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr. — Letarte said, “The drivers are what people come out to see, and when you have the opportunity to put it back in your driver’s hands, I think you do that when you put tires on and you’re aware that tires fall off.”

Then, Letarte made the case for each of the four championship crew chiefs, noting he would have made the same calls if he were in their chairs.

“The funny thing is I think everyone made the right decision for where they were running,” Letarte said. “If I was the 11, I probably couldn’t pit from the lead with a championship on the line. If I was the 31, who had been good all day but not great, a little behind the 4, a little behind the 11, take two tires. Give yourself the chance to be the first guy on tires. The 4 car has the fast car. He puts on four tires. Unfortunately, Joey had his problem. So really I think I would have made the same call all four of those crew chiefs made in their situation.”

MORE: