Former Dale Jr. crew chief reflects before joining NBC Sports booth
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Few people get to conduct their exit interview from a place they’ve called their work home for the better part of two decades through social media channels. If you’re a race-winning crew chief with one of NASCAR’s most prominent teams, these things happen.
Steve Letarte, outgoing crew chief for the No. 88 Chevrolet driven by Dale Earnhardt Jr., gave his thoughts on the transition from the pit box to the TV booth during the offseason. It’s not exactly pulling the curtain back on Hendrick Motorsports’ human resources practices, but the pair of video clips provided by the team Monday and Tuesday offer an honest glimpse at Letarte’s 19-year run and his relationships with Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon, but especially team owner Rick Hendrick, who helped shape the face of his career.
“No one could ever walk in his shoes — professionally, personally — the things he’s done,” Letarte said of the 65-year-old team owner. “He’s taught us all how to live life, how to enjoy life, how to act in business, how to treat teammates, how to treat sponsors. There’s just so many things he has taught us about being better people, and in the end, that’s why it really doesn’t matter how many races we win or how many championships we win. I think we’re very proud about the ones we have won because of how we have won them, and we have won them kind of the way Mr. Hendrick has blueprinted — be a good human being first and everything else will kind of follow.”
Letarte started with the Concord, N.C.-based team in 1995. He announced in January that he would leave the team at season’s end to join NBC Sports, which becomes a NASCAR broadcast partner in 2015, as a crew chief analyst.
In Letarte’s swan-song season, Earnhardt enjoyed a career resurgence, winning four races and qualifying for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoffs for the fourth straight year. The success was sweet, Letarte said in Tuesday’s second installment, but only served to reaffirm his decision to enter the next phase of his career.
“The question I get asked is the opposite all the time,” Letarte said. “So people ask me, it’s got to be hard stepping away after such a successful season and my rebuttal is no, it would be the opposite. I don’t know how I could ever step away with a disappointing season.”
Letarte has a total of 15 victories as a crew chief in NASCAR’s top division, five with Earnhardt and the remaining 10 with Gordon.
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