Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s new crew chief puts No. 88 team in best possible position
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Dale Earnhardt Jr. said he had one specific request of Steve Letarte when the two were discussing his crew chief's replacement for the Hendrick Motorsports No. 88 team.
"I said 'One of the things you're responsible for is putting me in a better situation than I'm in right now,'" Earnhardt Jr. said during this year's annual Charlotte Motor Speedway Media Tour presented by Technocom.
"I said, 'I want to get better at this position that you're in. I don't want to do a lateral move; I don't want to drop down and wait on the guy to develop. … I need you to comb the sport and tell me, give me some names of some guys that can make us better."
The name at the top of the list, Earnhardt said, was Greg Ives.
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A former engineer at HMS, Ives was putting the finishing touches on his second season at JR Motorsports, eventually helping guide Sunoco Rookie of the Year Chase Elliott to the NASCAR XFINITY (then Nationwide) Series title.
The year before he had been teamed with JRM driver Regan Smith -- Smith won twice and finished third in points.
For 2015, he will be back in the Sprint Cup Series, this time as crew chief for Earnhardt.
Letarte is headed off to NBC Sports' broadcast booth where he will serve as one of the network's analysts for its NASCAR coverage. He leaves after leading Earnhardt to his best season, if not his best points finish, in a decade.
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That Ives is meticulous in his role as crew chief didn't surprise Earnhardt Jr. -- he'd seen it firsthand at JRM.
"He's a real detail guy," Earnhardt said. "I asked him about the Daytona car, some of the things he's working on, and he ran down this list of about 50 things. They are the most particular, peculiar, tiny things that he is concerned with and when you ask him something, he is going to give you the full rundown."
Nothing escapes the eye of Ives, it seems. Even a show car used for a recent photo shoot produced a list of nearly 25 items Ives wanted changed.
"You know that's going to be a positive going into the relationship, that he's that particular," Earnhardt said. "You want a guy who is a perfectionist. There are crew chiefs out there that don’t cover every single base -- maybe he'll learn over time that he can't cover every single base, (that) he just doesn't have the time in the day, but this offseason … he's had time to comb the shop from corner to corner and work on every little detail he sees where we can improve.
"He is thorough and that's going to make a huge difference in how we are prepared each weekend and getting our cars out on the race track and being fast."
Ives, a team engineer for Jimmie Johnson when the HMS driver was busy stacking up championships, downplays his work ethic and detail-oriented approach.
"That's the way I'm wired," Ives said. "If I look at something and it doesn't look right, I'm representing Hendrick Motorsports, the 88 team and (sponsor) Nationwide, that's my job -- to be 100 percent perfect at all times.
"Not because that's required by anybody else other than myself. That's that mindset … if you have it and you surround yourself with people with it, they're going to be the same way."
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Having come though the Hendrick system, there should be no problem making sure everyone is on the same page. Many of the folks are those he has worked alongside in the past. Car chief Travis Mack makes the move from JRM over to the No. 88 team, and Kevin Meendering has served as Earnhardt’s lead engineer for the last four seasons.
That he'll be paired with the sport's most popular driver won't affect how he does his job, Ives said.
"(The spotlight) follows him, not me," he said. "My focus is not who is driving my car but how they perform when they do it.
"If you can take only the good, the praise … and you can't take the bad then you better get out of this position. I've been criticized; I've been praised. The way I attack my daily work doesn't change. I wake up in the morning (and) do the same thing -- try to attack the day and make it the best day yet."
While the lines of communication might be a bit fuzzy early on due to the lack of testing, Earnhardt said he's more than willing to do his part to speed up the process. And his experience with Letarte helped prepare him for just such a situation.
"Trust me … I'm going to be a professional and be positive, do everything that I can to make it as easy as possible on Greg," he said. "I learned that with Steve, how to be a better driver and more of an asset. … I think the cars will have the speed. So I'm excited."