Crew Chief Steve Addington is no longer in charge of Kyle Busch’s No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Tony Stewart, who drove for JGR for an entire decade and knows both Busch and Addington well, professed strong surprise by the move. “I’m kind of shocked by it,” Stewart said. “I don’t know what the reasoning was behind it but you know at the end of the day there was a reason that made them make that switch. I don’t know what that is but I was like, ‘You’re joking right?’ It was hard to believe that they are going to split that combination up.”

But Denny Hamlin, who still drives for JGR, said that once a relationship goes bad between driver and crew chief, it’s nearly impossible to rekindle. “I think you just give up on giving up information,” said Hamlin. “You don’t debrief as much because you’re like, ‘He’s not going to fix it anyway,’ or if you’re maybe a crew chief maybe you’re like, ‘Hey, if he would just change his line and stop whining then he would fix it.’ Maybe you’ve got a teammate that’s running better with the same stuff so I think maybe it’s just a little bit of that. When you lose faith with the person on the other end of the radio, that’s when it just goes downhill.”

Busch himself pretty much agreed with that assessment. “I kind of lost faith and things would go backwards,” he said. “In Steve’s case, I never lost faith Steve. He was always trying 100 percent, giving 100 percent and trying his all, working his people to death. I don’t think it was Steve that didn’t give me what I needed, I don’t think it was the engineers — it was just something didn’t click. Obviously, this is a performance-based business and we’ve got to be the best we can out there. When you’re not beating the 48 (Jimmie Johnson), something has to change.”

Over at Hendrick Motorsports, the situation with Earnhardt and McGrew is almost the opposite of Addington-Busch: They haven’t had the on-track success since joining forces in late May, but they believe they will achieve it next year.

“I see myself without looking at the statistics and luck that we have had lately, I can see a lot of improvements in the team and I can see the impact that Lance is making,” said Earnhardt. “I am really excited about his chance for me and him to understand what our future is and see how we can improve upon that by being given the opportunity to work together and know we are going to work together.”

McGrew said he, too, is seeing progress, even if the actual results have been slow in coming. “We have 550 teammates at Hendrick Motorsports that are bleeding sweat to make this No. 88 team run as successfully as it is supposed to be running,” said McGrew. “We’re heading that direction. This is kind of the time of the year where everybody is looking for direction and hoping you can get a lot of momentum at the end of the season. That is kind of what we are trying to do by setting the record down that I am going to be with the team next year and getting everybody pulling in the same direction.”

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or Speed Channel

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief for SPEEDtv.com, the former Executive Editor of NASCAR Scene and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. He is the author of ?Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of SPEED,? and has appeared on television and radio shows to discuss NASCAR racing. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association. Jensen is the 1997 National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year and has won numerous national and state awards for news reporting, columns and feature writing. The Answer Man is back at SPEEDtv.com. Tom Jensen answers your questions during every race week and looks forward to hearing from you - please e-mail it to