The recent crew chief change for the Matt Kenseth NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team was initiated by Kenseth. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Matt Kenseth says former crew chief Drew Blickensderfer didn’t show the leadership skills or develop the type of chemistry his team needed, leading to the change this week with Todd Parrott taking over the reins of the No. 17 Roush Fenway Racing team.
Kenseth won the Daytona 500 as well as the race at Auto Club Speedway to open 2009 with Blickensderfer as crew chief, but the team didn’t win again and missed the Chase For The Sprint Cup for the first time since its inception in 2004.
The 2003 Cup champion, Kenseth finished eighth in the season-opening Daytona 500 but did not run well much of the day.
“The timing of the change is probably 100 percent my fault,” Kenseth said. “I know that I’ve been asked by Jack several times if there’s anything we needed to change on the team. … Jack talked to me in November and asked if I thought we were OK with everything we had going on, and I really did.
“I really felt like we needed to give Drew a full year and a full offseason. He was working on some things, trying to make it better. It’s really hard to explain the timing of the change. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not any good for anybody, really. It’s just kind of the way it went down.”
After the 2008 season, Blickensderfer was promoted from Nationwide Series crew chief to replace Chad Bolin, who remained with the No. 17 car as the team engineer. Bolin had replaced Robbie Reiser, the only Cup crew chief Kenseth had ever had and who is the organization’s competition director.
“It wasn’t a change that was really about me and Drew, to be honest with you,” said Kenseth, who was 14th in points last year. “We always talk about it being a team sport, but it really is and that is really where I found I needed some help, was team-wide.
“They were used to an experienced, strong leader like Robbie. … It’s really hard to explain, but we were just missing something on the team. I don’t think the way we operated at Daytona that we could win races and win championships. I didn’t feel like that for whatever reason, I just felt like a change needed to be made.”
