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Sprint Cup
CUP: Menard And Slugger Labbe - Happy Together
Paul Menard is happy to have crew chief Slugger Labbe following him to RCR next season...
Richard "Slugger" Labbe (Right)and Paul Menard (left) at Talladega Superspeedway. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
When Paul Menard joins Richard Childress Racing for the 2011 season, not everything will be new.
He’ll still have crew chief Richard “Slugger” Labbe calling the shots from atop his pit box. And he’ll still have veteran spotter Stevie Reeves in his ear.
There will be other familiar faces, too, that should make the transition easier when he leaves Richard Petty Motorsports for his new team.
“There will be some familiar voices on the radio, for sure,” Menard said Saturday as he finishes out his last month with RPM. “It’s big. Slugger and I get along really well and we’ve hit on a few things this year that we can hopefully apply over there. It knocks a step out of the learning curve.
“I was up at the shop last week getting fitted for a car. There are a lot of people up there that I didn’t realize were there that I worked with in the past. There’s already some familiar faces. It won’t be like a brand-new race team.”
The biggest key will be Labbe, who has helped Menard enjoy his best Cup season in four years on the circuit and confirmed this past week that he will leave RPM for RCR to continue working with Menard. Menard, who spent the first 10 weeks of the season in the top 20 of the standings, sits 23rd with four races remaining.
Labbe is a veteran crew chief who has worked for Robert Yates Racing, Evernham Motorsports, Dale Earnhardt Inc., MB2 Motorsports, Bill Davis Racing, Red Bull Racing, TRG Motorsports and RPM.
“Working with Paul this year and him working with me, we kind of know each other, so hopefully it will help the transition over to RCR to be seamless,” Labbe said. “I’ve been talking a lot to the people over at RCR.
“They’re building cars for us now. We’ve got a huge jump on 2011 already. … I understand Paul’s lingo and his mentality, what he likes, what he doesn’t like. I know that already. When we get to Daytona, it’s not like we’re going to be nervous.”
RCR placed no drivers in the Chase For The Sprint Cup in 2009 when it was a four-car operation. It scaled back to three teams in 2010 and all three made the Chase.
The addition of Menard will make it a four-car team again, and Labbe isn’t worried that a fourth team will be disruptive to the organization.
“They’re racers. Not that they’re not racers where I’m coming from, but the mentality is whatever it takes to get it done,” Labbe said. “It’s the fourth program for them.
“They’ve been down that road before. They did some things right. They did some things wrong. Starting a fourth team again, they know what not to do. They know how to do it right.”
Labbe is in the process of assembling a crew, much in the same way he did last year when he came from TRG Motorsports to lead Menard after RPM merged with Yates Racing.
“We just assembled a good group of people and the biggest thing was we said, ‘Look, this was a fresh chance for Paul and let’s prove to everyone we can do this,’ and we all believed in each other and we worked hard on building the best cars that we could,” Labbe said Saturday.
“Paul believed that we were fully supporting him and we were there to get the job done. We started the season off very well and then we got in a couple of wrecks that started a downhill slide.”
Some RPM employees will join Labbe at RCR, and he likely will fill more positions as teams in the Cup garage go through their offseason turnover, some of which will happen as RPM scales back from four cars to two at the most.
Labbe believes that will help him put together a solid crew and one with some familiarity for Menard.
“That voice in his ear, the two people that Paul deals with the most on a weekend are his crew chief and the spotter, and those two voices are going to be the same,” Labbe said. “That will help calm him down so he can focus on what he’s got to do. … Ever since he’s announced he’s going to RCR, he’s kind of picked up his game, which is good.
“That is a good organization that has three drivers in the Chase, and here comes Paul and myself and we have a lot to do to keep up with them.”
SceneDaily.com • Talladega to name press box in honor of NASCAR VP Jim Hunter
He’ll still have crew chief Richard “Slugger” Labbe calling the shots from atop his pit box. And he’ll still have veteran spotter Stevie Reeves in his ear.
There will be other familiar faces, too, that should make the transition easier when he leaves Richard Petty Motorsports for his new team.
“There will be some familiar voices on the radio, for sure,” Menard said Saturday as he finishes out his last month with RPM. “It’s big. Slugger and I get along really well and we’ve hit on a few things this year that we can hopefully apply over there. It knocks a step out of the learning curve.
“I was up at the shop last week getting fitted for a car. There are a lot of people up there that I didn’t realize were there that I worked with in the past. There’s already some familiar faces. It won’t be like a brand-new race team.”
The biggest key will be Labbe, who has helped Menard enjoy his best Cup season in four years on the circuit and confirmed this past week that he will leave RPM for RCR to continue working with Menard. Menard, who spent the first 10 weeks of the season in the top 20 of the standings, sits 23rd with four races remaining.
Labbe is a veteran crew chief who has worked for Robert Yates Racing, Evernham Motorsports, Dale Earnhardt Inc., MB2 Motorsports, Bill Davis Racing, Red Bull Racing, TRG Motorsports and RPM.
“Working with Paul this year and him working with me, we kind of know each other, so hopefully it will help the transition over to RCR to be seamless,” Labbe said. “I’ve been talking a lot to the people over at RCR.
“They’re building cars for us now. We’ve got a huge jump on 2011 already. … I understand Paul’s lingo and his mentality, what he likes, what he doesn’t like. I know that already. When we get to Daytona, it’s not like we’re going to be nervous.”
RCR placed no drivers in the Chase For The Sprint Cup in 2009 when it was a four-car operation. It scaled back to three teams in 2010 and all three made the Chase.
The addition of Menard will make it a four-car team again, and Labbe isn’t worried that a fourth team will be disruptive to the organization.
“They’re racers. Not that they’re not racers where I’m coming from, but the mentality is whatever it takes to get it done,” Labbe said. “It’s the fourth program for them.
“They’ve been down that road before. They did some things right. They did some things wrong. Starting a fourth team again, they know what not to do. They know how to do it right.”
Labbe is in the process of assembling a crew, much in the same way he did last year when he came from TRG Motorsports to lead Menard after RPM merged with Yates Racing.
“We just assembled a good group of people and the biggest thing was we said, ‘Look, this was a fresh chance for Paul and let’s prove to everyone we can do this,’ and we all believed in each other and we worked hard on building the best cars that we could,” Labbe said Saturday.
“Paul believed that we were fully supporting him and we were there to get the job done. We started the season off very well and then we got in a couple of wrecks that started a downhill slide.”
Some RPM employees will join Labbe at RCR, and he likely will fill more positions as teams in the Cup garage go through their offseason turnover, some of which will happen as RPM scales back from four cars to two at the most.
Labbe believes that will help him put together a solid crew and one with some familiarity for Menard.
“That voice in his ear, the two people that Paul deals with the most on a weekend are his crew chief and the spotter, and those two voices are going to be the same,” Labbe said. “That will help calm him down so he can focus on what he’s got to do. … Ever since he’s announced he’s going to RCR, he’s kind of picked up his game, which is good.
“That is a good organization that has three drivers in the Chase, and here comes Paul and myself and we have a lot to do to keep up with them.”
SceneDaily.com • Talladega to name press box in honor of NASCAR VP Jim Hunter
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