Crew chief Steve Letarte (Right) will no longer work with Jeff Gordon (Left) next season. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

And in the hyper-competitive world of NASCAR Sprint Cup racing, if a top team builds a new car and it doesn’t perform, the team will scrap it, sometimes quickly. “I’m about a two-strike guy,” said Steve Letarte, crew chief for Jeff Gordon and the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. “If we build a car that should run really well on paper and we gave it two races and it didn’t perform well at either race, that’s it. Two strikes is all you get.”

Some drivers don’t even want to know what chassis they have at any given race because they don’t want to be prejudiced about whether or not they’re in their favorite car.

“I couldn’t even tell you what car we bring to the track. I got out of that mode a long time ago, just for the fact that I didn’t want to have any biased opinions on what a car felt like,” said NASCAR Sprint Cup points leader Kevin Harvick. “And I think having the faith in the guys to go through our quality-control process, after your cars get back with the parts and pieces has always been very strong at RCR. So, I know we have two or three new cars on the floor. I know we have been racing new cars the last two or three weeks. We have a timeline of how long how they last and when you’re done running them. I haven’t driven a bad car this year.”

Still, drivers do get attached to some cars.

“There have been times like Pocono for example,” said Carl Edwards of Roush Fenway Racing. “We had a new car for Indy and it was great. I was like, ‘Alright, we’re gonna take that to Pocono, right?’ And (crew chief Bob Osborne) said, ‘No, we’re gonna take another one. Don’t worry, we’ve got another plan for that car. Don’t worry.’ And, man, it’s hard not to argue with him because once you get that good car you like, it’s hard to let go.”

As for Busch, he admitted he’s baffled by the differences in his cars and why No. 251 is his only fast car at the moment.

“We have a car like 257 or 263, I don’t remember which one it is, but we take that car and everywhere we go with it, we’re 13th to 20th,” said Busch. “It won’t go anywhere, it won’t even get out of it’s own way.”

And that’s a huge frustration.

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“They’re built identically the same, they were built on the same chassis plate and built on the same body plate by all the same guys,” said Busch. “They are way different. You take them to the wind tunnel and the wind tunnel numbers are close. They’re not here and there, they’re right there. There’s no reason they should be as far off as they are.

“I’ve talked to Kasey Kahne and he says the same thing, they have one or two cars that they really know run well everywhere they go with them and then the rest of the fleet is just the rest of the fleet,” said Busch. “Denny (Hamlin) has one car, actually two – Denny has two cars that they feel like will run really well and the 20 (Joey Logano) only has one car. We’re trying to find those other cars that we know will have the speed in them when we get to the race track.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.