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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
GURSS: People Win Races, Not Machines
Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing have had long-term success like Penske in Indy cars...
Jade Gurss  |  Posted May 25, 2009   Mooresville, NC
Faster. Louder. The weekly column on SPEEDtv.com by Jade Gurss. (Harold Hinson Photo)

It was a shock to hear Roger Penske explain his Indy car teams had 800 years of combined experience during an interview before the Indianapolis 500. That massive number only emphasizes the not-so-secret to success in motorsports: hire and keep the best people. It’s a key to why Penske now has 15 Indy wins in his career.

On the NASCAR side, teams like Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing have had long-term success like Penske in Indy cars: they hire the smartest and best people, and then treat them well so they want to stay throughout their careers. But, has a new contender emerged at Stewart-Haas Racing?

The team has been excellent this season, with Tony Stewart winning the All-Star race while Ryan Newman won the pole for the Coca-Cola 600. Both teams are within the top 10 in points based upon a series of consistent top-five and top-10 finishes. And all from a team that before this season hadn’t produced anything near the same results despite running with Hendrick cars and engines in previous seasons.

Yes, the Hendrick machinery is second to none, but Stewart has energized the team with a new attitude, and brought in key people to bring Stewart-Haas into the thin air of the teams at the peak of the sport.

Stewart recognized the equation when he hired crew chief Darian Grubb away from Hendrick to lead the No. 14 team’s effort. It’s about relationships and chemistry more than sheer mechanical skill.

“To find that package and find that combination and relationship was something that you don’t know. Even if he is the best crew chief in the world and if he has the best driver, you don’t know if that means you are going to have success personality wise,” Stewart told the media last weekend at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. “Right off the bat at Daytona and when we went and did our first test, it didn’t take long to realize that this was kind of like putting on an old pair of shoes… we talk to each other all the time. We laugh about things. He’s got a great personality, he likes to have fun while we are racing and that is what leads us to the success we are having.”

Grubb is merely one example. Bobby Hutchens, a long-time Richard Childress Racing and more recently a Dale Earnhardt Inc. man, was brought in as director of competition and Ryan Newman’s team is led by crew chief Tony Gibson and a vast number of crew members that have been together for many years with Dale Earnhardt Jr. and the No. 8 crew at DEI.

It had been easy to criticize the team when they were under the pressure of the Dale Jr. spotlight, but now they are thriving and excelling with Newman and Stewart-Haas.

In the same way, Stewart himself seems rejuvenated under the weigh of team ownership.

“It is awesome,” Stewart gushed. “(Owning a team) was supposed to add stress, it has actually taken stress away, I don’t understand why. I don’t really have a good answer for it. Every day when I wake up, I look forward to going to the shop. I look forward to going to the track. I am having fun. I haven’t had this much fun for a long time. I loved where I was at, I loved the group of people I was with, I guess it is a situation that you see with pro athletes all the time, drivers, teams, crew chiefs. Just sometimes you just need a change.”

That attitude is easy to maintain while things are going well, so it will be interesting to see if the “new” Tony and his team are able to perform when things get tough. The true test is measured long-term, but it seems Stewart-Haas has all of the pieces in place to run at the front for years to come.

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

Jade Gurss is the owner of fingerprint, inc., a sports publicity company. He has written two New York Times Best Sellers, including what is believed to be the biggest-selling motorsports book in American publishing history (Driver #8 with Dale Earnhardt Jr.). His two decades of publicity and marketing experience involves nearly every category of motorsports, including nine innovative seasons as NASCAR publicist for the Budweiser brand and Earnhardt Jr. His blog can be seen at: http://fingerprint.typepad.com

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