Swap shop: Joe Gibbs should make wholesale crew chief changes

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Swap shop: Joe Gibbs should make wholesale crew chief changes

Published Tuesday, September 29 2009 - (0) Comments

Since Kyle Busch missed the Chase, there is talk that partnership between Busch and crew chief Steve Addington might come to an end.
But if the folks at Joe Gibbs Racing are serious about catching up to the Hendrick Motorsports juggernaut, the personnel changes shouldn't stop there. Nobody needs to be fired - all three drivers just need to swap crew chiefs before next season.
Addington needs to team up with Denny Hamlin, Mike Ford needs to move from the No. 11 to Joey Logano's No. 20 and Greg Zipadelli needs to jump from the No. 20 to Busch's No. 18.
Gibbs and Hendrick have dominated the sport so far this decade, combining to win seven of the last nine Sprint Cup championships. But Jimmie Johnson has won the last three titles in a row and Rick Hendrick's crew seems primed to make it four straight with Mark Martin and Johnson sitting atop the points standings.
While Denny Hamlin is not yet out of the title picture, it's becoming painfully obvious that JGR is becoming a smaller blip in Hendrick's rearview mirror with each passing season. Obviously the loss of Tony Stewart, who won two of Gibbs' three titles, has a lot to do with that as does JGR's change from Chevy to Toyota.
But at the end of the day, there isn't a whole lot of difference between the equipment both organizations have access to each weekend. The CoT keeps things close from a chassis perspective and the engine department at JGR is churning out enough horsepower for Hamlin, Busch and Logano to keep pace with Martin, Johnson and Jeff Gordon.
So how does Hendrick manage to spank JGR on a weekly basis? The chemistry between Martin and Alan Gustafson, Johnson and Chad Knaus and Gordon and Steve Letarte seems to make all the difference.
Time and again these crew chiefs communicate with their drivers as the race wears on, and when it comes time for the money stop, they always make the right changes. While Johnson and Martin ran up front at Dover last week, Hamlin struggled to a 22nd-place finish, dropping from second to sixth in the points.
Now it's time for Gibbs to start searching for the type of chemistry Hendrick has already found.
First of all, Ford has done a fine job of transforming Hamlin from an inexperienced rookie into a championship contender, but the partnership has fallen flat over the past two seasons.
So Ford should hand Hamlin over to Addington, a crew chief who has showed the ability to put the No. 18 into Victory Lane. Hamlin's 10 top fives and 15 top 10s put him in the same neighborhood with Johnson in terms of consistency, so a few more victories might be enough to put him over the top.
Moving Addington to the No. 11 would free Ford to take Logano and do for him what he did for Hamlin. Logano has all the tools Hamlin has, he just needs Ford's unique ability to listen to a young driver and understand what changes need to be made on the car in order to make it handle better. It sounds simple, but there aren't many "Rookie Whisperers" out there and Ford is probably the best of the best.
Finally, Zipadelli can take Busch and mold him into a champion like he did with Stewart. During his decade-long partnership with Smoke, Zippy showed the ability to ignore Stewart's outbursts and make the perfect adjustments when it mattered most.
The folks at JGR have all the right pieces they need in order to topple Hendrick. All they need to do now is put those pieces in the right places.

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