NASCAR Chat: Chad Knaus, Alan Gustafson

In advance of Sunday's season finale for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, Chad Knaus, crew chief on the No. 48 Lowe's Chevrolet, driven by three time defending champion and points leader Jimmie Johnson; and Alan Gustafson, the crew chief on the No. 5 Kellogg's CARQUEST Chevrolet driven by Mark Martin, who is second in the points going into Sunday's finale, spoke to the media today. The final race is the Ford 400 at Homestead Miami Speedway.

Chad and Alan spoke to the media from Hendrick Motorsports in Charlotte, N.C.Martin trails Johnson, his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, by 108 points.

ALAN GUSTAFSON
Birthdate: Aug. 5, 1975
Hometown: Ormond Beach, Fla.
Career Wins: 9
Career Poles: 9
Titles: 0
Car: No. 5 Kellogg's/CARQUEST Chevrolet
Team: Hendrick Motorsports

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
• 2009 is first season as crew chief for driver Mark Martin.
• Guided driver Kyle Busch for three seasons (2005-07), earning series Raybestos Rookie of the Year honors in 2005 and consecutive Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup berths in 2006-07.
• Began crew chief career in 2005 with Busch. Won first race on Sept. 4 at Auto Club Speedway.
• Joined Hendrick Motorsports in February 2000 as shock specialist for the No. 5 team. Served as lead engineer for the No. 5 from 2002- 2004.
• Attended Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla.

CHAD KNAUS
Birthdate: Aug. 5, 1971
Hometown: Rockford, Ill.
Career Wins: 47
Career Poles: 24
Titles: 3 (2006, '07, '08)
Car: No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet
Team: Hendrick Motorsports

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
• First crew chief in NASCAR history to win three consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup Series titles.
• Served as a tire changer for driver Jeff Gordon’s original Rainbow Warriors pit crew.
• Began crew chief career in 2000 with Melling Racing and driver Stacy Compton.
• Returned to Hendrick Motorsports in 2002 as Jimmie Johnson's crew chief.
• Has finished in the top five all seven seasons with Johnson; the duo also has competed in every Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup since the format's 2004 debut.

Here is more from today's NASCAR CAM Video Teleconference with Alan Gustafson and Chad Knaus.

Looking back, how do you view 2009?

ALAN GUSTAFSON: It's been a real successful season for us. You know, getting Mark on board was obviously a huge step in the right direction, and being able to win five races and contend down to the wire for the championship and have a shot at Homestead has been good. It's been a great season, and the guys have accomplished a lot and really looking forward to going to Homestead. It's a really fun track to race on.

Going there with a shot is even though the shot is not as good as we want, it's still a privilege to have that opportunity to contend and win a championship and go down there as put as much pressure on Chad, as much as possible, even though it's not as much as we want it to be. But go down there and have some fun doing that.

Chad, what's your take on 2009 thus far?

CHAD KNAUS: We've had a really good season, obviously. I think that with Alan and Mark running as competitive as they have this year, very similar to when the 24 car was running as well as what they were a couple years ago, having that internal competition I think has really helped our team and helped our company, actually, to rise to a better level. I think that's evident with the way that all of our teams are running, especially at this stage in the year. The 88 is running well, the 5, the 24 and the 48 are all battling each and every week. So I think that having the two teams battling for the championship and then with the 24 car right there on our heels, I think it's raised the production of the whole company up a bunch. So we're real happy with that.

Real pleased after coming off of Phoenix with a great win there. Jimmie did a fantastic job, the guys did a great job with the car, so I'm really looking forward to Homestead. We've been competitive there in the past. We haven't gotten a victory there. We would love to get an opportunity to do that, and just proud of the position we're in right now. It's really nice.

Q. One question for each of you. First for Alan, does this current Sprint Cup car make it easier or more difficult to chase teams like the 48 that's been in front of everybody else? I wonder whether you'd have a harder or an easier time trying to close the gap on those guys if you were in the old vehicle.

ALAN GUSTAFSON: Um, I don't know that the car matters. That's an interesting question. But I don't think that the car really matters as far as chasing the 48, if it would have been easier in the old car. It may have been a little bit easier to get an advantage in the old car, so with that being the case, maybe I could make a case for yes, it could potentially be a little bit easier to run somebody down in the old car.

I don't think it makes a ton of difference. This car does have us in a little tighter box to where

it's tough to get an advantage. Obviously Chad and Jimmie have a great relationship and a great team, and they really work well together, and that makes it tough. To beat them, you have to have some advantage over them. Maybe the old car would give us a better opportunity to do that, but if so, it would be very slight.

Q. And Chad, Ray Evernham won three titles and went into ownership. Do you have any aspirations for stuff like that or management, or is being a chew chief where you want to be long term?

CHAD KNAUS: I'm getting an awful lot of those questions for whatever reason the last few weeks. I don't know. My initial goal when I first came into the Cup Series was to obviously become a crew chief and win races and win a championship and then move on to an ownership role. I don't know if I want that now or not. I think it would be foolish of me to try to think that I could be an upstart team and try to make something like that happen.

You almost have to have an affiliation with somebody to do that. If you look at Tony Stewart and the way he got into Stewart Haas and that deal all came together with the support from Hendrick Motorsports, that deal will work. To start from an outside company I think would be a pretty lofty goal, and I don't know if after realizing what it is that we've got here at Hendrick Motorsports, I don't know if I would ever want to race against it. It's a pretty amazing place.

Just I don't know. We'll just have to wait and see. But the likelihood is probably slim at this point.

Q. First for Alan, and then if Chad will follow up, Alan, can you put your finger on what Chad and Jimmie have that nobody else seems to have? And after that, if you will, Chad, will you address what about Alan and his operation has impressed you in these last couple years?

ALAN GUSTAFSON: As far as what the 48 has that nobody else has, that's a really tough question to answer. If I could answer that, I'd be working really, really hard to figure out or to implement that or whatever it is. But I can tell you that they work as hard or harder than anybody else in the series consistently, and they're both at the pinnacle of the sport, both Chad and Jimmie, and they have assembled a great team and do a great job keeping a great team even when they have some rollover, which in professional sports is inevitable, they can fill the voids really well.

But the things that they've accomplished, and I know firsthand racing in this Chase, this is the closest I've ever been to them in my career, what they've been able to go do is extremely, extremely, extremely difficult. I've given everything I have and my team has and Mark has, and I think we've had a great season. Right now we're falling a little bit short. Hopefully for us that can change. I don't wish any bad luck on them at Homestead, but anything can happen. I do want to make the point that what they've been able to accomplish over the last four years and what they've done in this Chase is really remarkable.

I've heard some people bring the Tiger Woods analogy into the equation, and you sit there and you think about that, and that's probably one of the best ways to summarize how good they are and have been able to be over the last four years.

With that being said, we're not going to stop. At Homestead there's going to be another season in 2010, and we're going to gear up as hard as we can, and that's the position we want to be in. Each time you fall a little bit short, you learn, and I think we're getting better, and I think we're going to do whatever we can to reach that point sometime, too.

CHAD KNAUS: I think if you look at the 5 car, the thing that's impressed me the most, and not even this year, it's obviously easy to put a brand on what the 5 car has been able to do based on the 2009 season. But I think if you look at the tenacity that Alan and his team has had with different drivers, different circumstances, they don't give up. They have a never say die attitude.

I think if you look at where they were at at the beginning of the season with a couple of DNFs, whether that was from an accident or from an engine failure, they never even blinked an eye. Yeah, they were upset and they were discouraged, but they never gave up hope that they were going to make the Chase and man, they came back with a force. I think that if you look at the 5 car, they're probably one of the most technically advanced teams that we've got out there. Their engineering staff is second to none. They do a very good job of facilitating tests, looking at seven post data, gathering intel and using that information.

I think Alan is the smartest crew chief out there. I've been saying that for a couple of years now. And I think it's just a matter of time before they get their chance, and it very well could be this year. We're hoping obviously from my side of things that it's the 48 car, but I can promise you, if we have something go down, they're going to be there to pick up

the pieces.

Q. Question for Chad. One question and then a follow up. Can you sort of go back to that 2004 race down at Homestead and just sort of take us through that and how intense that race was?

CHAD KNAUS: That race, man, if I could do anything to have that race again. I've played that race over in my head a million times. You know, to lose the championship by eight points we did a very good job. We finished second that race. There were a lot of teams that were in the hunt for that championship, with the 24 and us and the 97, and I think the 20 was the other one maybe. And we did a very good job. We really did. We lost it by 8 points.

The 97 car had that loose wheel. If the wheel would have fallen off just a split second later, he'd have hit the end of pit wall. If the wheel would have fallen off just a split second later, it would have went down pit road and the caution would have never come out. So all of those things coming out. If we would have won the race and the 97 car would have finished where he did, I think he was fourth or fifth, we would have got the five bonus points for winning the race and leading a lap, and we would have won the championship.

That one was a heart breaker because I can tell you probably going back about 15 ways that we could have made up eight points throughout the course of those final races.

But I think at that point we definitely established ourselves as a team capable of battling for the championship seriously and people really started to take notice of us, so I think that was a step out season for the 48.


Q. This is for Alan. How is working with Mark Martin different from other drivers you've worked with?

ALAN GUSTAFSON: Mark has got obviously a lot of talent. He's a great person. I think the biggest thing, his professionalism is above considerably above everybody else I've worked with on and off the racetrack, the way he works at his trade, the way he communicates with the team, the way that he works with his teammates. Everything he does, he is very, very professional, very dedicated to what he does, and he does it in a really positive way.

I know it's a really broad statement, but his professionalism is very impressive, and that allows you to focus on what's important. You don't have to worry about things that aren't important. You can worry about what's going to make the cars go faster, the communication of the team, the communication of the engineering staff, help work with the pit crew, help work with our teammates and other drivers, other crew chiefs and other drivers to get that dialogue going to where we can get as much information as possible, and then process it correctly.

He does a fantastic job with that. You know, he's a great teammate. He's just a great person to be around. I think Chad would say the same thing. He's a great complement to our organization. He helps all the drivers, helps all the teams, helps management, everybody. He's just got a great perspective on racing and how to go about things, and we're really fortunate to have him here at the company.

Q. As a follow up, because of his experience, has that been an asset there with the younger drivers at Hendrick, but with Mark's experience because of the testing policy that has been in place this year, has that benefitted Hendrick?

ALAN GUSTAFSON: Yeah, I think there's no question about that. I know it's benefitted the 5 tremendously, and I think that's flowed over to other teams. He knows what he needs and what he wants. He's got a great feel for a race car, and he can give us the information. Not that he's going in and saying, hey, I need this or I need this, but he will say I need my car to do this and he feels like this is happening, that it make this happen and that's a result of X, and then we can go back and diagnose all that stuff.

There's been a lot of times during the year that the 48 and the 5 have been very similar or the 24 and the 5 have been very similar. All four cars have been similar. To watch Mark have the dialogue with those other drivers and when you get a guy like Mark Martin and a guy like Jimmie Johnson on very similar equipment, getting their feedback is just priceless. It allows us to take things so much further, and like you said, with the lack of testing, you don't have that benefit if you have a rookie driver or drivers that don't have the experience or the intelligence level or the ability that those two have. They're two of the best.

So it's really neat to be involved with that, when you get the four talented drivers we have, get them on similar equipment and then listen to how each one of them will dissect the car differently, and I think Mark does as good a job with that as anybody.

Q. And Chad, would you mind commenting, please, if Mark has benefitted you this year, as well?

CHAD KNAUS: I think Alan really hit on it all. Mark is a fantastic talent. I've been a fan of Mark since I was just a child. My father and Mark used to run ASA

together, so I've got photographs of myself and Mark when I was like six and he was, like, 18 or something like that, 20 years old. So that was kind of neat to be a part of this deal.

I think he brings great experience, not only from a motorsports side of things but life experiences. Obviously he's older than we are, so he's done more and he's experienced more things. He really pulls out good information out of the other drivers. It's real easy, especially with what we've got going on now with different tires, and obviously we hate to compare cars still, but with this car that we've got, there's only so much you can do to it before the driver just has to say that's about as good as it's going to be and I have to go through with it and drive it.

And I think when we get together with Mark as a group, a lot of the drivers will come in discouraged and be just like, man, that's all I've got or even Mark could possibly do that. What ends up happening is they start to discuss it, and they're like, wow, that's what my car is doing, too, and they start to feed off of that and then Mark starts to influence those guys, just like, you know, guys, we can get through this, we can do this.

He's got such a good spin on things. It's never done. You're never done working on it. It could always be better. It's just time to go race.

And I think he brings a lot of that mentality to where we're like, look, we're going to work on it until the last lap of the race and try to make it better. He's got that desire that not a lot of people have.

Q. Chad, I'm wondering, heading into this weekend at Homestead Miami Speedway, it's the only track on the Chase schedule that you guys haven't won at, and I'm wondering if the reason is mainly because you're going in protecting a lead, or is there something else about that track that you guys haven't quite figured out yet?

CHAD KNAUS: Well, I think if you look at it, we've had obviously both scenarios play out there. We've had races that we've had to win to try to win the championship, we've had races that we needed to go in there and just be protective and try to make sure we didn't lose it.

So I think that we haven't hit on exactly what it is that we need there, although I feel like our package going into Homestead this year is probably the best that we've had yet, so I'm excited about that. I think we can go in there this weekend with the aggressiveness that we need. We sat on the pole there a couple years ago. I think it was 2006. I think we can go down there and battle for the pole and hopefully get ourselves in position to race for the win.

But you know, we're not going to do anything silly, either, to take ourselves out of contention or out of a place that we can possibly win this thing. So we're just going to have to play it by ear and hopefully we can be in a position to race for it and hopefully win this thing. It would be awesome. But obviously the big prize has to be the thing first and foremost on our minds.

Q. Alan, Rick Hendrick as a guy, what is it about him that just promotes an incredible sense of loyalty that we see out of the employees from the drivers and crew chiefs to everyone we see in the garage area? There's just something about Rick Hendrick that you guys want to do well for him.

ALAN GUSTAFSON: Well, I don't think there's any person that I've ever met who was more compassionate and who treats fellow human beings better than Rick Hendrick. And I think that's the key for me personally, and that's all I can speak on.

I know when I started here in the chassis shop, basically I don't want to say a nobody, a nobody is a nobody, but nowhere on his radar, he treated me like I was the best crew chief in the world or the president of Lowe's or whatever you want to say. He was extremely, extremely good to me, and he has been, and he's supported me through thick and thin, and he's supported me in tough times.

One thing that stands out in my mind when we've had issues on the racetrack or we had performance issues last year, there's a lot of owners who would have went right to the crew chief, and we see that week in and week out. We've seen that happen this year. But he had faith in me, and he stood behind me. I will return that favor ten times over. I think that's the key.

It's not there's not any magic. The fact is he's willing to do more for people, for his people, than basically anybody else is. And he's willing to put himself second time and time and time again for his company and for his people, and we all sincerely appreciate that, and we want to return the favor to him because he treats us so well.

I think he genuinely enjoys bringing good things and happiness to people's lives, and he does a great job of it. So he's just a super special person. The world would be a worse place without Rick Hendrick in it. He's just a great guy and somebody you will do anything for because he will treat you the same way.

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No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports