Prognosticators have sounded like broken records the last few years,
as they’ve pretty much all named Jimmie Johnson as THE favorite to be
crowned Sprint Cup Series champion year in and year out. The predictable
predictions continued well into this year’s Chase for the Sprint Cup,
and understandably so. After all, he headed into the Chase second in
points, only 10 behind Denny Hamlin, and it was just a matter of a few
weeks before he and his No. 48 team took command and assumed their
positions at the top of the standings.
After last weekend’s soap opera of a race, does Johnson look like the
champion of old? Well, maybe Johnson’s still in fine form, but what
about the No. 48 crew backing him up? During Sunday’s AAA Texas 500 at
Texas Motor Speedway, to say the pit crew stumbled would be somewhat of
an understatement. The team lost positions for Johnson on pit road four
out of the seven pit stops during which it serviced the car. The crew’s
performance got so bad, that after teammate Jeff Gordon had his
now-infamous incident with Jeff Burton and fell out of the race, his
crew was called upon to replace the No. 48 crew on pit road.
On the following Monday, Hendrick Motorsports made the announcement
that the mid-race change on Sunday would remain in effect through the
remaining two races of the season—this weekend at Phoenix International
Raceway and the following weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Meanwhile, the No. 48 crew will service Gordon’s No. 24 car since
Gordon’s already out of championship contention.
Granted, swapping pit crews between teams within an organization is
nothing new. Richard Childress Racing implemented a crew chief swap just
a few weeks ago, sending the No. 33 team to service the No. 29 car of
Kevin Harvick, who is still in the title hunt, since the No. 29 team was
having struggles on pit road. But that change was made during the week,
with crew members already in place with their new assignments by the
start of the race weekend.
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