While it's the individual driver, and perhaps the car and car number that get the recognition and the accolades after a championship season, NASCAR is a sport of teamwork.
From the people who build the engines to those who are hard at work in the garage making things work as well as possible to the pit crew getting the car back on the track quickly, it's a team game.
Chad Knaus is more or less the quarterback of that team as crew chief for three-time defending champion Jimmie Johnson. And assuming their car can stay out of trouble Sunday at Homestead, he's about to be the crew chief of the series champion four straight years.
For driver, crew chief and team, that's an unprecedented streak in the history of NASCAR.
And he said the key to it happening started the year before the streak, when Johnson fell just short of the series title.
"In 2005 I really dedicated everything I had to that year to try to win the championship, and we came up short, and Mr. Hendrick and Jimmie showed me at the end of that season, look, you can't do this; you can't do it at the level that you're trying to do it," Knaus said in a Tuesday teleconference. "I was losing that edge that I had and I was beginning to flame out.
"I think that now a good crew chief, a really good crew chief, probably does a better job of balancing his home life, his life away from work and his life at work because that's the only way you're going to get the proper balance to where you can be successful in both, so you can be successful in both because you can't have one without the other and probably be fulfilled."
Knaus, 38, debuted as a crew chief in the Sprint Cup Series in 2001 with Stacy Compton's team, going to a nondescript 33rd-place finish in points. He began his partnership with Johnson in 2002, when Hendrick Motorsports hired him to lead the rookie's team.
The rest is history -- Johnson's rookie of the year title, 47 wins and three straight series championships.
And the team is in line for another title this year, with Johnson more than 100 points up going into the season's final race.
The team's unprecedented run the last few years has their peers trying to answer the same question. How do they do it?
Alan Gustafson, crew chief for fellow Hendrick driver Mark Martin, doesn't have the whole answer, or he'd bottle it and use it himself.
"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," Gustafson said. "They have assembled a great team and do a great job keeping a great team even when they have some rollover.
"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."
As his success continues, Knaus also hears questions about what may be in his future. Jeff Gordon's former chief, Ray Evernham, won three championships as a crew chief with Gordon before later becoming a team owner.
Knaus admitted that was his original goal after coming to the Sprint Cup Series, but now he's not so sure.
"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," Knaus said.
For now, he's focused on the team he has and making history.
Christian Potts 366-3531 cpotts@normantranscript.com
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