Roush Fenway Racing crew chief Drew Blickensderfer glad to return to track after release from Matt Kenseth’s team
After being replaced last week by Todd Parrott as Matt Kenseth's crew chief in the Sprint Cup Series, Drew Blickensderfer will now be reunited with Roush Fenway Racing's Carl Edwards in the Nationwide Series.
// Jim Fluharty, NASCAR Illustrated
LAS VEGAS – Roush Fenway Racing crew chief Drew Blickensderfer is back in the garage. He’s in a different garage and with a different driver but he’s ready to be back atop a pit box.
The former crew chief for Matt Kenseth’s Sprint Cup team, Blickensderfer is now the crew chief Carl Edwards’ Nationwide Series team.
Blickensderfer won his first two races as Kenseth’s crew chief in 2009 (the Daytona 500 and the race at Auto Club Speedway) but the team didn’t make the Chase For The Sprint Cup. After struggling at Daytona two weeks ago, Blickensderfer was removed as crew chief in favor of Todd Parrott.
“A year ago, I felt like I was on top of the world,” Blickensderfer said Friday morning in the Nationwide Series garage at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. “Everything was going great. It couldn’t have been any better. Then 360 days later, being let go before California was tough. … Spending the weekend at home watching the races, spending the time with the family, they knew I didn’t want to be there but we were making the best of it.
“When you’re not given the situation to go to the race track and be the boss and make the calls on pit road, it was a weird feeling. I didn’t like it at all.”
Blickensderfer said he understood the strange timing of his release. He said that with Kenseth under pressure to return to the Chase, he said “they needed to make something so they could get going right away.”
“I wanted to be Matt’s Cup crew chief and everything, but I agree that there might have been something that we should have done,” Blickensderfer said. “They needed to get the best finishes possible, and if they felt somebody else could do it, I was good with that.
“After talking with Jack [Roush] and Jack being as supportive as he was to me, I knew I was going to be fine. … If they went out and got somebody and replaced me with somebody I didn’t know about, that would have been one thing. But to go with Todd was probably easier to swallow.”
The 33-year-old Blickensderfer said he was in a unique situation with Kenseth, with former crew chief Chip Bolin still the team engineer and Kenseth’s long-time crew chief Robbie Reiser as Blickensderfer’s boss. Throw in a car he had never worked on (NASCAR’s new Cup car), and it wasn’t necessarily the best situation.
“The challenge that I had was coming in more as a peer to a lot of those guys,” Blickensderfer said. “Those guys had been there since I worked on the [Roush Fenway No.] 6 car setting up the car and changing tires. They were a peer with me, then I go off to [the Nationwide shop] to become a crew chief and they don’t see me and all of a sudden I come back as their boss.
“They’re the same age as me. It was tough. Having Robbie, who had so much success there, being the general manager and having a former crew chief being my engineer, and I’m supposed to be his boss now and I’m supposed to answer to Robbie and I’m supposed to try to fit in this group with Robbie … it was a challenge for me to try to figure out how I can get my style in there with those guys at the same time and demand respect. That’s what probably hurt the situation more than anything.”
Blickensderfer said he remains friends with Kenseth and even wanted Kenseth to drive the Nationwide car if Edwards’ couldn’t race this weekend because his wife was giving birth to their first child. She gave birth Wednesday.
“My personal pride was hurt because I want to be successful and I want to win,” Blickensderfer said. “But after you get over that little bit of it, it’s OK. … I’ve talked with Matt. The Matt I talked to afterwards was the same guy I talked to when I was with Carl. It was back to a buddy situation, and that was good.”
Blickensderfer said he didn’t give much thought to leaving Roush Fenway. He return to the Nationwide Series, where he won seven of 19 races when he worked with Edwards in 2008. Edwards called him earlier this week to see if he was interested in returning to his former post.
“I’d rather do this than a lot of Sprint Cup cars,” Blickensderfer said. “It was great to be able to bounce back. … With Carl driving and the emphasis that Roush Fenway has on this car, I’d be happy doing this for multiple years.
“Anybody who is doing this, they want to be at the top level. I want to be at Sprint Cup. But at the same time, I’d be happy doing this for years and years to come. This is just fine with me.”
