Crew chief Dave Rogers ready to become pit boss for Joe Gibbs Racing's Kyle Busch
Joe Gibbs Racing's Dave Rogers will work his first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race as Kyle Busch's crew chief in Sunday's race at Texas Motor Speedway. // David Griffin, NASCAR Scene
Joe Gibbs Racing driver Kyle Busch and crew chief Dave Rogers will work their first NASCAR Sprint Cup race together this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway, but they do have a successful, albeit brief, history.
In three races in JGR’s No. 20 Nationwide Series Toyota in 2008, Busch won once, collected one pole and led 300 laps with Rogers as his crew chief.
Now, Rogers returns to the pit box of Busch’s team, only this time it’s in the Cup series. Rogers replaces Steve Addington, who served his last race as Busch’s Cup crew chief last weekend at Talladega.
“I love Steve,” Busch said. “He has been a great guy and a great leader with this team the last couple of years. He brought a lot to the table last year with the car coming in for his first full season of competition. This year, it just seems in the beginning of the year we were good again, but we sort of fell off a little bit and couldn’t keep up with the rest of the competition.”
Busch won 12 Cup races with Addington as his crew chief, but the No. 18 team failed to make the Chase For The Sprint Cup this year. Busch said the team is now “looking for some new, fresh ideas.”
“They feel like Dave Rogers can bring those in and get us going,” Busch said. “[Owner] Joe and [team President] J.D. [Gibbs] are always looking for opportunities to make their organization better. They felt like this was a necessary change to make in order to get ready for 2010 so the 18 car can be capable of competing for the Chase and, of course, competing for the championship at the end of the year.”
Busch said the team will use the final three races of the season to prepare for 2010.
“That’s what our plan is for the last three races of ’09 – just getting ready for 2010, not to say we wouldn’t love to win one of the remaining races,” Busch said. “Dave and I have worked together on the Nationwide side before, so we have a sense of what we need from each other and what we need to talk about.
“It might be a bit of a learning curve for Dave, so that’s going to be the biggest thing, probably Dave getting ready and getting everything and all his paperwork in order for this new car. For me, it will be just talking with Dave, spending some more time with him, trying to get everything going. That’s going to be the biggest thing in these final races, just trying to prepare ourselves and trying to get ready for 2010.”
