Hendrick Motorsports crew chief Steve Letarte doesn't tune out criticism

Steve Letarte doesn’t like criticism any more than the next guy. The crew chief for Jeff Gordon just believes there’s always something to be learned from it.

So when fans blame Letarte for the four-time NASCAR Cup champion driver’s failure to win more than one race over the last two seasons, he doesn’t merely brush the judgments off as nonsense.

No, Letarte uses the sometimes-harsh critiques as an opportunity to examine himself and grow.

“Anytime you get beat with a guy as talented as Jeff Gordon, people are going to have their opinion that you’re not doing as good a job as you could do,” Letarte says. “There’s two ways to look at it. You can block it out, say, ‘There’s no truth to it, I’m doing all I can do.’ Or you can be a man, stand up, look in the mirror and ask yourself that question. I’m not saying it’s true. Everybody has an opinion, that’s fine.

“But before you just write it off and you throw that article out or you click ‘X’ on your computer and you exit out, why don’t you stop for a minute and you make sure there’s not some truth to it? Because whether you agree or disagree with everybody’s opinion, I’ve found there’s always a little bit of truth to all of it.”

Cliché as it might sound, Letarte knows that you’re only as good as your last race in the mind of most observers.

It was just two years ago when he and Gordon piled up six wins together and finished second to teammate Jimmie Johnson in the 2007 standings.

Losing the title by just 77 points took an emotional toll on Letarte that he kept mostly to himself. Gordon’s No. 24 team had kept pace with Johnson’s No. 48 group for most of the season and led the points with three races left.

But two wins by Johnson in the last three races (and four of the last five) allowed him to overtake Gordon and pull away.

It was a major letdown for Letarte, who was promoted from car chief to crew chief on the No. 24 team the week after Gordon failed to qualify for NASCAR’s 10-race playoff in 2005.

The two then won in just their sixth start together and collected four more checkered flags in 2006. Then in 2007, they became bona fide championship contenders.

“I think 2007 took a lot out of us, me personally,” Letarte says. “I can’t speak for us but me personally, I put everything I had in to winning the championship and to fall short takes you a long time to recover, and I don’t think I ever really admitted that and I think I struggled in 2008. I thought I gave everything I had and it really wasn’t.

“It was as much as you could have without every piece of your soul in it. And I think in 2009 I went to [the track] every week not afraid to lose, and I think that was the key to getting better.”

But better wasn’t good enough for Letarte.

Despite improving from seventh in the standings in 2008 to third in 2009, Letarte wasn’t satisfied with the overall performance of the No. 24 team. Nor was Gordon’s return to victory lane with a lone win at Texas Motor Speedway enough to atone for a winless 2008.

“I guess it’d be very easy for us to sit back and say, ‘2009, one win, one pole, third in points. Man, that was a success.’ You won’t hear that come out of our mouths,” Letarte says. “You’re going to hear, ‘One win, should have been five. One pole, could have been five. Third in points, two [positions] from where we want to be.’ ... If you really want to be the best in this sport, you need to evaluate top to bottom and that’s what we’re going to do.”

And that includes an assessment of his own performance.

“I feel that it’s my job to decide if I’m the guy [for Gordon],” Letarte says. “Can I be the guy? How committed am I? Do I feel that all their opinions are right? No. Do I feel I should lose my job? Well, no. If I felt that I wouldn’t be here. But do I feel that I had no hand in us not winning a race? Absolutely not.

“I mean, I am the guy that has the position to steer this team into battle. That’s what I do, that’s my job. And when this team doesn’t operate as well as it should, that should fall at my desk, nowhere else.”

Letarte worked on Gordon’s team in its championship seasons of 1995, 1997, 1998 and 2001 and is proud of what the group accomplished. After that experience, he recognizes that any crew chief paired with Gordon will likely be compared with Ray Evernham, who won three championships with Gordon.

Letarte said his team doesn’t live in the shadow of those accomplishments.

“I think if you don’t talk about it, if you’re afraid to talk about it, if you’re afraid to measure up to it, then you’re always going to be in its shadow, but I’m not,” says the 30-year-old crew chief.

“I was proud to be a part of those race teams. Those were great years but that was a different car and a different time. And that doesn’t mean it’s worth any more or any less. That just means that right now my goal is 2010 and what happened in 1998 or 2007 doesn’t really affect how we have to approach 2010.”

Letarte isn’t afraid to acknowledge his weaknesses, one of which he says is tuning on race cars.

He admits that the implementation of NASCAR’s new Sprint Cup model on a full-time basis in 2008 wasn’t as easy of an adjustment for him as some other crew chiefs within the Hendrick organization, and that it was a struggle to improve the handling on Gordon’s car during several races this past season.

While Gordon was a consistent top-10 performer, the No. 24 team wasn’t in the same league as those of teammates Mark Martin, with crew chief Alan Gustafson, and Jimmie Johnson, with crew chief Chad Knaus.

Johnson and Martin combined to win 12 races and earned the top two points positions.

“I think that my strength as a crew chief has always been personnel and dealing with the driver and calling the race and things like that. I am not as good of a car guy as Chad Knaus or Alan,” Letarte says. “They are definitely better car guys than me and when the car changed I feel they adapted quicker and I tried to follow suit and I think I failed Jeff a little bit and didn’t get him the car he needed.”

Gordon, however, has continued to publicly express his confidence in Letarte, and considers Letarte to have “a personality that works very well with myself, with the team.”

Ultimately, even if Letarte doesn’t disregard the opinion of those outside the Hendrick organization, it’s the approval of Gordon and team owner Rick Hendrick he covets the most.

“I don’t think there’s any way I could come in here everyday and truly be honest and evaluate this program, evaluate my team and evaluate me and the driver and whole company without knowing that they’re behind me, because this is a challenging sport,” Letarte says. “And the only way you win races, the only way you win championships is to be honest with everybody involved. If I was in fear of my job, then I don’t feel I could do the job that I have.

“ … I think the biggest thing I’ve learned over the last four or five seasons of being Jeff Gordon’s crew chief is it’s the job I want more than anything in the world. I want to win a championship with Jeff Gordon. He’s given me everything I have in my career, it’s the only driver I’ve ever worked with, and that’s my number one goal when I wake up in the morning is to come here and provide him with the equipment that he can go out and do what he does.”