Poll Position: Will No. 48 team's pit crew gamble pay off?
CBSSports.com editor Brian De Los Santos, writer Pete Pistone and a chosen member of the community (for a pure fan perspective) share their thoughts on this week's poll question.
Jimmie Johnson's No. 48 team swapped pit crews with Jeff Gordon's No. 24 team mid-race at Texas and will remain swapped for the final two races. A smart move or sign of desperation for the four-time defending champions?
PETE PISTONE: For the first time in, well four years, there is a chink in the armor of the 48 team. Before the Chase even began, Denny Hamlin and Mike Ford were talking about how much better the No. 11 team was on pit road compared to Johnson's crew and time and again in this year's championship run they've proved it. Sunday's first half performance by the original 48 squad including two mishaps that cost Johnson several positions on track that were difficult to make up, especially with a car that simply was not race-winning caliber. So Chad Knaus made the drastic call to basically fire the entire squad -- in front of thousands of fans and a national television audience -- in the middle of the race to bring in Gordon's team. It proved to be beneficial as pit road stops in the race's second half were much improved.
But I wonder what the ramifications will be now that the 24 group will pit Johnson for the remaining two races of the season? The chemistry that has been built over the last four championship winning years with the 48 team has been obliterated in one decision. And in the short term, the pressure now put on the former Gordon team to perform flawlessly from here on out is enormous. There is absolutely no room for error and everyone of the seven crew members that go over the wall in Phoenix and Homestead know their every move will be under the microscope. It does smack of desperation and that's something we just haven't seen from this record-setting team. And it's exactly the kind of mental game that in my mind plays perfectly into the hands of Hamlin and even third place Kevin Harvick, who no doubt sense the blood in the water. It may turn out to be the most brilliant move in NASCAR history if Johnson rallies back and takes this year's title. Or it could do down as the day the reign and dominance of the 48 team ended.
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BRIAN DE LOS SANTOS: While a mid-race crew swap isn't exactly conventional -- especially for a team trying to claim a fifth consecutive title -- I didn't have a problem with the move one bit. It was the smart thing to do by far.
I think to some it comes off as an act of desperation because it happened with 2½ races to go, but it had to be done. It's not as if crew chief Chad Knaus is making this change for the sake of change. Pit stops have been a problem that needed to be addressed for some time. I've been saying all season that the 48 pit crew has been shaky. I'm dumbfounded that changes weren't made weeks earlier to shore things up.
Racing is a sport where every millisecond counts and the pit crew was holding back Johnson at times. A couple of his wins have come in spite of the work of his pit crew.
Knaus was probably a bit too loyal to his pit crew throughout the year. It has been pretty clear to me that the 48 pit crew has not been operating up to par. Maybe the fact that Johnson still managed to claim five victories during the regular season gave Knaus a false sense of security that come the Chase, his crew would step up their game, but it just didn't happen.
Now the question is whether Knaus waited too long.
D2Moo: The move to swap the 48 and 24 pit crews is a very smart move. A smart move that has the peculiar odor of desperation from a team and organization that usually causes other teams to take extraordinary measures to keep up. The switch in and of itself is not unusual at all. Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer did the same switch recently with a quarter of the publicity. The timing and circumstances of the 48/24 crew switch guaranteed that it would be a big news item in the sport.
It was a smart move in that sometimes even pit crews need extra motivation or a change of scenery to shake them up a bit. I do not know if the 48 guys were complacent all of a sudden, but maybe being four-time champs lured them into a false sense of security. The challenge of having two competitors this close, this late, was something that possibly they were not used to. Somewhere they lost their urgency. In that regard, this is probably a very good move to get a hungrier 24 crew over to Johnson's pit.
The fact that this is a close race leads me to the "out of desperation" part of the question. The pressure Chad Knaus and Jimmie Johnson put on themselves to be the best has to be a burden sometimes. That burden is felt by every member of that team. That drive for five in a row has been a big old noose around their necks. The loose and confident 11 and 29 teams have maintained the pressure on them. Finally, seeing the lead evaporate and seeing the pit crew having an unusually bad day, Chad pulls the equivalent of the old basketball coach trick of pulling all five starters and benching them for a poor performance. That is a desperation move designed to get a group's attention. Only now, Knaus and Steve Letarte (Jeff Gordon's crew chief) are making this move for the rest of the Chase.
In the end, if Johnson wins the championship again, the move will be scary, psycho smart. If Hamlin or Harvick win, then it was a desperation move that failed to achieve its goals. We'll know for sure in less than two weeks.
