NASCAR- Burton Talks New Crew Chief
 

Jeff Burton says battle-tested Drew Blickensderfer right fit to be his crew chief

Screen Daily


Jeff Burton didn’t need to talk much to Drew Blickensderfer for Blickensderfer to be on the top of Burton’s list of prospective crew chiefs.

Burton had plenty of time to watch David Ragan’s crew chief in action this past year as their cars were always near each other in the Sprint Cup garage.

Talking with Blickensderfer just confirmed for Burton what he had thought – that the 2009 Daytona 500 winning crew chief was the person he wanted guiding the Richard Childress Racing No. 31 team in 2012.

Burton will be the third driver Blickensderfer has worked with in four years. The 35-year-old Blickensderfer was crew chief for Matt Kenseth in 2009 (winning the first two races) and one race in 2010 before being moved to the Nationwide team of Carl Edwards. He became Ragan’s crew chief in September 2010.

“They’ve asked him to do several different things and he’s just been a damn soldier and went and done it and did a great job at whatever he did,” Burton said Tuesday in a phone interview. “It’s easy to point to somebody when everything is going well and say, ‘Wow, that guy is really good.’ It’s another thing to see a guy that is asked to do some different things and he still has his head up and still be successful.

“I like battle-tested guys. I like the guys that have seen the ghosts so to speak, [wondering] ‘Oh my god what’s going to happen to my career next’ and how they respond to that says a lot about his character. That he’s had those experiences made him that much more desirable to me.”

Blickensderfer led Ragan to the 23rd spot in the standings in 2011, but Ragan had a chance to make the Chase For The Sprint Cup thanks to a win in July at Daytona. Burton, who had made the Chase in three of the previous four seasons, finished 20th in the standings and last among the RCR drivers.

“It is kind of a similar situation to what I had with the 6 [and Ragan],” Blickensderfer said. “They didn’t perform last year the way everybody wanted them to perform. We’ve got to rebuild that. I just came back from a program where I felt like I did a decent job of that.

“I had that fresh in my mind. I really enjoyed doing that – surprising people and getting the team better and stronger, both with personnel and cars.”

Leaving Roush Fenway Racing wasn’t the first choice for Blickensderfer, but the No. 6 team has no sponsor for next season and it’s unclear how many races it would run.

“I wanted to be loyal to Jack,” Blickensderfer said. “The way everything worked out with the 6 car and not quite knowing where I would end up in his program and having this opportunity, it made it pretty easy and clear-cut for me to make a decision. … Just the fact that they had sponsorship [at RCR] was a big turn-on.

“Having fully-funded cars for the foreseeable future is good. All they do is race. [Childress] doesn’t have other businesses. It really hit home that this guy wants it bad. All the other successful guys want it bad as well, but if this is all he is, it makes it even hit home harder that RCR is the place where they make money so they can go put in their race cars so they can go win the next week.”

Burton started 2011 with Todd Berrier as crew chief and ended the season with Luke Lambert, who replaced Berrier in July. Lambert will remain at RCR.

Burton posted four top-10s in his final five races with Lambert.

“It was a little unfair for Luke to throw him in the fire,” Burton said. “Drew and Luke are working together great. Luke is an RCR guy. He has been a big supporter of RCR and mine for a long time.

“All along in this whole process, Luke and I have been completely honest with each other and understood from Day 1 what we’re trying to do. … I feel like everybody won. Luke showed the racing world that he was capable and he’ll have that opportunity.”

Blickensderfer comes from an organization that was strong in the mile-and-a-half tracks, which wasn’t necessarily RCR’s forte last season.

“The technology and the thought process that Roush used to be successful on mile-and-a-halves, 12 months from now won’t be successful – somebody else will figure out something better,” Burton said. “You have to be careful in trying to buy short-term success. … You can take all that stuff and put it on our cars and it might not work.”

But Blickensderfer thinks he could help in that area. He said the cars at Roush Fenway are built a little different than those at RCR.

“There are some areas where I can help them out and if not bring immediate speed, maybe raise their attention or open their eyes to look at this or that and at least spur enough interest that we can improve the program and the whole company,” he said.

The goal for the organization is to win championships, and Blickensderfer said that means making the Chase. He said two of the keys are qualifying better and just getting the 2011 funk out of their heads.

“Everybody that made that Chase had a chance to win that championship, and that’s how we want to [approach] it,” he said. “If you can put yourself in the Chase, which I think Burton has proven he can do consistently and had an off year this year, then we can prepare ourselves to win a championship.”