Two Joe Gibbs Racing Nationwide Series crew chiefs suspended last year for tampering with a NASCAR test are back on the job and hoping to put their troubles behind them.Dave Rogers and Jason Ratcliff got back to work Thursday at Auto Club Speedway in California after 11-race suspensions for attempting to manipulate an engine horsepower test last August.
Their teams carried on well without them at the track. Rogers’ No. 20 team went on to win the series owners title, while Ratcliff’s No. 18 team won five of its last 10 races and is taking aim at both the owners and the drivers title as Kyle Busch will run the entire season for the team.
One of those wins came with Busch at Auto Club Speedway, and even though he wasn’t there, Ratcliff felt as if he was part of it.
“Anytime we’re successful, we all feel like we’re a part of it whether we were at the race track or not,” Ratcliff said Thursday at the track. “There’s a lot of guys on this team that stepped up and took new responsibilities last year and did a really great job.
“We’re that much of a stronger race team today than we were a year ago. We had some guys who had to dig a little deeper and go out of their comfort zone to do things. We’ve got a better race team for it.” Neither crew chief participated in JGR’s preseason media day, and only Rogers had talked about the punishment when he attended the Nationwide Series banquet last November. They return to the spotlight this week.
“Life is back to normal now,” Rogers said Thursday. “I’m ready to move on and have fun this year. … Just being with my guys, this is my second family – we hang out together whether we’re racing or playing. “To have to load the truck and watch these guys go without me is very disheartening.” Rogers and Ratcliff were among seven JGR crewmen suspended following the August race at Michigan.
After that event, NASCAR took the cars to test their engine horsepower, and JGR’s team had attached a washer to the throttle after the race so it wouldn’t generate top horsepower. The Toyota teams were angry that NASCAR had recently changed the rules that they felt unfairly punished the Toyota teams for running well. NASCAR lifted their indefinite suspensions prior to the season, and then JGR imposed an additional one-race suspension for the season-opening race at Daytona.
Both crew chiefs obviously want to put the incident behind them. “I think everybody knows that it didn’t have anything to do with [performance] on the race track,” Ratcliff said. “The reason we’re successful is because we have a hard-working group and have great equipment and great drivers.
“That deal that happened was not something that gave us a competitive advantage. I don’t feel like we have anything to prove. We just want to get back out there and race and do what we enjoy and let that be gone and create some new memories and have some new success and move on, have a good season.”
Ratcliff believes his No. 18 team is ready to compete for the title with Busch as the driver. “If you look back, this group has for the most part been together for four or five years,” Ratcliff said. “We’ve run with some different drivers, we’ve run some rookie drivers, we’ve run some limited deals. [We now] have the opportunity to run 35 races with one driver – and not only one driver, but in my opinion the best driver on the circuit right now.”
With the strong team, Busch is considered one of the favorites to win the Nationwide title. “It’s not going to be easy,” Ratcliff said. “If we can pick up where we left off last season, I would say we’re definitely a strong contender. … I would hope that we’re at least in the top three.”
Rogers will have multiple drivers in his No. 20 car – Joey Logano, Denny Hamlin and Brad Coleman. He hopes to win a second consecutive owners title, but he knows that Ratcliff’s team will be the top priority. “We do everything the same at our shop,” Rogers said.
“Typically, we have two of everything so neither one of us has to go without. Occasionally, we will get in a jam where there would be a preferred part. “Last year, we would get it. Obviously, at JGR the 18 cars get it. But [team owner] Joe [Gibbs] and [team President] J.D. [Gibbs] do a great job making sure both teams have the resources they need.”
The crew chiefs were welcomed back by their competitors with crewmen from other teams coming by to say hello. “You have a lot of hard-nosed competitors in this garage area,” Rogers said. “At the end of the day, we all care for one another. I’ve had a lot of people give a lot of support. “I’ve moved on. You can’t worry about yesterday. You just worry about today and tomorrow.”
