Ford Performance: Quotes from Finalist Crew Chiefs Tony Gibson and Todd Gordon

Tony Gibson, acting crew chief for MENCS championship contender Kevin Harvick, participated in a NASCAR teleconference Wednesday morning to discuss the upcoming Ford Championship weekend from the perspective of the No. 4 Jimmy John’s Ford team.

                      

Can you talk about how it felt in Phoenix getting back on the pit box for Kevin and how you're feeling heading into Homestead?

           

TONY GIBSON:  “Well, it was obviously a little nerve‑racking.  For me it was about what not to make a mistake at and screw up a good lesson plan that Rodney had laid out.  That part of it was really nerve‑racking.  The first part of the weekend went extremely well, tons of speed and things were going smooth, and then lap 73 it kind of went all to heck there. So yeah, I was just real nervous.  After I got into the race a little bit and got over the flat tire and got into the groove of things, it went a little bit easier.  But still, the pressure of just not making the right call or just putting ourselves in a bad position was my biggest worry.  Fortunately for us it all worked out at the end, but it was pretty stressful.”

I know that this has been quite a year for you, and I know you tweeted this summer about how July 6th was when you had the blood clot in your brain and came back to work on August 20th, and I wanted to ask you, how long were you hospitalized at that time, and how was that situation detected?  Was that just a doctor's visit?  Was it something that suddenly happened and you or your wife took you to the emergency room or something?  Can you kind of talk me through that, please?“Yeah, I was actually just driving home from work and just had a real ‑‑ I just could not get my brain to function with my hands and my feet, and I could not drive any further and knew something was wrong.  Just wasn't sure, and ended up going to the emergency room and put me in for observation that night, and then about 1:00 in the morning they came back and they had done several scans and told me I had a blood clot in my vertebral artery, so that started the whole process. I was in the hospital for about a week, a little over a week.  The blood clot started to dissolve.  I was home one day and back in the hospital again.  As the blood clot started to dissolve, it caused a mini‑stroke in my optical nerve system in my left side, which caused me to lose 85 percent of my hearing in my left ear, and I lost most of the function of my left eye, so I was in and out of the hospital for about three weeks.  I'd be home for a day, back in for four days, and it was quite a deal.  I was in Wake Forest for a while doing therapy to get everything back working right, and I still go back.  Actually I have a neurologist's appointment on Friday in Wake Forest, but I'm unfortunately not going to be able to make that one.  I'm going to be at Homestead.  But I have doctor's visits quite a bit that I still have to go back and check, and they check the ‑‑ and I'm on a lot of medicine, obviously, for blood thinners and blood clots and things like that that I have to take every day twice a day. But I'm managing it.  You know, it's just part of life and things that ‑‑ I was very lucky, and I don't take that for granted.  There's a lot of people out there that are way worse than me, so it's just something that I'll overcome and I'll get used to it and go on.”

“So when the team asked you to take over for Rodney at the track for two weeks, because of your health condition, even though you're better now, was there a consideration to say no and feel like it was going to be too much on you, or how did you decide that you could do this or handle this when they came and asked you about that?  “Well, I wasn't 100 percent sure.  I told Rodney and Zipadelli that I had to call my doctors and make sure that I could fly, first of all, that it was safe for me to fly.  So I did that and contacted my doctors, and they all released me to go and fly.  They said I'm probably safer than anybody on the plane as far as blood clots with the medicines that I'm on. Other than having to get up and walk around on the plane and do my normal stuff that I do, they were pretty satisfied with me doing it, and if all possible, I was going.  There was no way I was going to let those guys down.  So as long as my doctor said I could go, I was going.  There's just no doubt about it.  That's what they got me here to do, and I just feel like it's part of my job, whether it's helping all four cars every day of the week while I'm in the shop or if one needs me on the road.  I went earlier in the year to Bristol when Klausmeier was having his second child and filled in there. That's what I'm here to do.  That was part of my agreement with the company, and I would do it for any of these guys.”

I wanted to ask you what you kind of see as your biggest challenge heading into the weekend being put in this situation.  You couldn't be put into a higher stakes situation.  “Yeah, it was a pretty nerve‑racking deal there for sure.  My biggest deal, like I said before, is just making sure that we take each practice ‑‑ the inspection process we all know is pretty intense, so making sure that stuff flows good and we get through there safe and sound, and then we'll take each practice just like we did Phoenix.  We took each practice, each run one at a time, thought about changes and what we needed to do, and like I said, Rodney had a great plan laid out, and we kind of just followed his lead through that.  He has an awesome race team.  They all pretty much know what to do.  You don't have to tell them what to do.  They follow right along. We had to adapt a few times off the lesson plan, but like I said, it all went really smooth.  But my biggest deal is not messing up.  When I called for those two tires this past weekend, the first thing I thought about, man, did I just mess up here, and I think about the 380 some employees we have here at Stewart‑Haas Racing, did that one decision I made put everybody in a bad spot and could this be the end of it.  But sometimes you have to make calls from your gut and you worry about what happens later. My biggest fear is just making the wrong call or doing the wrong thing.  I want those guys to be proud of me.  Like I told Rodney, I just want to do you a good job and hope you can be proud of me, so that's what I want to get done.”

Do you feel like you and Rodney are similar in terms of kind of how you go about things?  Is it a big personality shift for Kevin and the team in this big situation? “No, I don't think so.  Me and Rodney have a really, really good relationship, along with Kevin.  I know you guys seen it before, me and Rodney, we do a lot of things off track together.  We go side by siding together, and we do a lot of things, we have a lot of things in common that we love to do, so we've got a friendship outside of the racetrack part of it and the racing side of it, which I think kind of helps all that, kind of merge a little easier. And like I said, I don't have an agenda in this whole deal coming into it.  I don't have a personal agenda.  I have a company agenda of winning a championship.  We sit down like we've sat down this week already, and we'll sit down again and go over our plan for the weekend and talk to Harvick in the truck all the time.  This week was easy because he didn't have a motor home and he was in the truck with us all weekend long, so we could talk about things and go over strategy and how things are going in practice, what we need to do for the race.  So we'll do the same thing this weekend.  We'll just take it step by step, and that relationship ‑‑ I would talk to Rodney every night, text him through the day.  So it all went really well, and I think this weekend hopefully will go just as smooth.

Where does this rank among the challenges that you've had when you look at a team that's lost its car chief, lost its crew chief and is trying to perform in a championship situation amid people questioning the team's integrity? “Yeah, you know, it's normal, right?  People should.  When you take two of the key people off, you always wonder whether it's a quarterback or a running back or a wide receiver, can the others step up and do a good job.  I think that's where Rodney and this company at Stewart‑Haas has done a good job.  We have a lot of depth here at this company. For me personally, I would say the closest thing to this situation was back in 1992 when we were racing for a championship with Alan Kulwicki and I was the field guy back then, and we came down ‑‑ it came down to a green flag fuel stop, and Alan was coming down pit road, and I step over and I realize I'm the only guy on pit road, and we're the only car on pit road.  And I had to get 3.2 seconds of fuel in this thing to make it to the end, and if I don't get it in there and if I don't do my job, then it all lays on my shoulders.  That's probably the last time I've been in this situation with this much load on it.  It would have been in 1992.”

Do you feel that the team at all has ‑‑ I don't want to say a chip on its shoulder, but feel like they have something to prove, that ‑‑ after the penalty and the perception of it? “No, I don't think so.  I think they ‑‑ this team right here, when you get down inside it and watch how it works on the inside, they approach every race to win races, not to win stages or points or lead laps.  It's about winning races no matter what the circumstances are, and I think that they don't really have a chip on their shoulder about anyone in particular or anything.  It's just they want to show everybody that they are the best and they deserve to be in this position to fight for a championship. You know, I think personally, all these guys want to step up and show Rodney that, you know what, we are a great team, and you have built an awesome race team here, and we want to show you that ‑‑ how mature we are as a group and how we can function as a group, even when our leader is not with us.  We can still follow your lead and we can still get this done.”

odd Gordon, crew chief for MENCS championship contender Todd Gordon, participated in a NASCAR teleconference Wednesday morning to discuss the upcoming Ford Championship weekend from the perspective of the No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford team.

Can you talk about what you and your team have been doing to prepare for Homestead the last couple of races after winning the first race in the Round of Eight and securing your spot in the championship?

           

TODD GORDON:  “Yeah, I think definitely it gave us an opportunity winning Martinsville to kind of focus forward on our Homestead cars as they were being built and had the opportunity to take two cars to the wind tunnel and identify which one of the two was the better and pick our primary and backup out of that and continue to work on the cars. It's been good because the shop becomes utterly focused to making those cars as good as they can be because they know that they're going to race them for a championship.  It's been a productive couple weeks, and look forward to unloading at Homestead and seeing where we stack up speed‑wise.”

When you first became crew chief for Logano when he came over to Penske, what did you know about him?  What did you think about him?  And could you have envisioned what you all have accomplished through seven years together?  “I felt like the path was there.  The pieces before he came here and drove for us, I think the ‑‑ you know, the struggles or the lack of ‑‑ the performance that he was at in the 20 Cup car obviously wasn't the level that we thought that he could get to.  But in watching him in the Xfinity Series, I felt like from an outsider looking in that he and the 20 car could actually ‑‑ he could outrun Kyle half the time in the 18 car.  So I felt like his ability to perform at a high level was equal to that of Kyle within the organization and just didn't find the chemistry that they had on the Cup side. Looked forward to that coming over here, and I think he showed that pretty quickly in '13 as we started our adventure to the point that we're at today.  But a lot of speed right off the bat and a very competitive person.”

What is it about him that allows him to be booed by a crowd after a race at Martinsville and kind of still think it's kind of cool that so many people have that much emotion about what he does? “Well, I think you have to look at it and say that if people are making noise, whether it's cheers or boos, that means that you've done something and you're competitive.  I think the great part about NASCAR racing is the passion of our fan base, and it's passionate in both directions. You know, at the end of a day, if you're up there and you have noise being made, I think it means that you're doing the right things and you're being competitive, because your fans are very passionately cheering you, but the fans of ‑‑ you have 39 competitors that their fans probably, if you're very successful and you're competitive, they're going to make noise in the opposite direction. You know, volume speaks for what you're able to accomplish, not necessarily the words that come out of it.”

I know you made the pit crew change with Graham after Kansas; has anything else changed with your pit crew going into this weekend? “No, it's status quo going forward, and the great part of making that change was we had three races, three successful races ‑‑ well, two of them were.  One we had a flat tire.  But for those guys to build more chemistry and to build themselves forward.  Look forward to that group.  That group has been stellar.  If you look at Martinsville, I would give them a fair amount of credit for putting us in position to win that race. They've done a great job there, and they've performed against the guys we're racing against.  There in Texas they did a phenomenal job and didn't give them many opportunities at Phoenix to work on it.”

TODD GORDON CONTINUED --

As a crew chief, coach type of person, what's kind of been your philosophy with kind of working with him in regards to how you handle those situations, when to be aggressive, when it's better to pull back a little bit, or is it a case of, look, it's his own fight and he knows what he's getting into, so don't change anything with Joey? “Well, I think the pieces in our relationship, obviously we've been together for several years now, we talk about all situations as they happen on the racetrack and in retrospect afterwards.  And we get together every week and just sit down and talk about what the weekend before entailed, whether it be how our race cars handled, how we strategized the race, incidents that happened during the race.  I think the biggest thing is from a peer to peer, we talk through what's happened, how we handle it, and how we could have done things differently or how we should have done things differently, if they needed to be done differently. I love his passion.  You know, the one thing you've got to appreciate out of Joey is that he races ‑‑ he gives 100 percent.  He's racing all the time, and that's a great attribute of his that he does.  He's up on it.  You never have to question where we are, if it's through practice or through any session.  You're getting 100 percent out of him, and that's a great thing.  He's a racer.  I think that's a great part. But in how you handle these situations, there's ‑‑ I'll try to give him my opinion and let him form his direction out of that, and I think it's a good relationship in that respect.”

This isn't the first time you guys have made it to the Final Four.  Your previous experience, has it changed anything that you've done in terms of preparing for this week, or are you just doing it like another race and another Final Four that you've been in before with the Championship 4 for this week with your team and with Joey? “Yeah, I think we're trying to keep it as normal as possible.  The first time into it in 2014, you didn't know.  I didn't.  It was a new format.  It was new to everybody, but you didn't know how to handle it or how the weekend was going to go.  I didn't because I really hadn't been in that position to have one race that dictated a championship of a season. There was a lot more anxiety, I think, into the '14 race, and the fear of the unknown.  I think '16 we raced into that race and just felt like we needed to handle it like the other races and continue to work forward, and I thought that was a decent approach to the weekend.  I thought we were very competitive.  I thought we were in a position that we could race for the championship late with 20 to go. That worked well, and I think the message to my guys and even to Joey, you get an opportunity to kind of ‑‑ the win at Martinsville allowed you to say, okay, we're going.  Now how do we strategize the week coming into it to make it where it's what we've been doing.  We tried to make this weekend as normal as we can in how we approach the weekend and how we've been racing the last ‑‑ throughout the playoffs, because if you look back at the last two mile‑and‑a‑halfs in the playoffs, we've had a fair amount of success.  We've led a lot of laps.  We've won a pole, and we've had speed, and we just need to continue to do those things, and we'll be in a great position.”

From your perspective as a crew chief and of course knowing Joey very well, do you guys feel like you're the championship favorite heading into Homestead this weekend? “I feel like we've got as good an opportunity as anybody.  If you look back, the thing I would build off of is we led over 100 laps at Kansas at a progressively banked racetrack that's similar banking to what Homestead is, not a high‑falloff racetrack, but it was a good place for us.  We lost some track position and really didn't recover from that to finish the way I think we could have, but we had a great run there, and I think at Texas, the 4 car was dominant at Texas, but beyond the 4 car, I thought we were as good as anybody and finished third there. Our mile‑and‑a‑half program I think through the summertime was lacking speed, and we just needed to understand how to make our race cars faster.  Setup wise and everything.  And I think we've continued to understand what we need to do to make ourselves faster, and we're working on that, and I think through the last two mile‑and‑a‑halfs we've had speed.  We've been competitive.  We know what we've lacked when we haven't executed completely. I look forward to that going forward, and I would say to the other three contenders here, I feel like we've got every bit of the speed that they do and every bit of the opportunity to win this championship.”

This weekend's chassis, is it a previously used one or did you guys build a new car?  “It's a previously used one.  I'm probably the least superstitious or passionate about car numbers.  I think our guys here at the shop, we've got a fleet of cars, chassis wise, and the experience and the procedures that we have in building cars, I don't feel that we have anything that's any different between the cars.  Couldn't even tell you where this car raced last to be honest with you, and I don't focus on that.  We always try to build the best car we can, from the ‑‑ we did build two cars to go to Homestead, and we took both of them to the wind tunnel to see which one is better body‑wise, but they're fresh body builds, but the chassis, they're a couple years old.  Every car that we have here at Team Penske goes back through a whole process.  They come all the way back down to bare metal and no paint on them before we start the procedure of putting a body back on them. Car is as fresh as any car we have in the fleet, and I feel like it's a good car to go race for a championship with.”

Joey mentioned how not being in the playoffs last year really stunk, of course.  Did that motivate the team at all this year?  Did you see maybe that as kind of something that was pushing them all year of not wanting to be left out again? “Yeah, I think it's a humbling experience.  2017 was a humbling experience for us.  We had been very competitive.  You know, if you looked at it, I felt like we were capable of making the Final Four, all '14, '15 and '16.  To not even make the playoffs in '17 was pretty humbling, and I think it was something that allowed us to step back and say, what do we need to do differently.  We've done things that have gotten us through the last three years, but how many of those things have changed with how this sport has evolved and the aero package has changed. I think the struggles of '17 definitely allowed us to kind of sit down and say, okay, what can we look at doing differently and how do we need to focus forward on being successful this year, and I think that the frustration of the finish of '17 motivated everybody here to figure out how we can have more speed in '18 and execute better. I think we did that as a group.  We lacked some speed in our cars through the summer, but we've definitely continued to work forward on how we could stay, and I feel like we're competitive.”

Ron Fleshman

RIS NASCAR Editor.  Has been with RIS since the middle 90's. Writes on each of the three main series of NASCAR.

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Volume 2018, Issue 11, Posted 8:26 PM, 11.14.2018