LONG POND, Pa. — Kurt Busch posed for victory lane photos Monday with interim crew chief Johnny Klausmeier and an invisible man.
With regular crew chief Tony Gibson sitting at home thanks to a one-week suspension for a lug nut violation, Klausmeier — a 35-year-old engineer — calmly guided his veteran driver to a fuel-mileage win at Pocono Raceway.
But Gibson was hardly forgotten, so Busch and Klausmeier left a space between them in a winner’s circle photo with their arms around nothing but air.
“We’re going to superimpose Gibson in between both of us,” Busch joked.
It was easy to smile and laugh after the tension of a fuel-mileage race had dissipated. To earn his first win of the season, Busch had to save two full laps of gas — five miles’ worth — and without Gibson calling the shots. But he still had enough for a solid burnout celebration.
Klausmeier later acknowledged he was worried, but Busch didn’t pick up on the nerves. The engineer’s voice sounded “way more calming than Gibson,” Busch said.
“When you have an engineer calculating your fuel — I mean, it’s a calculator,” Busch said, catching himself. “I know Gibson can do it just the same, but when you have a new guy or you’re not at your full strength, there’s something that happens to everybody on the team.
“Everybody pulls harder. Everybody digs in a little bit deeper, and not having Tony Gibson here today, I know everybody gave that much more.”
So much for the recent lug nut suspensions being that much of a penalty. They began after the co-owner of Busch’s car, Tony Stewart, lashed out at NASCAR for being lax on safety when it stopped policing the amount of lug nuts attached to the wheels.
NASCAR reacted by implementing a one-race suspension for the crew chief of any car found to not have all five lug nuts secured on each wheel after a race. Busch’s No. 41 was one such car after last week’s race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, and Gibson had to spend a week at home.
But with today’s technology – FaceTime, data accessible via cloud and the like — teams aren’t at a major disadvantage without the crew chief there in person. If a change is made at the track, a crew chief in North Carolina still can see what happens.
“You’d probably be surprised at how involved the crew chief is in the race weekend even though he’s suspended,” runner-up Dale Earnhardt Jr. said. “Those guys find unique ways to be able to communicate and be on top of everything the car and the team are doing with the car, even though he’s not there to see it with his own eyes.”
A six-week suspension? That would be significant. One week, especially for a Chase-bound team? That’s not a big deal, Earnhardt said.
And Busch’s team — despite being winless for the first half of the regular season — was certainly headed for the Chase before Pocono. The 2004 champion was second in the points standings entering the weekend and had 11 top-10 finishes in the first 13 races.
Now Busch heads to Michigan International Speedway, where he is the defending winner of the spring race.
“The biggest thing for me is just the relief of being into the Chase with one win,” said Klausmeier, who will return to his normal role next week. “I think that’s huge. We’ve been so close, it’s just a matter of getting that off our shoulders, and now we can just build our notebook for the Chase.”
Follow Gluck on Twitter @jeff_gluck
