Deep bond propels Dale Earnhardt Jr., Steve Letarte to success

The wins didn’t always occur with such regularity. In fact, for the first 18 months they were paired together Dale Earnhardt Jr. and crew chief Steve Letarte didn’t win a single race.

Those moments are now looked back on fondly by Letarte, who led Earnhardt to his third victory of 2014 Sunday at Pocono Raceway. Letarte remembers his third race with Earnhardt where the team celebrated a seventh-place Las Vegas finish like it was something more.

“Our ride to the airport you would have thought we won,” Letarte said. “For everyone involved that was a step in the right direction.”

Team owner Rick Hendrick had placed Earnhardt and Letarte together in 2011, each coming into the partnership seeking their own form of redemption.

Earnhardt was coming off consecutive seasons which saw him finish 21st and 25th in points. Despite signing on with NASCAR’s most powerful organization three years before, Earnhardt was floundering with just a single victory in 144 starts. His slump so abysmal, and having cycled through two other crew chiefs before Letarte, Earnhardt figured Hendrick might jettison him.

“There was never a day where I thought he was going to fire me, but he had every right,” Earnhardt said. “I don’t think anybody in this room or in the garage would have thought much of it or been surprised.”

Instead, Hendrick took a different track. Although Jimmie Johnson had won the 2010 Sprint Cup championship, Hendrick Motorsports experienced a rare down year that saw Earnhardt, Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin go winless. Sensing a need for a shakeup, Hendrick decided to juggle crew chiefs among his three struggling drivers.

While Earnhardt needed a boost, for his soon-to-be crew chief it was a fresh start following five uneven seasons with Gordon.

In their time together Letarte and Gordon won 10 races and finished runner-up to Johnson in the championship in 2007. But they failed to reach Victory Lane in two of the next three years and both needed a change.

With his confidence at an all-time low and his career at a crossroads, Earnhardt needed someone like Letarte, perpetually upbeat and cheerful, to guide him back from the abyss.

Thus the Earnhardt-Letarte tandem was created.

Since Letarte’s arrival Earnhardt hasn’t missed the Chase. More so, he’s consistently winning again. With a season-opening Daytona 500 victory and the Pocono sweep, Earnhardt has multiple victories for the first time since 2004, when he won six times and nearly achieved the championship. It’s a considerable turnaround.

“Everything about life right now has been great,” Earnhardt said. “I got my professional life good and the personal life’s doing good. I’ve just learned and grown a lot in the last four or five years working with this group, and so, it’s been a big thing.”

For Letarte, how 2014 has unfolded is a nice bookend to a crew chief career that will soon conclude. Letarte is joining NBC, where he will be an analyst when the network picks up the second half of the NASCAR schedule next year.

Married with two young children, Letarte desires more time with his family. And in spite of the success he and Earnhardt have enjoyed, there is no second-guessing the decision. Not even in the aftermath of a win Letarte played a prominent role in securing.

“As a crew chief, especially with the depth of these teams and the strength of the engineers, I feel like my job has become less and less of this decision makes the difference,” Letarte said. “I try to support the guys on our team and we have such a great team that, man, some weeks I wonder if I even need to be here. They run on their own. They really do. I’m not sure even what I am doing some weeks they’re such an efficient group.”