In hopes of jumpstarting what has been an underwhelming couple of seasons, Michael Waltrip Racing is exchanging the crew chiefs of its two Sprint Cup Series teams.
Michael Waltrip Racing swaps crew chiefs for Clint Bowyer, David Ragan
Clint Bowyer and David Ragan will each have new crew chiefs beginning this weekend at Michigan.
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Brian Pattie will move from Clint Bowyer’s No. 15 team to lead David Ragan’s No. 55 team, with Billy Scott shifting from Ragan to Bowyer. The move is effective immediately and includes each team’s respective engineers. Other key personnel such as car chiefs, mechanics and pit crews will remain in place.
The crew chief swap comes with MWR in a prolonged slump, having last won a race July 2013 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and with neither Bowyer nor Brian Vickers qualifying for the 2014 Chase for the Sprint Cup. (In April, MWR named Ragan to replace Vickers, who’s sidelined indefinitely with a recurrence of blood clots.)
“Our goal is to best position the 15 and 55 teams for a berth in the Chase for the Sprint Cup,” MWR co-owner Rob Kauffman said. “MWR has an enormous amount of bright, motivated and quality people working to solve the endless challenges inherent to racing. We have won poles and races, we have made the Chase and competed for a championship with this core group of personnel.
“We just felt it was time to shake things up a bit to try and spark fresh ideas and more consistent results. There are 12 races left before the 2015 Chase field is set and we plan to be a part of it.”
MWR’s overall lack of competitiveness has coincided with Bowyer regressing from a championship contender to struggling just to run near the front consistently. In 2012, he and Pattie joined MWR and won three races and finished runner-up in the points standings to champion Brad Keselowski. Bowyer again made the playoffs in 2013, finishing seventh.
But Bowyer hasn’t been to Victory Lane since October 2012 at Charlotte Motor Speedway and his relationship with Pattie has gradually deteriorated. Several times this season Bowyer has loudly vocalized his displeasure with his cars along with a palpable frustration on the No. 15 team’s progress.
Bowyer currently ranks 17th in points with three top-10s in 14 races and a best finish of seventh. Ragan, who joined MWR after serving as a substitute for Kyle Busch at Joe Gibbs Racing, is 23rd in the standings. In four races with MWR, Ragan’s best result is 13th.
The next race is Sunday at Michigan International Speedway.
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