SolveYourProblem Article Series: NASCAR
Everything You Need To Know About NASCAR

How To Win A NASCAR Race - Is It Chemistry?

Everyone’s always talked about chemistry when it comes to relationships between men and women, but people seem to look really surprised when they hear the word chemistry as the deciding factor in winning a car race. What is chemistry you say? Well, it’s not what you did in high school in the science lab, and it’s not a spark between two people who are interested in each other. No, in the world of NASCAR, chemistry means something entirely different from these common definitions of the word.

In NASCAR, chemistry refers to the connection between members of the same team, most often the chemistry between the driver and the crew chief. What it specifically means is not only how well the crew chief and the driver can get along, but most importantly, the quality of their communication. Of course, if they get along with each other in day-to-day life, the quality of their communication will probably be better than if they don’t like each other. People who like each other tend to leave the channels open for communication more than people who feel some sort of negativity toward each other, regardless of the reason for which there is a bit of a negative feeling.

While it’s just generally nice to have people get along, when you’re talking about winning a NASCAR race, communication is absolutely vital because the driver and the crew are in communication via the crew chief and via headsets. A crew chief cannot rely on body language or facial expressions on the part of the driver in order to help the crew interpret what the driver needs and wants in order to get a top performance out of the car; the crew chief must be able to interpret subtle nuances in the voice of the driver and know what exactly the driver means when he says one thing or another. The crew chief relies on what the driver is telling him in order to decide just what exactly needs to be done to the car at the next fuel stop in order to maximize performance.

Okay, so chemistry is important, but do drivers really expect to have chemistry with their crew chiefs? Actually, establishing such positive and effective chemistry is not generally the responsibility of the driver; teams are much more likely to switch crew chiefs than to switch drivers, so it is a very large part of the crew chief’s job to figure out the voice and vocabulary of the driver and to really try to find a way to get along with the driver. Since sponsors sponsor a driver and his name, a team will not easily get rid of their driver if it seems to be that there’s not good enough chemistry between a driver and a crew chief. A team will first try many crew chiefs in search of a crew chief that has good chemistry with the driver before even thinking about switching drivers. So, needless to say, it’s very much in the court of the crew chief to attempt to establish a good relationship with the driver.

Good chemistry can mean the difference between coming in 7th and 1st. Rationalists might have trouble seeing the importance of chemistry in NASCAR racing, but anyone on the inside would assure you of its importance. Many hard-core NASCAR fans insist that the best NASCAR star drivers have become champions because of the synergy of combining a driver and a crew chief who have good chemistry. In such cases excellent driver + excellent crew chief do not simply equal excellent team; these two excellent people, with the addition of chemistry, equals an excellent, and a winning, team.

# # # # #

SolveYourProblem.com : 2009

> Home > Nascar: Main Page