great article. Thanks.
AWESOME Article about Rick Hendrick from Nascar.com
MIAMI — Rick Hendrick was tired of listening to them bicker. It was late in the 2005 season, and the once-promising title hopes of Jimmie Johnson, who fell from first to fifth in the final five races, had crumbled. The once-unshakable relationship between the young driver and Chad Knaus, his intense crew chief, had developed fractures. One day in the Hendrick Motorsports shop the two were clashing again, and their championship car owner had heard enough.
So he called them up to his office, where he set out a box of cookies and a gallon of milk. If they were going to act like children, then they were going to be treated like children. The message delivered, he sat them down and brokered a truce. Johnson learned to speak up. Knaus learned to cool down. And the bond between the two, now on the brink of their second consecutive championship in NASCAR’s premier series, improved as a result.
“I’d been down that road before, with Harry Hyde and Geoff Bodine and countless other drivers and crew chiefs,” Hendrick said Thursday during interviews previewing Sunday’s Nextel Cup season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. “But it’s probably the first time I’ve seen one that was going that far south turn and do that well.”