Knaus to blame if Johnson loses title
Chad Knaus comments about pit crew swap:
COMMENT ON THE DECISION TO MOVE FORWARD THE REMAINDER OF THE YEAR WITH THE 24 AND 48 SWAPPING CREWS:
Knaus "Yea, you know. It's a difficult decision for sure. There's always emotions involved but I think the thing that everybody has to realize is when we set up this team it was a one team situation. That's what we are and we always have been. We've had crew members from the 24 pit the 48, we've had crew members and mechanics on the 48 pit the 24. It's always been like that and we're going to continue to work that way. We set it up at the beginning of the year that we were going to have five or six tire changers, we were going to have three or four jackmen for the 24 and the 48 and that was explained to the guys at the beginning of the year and everyone understands that and that's the way it is."
YOU SAID ON SUNDAY THAT YOU WANTED TO GET YOUR GUYS BACK HOME AND REGROUP. HOW DID YOU COME TO THE DECISION TO MAKE THE CHANGE?
Knaus "It was obviously a collective decision. We got everybody involved, Stevie (Letarte) and myself initially. We actually talked about it Sunday night quite a bit on the flight home from Texas. We had a couple of hours there where we could run through some ideas and how we wanted to approach it. We felt like it was a good thing for the 48 obviously. And it could be a definite positive for the 24 as well. We got the drivers involved. We got Mr. (Rick) Hendrick and Mr. Carlson (Marshall Carlson, President, Hendrick Motorsports) involved and we discussed it and came up with a choice. And then we got the guys together and we discussed it with them and they all bought into it 100% and there's a lot of positive in it to be honest." Team Lowe's
11/08/10 The #24 and #48 Hendrick Motorsports teams will trade pit crews for the remaining two races of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season. The change is limited to the seven primary over-the-wall members of the respective pit crews. Roles of additional team personnel will not be affected. Hendrick Motorsports
11/08/10 A reader writes, Dear AR1.com, I sure hope the media does not give Chad Knaus a free pass on the decision to swap crews for Jimmie Johnson. Where the hell was Chad in finding different driver when Jimmy spun out twice a few races ago. That decision was intentionally done to make all the crew the scrape goats for not winning the championship. If he don't take some heat on this, then I agree that NASCAR is nothing more than the WWF on wheels. Russ