Being A Nascar Crew Chief Involves More Than Just A Racecar

A Nascar crew chief is known more for being a nuts-and-bolts person, someone adept at turning wrenches, building engines, and finding speed in racecars. However, because it takes an entire team to win and be successful in the sport, a Nascar crew chief must be an effective manager. Not only must they orchestrate pit stops that are under 13 seconds while developing and executing race strategy, a Nascar crew chief must do it all while managing a team filled with mechanics, chassis specialists, tire changers and more.

Alan Gustafson has earned the right be called a successful crew chief. The 45-year-old Florida native just completed a very successful season as crew chief for the Hendrick Motorsports team with driver Chase Elliott which won the 2020 Nascar Cup series championship. Like most Nascar crew chiefs, Gustafson doesn’t have an MBA or any sort of formal managerial training. Gustafson grew up in the shadow of Daytona International Speedway and attended nearby Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University to study for a mechanical engineering degree while racing on the side. He would abandon his academic pursuits as his passion for motorsports took over moving to North Carolina in 1996 where he was soon working his way up through the ranks to reach the highest levels of stock racing, the Nascar Cup Series.

Along the way, Gustafson not only learned how to craft a winning race car, but how to manage people.

“The key is I like to lead by example,” Gustafson said the day after his team won the biggest prize in Nascar. “That’s the first thing. You know, I like a little saying, ‘Don’t tell me Show me’, I think that’s the best way to go about it.

“I’m just trying to set the example. And I’m not a micromanager, for sure,” he added. “I try to empower my people. I get great people around me. There’s no way I can do I do without them. There’s no way that I can be as intelligent or smart or educated in their specific areas as they can be.”

“So, I empower them to make the decisions. And obviously when you do that communication is a huge part of it. But we have great chemistry and communication.”

The key to his approach, based on what he’s learned ‘on the job’ as he worked his way up through the ranks comes down to a time-tested theory known as a participative management style. With lessons any manager can learn.

“Managers don’t realize how powerful the fact of empowering people is,” Gustafson said. “If you try to manage by scripts and tons of step by step-by-step instructions, you just take away the power of your human capital and what they can contribute in; how their views and perspectives are on whatever that process is and how they can improve it.

“Obviously, communication is key, but just empower your people and believe in what they can do. And as a manager, one of my philosophies is just, I don’t want to be the ceiling, I want to be high enough up, allowing them enough room to grow that they’re not hitting my ceiling. I want to keep elevating it and giving them opportunities to grow. “

Gustafson held roles such as shock specialist, team engineer and chassis fabricator during his rise to crew chief. After joining Hendrick Motorsports in 2000, he was named as crew chief for the No. 5 Chevy with then rookie driver Kyle Busch in 2005 followed by stints as crew chief for drivers Casey Mears, as well as legends Mark Martin and Jeff Gordon. Drivers are the most visible face of a race team and professional racecar drivers require their own style of managing.

“It’s interesting,” Gustafson said. “I’ve worked with some really young guys; I’ve worked with some veterans and I try to manage them all the same.

“I learned a valuable lesson from Mark Martin. When I was working with Mark Martin, he was 50 years old. When I was a kid, like that was my guy, right? That was the guy I pulled for; he was my hero. He was everything, and to work with him was just surreal. It was crazy. But we met, and we tried to build a relationship. We had a pretty significant meeting to start, kind of technical debriefing and he looked at me and said, ‘Hey, I want you to treat me like I’m a rookie, like, I’ve never run a race, I don’t have any idea where the track is, what’s going on’. He said, ‘I don’t want you to assume anything, I want you to impart as much information to me as you possibly can’. That was a hugely valuable lesson for me.”

“Managing all the people that I manage driving the car are quite a bit different,” he added. “The personalities are quite a bit different. You just have to know, some guys you’ve got to get up, some guys you’ve got to keep down; you’ve got to motivate some guys, some guys you’ve got to pull back.”

Those lessons served him well when it comes to managing his current driver Chase Elliott. He took over as crew chief for the team and Elliott in 2016, when Elliott was just 20-years old.

“People can look at me weird, but Chase is the absolute easiest by far to manage,” Gustafson said. “He is so level, there’s no up and down with him, his bandwidth is just super narrow. He’s always the same, he’s always consistent.

“If anything, he’s just a very, very genuinely nice person. You talk about being egocentric, he’s not, he lacks ego. He’s very humble, very empathetic. That doesn’t really work great when you have to go out there and push everybody away and push everybody around and act like you’re the king of the world. That would be the only thing with him. Sometimes you have to remind him, ‘Hey, man you got to treat these guys how they treat you. Not how you want to treat them’”.

Now 24, Chase Elliott just became the youngest driver to win a Nascar Cup title since another driver won his first Cup title in 1995. That driver? Jeff Gordon. Gustafson was crew chief for Gordon from 2011 to 2015. But to Gustafson it’s not just about winning races or titles.

“I certainly don’t try to define my career on championships or wins,” he said. “I think, to me, it’s more about the relationships with the people and the experiences. You know, that’s why you do it.”