Subs lead JGR Nationwide team back to the racetrack

BRISTOL, Tenn. -- At first glance, it all seemed like business as usual. One mechanic worked under the hood of Joey Logano's No. 20 Nationwide Series car, while another checked under the wheel well. A crewmen swept debris from the work area along Bristol Motor Speedway's backstretch pit road. It could have been any other week -- except for the presence of Steve Addington, crew chief for Sprint Cup points-leader Kyle Busch.

Gibbs hammered

Joe Gibbs Racing has suspended two Nationwide Series crew chiefs for the remainder of the season in the wake of penalties handed down by NASCAR for rule violations.

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• Did the penalty fit the crime?

It was the only visible sign of the upheaval that has gripped the Joe Gibbs Racing Nationwide program this week, in the wake of the discovery that the Nos. 18 and 20 teams had attempted to conceal their vehicles' true horsepower during dynamometer testing following last week's event at Michigan. NASCAR hit the team hard, suspending seven team members indefinitely, doling out $100,000 in fines and docking points. The Gibbs team came down even harder, suspending all involved for the remainder of the season.

So a team that had won 14 Nationwide events between its two cars came to Bristol with its brain trust -- crew chiefs Dave Rogers and Jason Ratcliff, car chiefs Dorian Thorsen and Richard Bray, a pair of engine tuners and one crewman -- exiled to shop work after NASCAR officials discovered small magnets placed under the accelerators of the two cars. Their replacements were cobbled together from a variety of departments at Joe Gibbs Racing, and tasked with shaking off the suspensions and embarrassment and getting two of NASCAR's most dominant cars this season back to Victory Lane.

"I think it's made us stronger," said Logano, driver of the No. 20 car in Bristol's Nationwide event Saturday night. "I think it's made us more of a team. We're out here with even bigger goals now. A win means a lot more than before. We're digging pretty hard now."

And they were forced to dig amid a packed schedule on a full-bore Friday, one where the Nationwide cars practiced, qualified and raced all within an 11-hour span. Replacing Ratcliff on the No. 18 was Doug Hewitt, a former Cup crew chief who is currently director of competition for the Gibbs Nationwide teams. On the No. 20 team, Rogers was replaced by Wally Brown, a onetime crew chief at Roush who now leads Gibbs' research and development team.

"It was a natural option for us to kind of look at where we were and drop those guys right in," said Gibbs vice president Steve DeSouza, who oversees the team's Nationwide program. "We've got some options we're making on the fly, but in terms of the leadership and how we're doing it, I won't say it's seamless, but it wasn't as if we had to go research and figure out where we were going to find people to do this kind of thing. We just had to lay our options on the table, and they all kind of made sense clearly to us." (Continued)