Poor Season Causes Personnel Shake Up At Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing

[media-credit id=22 align=”alignright” width=”195″][/media-credit]Immediately after he was introduced, Chip Ganassi, owner and president of Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates, took the podium and politely welcomed attending members of the media.

EGR was the first of several race teams to be visited by the media on day two of the Sprint Cup Media Tour presented by Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Once Ganassi issued his welcome, he went straight to business.

“Hopefully this is the last time I have to say we finished 21st and 27th in the points, and talk about such a performance.”

Going into 2011, neither Jamie McMurray nor Juan Pablo Montoya could continue the momentum and success they had in 2010.

“Last season was frustrating,” said McMurray. “It made us appreciate what we had in 2010.”

McMurray continued that it was difficult pinpointing exactly what was hindering their performance.

“Nothing changed from 2010 to 2011. We just didn’t have the success. If we knew what the problems were, we would have fixed them.”

Ganassi must have felt the elusive problems were insurmountable and couldn’t be corrected with the current personnel at EGR. During the off season a decision was made to change the majority of those personnel.

“People around the car were a problem,” said Sabates. “We made personnel changes over the off season to help this. We have made mistakes in the past by keeping people too long.”

Ganassi said the organization needed a shake up because recent performance was pathetic for a team of their abilities and resources.

“We live in an information age”, said Ganassi. “I don’t need just information, I need CORRECT information.”

Given the years of economic woes and the continued attrition of competing race teams and employees, the quality of available talent should have been abundant for EGR’s personnel transitions.