KANNAPOLIS, N.C. – Stewart-Haas Racing, the championship-winning NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team, will swap crew chiefs and road crews between its Nos. 10 and 41 teams beginning with the AAA Texas 500 race weekend Oct. 31-Nov. 2 at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth.
Crew chief Tony Gibson will move from the No. 10 GoDaddy team of Danica Patrick to the No. 41 Haas Automation team of Kurt Busch. Crew chief Daniel Knost will move from the No. 41 team to serve as the interim crew chief for Patrick and the No. 10 team. The road crews assembled by each crew chief will also make the swap. However, the pit crews for each respective team will not be moved.
“We made this change to evaluate our program and to get a head start on 2015,” said Greg Zipadelli, vice president of competition, Stewart-Haas Racing. “With the ban on testing next year, the last three races of this season take on even greater importance. For Tony Gibson and Kurt, they’ll get three races together that will provide direction for next year. And for Daniel Knost and Danica, this is an opportunity for them develop a rapport that could potentially continue into 2015.”
This weekend’s Sprint Cup event at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway will be the last for Gibson with Patrick and Knost with Busch.
In 70 Sprint Cup races with Patrick dating back to the last two races of the 2012 season, Gibson helped deliver her first career pole in the 2013 Daytona 500 and her best career finish of sixth earned on Aug. 31, 2014 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
In 32 Sprint Cup races with Busch, all of which took place in 2014, Knost helped him make the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup for a second straight season and the eighth time in his career. Knost, a first-year crew chief with a doctorate degree in mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech, directed Busch to six top-five and nine top-10 finishes, highlighted by a win when the series raced at Martinsville in March.
About Stewart-Haas Racing:
Stewart-Haas Racing is the title-winning NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team co-owned by three-time Sprint Cup champion Tony Stewart and Gene Haas, founder of Haas Automation – the largest CNC machine tool builder in the western world. The team fields four entries in the elite Sprint Cup Series – the No. 14 Bass Pro Shops/Mobil 1 Chevrolet for Stewart, the No. 10 GoDaddy Chevrolet for Danica Patrick, the No. 4 Budweiser/Jimmy John’s Chevrolet for Kevin Harvick and the No. 41 Haas Automation Chevrolet for Kurt Busch. Based in Kannapolis, North Carolina, Stewart-Haas Racing operates out of a 140,000-square-foot facility with approximately 270 employees. For more information, please visit us on the Web at www.StewartHaasRacing.com on Facebook, at www.Facebook.com/StewartHaasRacing and on Twitter @StewartHaasRcng
If only they could swap that 10 driver for a real driver.
Poor Daniel. Lucky Gibson.