CONCORD, N.C. – Crew chief Keith Rodden and the No. 5 team have gotten off to a solid start in 2015.
Working with his new crew chief, Kasey Kahne has four top-10 finishes in nine races – and four of the five other results came in the top 17.
That consistency has put Kahne in the top 10 in the overall point standings.
As the team prepares to continue that success at Talladega Superspeedway this weekend, HendrickMotorsports.com shadowed Rodden on one of the busiest days at the shop – Tuesday – to see what a typical day in the life of a crew chief is like.
5:55 a.m.: Rodden’s alarm clock sounds at the exact same time it does every day.
6:45 a.m.: Rodden pulls up to the Hendrick Motorsports campus, heading to his office above the Nos. 5 and 24 race shop. One of the busiest days of the crew chief’s week is about to begin.
7 a.m.: The morning kicks off with a shop managers meeting for the Nos. 5 and 24 race shop. It’s a meeting that begins every day at the shop, not just Tuesdays. The idea is to lay out the goals for the day.
“It’s an update on how the car is coming together,” Rodden explained.
He noted that it’s a chance to keep the schedule up-to-date if there is any testing on the calendar – like Jeff Gordon’s trip to Indianapolis Motor Speedway for Goodyear tire testing.
On Tuesdays in particular, the managers discuss the previous week’s Chevrolet SS.
“A lot of the time we’ve torn the cars down on Monday, so if they found any problems in tear-down, they’ll bring those up,” Rodden said.
7:30 a.m.: Next, Rodden heads back downstairs for a full building meeting. Typically, he and No. 24 team crew chief Alan Gustafson lead the meeting, breaking down the previous week’s race for their respective teams. And with the No. 25 team stationed out of the shop for Chase Elliott’s five races in 2015, occasionally Vehicle Technical Director Kenny Francis – who is serving as Elliott’s crew chief for the five events – will participate in the meeting as well.
On this particular Tuesday, however, Gustafson was with Gordon in Indianapolis and Francis was attending a separate meeting.
“So I got to do the rundown for everybody,” Rodden laughed. “We do that every Tuesday – let the shop guys know how the weekend went, if we had any problems and how the race went.”
Rodden congratulates the shop on two top-10 results – Kahne finished sixth and Gordon was eighth – in addition to Elliott’s best result in the Sprint Cup Series.
8:45 a.m.: Rodden’s next meeting is back in an upstairs conference room, when the No. 5 pit crew joins him and the pit crew coaches to review the previous race.
Rodden noted that he lets the pit crew coaches run the meeting – he attends in part “for moral support.”
“We weren’t happy with how some stuff had been,” Rodden said. “We’ve made some changes and everything’s been a lot better and the guys are still going forward. We’re sitting there and try to offer encouragement. I don’t watch the pit stops in the race, so it gives me an opportunity to watch the stops and see if I pick up on anything else the coaches don’t.”
The crew watches tape of every pit stop, evaluating them step-by-step.
Rodden likened it to film study by a football team.
“If you get your footwork incorrect or if you try to rush the process, you can kind slow the whole stop down,” he said. “So we watch all that stuff.”
9:30 a.m.: From there, the No. 5 team road crew enters the conference room to review the previous week’s race and look ahead to the next event. Typically the road crew gets Mondays off, so during the meeting they’ll hear an update on how the tear-down of the previous week’s Chevrolet SS went.
They begin to prepare for Talladega Superspeedway, even discussing which garage stall the No. 5 team will occupy and which competitors will be on either side. In addition, they confirm what needs to be packed in the hauler for a race at Talladega.
“You need to take different types of spare parts for the superspeedway race versus (last week at) Richmond being a short-track race,” Rodden said. “So just getting everything together.”
10 a.m.: Thirty minutes later, the No. 5 team race engineers join the crew chief in the conference room.
“We have all our guys in there, we can look at the simulation runs from our sim tools, which are made using vehicle dynamics equations that we learn in calculus and physics, and go from there,” said Rodden, who has a degree in mechanical engineering from North Carolina State University.
It's an example of how STEM plays a role every day throughout the organization.
At this point, Kahne enters the room and joins the discussion. In addition to looking at data, the group will also watch film, similar to the pit crew meeting earlier in the morning.
It’s a chance for the driver and crew chief to debrief before moving on to the next race.
“We just talked about what the car did well, what the car didn’t do and what we need to do better for next time,” Rodden said.
12 p.m.: At noon, all of the crew chiefs and all of the drivers – minus Gordon and Gustafson, who are in Indianapolis – head to the Hendrick Motorsports competition meeting, where topics are discussed as an organization as opposed to four individual race teams.
2:30 p.m.: After the meeting, Rodden heads back to the Nos. 5 and 24 race shop to make sure everything is in order. The goal on Tuesday is to continue getting the cars ready to load into the hauler.
6 p.m.: Rodden’s day comes to a close and he heads home to his family.
His alarm will once again sound in less than 12 hours as he and the No. 5 team work toward a successful run at Talladega Superspeedway come the weekend.