Leading the Way

By Steve Letarte

It was among the most remarkable and successful rebuilding projects in NASCAR history - turning the most popular driver whose confidence bottomed out amid questionable work habits into an assured and diligent championship contender. In Leading the Way, Steve Letarte takes readers into the closed-door meetings, the heartfelt conversations in the No. 88 hauler and the after-hours bonding sessions that created the faith and trust necessary to make Dale Earnhardt Jr. a winner again. Through vivid depictions of some painful mistakes and critical decisions, Letarte details the overlooked strategies and structure that he successfully applied to a slumping race team the same way that a CEO would implement in a struggling company. Here are the never-before-revealed fierce arguments, lighthearted moments and unbridled joy shared with Earnhardt in a four-year, cross-country odyssey from the highs of a magical 2014 Daytona 500 win to the lows of a career-threatening concussion. "Steve possesses all the qualities of a successful leader, with a unique ability to rally his team into believing in their own success. This book is a special look at his life both personally and professionally that I think will enlighten and educate." - Dale Earnhardt Jr. "I never dreamed of being an author, but those years with Dale were so special. I wanted everyone to hear these stories to appreciate the important values of leadership and friendship and the successes that are measured beyond trophies and championships." - Steve Letarte

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781642983883

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Leading the Way

Steve Letarte

Copyright © 2018 Steve Letarte

All rights reserved

First Edition

Page Publishing, Inc

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc 2018

ISBN 978-1-64298-386-9 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64298-387-6 (Hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-64298-388-3 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Foreword

How our paths eventually crossed is a long story. The fact that they did was a game changer for us both.

Steve’s approach to our future together was simple and easy to embrace. We would only succeed by working closely together, and we would become great friends while building that mutual trust.

Steve helped me understand how to be a team player. He showed me the importance of being available and accountable.

Steve possesses all the qualities of a successful leader with a unique ability to rally his team into believing in their own success.

This book is a special look at his life, both personally and professionally, that I think will enlighten and educate.

Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Chapter I

I Need Your Help

After fifteen years at Hendrick Motorsports … five seasons and ten wins as Jeff Gordon’s crew chief … countless miles and hours on airplanes … who knew that November 23, 2010, a wet and dreary Tuesday, would be the biggest day of my career?

It was the day that changed the course of my life forever.

And yet as I walked out of a conference room, I surely thought I was getting fired.

The 2010 Sprint Cup season was among the worst of Gordon’s career, and certainly the worst during my tenure as his crew chief.

After five years together, we didn’t win once in thirty-six starts, and we finished in the top ten seventeen times—almost half as many as the record thirty top tens we had achieved only three years earlier. We had tried fishing trips, sports psychologists, and other well-intentioned attempts at team-building, but nothing was working anymore despite our best efforts.

For the second time in three seasons, the NASCAR superstar had gone winless, and it was my fault. On the Tuesday after the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway (where we placed thirty-seventh, the second time in three races we had matched our worst finish of the season), I sat mentally exhausted in a mammoth boardroom at Hendrick Motorsports. As general manager Doug Duchardt debriefed with crew chiefs and about a dozen Hendrick executives over what had been a mostly disappointing season (six wins, all by Jimmie Johnson on the way to a fifth championship), I stared out a window and daydreamed about a long, miserable year.

I’d had enough, so much so that I barely noticed the oddity of our boss, Rick Hendrick, entering halfway through the meeting.

When it was over, I popped up, ready to beeline for the door, when Rick said in one of his familiar authoritative tones, Hey, Stevie, I need to see you for a minute, and motioned me toward team president Marshall Carlson’s office.

A moment of clarity struck while I was gathering my things at the enormous conference table.

What race teams would have openings for next season? Who is most likely to be hiring?

There was no way the best team in NASCAR could keep me employed. By the time I’d walked past the two dozen chairs to the door leading to Marshall’s office, I already was resigned to my fate. I wouldn’t blame Rick Hendrick for wanting to cut me loose. There’d be no argument here. I’d do the same thing in his position.

Rick, Marshall, and I sat at a smaller round table inside Marshall’s office, further confirming my fears. We were team owner, president, and underperforming head coach meeting after a disappointing review of the season.

This is the way terminations happen in professional sports.

Except this one.

Stevie, Rick said, I need you to do me a favor. If Dale Jr. is unsuccessful in my cars, it’ll be a black eye on me and a black eye on this company that I’ll never live down. I need your help.

In context, this was one of the most extraordinarily positioned job offers in NASCAR history.

Beyond being the most successful team owner in NASCAR history with eleven Cup championships, Rick Hendrick also is a billionaire whose automotive empire encompasses nearly one hundred dealerships stretching from coast to coast.

I’m a small-town racer’s son from Maine who moved to North Carolina as a sophomore in high school without any NASCAR career ambitions before Rick Hendrick gave me a job sweeping floors. I didn’t attend college. I wasn’t a prize prodigy out of MIT.

But that was how I was being treated by the most powerful man I’d ever work for, as if I were the most highly coveted commodity in the room.

At the time, though, it completely was lost on me. My head was spinning.

In the span of ten minutes, my mind had wandered from being gainfully employed to out of work after fifteen years with one team, to mentally blanketing the greater Charlotte area with mass mailings of my résumé.

There were no words as I tried to regain my bearings, so Rick began filling the silence left by my dazed state.

He removed an index card from his shirt and began writing numbers.

Large numbers.

I’m going to pay this extra if you can win a race, Rick said. This much extra if you can make the Chase. This was NASCAR’s version of the playoffs.

These will replace his current bonus, right? asked Marshall, who was in charge of making the team’s budget work.

No, this is in addition to it, Rick replied.

Marshall’s face turned a little pale.

I still hadn’t said a word, but it began to sink in that my situation rapidly was improving, even though I hadn’t processed the bonuses yet.

There were no incentives or convincing necessary to take the job. The answer was obvious once the shock lifted.

Well, yeah, boss, I told Mr. Hendrick. "I’m in. I’ll do whatever you need me to do.

I would have agreed to the move solely out of my loyalty to Hendrick Motorsports, which single-handedly was responsible for putting me on the map in NASCAR.

But there was another reason too.

In life, the only constant is change, as difficult, painful, and unnerving as it may seem.

The most successful people in life are those who view change as an opportunity, in contrast to those who see it as a negative that can turn their worlds upside down.

It’s impossible to insulate your life from the uncontrollable events that will shape it, which is why you must welcome those events as a gateway to personal growth.

I’d spent my entire working life at Hendrick Motorsports, but it wasn’t a static existence by any means. I’d been promoted from floor sweeper to tire specialist to mechanic to car chief to crew chief.

I’d been an active participant as Jeff Gordon won races and remained a title contender through three crew chiefs and significant personnel shuffles. I’d watched firsthand as Hendrick built a team from scratch for Jimmie Johnson, who would win seven championships.

There were incessant examples of how results always improved after every major change at Hendrick Motorsports. The company’s growth dovetailed with NASCAR’s explosion through the 1990s and 2000s.

Ten years ago, I went to my first Daytona 500 as a crew chief with a Nokia flip phone that I thought was the coolest thing I ever owned. Today, I can order a gizmo off Amazon on an iPhone and have it on my doorstep the next morning.

You can change with the world or be left behind.

So I was all in on becoming the new crew chief of the most popular driver in NASCAR, who was fresh off the worst two seasons of his career.

* * * * *

Now it was time to tell the rest of the world—and quickly. Beyond myself, the only others in the know were those involved in the decision—Rick Hendrick, Marshall Carlson, Jeff Gordon, and Rick’s two most trusted lieutenants, Doug Duchardt and Ken Howes.

Even Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn’t know yet.

It wouldn’t stay that way for long, though, so I needed to hustle back up the main road on the Hendrick campus to the shop shared by Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon to tell my guys they had a new driver named Dale Earnhardt Jr.

But first, I needed to inform the most important person in my life. As I left the conference room, I grabbed my phone and called my wife, Tricia, while walking up the hill to my office.

Hey, listen, we need to talk about something, I said, preparing to brace her for the news.

Understandably, she didn’t grasp the gravity of the situation while in the 3:00 p.m. carpool line. And an already scheduled date night for the Letartes also loomed that evening as the perfect opportunity to delay an in-depth conversation.

I’ve got to get the kids, she said. We’ll talk tonight.

"No! We need to talk now before you see this on SportsCenter!’"

Tricia began to cry. She thought I had been fired.

No, wait! I didn’t get fired. I’m going to crew-chief for Dale Jr.

She cried harder.

The reaction was partly about inheriting the pressure of working with NASCAR’s most popular driver. But Tricia later would say it was mostly Dale’s legendary reputation for partying off the track that scared her. She didn’t want her husband and father of their two children out late at night with his new driver, a bachelor whose persona was beer drinking and hell raising.

Tricia also had listened to Dale Jr.’s contentious scanner dialogue during races with his previous crew chiefs. These were vulgarity-laden, mean-spirited conversations, and she worried that I was just another poor soul who would go down in flames if Dale didn’t run well.

It also was about my relationship with Jeff Gordon. He might exist in a different social universe, and we didn’t go to dinner regularly, but Jeff truly was a great friend. If we ever were in dire need, he’d be there.

I would entrust him with my kids, Tyler and Ashlyn, both of whom also began crying when Tricia broke the news.

Ty, why are you crying? Tricia asked.

My son said, Well, I like Jeff. What if Dale doesn’t like me?

She told him, Well, you know, Dale Jr. has a go-kart track. And he stopped crying.

That was enough to win my son over.

* * * * *

With my family secured, now it was time to win over the rest of my coworkers, starting with Chad Knaus, the crew chief who had guided Jimmie Johnson to five consecutive championships.

I’ve known Chad for more than twenty years. We met in the summer of 1995, when I was cleaning Jeff Gordon’s shop and Chad was changing tires and working as a fabricator on the No. 24.

He has a drive and desire to be successful in his career unlike anyone I’ve ever met. He is one of the greatest crew chiefs of all time, and it was his ambition to achieve that goal since the moment he entered NASCAR.

Though it wasn’t his driver changing crew chiefs, this would be a huge shift for Chad. For eight years, his team had worked side by side under the same roof as Jeff Gordon’s team. Now Jeff, who had played a major role in brokering the deal to bring Jimmie Johnson and Knaus to Hendrick, would be