Newsmaker

Crew chief Alan Gustafson knows it will take a miracle for his driver, Mark Martin, to win the Chase for the Championship this Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Despite trailing Jimmie Johnson by 108 points going into the Sprint Cup Series finale, Gustafson remains positive about what his team has accomplished.

Gustafson talked about the season and his driver during a conference call this week. Here are excerpts of that interview:

Q: Looking back over the first 35 races, what are your impressions of 2009?

A: It's been a real successful season for us. You know, getting Mark on board was obviously a huge step in the right direction, and being able to win five races and contend down to the wire for the championship and have a shot at Homestead has been good. It's been a great season. It's a really fun track to race on. Going there with a shot is, even though the shot is not as good as we want, it's still a privilege to have that opportunity to contend and win a championship and go down there as put as much pressure on Chad (Knaus, Johnson's crew chief), as much as possible, even though it's not as much as we want it to be. But go down there and have some fun doing that.

Q: Although you're teammates at Hendrick Motorsports, what does Johnson and Knaus have that nobody else seems to have?

A: As far as what the (No.) 48 has that nobody else has, that's a really tough question to answer. If I could answer that, I'd be working really, really hard to figure out, or to implement that or whatever it is. But I can tell you that they work as hard or harder than anybody else in the series consistently, and they're both at the pinnacle of the sport, both Chad and Jimmie, and they have assembled a great team and do a great job keeping a great team even when they have some rollover, which in professional sports is inevitable, they can fill the voids really well.

Q: Ray Evernham once said to be a successful crew chief you have to sacrifice other portions of your life. Is that true?

A: Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a balance, and those are decisions that you've got to make. I think the point to all that is somebody is going to do it. Somebody is going to dedicate their life 24/7, 365, to their trade and their sport and their craft and they're going to continuously get better. You've got to make a decision in your life at what point in time is enough enough or when are you going to quit or is there ever a point when enough is enough. That's difficult and something we all have to balance out. The flip side of that is I think you can go too far and lose your sanity, and that can be just as bad of a distraction as not working hard enough. You've got to balance it out, and there's a lot of ways. I think the one thing that we really look at here at Hendrick Motorsports is how we can be the most efficient and optimize our time and not waste time because time is so precious to us, either being here at work, at the racetrack or on vacation with our families or whatever it is that we're doing. We try to get the most out of every second of every day. And I think that's the key, because you've got to be able to balance it out.

Q: What makes Mark different than any other driver you've worked with?

A: Mark has got obviously a lot of talent. He's a great person. I think the biggest thing, his professionalism is above, considerably above, everybody else I've worked with on and off the race track, the way he works at his trade, the way he communicates with the team, the way that he works with his teammates. Everything he does, he is very, very professional, very dedicated to what he does, and he does it in a really positive way. I know it's a really broad statement, but his professionalism is very impressive, and that allows you to focus on what's important. You don't have to worry about things that aren't important. You can worry about what's going to make the cars go faster, the communication of the team, the communication of the engineering staff, help work with the pit crew, help work with our teammates and other drivers, other crew chiefs and other drivers to get that dialogue going to where we can get as much information as possible, and then process it correctly.

Q: Has Mark's experience been a benefit at Hendrick Motorsports since NASCAR doesn't allow testing?

A: Yeah, I think there's no question about that. I know it's benefited the 5 tremendously, and I think that's flowed over to other teams. He knows what he needs and what he wants. He's got a great feel for a race car, and he can give us the information. Not that he's going in and saying, hey, I need this or I need this, but he will say I need my car to do this and he feels like this is happening, that it make this happen and that's a result of X, and then we can go back and diagnose all that stuff. There's been a lot of times during the year that the 48 and the 5 have been very similar or the 24 and the 5 have been very similar. All four cars have been similar. To watch Mark have the dialogue with those other drivers — and when you get a guy like Mark Martin and a guy like Jimmie Johnson on very similar equipment, getting their feedback is just priceless.