That's a huge oversight there Smooth, I mean he did finish 15th in the standings with 2 DNF's. I mean, JJ had 4 DNF's, the difference, he had more wins than Mears and more Top 10's. Gotta remember, this was his first year working with Darian Grubb and next year he will get another crew chief. Same thing happened to him at Ganassi, he had Jimmy Elledege for a year, then got switched to Donnie Wingo, then went to Hendrick this year. The kid hasn't had any stability, everytime he starts to gel with a crew chief they get taken away.
As for JJ, Chad Knaus will not be there long enough for him to get to 7 titles. Chad has been doing this for many years now, he isn't far from moving into a strictly office position or retiring completely. Look at Kenseth and Reiser, they have been split up and I thought that would never happen. Now we will see just how good Kenseth is with Reiser not able to make any calls for him. Bit premature to be saying they will match Cale Yarbourgh's 3-peat when everything is changing next year. The new car will be in use on all the tracks and nobody has any racing condition notes for it on a good portion of the schedule.
If all 4 Hendrick cars are not in the Chase next year, 1 will just miss out. Rick is making it his personal goal to get the 88 and 5 up to the same level as the 24 and 48. He is sending all resources over there to elevate them.
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