From not qualifying for the round of 8 to going straight into the championship four, Joey Logano and his team have been through a lot in just over a week. The #22’s win in Las Vegas also made crew chief Paul Wolfe the most successful among active crew chiefs in terms of race wins — a position Kevin Harvick’s former crew chief Rodney Childers once held for several weeks.
Advertisement
Childers congratulated his Team Penske counterpart with a post on X (formerly Twitter) which shows the mutual respect crew chiefs have for one another.
He also outlined his goals for the next three years as he will be working with Corey LaJoie at Spire Motorsports starting next season. He has been at Stewart-Haas Racing since 2014 and would have probably remained there if the team was not shutting down.
“Congrats to Paul and the 22 guys. Paul is an amazing crew chief and friend. He and Joey are a great pair. We are all blessed to be in such good company on that list. My goal is to get to 50 in the next 3 years and a Daytona 500,” he wrote on X.
Wolfe, like Childers, has won the Cup Series. He did it a couple of years ago with Logano and will be hoping for a similar result this season as well. No one gave the #22 team a chance even after they secured qualification to the round of 8. Well, they have certainly proved their doubters wrong.
Winningest active crew chief hails teamwork post-Vegas
There are some big names on that list of most successful active crew chiefs who could take the top spot from Wolfe quite soon. Childers is one of them and a couple of other strong candidates are Alan Gustafson and Adam Stevens.
Gustafsson is the crew chief of the #9 car driven by Chase Elliott and has 39 wins while Stevens is the driver of the #20 car driven by Christopher Bell. The latter is considered a favorite for the championship this year.
The spotlight currently however is on Wolfe who will be hoping to win a few more races and the Cup Series championship. He put a strong emphasis on teamwork after their win in Vegas.
“We were the best team. Were we the fastest car? No, but we had the best team. I have a great group of guys around me that help me make those tough calls and we had a plan going into the race,” he said.
The win means that it’s irrelevant how the #22 team does in the next two races. They can take it easy and direct their focus primarily at Phoenix. The Homestead and Martinsville races may also give them opportunities to try out different setups which could be advantageous at Phoenix Raceway later this year.
