Steve Letarte

Steve Letarte is Jeff Gordon's crew chief in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series. He first got the job as a crew chief when he took over the crew chief job of the #24 DuPont Chevrolet from Robbie Loomis in September 2005. Letarte was promoted from car chief to crew chief after poor handling racecars caused the #24 DuPont Chevrolet to miss the 2005 Chase for the Nextel Cup. He was promoted after 26 of the 36 races in the 2005 season and remains the crew chief of Jeff Gordon and the #24 DuPont Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS. On his sixth race as crew chief, he won his first race with Gordon the next month (October 2005) in the Subway 500 at Martinsville Speedway, in Martinsville, Virignia. After that, the handling of the #24 slowly improved with three top-five finishes in the last five races of the 2005 season. Letarte's rejuvination of the #24 car was expected to carry into a possible title-contending year in 2006.

Letarte entered 2006 as Jeff Gordon's official, non-interim, crew chief. He made wholesale changes to the Hendrick Motorsports team; he reconfigured the pit crew with a mix of new men doing different jobs "over the wall." He changed the personnel at the shop and began experimenting with brand new race cars in order to eliminate the handling issues that had plagued the #24 DuPont Chevrolet Monte Carlo in 2005.

The first half of the year (up until mid-June 2006), Letarte seemed to have lost momentum and communication that he had begun to build with his driver, Jeff Gordon, during the last ten races of the 2005 season. Letarte's team received three DNF's (did not finishes) by the time the Nextel Cup series went to Michigan in mid-June 2006. Besides that, Jeff Gordon had fought major handling issues at almost all of the intermediate racetracks (1.5/2-mile downforce racetracks) which relegated Gordon to run outside of the top-ten and even outside of the top-fifteen. Gordon finished outside of the top-ten at California, Texas, Charlotte, and Pocono - all of which were downforce tracks. The downforce tracks were the #24 DuPont Chevrolet's Achillies heel in 2005.

But, when the series reached the 2-mile downforce racetrack of Michigan International Speedway, in Brooklyn, Michigan, in mid-June, the #24 Chevrolet experienced a huge turnaround at a track that the #24 had struggled. Gordon led the most laps and finished eigth in a rain-shortened event; showing an instant improvement in the #24's downforce program.

Letarte kept that momentum going, after an extremely metiocre first half of the 2006 season, leading the team to a win the next week in the Dodge/Save Mart 350 at the Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, California. Even though the week after that the #24 DuPont/Pepsi/Superman Returns Chevrolet finished 40th at Daytona, Letarte pressed-on to the next week at the 1.5-mile downforce track of Chicagoland Speedway. He led the team to get its first win on a downforce track since August 2004 and the #24's second win of the 2006 season.

Letarte continued tuning Jeff Gordon's car every week after that, making improvements that resulted in ten top-five finishes, after Pocono in June, and the #24 DuPont Chevrolet making the 2006 Chase for the Nextel Cup.

Unfortunately, Letarte and his team experienced an up-and-down "Chase to the Nextel Cup". He led his team to two consecutive top-five finishes in the first two races of the Chase, rocketing the #24 DuPont Chevrolet to second in the points standings. Yet, following those top-fives, his team has experienced a 39th and 36th place finishes due to a failed fuel pump in Kansas City, Kansas and an accident at Talladega, Alabama. He also experience an engine failure with 33 laps to go at Charlotte which relegated his driver to a 24th place finish.

Letarte and his team have rebounded with finishes of: 5th at Martinsville, 6th at Atlanta, 9th at Texas, 4th at Phoenix and a 24th place finish at the season finale at Homestead. Letarte's teammate, the #48 Lowe's Monte Carlo SS which is driven by Jimmie Johnson and crew-chiefed by Chad Knaus, won the 2006 NASCAR/Nextel Cup Series Chanpionship. This gave Letarte and his team an extra boost heading into the 2007 season.

Letarte lead a rebound by the #24 DuPont Chevrolet from a dismal 2005 season, which allowed his team to finsih 6th in the NASCAR/Nextel Cup Series Standings, after he lead the team to 14 top-5's, 18 top-10's, 2 wins, and 2 poles and consistency week-in and week-out.

He has also been called "Pop Tart" by many of the NASCAR announcers.