Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Stewart-Haas Racing announces driver-crew chief pairings for 2018

Stewart-Haas Racing Driver Announcement

KANNAPOLIS, NC - NOVEMBER 08: Tony Stewart, co-owner of Stewart-Haas Racing, answers questions from the media following a press conference at Stewart-Haas Racing on November 8, 2017 in Kannapolis, North Carolina. Stewart-Haas Racing introduced Almirola as their driver of the #10 Smithfield Ford for the 2018 season. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Stewart-Haas Racing via Getty Images)

Jared C. Tilton

Stewart-Haas Racing on Friday morning announced its driver-crew chief lineup for the 2018 NASCAR Cup Series season.

Two driver-crew chief pairings remain the same: Kevin Harvick and Rodney Childers on the No. 4 team, as well as Clint Bowyer and Mike Bugarewicz on the No. 14 team.

The changes are related to the No. 41 and No. 10 teams:

* Earlier this week, Kurt Busch re-signed with SHR and will have a new crew chief for 2018, Billy Scott, for the No. 41 Ford.

Busch’s previous crew chief since November 2014, Tony Gibson, is expected to assume a new role within the organization.

Scott, meanwhile, shifts to the No. 41 team as its crew chief after spending the last two seasons as Danica Patrick’s crew chief.

The 2017 winner of the Daytona 500, Busch enters his fifth season with Stewart-Haas. Five of his 29 career Cup wins have been with SHR.

* The newest member of the team, Aric Almirola, replaces Danica Patrick in the No. 10 Ford. Joining Almirola as crew chief will be John Klausmeier, who has been a team engineer with the organization since 2009.

Klausmeier already has a win as a crew chief, serving in an interim capacity in place of Gibson in June 2016 when Busch won at Pocono.

And then there’s the two returning driver-crew chief combinations:

* Childers returns as Harvick’s crew chief for the fifth straight year. Together, the pair has won 14 races, 15 poles and led 6,665 laps. They won the NASCAR Cup championship in 2014 and have been part of the Championship 4 in three of its four-year existence.

* Bugarewicz enters his third year as the crew chief for the No. 14 Ford. He spent 2016 as Tony Stewart’s crew chief, leading the three-time Cup champ to the 49th and final win of his career (Sonoma) before retiring as a Cup driver at the end of that season.

Bugarewicz remained in the same position when Bowyer replaced Stewart in the No. 14 in 2017. Together, the pair had three second-place finishes this past season.

“We wanted to maximize our strengths and address the areas where we needed to improve, and we feel this lineup gives us our best chance to succeed every time we bring our Ford Fusions to the racetrack,” SHR VP of competition Greg Zipadelli said in a media release. “This is a very technical sport, but it’s the people who make it go, and we’ve got some of the best people in the business.”

Follow @JerryBonkowski