A little more than a year ago, Steve Addington was being hailed as one of the top crew chiefs in the Sprint Cup Series garage.

Today, he's no longer a crew chief -- at least for the time being. Twelve wins on the top of driver Kyle Busch's pit box in less than two full seasons was not enough to keep Addington employed there. He will be replaced as Busch's crew chief for the last three races of this season by Dave Rogers, who will get his first crack at a full Cup season with Busch in 2010 while Addington is reassigned by Joe Gibbs Racing.

Such is the often volatile life of a crew chief. Nearly 10 years ago, Joe Gibbs himself was asked about the future role of the crew chief in NASCAR. He likened their high-pressure positions to that of a head coach in the National Football League -- something Gibbs knows more than a little about after guiding the Washington Redskins to three Super Bowl championships in 16 seasons.

"Crew chiefs are exactly like football coaches," Gibbs said then. "They're going to get more and more visible as time goes by. Television is going to help that.

"They have developed an expertise. They didn't get it by going to school, just like a coach doesn't get how to run a football team from going to school. They learn it on the job and they work their way up to these positions. They are very highly paid and the positions are filled by highly sought-after people.

"It's going to continue to improve for them financially and in other ways, too. They've got to do a lot. They've got to be able to handle all the people around them, set up the race car, get along with the driver and also handle the press and a lot of other people issues."

Gibbs' words proved prophetic. Do the job well and fame indeed does await the championship crew chief. Just ask Chad Knaus, crew chief for three-time defending Cup champion Jimmie Johnson -- and Johnson's partner in a series of ongoing, high-profile and wildly popular television commercials for the primary sponsor of their No. 48 Chevrolet.

But at the other end of the spectrum is a guy like Addington, who was more reserved and never sought the public spotlight. And when Busch faltered down the stretch for the second consecutive season and this time narrowly failed to make the 12-driver Chase for the Sprint Cup field, Gibbs and his son, J.D., who is president of JGR, thought a change was in order.

Why do some driver/crew chief combinations work, and others don't? Why do some spin magic for a while and then fizzle, while others are able to sustain success for the long haul?

It isn't an exact science, but there are clues everywhere.

Autostock

If Alan Gustafson is in any way intimidated by Mark Martin, he hasn't shown it.

THE DRIVER

It is two days before the NASCAR Banking 500 at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C., and veteran driver Mark Martin is answering questions during a news conference in the LMS media center. The conversation turns to his relationship with crew chief Alan Gustafson.

"What Alan and I have going on is really special with the communication and the mutual respect and the way it all is working," Martin said.

Yet theirs is a relatively new partnership. At 50, Martin is the oldest and most seasoned driver in the Sprint Cup Series. He made his first Cup start in 1981, drove his first full-time season in '82 and since '88 has been pretty much a fixture on the circuit. He loomed large even when he cut back to a part-time schedule of 24 races each in the 2007 and '08 seasons.

But this is his first season with Gustafson, who was a student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., about the time Martin was putting together the second of what would be four runner-up finishes in the season point standings while driving a Ford for owner Jack Roush in 1994. Gustafson only recently turned 34, and this is his fifth season as a Cup crew chief.

Yet these two hit it off almost immediately. They were hitting it off even when their team wasn't at the start of this season, when mostly poor racing luck conspired to sink them to 34th in points after the first four races.

Mark Martin and Tony Gibson

“

I know over a period of time I have beaten down some crew chiefs in the past. And when you get to that point, you can't fix it.

”

MARK MARTIN

From there, they went on to win five races and climb to the top of the point standings at the beginning of the 10-race Chase. They currently sit in second behind the leader Johnson. Martin said he thinks he knows why his partnership with Gustafson is working.

"A thing I think that everybody should take note of is that one of the things I'm most proud of about Alan is I bet you he probably might be a little bit intimidated by me -- but it never shows and that's big," Martin said.

"That's helped me as much as anything he could do -- to not let me intimidate him and prevent him from doing his very best job for me. Not that I try to. It's just that I have been around a long time and a lot of times have gotten into situations where the crew chief gave in to what I thought or what I said too quick and I'm certainly not always right. We're getting it right together and that is my point. We are able to get it right so much we hope to keep doing it."

Martin admitted that because of his vast experience, too many other crew chiefs he has worked with, especially in recent years, were too quick to give into any and all advice he may have offered about making his car better during the course of a race weekend. Gustafson doesn't.

"Most of the guys I've worked with in the last 10 years have been somewhat intimidated," Martin said. "Not to say that Tony Gibson was [last season] because Tony got right in my back end. And I'm not saying that Ryan [Pemberton] was [in 2008], but we weren't under the same kind of pressure that we were under this year trying to make the Chase and run for a championship.

"But I know over a period of time I have beaten down some crew chiefs in the past. I realized that -- and when you get to that point, you can't fix it. That damage is done, so from experience I've learned, too. I've learned how to handle things and in my frustration I still am aware that [going off on them verbally] will hurt me -- and I know that no matter how much those guys love you, when you kick them and you kick them again, I don't care, I'm telling you it affects them. They can still love you, but it's just not the same. I've been through all that."

Citing a specific example, Martin recalled how last year he went to Atlanta with Gibson as his crew chief -- and chewed on Gibson so long and so hard that their relationship never was the same. Martin said he blames himself for that.

"I definitely had to check myself with Tony Gibson," Martin said. "We went to Atlanta with Tony last year and I told him this was the worst car I've ever driven and jacked him so far up that when Atlanta was over with I knew that I had made a mess of things.

"So from there on with Tony I was always calm. I was like, 'This is not working; we need to do this.' Because I found out if I got excited and really got after him, he would get excited, too. Then we'd be in trouble. It's OK if one of us is excited, but if both of us get excited then we're probably not going to hit the target. So Tony and I really, really, really got good communication going forward from that. But I just had to be careful about getting him too wound up because he would make bigger changes than I would have under more calmer situations. Then we would miss our mark.

Darian Grubb has won with three different drivers in the past three years.

Crew Chief Power Rankings

Pos.	Crew Chief	Comment
1.	Chad Knaus	No question here, and no valid argument from anyone. The only question now is: Can he and Jimmie Johnson make it five in row?
2.	Alan Gustafson	He just wishes Mark Martin was about 20 years younger. Martin already is driving like he is, and he trusts his crew chief implicitly.
3.	Darian Grubb	Think about it. In a relatively limited amount of time, he has won races with Tony Stewart, Jimmie Johnson -- and perhaps most impressively of all, even Casey Mears.
4.	Mike Ford	He and Denny Hamlin are poised to make their own run at a title if they can only start getting Chase mechanical failures out of the way. Ford is a master at keeping Hamlin's head straight.
5.	Brian Pattie	OK, so he and Juan Montoya have yet to win a race together. But does anyone do more with less in the Sprint Cup garage these days?
6.	Steve Letarte	It just seems like with all the second-place finishes by Jeff Gordon this year, something could have been done better on his end to produce at least a couple more race wins.
7.	Bob Osborne	Only a year ago, with a series-high nine wins, he would have been ranked much higher. But he and Carl Edwards have struggled mightily all year to rediscover that magic.
8.	Kenny Francis	With all the turmoil going on behind the scenes at Richard Petty Motorsports, he and Kasey Kahne have kept it together to win two races and at least make the Chase. That's remarkable.
9.	Greg Zipadelli	Just because Tony Stewart is gone and Joey Logano hasn't performed quite as well as projected doesn't mean Zippy has lost his touch after two championships.
10.	Ryan Pemberton	Others such as Pat Tryson (Kurt Busch) and Frank Kerr (Marcos Ambrose) contended for this final spot, but Pemberton and Brian Vickers had it rolling until the Chase started.

"So, yeah, in the past I've adapted how I deal with guys based on how they react to my input. With Alan it hasn't taken any conscious effort. My respect for him is so huge that I just can't see me getting wound up. There could be no way we could fight any harder than we fought to get into the Chase. ... For us to get in the Chase, that was big. To be 34th in driver points after Atlanta -- and it didn't stop there because we had a few more little accidents and setbacks even after that -- we already had our pressure-cooker experience just to get into the Chase."

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

Two days before the Tums Fast Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway, Gustafson sits in the team's No. 5 Chevrolet hauler and smiles as he listens to some of the stuff Martin continues to say about him.

Martin is fond of saying he's the luckiest man in the world, or at least in NASCAR, and that someone should pinch him so he knows it's not a dream. He frequently refers to Gustafson as "the greatest." Gustafson shakes his head and grins.

Then he explains why he thinks some crew chiefs hit it off with certain drivers, and others don't. Or why some can't sustain their initial success.

Gustafson won four races in three seasons as Kyle Busch's crew chief before Busch was forced out at Hendrick Motorsports and landed at JGR. They made the Chase their last two seasons together in 2006 and '07, so it's not like they were also-rans by any stretch of the imagination.

But they never clicked like Gustafson is clicking now with Martin. He said he thinks he knows why. Communication is key, and the keys to good communication are honesty and mutual respect -- all of which have to converge on the career progression lines of driver and crew chief at precisely the right times, based on their own individual experiences.

"Mark did not become a good race car driver and a good communicator overnight. Same with me. It takes years and years and years," Gustafson said.

"So I think a little bit of it is getting to a point and a position where you can get results out of it. If I compare my experiences with Kyle to my experiences with Mark, well, with Kyle we had good communication -- but neither one of us was at the level we're at now."

Gustafson said he wanted to make it clear that he and Busch became friends and remain friends. But neither was completely prepared for the total two-way commitment that is required to consistently excel at the top of the Cup Series.

"It's not just that you get along and you communicate. That doesn't guarantee that you'll have success. You've got to have all the other things behind you, too, including equipment and a loyal, committed team," Gustafson said.

"But I do think to be at the tippity-top top, you've got to work very hard and it helps a lot to genuinely like who you're in that relationship with. One of the things that helps me with Mark, and I think helps him with me, is that if we had the choice, we would spend time together. That helps when you're around each other so much and you have similar interests.

"But you've got to do the work and you've got to be honest with each other. If the car is not there, I have to be honest with Mark and tell him the car is not there. If Mark goes out and messes up a lap, he could come in here and blame us -- but he never does. In fact, he goes more the other way. He's harder on himself than most people."

Gustafson said he has seen plenty of driver/crew chief deals go bad because the parties aren't totally honest with each other all of the time. Sooner or later, that will lead to blaming one another -- or someone else within the team -- when they face a crisis like the No. 5 team did after the first four races of this season.

Once that starts occurring on a regular basis, a split usually isn't far in the offing.

"Honesty with each and being honest to yourself goes a long way toward building that relationship and trust," Gustafson said. "A lot of times when you see these things fall apart, that's what causes it. When you see a relationship or a communication go bad, it's when people start finger-pointing and they lose that trust. That trust is a huge component. You have to trust your driver, you have to trust everyone you're working with; if you don't, that's when it can start coming apart in a hurry."

Autostock

Mike Ford's relationship with Denny Hamlin still is evolving, much like the driver himself.

OTHERS AGREE

An hour after winning the Tums Fast Relief 500, crew chief Mike Ford sat next to driver Denny Hamlin in the media center at Martinsville Speedway and reiterated much of what Martin and Gustafson already had laid out as a blueprint for success.

In short, there is no substitution for time together. And if it doesn't necessarily click all the way at first, try, try again.

Ford and Hamlin don't always outwardly display the same friendly relationship that Martin and Gustafson have. In fact, earlier this year at Pocono, one day after Hamlin complained about all the rotten racing luck his No. 11 Toyota team had been enduring of late, Ford publicly chastised his driver for what he saw as exaggerating the situation.

Even after their car suffered a mechanical failure early in the race the next day, they eventually got over it and moved on to bigger and better times. Their recent win at Martinsville was their third of the season.

Chad Knaus and Jimmie Johnson

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That's why the 48 runs so good. It's because those two guys have had a lot of time together to work on issues that no one else really has had time to work on.

”

MIKE FORD

Managing personalities

Jimmie Johnson talks about how he has handled his relationship with Chad Knaus.

• More

"I think we've just gotten a lot better at breaking down our race car, whether it be during the week or at the race track during the weekend," Hamlin said. "I think it's just our communication has gotten to where he's really starting to figure out what I'm talking about and feeling in the car.

"And I think a lot of it, too, is that both of us are looking at this a little differently. We're looking at adjusting our car a little bit differently than what we have in the past. We're looking at different parts of the car than what we've looked at in years past. I think all of that is kind of evolving and getting better with time."

Ford agreed.

"Time together leads you to create a database that you can really work off of," said Ford, who has helped Hamlin make the Chase field in each of their four seasons together. "There are some things, some solid things, that you know you aren't going to change. But with the years we've got behind us, you don't so much talk about springs and shocks and the basic things; you take your tuning to the next level and work on the transparent issues. And that's where we're at.

"To me, that's why the 48 [of Johnson and Knaus] runs so good. It's because those two guys have had a lot of time together to work on issues that no one else really has had time to work on. Now we're starting to work on things that you don't normally see -- not just setup things, but just general items that you used to think you could never work on."

In other words, since their basic package is better, they can spend more time attempting to fine-tune their race car. And their time together in the past four years has allowed their level of communication to progress to the point where they can fine-tune during an actual race better than ever before -- which bodes well for their future, even though two bad races early in this year's Chase already had taken them out of championship contention.

"For example, getting a balance from the bottom of the race track to the top of the race track -- you would think that there's nothing you can do about that," Ford said. "But we're working on those types of things and we're dialing our car in better. I'm starting to understand what Denny is wanting in a car better. So we're unloading better [at the beginning of a race weekend], which ends up putting you racing better because you make smaller changes.

"I think time is the biggest thing that we've got together, and the communication gets better each year."

Getty Images

Brain Pattie has guided Juan Montoya to his most successful Cup season yet.

A SPECIAL BREED

It is late in the Price Chopper 400 at Kansas Speedway in early October, and suddenly Juan Montoya's No. 42 Chevrolet is not driving the way he thinks it should -- or at least the way it was earlier in the race. What had been a solid top-five car suddenly is going backward.

Montoya snapped on his radio and barked at crew chief Brian Pattie: "The car was great. I don't know what we did, but now it sucks."

He started to go on, but Pattie interrupted him.

"That's why you get paid the big bucks to drive it. Just drive it," Pattie barked back.

Talking about it later, Montoya said the exchange made him laugh. And drive it. Despite the car's handling not being as good as earlier in the day, Montoya ended up muscling it to a fourth-place finish.

"We have a very good relationship and it's very open," Montoya said. "We understand each other; we all have good days and bad days. He plays it really cool with me, but I know as soon as he comes off the button [on the radio] he is shouting at Billy [Curwood, team engineer], who is sitting there beside him. Billy gets all the shouting from Brian and Brian gets all of it from me.

Kyle Busch and Alan Gustafson

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If you're determined to making it work and committed to making it work, it will eventually. It could be a volatile situation, it could be high-energy, it could be calm. I think with different drivers, you have to handle it a little bit differently.

”

ALAN GUSTAFSON

"He tells me sometimes, 'You should shout and then press the button.' I said, 'Then what is the point?'"

All drivers and crew chief relationships are unique in their own way. Even Knaus and Johnson aren't immune to sniping at each other once in a while, and they are the best in the business. Others snipe at each other until one or the other can't take it anymore, and that's when a change atop the pit box or in the driver's seat inevitably occurs.

Gustafson and Martin likely are the exception to the rule in that regard. They are genuinely nice to each other in exchanges on the radio, but that doesn't mean they always agree.

Again, it all seems to come back to communication and mutual respect. If that is off, usually so is the team.

"The mutual respect really allows us to do what we do," Gustafson said. "I've been with other drivers in the past where if you disagree with them, they take offense. And they get mad. They feel like you are in some way, shape or form degrading them -- and that's tough.

"That makes my job really easy with Mark. He knows I'm not questioning his ability. He knows I think he's the best guy for the job in this series. He knows if I say we ought to go in another direction, it's because I think it's in the best interests of him and the team. But some drivers will take that as an insult.

"Also, the proof is in the pudding. If I say something like that, I'd better be right. When you've got a great team behind you, like Mark and I do, fortunately that enables us to be right the great majority of the time."

When and if that begins to change, Gustafson said he knows he will have to be ready to adapt as well. He has seen it too many times -- a team that excels one season suddenly is down the next, and before you know it, said team and a once-solid driver/crew chief duo is coming apart at the seams.

"There are other crew chief/driver dynamics that are completely different than mine and Mark's. For me, ours is the way I would draw it up; that's the way I think you need to do business. But for others, that may not be the case," Gustafson said.

"To me, it all comes back to determination and commitment. To make anything work, if you're determined to making it work and committed to making it work, it will eventually. It could be a volatile situation, it could be high-energy, it could be calm. I think with different drivers, you have to handle it a little bit differently."

With that, Gustafson was up off the couch in the No. 5 hauler and out the door into the garage area. He had work to do, and a driver to see.

Joe Menzer is the author of "The Great American Gamble: How the 1979 Daytona 500 Gave Birth to a NASCAR Nation." Click here to purchase.