A white night and an obstinate determination laid the foundations for what has become the best new driver / team leader combined three races in the Nascar Cup season.
It started when Dave Rogers, director of the competition at 23xi Racing, woke up around 2 am last year thinking about work.
“I was trying to find who is the next crew chief (cup) from the truck series,” he said.
This seems a strange thought for a framework for a team that would win the title of the regular season of the Cup last year and would place a car in the championship race, but Rogers already knew the heads of the Xfinity team. He was not also paid about those of the series of trucks.
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Rogers’ work led him to what he was looking for, but it took a little cajole.
“I am persistent,” said Rogers. “It’s just my nature.”
And the result, the association of Bubba Wallace and the head of the Charles Denike crew, has already turned out to be useful.
Consider:
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Wallace ranks sixth – the highest among drivers with a new crew chief this year – in the ranking;
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The 94 points of Wallace are greater than 20 above his average during the first three races of one season since he was 23XI of racing;
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He won his Daytona qualification race;
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He qualified in the first row for the first time in a Road Road-Road race last weekend at Circuit of the Americas;
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He won a scene last weekend in Cota.
“I really believe,” said 23xi Hamlin’s co -owner about Denike, “he’s going to change the situation for 23Xi. He’s special. All I can say is that I am happy to have found it.
Bubba Wallace needs a quick start
The message is clear: Wallace must work better at the start of the season.
“This is the point of emphasizing,” said Hamlin.
“Without a doubt about this. They have experienced sections of 10 against 12 in his career where he was a pilot and a team among the first five. … They have not yet set it up for a full season.
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Wallace only made the playoffs once in his cup career. He did it in 2023 – winning the last place in the regular season final.
He never won a regular season race race. His two serial victories have occurred in the playoffs for years that he did not run for a championship.
The points were therefore essential for Wallace, but he failed to mark enough years to extend his season. Often problems can be attributed to slow departures.
Wallace has an average of 4.6 points less per race in the first 12 events of a season compared to its total points in the last 14 races in the regular season in the last three years.
If he had equaled his productivity from the back to the front of last year, he would have obtained a place in the playoffs.
“This sport is so difficult,” said Wallace. “Being at the level of the cup, the victories do not come often, and you must be ready to jump when they do it. This is what we look forward to.
An unexpected text message
So how do you study team leaders from another series?
“I just started watching the band and listening to the audio,” said Rogers. “It was like ” Wow, this Christian guy from the Eches presents himself well. What’s going on here? I looked for the list (from the team), who is the head of the crew. I learned that it was Charles Denike, and I just started looking for the progress that the team had made and (it was like): “Wow, it’s interesting”.
“He took a team and really helped build it. If you are thinking of 23x, that’s what we are doing right now.
What Rogers’ research has shown is that Denike was a team leader in the truck series since 2020. Denike started with GMS Racing and moved to McAnolanly-Hilgemann Racing during the 2022 season.
He was twinned in 2023 with Eckes, a 22 -year -old. Eckers won four races this season and ranked fifth in the points. They stayed together last year and the duo won four races, the regular season championship, and Eckes ranked third in points.
Rogers also saw that Denike has been in the US military for nine years as an engineer officer, so “he is in the processes”. The more Rogers discovered Denike, the more he loved.
“I just need to meet this guy,” said Rogers.
He therefore sent a text to Denike one day to see an interest in meeting to discuss being with a cup team.
The reception was unexpected.
“I didn’t think he was really interested in cutting races,” said Rogers.
The right person for work
Although McAnolanly-Hilgemann Racing has not yet won truck race when Denike joined the team in 2022, he saw what he could become.
“My goal at the level of the crew chief of the truck series was to try to be transformational with this program,” said Denike. “There was a lot of potential in this program, but he needed a few important steps to move it forward.
“The kind of last step was when Christian arrived and we were able to bring together all of this. During 2023 and 2024, you try to show what you think you can do and continue to build there. “”
Denike focused on this when he received an SMS from a number he did not recognize.
“But then you see the first or two first sentences,” recalls Denike, “and you say:” Maybe I need to read this. “”
Denike was not trying to leave his job and was not focused on the Cup series, but he agreed to speak to Rogers.
It was not until Richmond in August that Rogers considered that things change with Denike’s interest – and it happened after a fortuitous meeting.
Rogers and Denike passed after Richmond Truck’s race, who saw Eckes sit on the post and finish second. On the Pit Road path to the carrier of McAnallly-Hilgemann, they spoke.
“I was a bit torn apart on what to do,” Denike said about the continuation of 23Xi race work.
Rogers recommended Denike to speak to Billy Scott, team leader of Tyler Reddick at 23Xi Racing, and Mike Wheeler, a former Cup crew chief who supervises operations at 23X Racing.
“It’s really, I would say, the catalyst to move forward,” said Denike.
He and Rogers continued to talk about the post.
“After taking the conversation deeply, I was convinced that he was the guy for that,” said Rogers.
The challenges are met
A few weeks before the end of a season which saw Wallace win career records in the first five and the first 10 and the average arrival position, 23xi Racing announced that Wallace would have a new crew chief for 2025.
Botie Barker was the Wallace crew chief since the end of the 2021 season. They were together for 110 races. But Barker would move into a leadership position in competition.
“I was on the fence to make a change because I was so comfortable with the bottime,” Wallace said earlier this season. “It is difficult to move away from something with which you are comfortable and something that seems to work quite well. But I simply took a step back and put all the confidence and faith in the team to make the necessary calls and the right call. »»
On the day of the Bowman Gray Stadium offense last month, Wallace sent a text to Barker: “Hey guy, I know it’s a change of rhythm, but I would not be where I am without all the help and all the advice you have given and I appreciate you.”
But associating Wallace with Denike, someone with whom Wallace had not worked before, presented challenges, especially for a driver who must be better – immediately.
And shooting a crew chief from the series of trucks was not a common movement in the cup. He worked for the double winner of Daytona 500, William Byron, who has worked with the former chief of the crew of trucks Rudy Fugle since 2021, but they worked together in 2016 in the series of trucks.
Rogers was not worried about Wallace-Denike’s chemistry.
“You look at the structure of how we operate at 23x,” said Rogers. “These are not three independent racing teams. It is a racing team that works together and this system offers us a learning curve (for a new team leader). Many things that a team leader may have to learn in the Cup series, he has two other partners who help him. We therefore think that we can shorten this learning curve for him.
“(More) just his leadership, coming from the military … I think he is going to be an extraordinary leader, and I think it will meet Bubba where he is now. Bubba, I think he will benefit from a strong leader. »»
The results show that he has already done so.
