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Thursday, June 21  Team members do everything asked By Chuck Etchells Special to ESPN.com For the last four and a half months, I've talked about quite a few subjects in our weekly get togethers. From finances and business aspects, to technical details and on-track performance, we've tried to give you a taste of life with a professional Funny Car team. This week, I'm going to turn the magnifying glass around and aim it directly at my team, in particular the 15 guys that spend long hours working on Jim's and my cars. They are a great bunch of guys, and the Etchells Racing Team is lucky to have them. We'll start at the top with my crew chief Terry Manzer. This weekend marks Terry's first anniversary with the team. In case you haven't seen him, Terry's a small guy, and he's had to shoulder quite a load. Over the last 12 months, he's been forced to rebuild the crew several times for reasons totally unrelated to him, all while trying to field a competitive car. I don't know many other people who would have put up with what he's had to deal with. Second in command is Larry Meyer, who I talked about in last week's column. Besides the research work and his invaluable technical experience, Larry has some outstanding people skills and plays a key role in the management of the team. Next are our two car chiefs, Chris Forton and Kevin Butterfield. I'll tell you, these are two extremely talented young men. While Kevin came to us during the offseason, Chris is the senior member of the crew, having been with us for over eight years. Quite frankly, I can't imagine our team without him. Chris and Kevin play a key role in getting both cars ready to race, with Chris responsible for my car while Kevin handles Jim's Camaro. In addition to monitoring the cars, they, as well as Terry and Larry, have acted as instructors, showing the less-experienced guys the ropes. So in addition to the mechanical abilities they already had, they're developing their personnel and management skills, working closely with Larry. Then you have the rest of the crew -- a terrific group. In alphabetical order, on my Sunoco/Matco Camaro, you have Isaac Bese, who spent some time with Force's bunch during our "down period," Brian Butler, who owns Butlerbuilt Equipment that builds 70 percent of the seats in NASCAR, Elliott Coker, Mike Law, Brad Personett and John Sullivan. Meanwhile, on Jim's Rug Doctor/Matco Camaro we have, Ed Boytim, who came to us from Gary Densham's team, Scott Grindstaff, Justin King, Creighton Carroll, Tim Martin (another guy with some NASCAR experience) and Neil Strausbaugh, who missed his high school graduation ceremony in order to work for us in Topeka. I'm glad to say they all get along pretty well, and are a good fit in our "one team, two car" philosophy. In fact, at any given time when you walk by our pit area, you're likely to see as many blue Sunoco shirts around Jim's car as you will working on mine, and a equal number of black Matco shirts wrenching on my hot rod. But as you all know, despite the crew's hard work and dedication, this has not been a memorable season for Etchells Racing. A lot of that can be attributed to the growing pains associated with a two-car team. As several of our competitors have shown over the last few years, it's not just a matter of rolling out a second chassis, plugging in a few crew members and driving into the winner's circle. The one advantage everyone speaks of is the additional information a second car provides. While that's true, it also creates twice as many opportunities for mistakes. For example, we're trying to keep the two cars as identical as possible, with one common crew chief. An unfortunate byproduct of this philosophy is that it can extend your learning curve, because you're only approaching the problem from one angle, so if the one car goes in the wrong direction, the other one follows. But that sort of thing is part of the growing pains I mentioned. You know they are going to happen, you just have to learn how to deal with them. In closing, I'll just say once again that this crew is a great group and I'm happy to have every one of them on our team. They work hard, do everything that's asked of them without complaining or questioning, and are always looking for ways to move our program forward. Now it's up to the upper management of this team to start doing our jobs a little better and start rewarding these guys with the best possible benefit some one in our sport can get -- winning. Chuck Etchells, driver and owner the Sunoco/Matco Tools Camaro Z28 Funny Car, provides a diary to ESPN.com throughout the NHRA season.  Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories
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