Dave Elenz

Dave Elenz will once again be atop the No. 9 pit box as he begins his fifth full-time season as crew chief for JR Motorsports and third with driver Noah Gragson. The 39-year-old crew chief is coming off a year in which he and Gragson posted career-high numbers in wins (two), top fives (17) and top 10s (25). The pairing paced the field for a total of 622 laps en route to a fifth-place finish in the NASCAR Xfinity Series championship standings.

Biography
The 2019 campaign marked the second season with the Gragson/Elenz duo in which the two led the No. 9 team to an eighth-place finish in the championship standings on the strength of nine top-five and 22 top-10 finishes.

Elenz is the second winningest crew chief in JRM history with 12 triumphs, just one behind cohort Jason Burdett with 13. Elenz is no stranger to guiding young drivers to success in NXS competition. In 2017 Elenz led then-rookie William Byron to JRM’s second series championship, NXS Rookie of the Year honors and a JRM rookie-record four wins. Under Elenz’s tutelage the team claimed a series-leading 12 top-five and 22 top-10 finishes.

The Gaylord, Michigan native followed up that performance in 2018 with a second consecutive NXS championship and third overall for JRM with rookie driver Tyler Reddick. Together, Reddick and Elenz earned two wins, seven top-five and 19 top-10 finishes en route to the championship.

Overall, Elenz has recorded a combined six wins, 28 top-five and 63 top-10 finishes in his three seasons as the crew chief for full-time rookie drivers.

Prior to the 2017 season, Elenz worked with multiple drivers on JRM’s “All Star” car, scoring four victories, 19 top-five and 41 top-10 finishes in two seasons of competition (2015-16).

A graduate of Clemson University, Elenz began his motorsports career at Jasper Racing in 2001. While there, he formed a bond with JRM Competition Director Ryan Pemberton. The duo also worked together at Ginn Racing from 2003-07 and Red Bull Racing Team from 2009-11. At the latter, Elenz was a part of the organization’s first victory (Michigan 2009) and a berth in the 2009 Chase for the Cup as the lead engineer for Brian Vickers.

In 2012, Elenz transitioned into an engineering role on Dale Earnhardt, Jr.’s No. 88 team at Hendrick Motorsports. That season, the team went to Victory Lane at Michigan International Speedway and recorded 10 top-five and 21 top-10 finishes.

Following an internal reorganization, Elenz moved to Jimmie Johnson’s No. 48 team in 2013. Working alongside crew chief Chad Knaus, Elenz helped Johnson earn his sixth career NASCAR Cup Series championship in addition to 10 victories during his two years on the No. 48 team.

For the 2015 season, Elenz took the next step in his professional career and joined JRM as a crew chief.

Dave Elenz had two very different experiences in his last two seasons as crew chief of JR Motorsports’ No. 9 Chevrolet, but still wound up as a Xfinity Series champion each year.

In 2017, Elenz and rookie driver William Byron claimed four wins, 12 top fives and finished third in the season finale to earn the title.

This season, again paired with a rookie driver in Tyler Reddick, the No. 9 team made it to the Championship 4 with just one win and six top fives.

They left Miami with their second win and JR Motorsports’ third Xfinity title.

Elenz, 37, is just the 10th Xfinity crew chief since 1982 and the fourth since 2000 to win multiple titles.

Both of those came in his first two years as crew chief for full-time drivers. In 2015, he worked with five drivers. In 2016, he worked with seven.

“Dave is critical,” JR Motorsports co-owner Dale Earnhardt, Jr. said Saturday after Reddick’s win. “Dave’s ability to take those young guys and mold them into men and mold them into people that believe in themselves and know what they need to do and don’t drive over their head, don’t make a lot of mistakes, they’re going to make mistakes. Everybody does. They will continue to make them. But Dave has them ready when it’s time to be ready. You saw it in Tyler throughout the playoffs.”

Reddick entered the playoffs with four top fives. In the seven-race playoff, he earned three top fives (all in the final four races) and placed outside the top 10 just once at Dover.

At Miami, Tyler Reddick took advantage of bad pit strategy by Cole Custer‘s team and passed Christopher Bell for the lead with 37 laps to go. He spent the rest of the race running against the fence, scraping the wall multiple times but going unchallenged to the checkered flag.

“(Reddick) had a good focus and ran hard, ran aggressive but never took himself out or did anything to hurt their chances of getting here to Homestead,” Earnhardt said. “Dave has a big involvement in his ability to do that, as Dave is coaching him throughout the year to put him in position to make those last few laps and keep the car out of the fence.”

The victory was Elenz’s 10th as a crew chief. Those wins have come with five drivers: Byron (four), Kevin Harvick (two), Earnhardt (one), Chase Elliott (one) and Reddick (two).

Elenz doesn’t know why he meshes well with young drivers.

“Every year it’s a fresh guy with a new style of driving, new thoughts and everything,” Elenz said Saturday. “As they progress throughout the year, you let them make their mistakes, try to be easy on them and just when they’re down, try to bring them up a little bit. But I don’t really know what it is. I know we have great teammates like Dale was saying, and with Elliott (Sadler) and Justin (Allgaier), they help guide the 9 team quite a bit because it’s tougher for the young guys to tell us what they need. We’ve got two of the best right next to us in the crew chiefs that help me out to make sure we’re not getting too far off base.”

Elenz will likely be paired with yet another rookie driver in 2019. Incoming driver Noah Gragson sat on the No. 9 team’s pit box for during the Miami race.

“I think that only makes sense,” team co-owner Kelley Earnhardt Miller said Saturday. “(With) Kevin (Meendering) moving up (to crew chief Jimmie Johnson in Cup), and we’re still working on our fourth car, but the three cars that we have in place, we’ve got three crew chiefs in-house, and seems like that would make the most sense.”

Elenz, crew chief for the JR Motorsports's No. 9 Chevrolet team, began his motorsports career at Jasper Motorsports in 2001. He then worked at Ginn Racing from 2003-07 and Red Bull Racing Team from 2009-11. In 2012, Elenz transitioned into an engineering role at Hendrick Motorsports. In 2013, working alongside crew chief Chad Knaus, Elenz helped Johnson earn his sixth career Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship in addition to 10 victories during his two years on the No. 48 team. In 2014, Elenz took the next step in his professional career and joined JR Motorsports as a crew chief. Elenz has led drivers to nine NASCAR Xfinity Series wins and specifically driver William Byron to last season's Sunoco Rookie of the Year and the NASCAR Xfinity Series driver championship.

Other information
Elenz, a Gaylord, Michigan native who attended, moved from the No. 88 team with Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and replaced Greg Ives on the No. 48 Hendrick team after the 2013 season. Ives spent one year with Regan Smith at JRM before guiding Elliott to the top of the standings this season.

Elenz started at Jasper Motorsports, where he first met JRM competition director Ryan Pemberton. The pair worked together at Ginn Racing and Red Bull Racing prior to Elenz joining the Hendrick Motorsports stable.

With engineering taking a greater role at the core of a team’s success in NASCAR, Pemberton says Elenz will be a perfect fit.

“The tools the crew chief uses in this day and age is all SIM-oriented, it’s all technology,” Pemberton said. “Having a crew chief that has an engineering background and a lot of experience on top of the pitbox with great guys like Steve Letarte and Chad Knaus makes a lot of sense. Everything it takes to make a car go fast is engineer driven so it helps to have someone with that type of background to be a leader.

“The knowledge, the skill sets that he has fits perfect for what we have but also with our relationship with Hendrick. Dave has the friends, he has the relationshps and he has knowledge of the Hendrick tools helps expedite the process and not having to learn things from scratch.”