| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | American |
| Born | May 14, 1979 Cornish, Maine |
| Residence | Cornelius, North Carolina |
| Sport | |
| Country | United States |
| Sport | NASCAR |
| Team | Hendrick Motorsports |
Steve Letarte (born May 14, 1979) is the crew chief for Dale Earnhardt, Jr. in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. He first began as crew chief for Jeff Gordon when he took over the job of the #24 DuPont Chevrolet from Robbie Loomis in September 2005. Letarte was born in Cornish, Maine.
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Letarte began working for Hendrick Motorsports part time in 1995. In 1996, at the age of 16, he joined the group full-time. From 1997 to 1999, he worked as a tire specialist for the #24 team. He then became a mechanic and finally car chief in 2002.
Letarte was promoted from car chief to crew chief after the #24 DuPont Chevrolet missed the 2005 Chase for the NEXTEL Cup. He was promoted after 26 of the 36 races in the 2005 season.[1]
In his sixth race as crew chief with Gordon, he visited victory lane for the first time in October 2005, winning the Subway 500 at Martinsville Speedway, in Martinsville, Virginia. The #24 improved with three top-five finishes in the last five races of the 2005 season.
Entering the 2006 season, Hendrick Motorsports made wholesale changes to the #24 team. They fought major handling issues at almost all of the intermediate racetracks, (1.5/2-mile downforce racetracks) which relegated Gordon to run outside of the top-ten and even outside of the top-fifteen. Gordon finished outside of the top-ten at California, Texas, Charlotte, and Pocono — all of which were downforce tracks.
When the series reached the 2-mile racetrack of Michigan International Speedway, near Brooklyn, Michigan, in mid-June, the #24 Chevrolet experienced a huge turnaround at a track that the #24 had struggled. Gordon led the most laps and finished eighth in a rain-shortened event; showing an instant improvement in the #24's downforce program. For the first time since 2004, the #24 DuPont Chevrolet made the Chase for the NEXTEL Cup.
The #24 experienced an up-and-down postseason in 2006. They finished in the top five in both of the first two races, but posted 39th and 36th place finishes in the next two events, due to a failed fuel pump in Kansas Speedway and an accident at Talladega Superspeedway. Gordon also experienced an engine failure with 33 laps to go at Charlotte which relegated the #24 to a 24th place finish.
Letarte and his team rebounded with finishes of: 5th at Martinsville, 6th at Atlanta, 9th at Texas, 4th at Phoenix and a 24th place finish at the season finale at Homestead, and ended the season 6th in the final points standings. Letarte's teammate, the #48 Lowe's Monte Carlo SS which is driven by Jimmie Johnson and crew-chiefed by Chad Knaus, won the 2006 NASCAR Nextel Cup Series Championship.
In 2007, the #24 team finished the year with 6 wins, Gordon's highest total since 2001, and a series-leading 21 top-5s, the most scored in a season since 1999. The #24 team also finished with 30 top-10s, setting a new NASCAR modern era record for most top 10s in a single season. They dominated the points standings throughout much of the year, earning, in total, 353 more points than Jimmie Johnson's #48 team, and 706 more points than Tony Stewart's #20 team (who earned the third most points of any team in 2007). However, due to NASCAR's "Chase for the Cup" playoff system, in which the points are reset based on the number of wins each team accumulates throughout the "regular" season (the first 26 races), the #24 lost the championship. Their performance in the Chase was exceptionally good however, winning two races and scoring an average finish of 5.1, but it was not enough to outperform their Hendrick Motorsports teammates on the #48 team.
2008 would be a brutal reminder of how difficult racing in NASCAR's top series can be. Astonishingly, the #24 team failed to win a race for the first time since Gordon's rookie year in 1993. The team posted a respectable 19 top-10s and 13 top-5s en route to a 7th place finish in the season's final standings, but it was a disappointing follow-up to the 2007 season. Despite being the target of blame from many critics for the team's failures, Jeff Gordon and Rick Hendrick stood by the longtime Hendrick Motorsports employee and Letarte returned at the helm for 2009.
Jeff Gordon snapped his career-high 47-race winless streak with a victory in the Samsung 500 at Texas Motor Speedway (one of only two tracks Gordon had yet to win at on the NASCAR circuit) on April 5, 2009. But alas, it would be the #24 team's only win of the 2009 season. The team had a strong year however, finishing 3rd in the final standings and leading the series with both 16 top-5s and 25 top 10s. As an organization, Hendrick Motorsports finished an impressive 1-2-3 in the standings as Mark Martin finished second and Jimmie Johnson went on to win his record-setting fourth-straight championship.
On November 23rd, 2010, Letarte was named the crew chief of the #88 car driven by Dale Earnhardt, Jr. for the 2011 season.[2]
Letarte has two children and lives in Cornelius, North Carolina.
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