Team owner John Force made a crew chief switch leading up to Richmond in an effort to strength his team’s chances of moving up in the points. For the rest of the season Ford Drive One crew chief John Medlen will be working with Force’s crew chief brain trust Austin Coil and Bernie Fedderly. Mike Neff will once again take the reins of his Mustang as crew chief and driver. Earlier this year Neff raced to the final in Phoenix pulling double duty.

Team owner John Force made a crew chief switch leading up to Richmond in an effort to strength his team’s chances of moving up in the points. For the rest of the season Ford Drive One crew chief John Medlen will be working with Force’s crew chief brain trust Austin Coil and Bernie Fedderly. Mike Neff will once again take the reins of his Mustang as crew chief and driver. Earlier this year Neff raced to the final in Phoenix pulling double duty.

“We have struggled so bad over here Austin, Bernie and myself that I wanted to put the brain trust back together and let them evaluate what is going on. We brought John Medlen back which he was always part of the brain trust. We knew Neff would be fine on his own. We left him over there with his group and we tried to see if we could shake things around over here,” said Force.

“When we lost Guido (Dean Antonelli) he’d worked with Coil and Bernie for fifteen years. Obviously he’d evolved and was able to do a lot of things working with them and that gave us a rounded program. We won the title in 2006. When he left in 2007 even though Coil and Bernie were tuning it Guido was a big part of making the calls on the starting line letting them know how the parts were performing. Guido was in the trenches and very much hands-on. Coil and Bernie were on the computers,” explained Force. “Medlen has always been hands on. So when we lost Guido and he went to Ashley, her car took off and our car went down. We were looking for help. We have good car chiefs here but what I needed was beyond a car chief. John Medlen was the best move to make to try and bring me around. I am still trying to get a shot at this title. I don’t even know if I have a shot. I think I’d have to win the next two races and have everybody in front of me fall off. That is going to be tough but I am still going to try just like I tried today.”

Neff quickly got back into crew chief mode but it did take a few rounds to get comfortable.

“It is busy. It is stressful especially when you haven’t done it in a while and you are not really familiar with the moves that you are making. You don’t feel real sure of what you are doing sometimes. You start making some runs and seeing results which helps you with the changes. You sort of feel your way though. I was nervous before the first run I wanted to make sure we had everything covered,” said Neff. “You just don’t really know what to expect. This car has been running god for a while and John Medlen had it set up so this was the easiest deal to step into. Medlen was here all weekend helping me. It just added more responsibility. I was thinking about the car all the time. When Medlen was making the tuning calls I just bopped around here with no worries until I got strapped in before the run. It just seemed like the wheels were turning non-stop this weekend. Medlen has available all weekend. It was not like he was gone.”

Neff managed to tune and drive his way to the semi-finals and a match-up with Tim Wilkerson.

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