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Well good for him. What the heck happened to Smoke?

I hear the Jr Nation was cheering for all the HMS drivers today at practice and qualifying!! :D

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Gustafson plans to stay at Hendrick Motorsports
SCENEDAILY - 1:23PM ET FRIDAY JUNE 15, 2007 -

BROOKLYN, Mich. - Kyle Busch’s crew chief at Hendrick Motorsports says he doesn’t plan on going anywhere - even if it means accepting a new role in the company.

Busch may be leaving Hendrick at the end of this season, but crew chief Alan Gustafson said he wants to stay loyal to team owner Rick Hendrick, no matter what that may entail.

“I expect to be a crew chief at Hendrick Motorsports, but I will make the statement that I will be at Hendrick Motorsports next year regardless,” Gustafson said Friday at Michigan International Speedway. “I’d rather sweep floors for Rick Hendrick than be a crew chief for someone else.”

But will he be the crew chief for the incoming Dale Earnhardt Jr.? It’s widely speculated that Earnhardt Jr. would want to continue his current pairing with cousin Tony Eury Jr.

Gustafson said he didn’t want to look that far ahead and said, “I’m not in limbo.” Still, he added, “Who wouldn’t want to work with Dale Jr.?”

The decision for Busch to part ways with Hendrick was one that stung Gustafson, who considers himself good friends with his driver.

“When you have a relationship like you do with a driver, it’s very personal,” he said. “When things go wrong, there is some disappointment. To sit there and say there wasn’t, I’d be lying to you.

“Now that it’s not working out, I feel disappointed and a little responsible in some regard because if everything would have went well, we wouldn’t have this problem. With that being said, I don’t think that I didn’t give 100 percent.

“It is sad, but that’s business, and we’ll just have to move on.”

Gustafson said that the incident at Texas - when Busch left the track while his car was being repaired - was “definitely a brick in the wall” but not the main reason Busch will not continue with the team.

“Nothing was intentional there, and I hate that that went down the way it did,” he said. “I hate that it severed any feelings or put anybody in an awkward position. It’s regrettable because that wasn’t intent of any action.

“We all know it wasn’t good. We knew when it happened it wasn’t good.”

Gustafson knows he would be a highly sought-after crew chief if he were to consider leaving the company but said his personal ties to Hendrick will keep him at HMS.

“Rick, quite frankly, is the classiest guy in this garage,” he said. “He’s been great to me from day one when I started there eight years ago.

“This sport’s going to come and go, things are going to happen, but to have a personal relationship with a grand man like that is very important to me. And I’m going to be loyal to him; he’s been loyal to me.”