Crew chief Adam Stevens played key role in Kyle Busch's title run

A huge part of Kyle Busch's NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship was the role played by his crew chief, Adam Stevens.

Stevens, a native of Portsmouth, Ohio, began his crew chief career on the Joe Gibbs Racing XFINITY Series program in 2011 after previously serving as an engineer for the team.

The 2015 season was Stevens' first as a crew chief at the Sprint Cup level, and he faced a huge obstacle early on, when Busch was injured in the season-opening XFINITY race at Daytona. Over the next 11 races, Stevens worked with Matt Crafton, David Ragan and young Erik Jones to field competitive cars.

When Busch was injured, it was Stevens who had to come up with a game plan to salvage the 2015 campaign.

"We had such high hopes for the season and got off on a good start there early in Speedweeks, and then Kyle had his accident, and the wind was certainly taken out of our sails," Stevens said. "I was just terrified that he was really, really in bad shape, but he saw his way back through that and got us on the right track, and thankfully we had a lot of help from Matt Crafton and David Ragan and Erik Jones and learned a lot in his absence, and were just ready for his return."

Adam Stevens (left) poses with Kyle Busch and the championship trophy at Homestead.

The substitute drivers were able to provide Stevens with needed feedback in Busch's absence.

"The guys that chipped in, Matt and David and Erik, just did a tremendous job, and when you have somebody else in the seat, you get a different level of feedback, you get a different kind of feedback, and I think that helped us develop our setups and our notebooks in a way that maybe just Kyle driving wouldn't do," Stevens said. "It has its pluses and its minuses. We didn't have the most top 10s or top 5s to show for it, but we had a few, and we learned something every weekend we went to the track, based off their feedback and their experience, so that was huge for us to move forward and be ready."

No question, though, that Stevens was ready for Busch's return.

"He came back strong," Stevens said of Busch. "So that's a testament to his hard work and dedication, and got us to where we're at today."

In the final, season-ending race, with the championship on the line at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Stevens and his crew had to give Busch a car he could win with. It took some work, but they did just that.

"When we unloaded here and we started in practice, we were loose and we kind of -- a little out of control, but Adam was making some really good changes, and the car kept coming to me, kept getting better and better, and we got it to where we wanted it," Busch said. "I was really pleased in Happy Hour."

The race was more of the same.

"We worked on our car all weekend long just being able to work the bottom, the middle, the top and work all over this racetrack to make sure we had the drivability in it to be able to maneuver and be anywhere we needed to be and not just stuck to a particular groove," Busch said. "That really worked for us. It was really smart execution all weekend long, and really adjustments and calls by our team. Adam Stevens and our engineers and everybody did a really good job."

And now, Busch and Stevens are champions.

"I'd be lying if I said I had any idea what we've even accomplished this year," Stevens said. "It's just been such a whirlwind year. You know, it was very compressed from the time that Coach (Joe Gibbs) and J.D. (Gibbs, team president) said, 'Hey, we need you to crew chief a Cup car,' -- maybe 16 or 18 months ago -- and just so much work went into building the right team and getting the right guys together. A lot more work went into that than went into thinking about race cars."

And as we all know, hard work pays off. This time with a championship.