Steve Letarte, crew chief for four time Cup series champion Jeff Gordon, is commonly called "Poptart." However, Letarte is no poptart.

You see, a poptart is delicious and never fails to satisfy, where as Steve Letarte, well, you see where this is going.

Letarte became Jeff Gordon's crew chief when Robbie Loomis, who was Gordon's crew chief during his 2001 championship season, left to manage at Petty Enterprises at the start of the 2005 Chase for the championship. Gordon had missed the Chase after a miserable season that was highlighted by struggles on 1.5 mile tracks.

Just six races into this new relationship Gordon and Letarte were in victory lane together at Martinsville, but honestly, was that Letarte, or was it Gordon, who had won three of the last five races heading into that event at Martinsville, including coming from three laps behind to win in the first race of that year. And of course there is the fact that Loomis had come up with great setups for Martinsville in the past few years, and those notes were at Letarte's disposal.

Now, in my mind Letarte hasn't proven himself at this point, but to his credit when he came on board the 1.5 mile program did improve, though before he came on board Gordon had made strong runs at those tracks that ended with wrecks and mechanical issues that were out of his control. Nonetheless, the performance improved greatly.

In 2006, Letarte managed to get Gordon to victory lane at Infineon, though again that's a track he's dominated in years past. But my hopes soared when Gordon ran up front all day at Chicagoland, a track that just one year earlier had plagued him, and captured the victory.

Though the team went winless throughout the rest of the season, the team ran well at several tracks and made the Chase, though bad luck plagued them and left them with a 6th place finish in points.

Now until this point in time Letarte has done a pretty good job, and in 2007 he led Gordon's team to great finishes week in and week out. This was thanks to great set-ups at the 1.5 mile tracks, something Gordon lacked for years. Gordon would finish 2nd in points after a great season, but it could have been more if Letarte had some common sense on top of the box during the race.

Now, before I continue, I will admit Letarte has brought Gordon great cars, but I think that he is incompetent during the race.

Right now you're probably saying, "But wait, didn't Letarte earn Gordon some wins with good strategy in 2007?"

Yes he did, to the naked eye....

The Phoenix race Gordon had a car that was good on a long run, but didn't have the track postition to contend for the win, until that final round of pit stops when the caution came out during green flag pit stops. Letarte was praised for making the call to finish the pit stop, but the team was already in the middle of the stop, and Letarte just made a call that any crew chief that hadn't inhaled too many exhaust fumes would make.

Then there was the Darlington race, where Gordon was able to win despite a geyser of water escaping his car. Letarte is praised for leaving Gordon on the track, but again, what else would you do? At that point in the season, Gordon is running away from the rest of the field in the points, and can gamble if he wants. When with 30 laps to go Gordon's car is overheating and is losing water you have two choices if you're Letarte: bring Gordon in the pits, raise the hood and pump more water into the car and lose a bunch of time and finish 20-somethingith, or leave the car on the track and hope for the best. No brainer.

Now Pocono was actually a well thought out race, and they played that fuel strategy perfectly and the weather came at the right time. I'll give credit to Letarte on that one, he made the right call.

Gordon went on to win races at Talladega through sheer driving ability, and won at Lowe's in the fall thanks to issues by Ryan Newman.

So overall, 2007 was a good season, but Letarte didn't do anything fantastic while calling the races. And if this were January 2008 and I were writing this, I might say that Letarte was a crew chief that could lead Gordon to a 5th championship, but now I highly doubt that will happen after the miserable season I've witnessed.

Of course, Gordon has been in a few crashes and had some mechanical woes, but when he hasn't Letarte has let him down.

And right now I'm disregarding the fact that Letarte can't provide a car better than 15th to save his life, that is just ridiculous, and until now that's the only thing Letarte has been good for, and now he can't even do that.

On top of the bad cars, Letarte has made horrible calls that have put Gordon way behind the pack when track position is vital or left him out to be a sitting duck after a long run. There was no exception to this at Sunday's race at Pocono.

Until the second round of pit stops, Gordon had made his way up to 13th without pit strategy after starting 38th. Gordon actually had a good car, but never had the opportunity to show it because of Letarte.

On that second round of pit stops, Letarte gave the order to take two tires, and considering at that point not too many people behind Gordon were doing that, that wasn't that great a decision. However, easy to make that decision after the fact. Gordon would fall back to about 11th during the before the next pit stops, so it still wasn't that bad, but Gordon's car fell off at the end of that run.

Apparently, the fact they fell back behind a bit on that run told Letarte he should never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever take two tires no matter how far back in the pack he may be. Throughout the race Letarte took four tires, four tires, four tires, even after short runs of just 10 or 12 laps. Others would take two, while Gordon had four. While tires are nice, passing ain't easy at Pocono, and Gordon was left in the low 20's for most of the race. Hard to make up all that lost ground.

However, by using fuel strategy, Gordon was 3rd in line with a group that was on a different pit sequence, one that saw them able to make it to the end on fuel after having made pit stops just 10 or so laps earlier. Everyone else had to pit, and at this point I'm thinking, "All right, at least Gordon's going to be 3rd when this all shakes out, so we should get a solid finish out of this."

Then to my dismay I see a flamed car coming to the attention of it's pit crew, getting four tires and fuel......

Why?

Instead of restarting that race in 3rd place with 20 laps to go and a few cars behind you with older tires between you and the guys who just took four, you're now 27th with about 20 cars on the same tires as you on a track that is known for being hard to pass at, let alone with the COT.

All I can do is sit as I watch Gordon make up as much ground as possible, shockingly coming in 14th, good for the circumstances, but not what it could have been.

This isn't the only time Letarte's done this either, he did it last year at Atlanta,Texas and Phoenix, taking four when everyone else took two on late pit stops and getting crappy finishes and losing points toJimmie Johnson. Maybe if he had taken a little chance and taken two tires (which I was screaming back then just like I was Sunday at Pocono) he would have had a top-5 finish and been closer to Johnson headed into that final race. Heck, he lost around 70 points because of it.

So now I'm complaining about the problem. I've said this before and I'll say it again, it's easy to complain about a problem, but it's hard to come up with a solution. Well, my solution is only half complete, unfortuanately.

Of course the first part is to get sack Letarte from the role of crew chief, but Letarte can still be valuable as a car chief, so you put him there. That's the easy part, the hard part is finding who to replace him with, and I think I've found my guy: Brian Whitesell.

Never heard of him? Whitesell was the first guy to replace Ray Evernham as Gordon's crew chief when Evernham left to work with Dodge, and in his first two races as Gordon's crew chief he got Gordon into victory lane. Whitesell's role was only temporary, as in 2000 Loomis filled the role as Gordon's crew chief. However, 9 years later, I think it is time for Whitesell to return to the top of Gordon's pit box.