NASCAR
Why Is Steve Letarte Missing From the NASCAR Championship 4 on NBC?
John Moriello started covering sports in 1982, began digital publishing in 1995, and joined Sports7 in 2020. A graduate of St. John Fisher University, he finds inspiration in the underdogs and the fascinating stories sports can tell (both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat). John expertly covers all aspects of NASCAR. Beginning with his 2014 coverage at Fox Sports of the aftermath of the dirt-race tragedy in which Kevin Ward Jr. died after being struck by a car driven by NASCAR Hall of Famer Tony Stewart, John has excelled as a journalist who specializes in the motorsports world. He previously spent more than three decades covering high school sports and worked as a beat writer covering Big East football and basketball, but NASCAR is now where the true expertise falls. John is a member of the New York State Basketball Hall of Fame (2013), the President of the New York State Sportswriters Association, and a two-time Best of Gannett winner for print and online collaborations whose work has appeared on FoxSports.com and MaxPreps.com.
Get to know John Moriello betterUpdated06 Nov 2022
Christopher Bell, Ross Chastain, Chase Elliott, and Joe Logano reached the final day of the NASCAR season still in the hunt. Unfortunately, Steve Letarte, the man who helped explain all season how they got there, wasn’t available to analyze the race for NBC.
Letarte, the retired crew chief for two of the biggest names in Cup Series history, had to miss the telecast after undergoing an appendectomy just hours before the Championship 4 at Phoenix Raceway.
NBC had to make do without veteran analyst Steve Letarte
Just like a NASCAR team losing a tire changer or jackman on short notice, NBC found itself a man down in the broadcast booth for the Cup Series Championship, the 312-mile race to determine the 2022 season title. Steve Letarte went on Twitter to disclose that he was hospitalized and would have to sit out the big race.
“Very little in the world would keep me from broadcasting the Championship race from Phoenix,” Letarte wrote. “Well…. Apparently an emergency appendectomy has done the trick. Thank you to Saint Joseph’s hospital and everyone who helped me out.”
Normally, Letarte, 43, is part of a four-man booth carrying the load from the green flag to the checkered. Rick Allen tracks the race, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Burton call upon their racing backgrounds to offer analysis from drivers’ perspective, and Letarte offers his knowledge from years of working on the pit crew and then atop the box. The quartet is finishing up its fifth season together.
His boothmates typically rely upon Letarte for anticipating fuel and tire strategies as well as for knowing what problems crews are tackling when they pop open the hood on pit row.
Steve Letarte was the crew chief for a pair of Cup Series stars
Steve Letarte’s career on a NASCAR team was a relatively brief 20 seasons, and he retired from the grind while still young. He started at Hendrick Motorsports in 1995 as a part-timer and was just 16 when the team took him on full-time. Working his way up on the successful No. 24 Chevy team of Jeff Gordon, he progressed from a tire specialist to mechanic and then became the car chief in 2002, the season after the Hall of Fame driver’s fourth and final championship.
In 2005, he received a late-season promotion to Gordon’s crew chief after the “24” missed the playoffs. Gordon and Letarte went to Victory Lane in their sixth race together. They won nine more races over the next five seasons, after which Letarte moved over to become Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s crew chief. The Earnhardt-Letarte combination scored five wins from 2011-14.
Letarte announced before the 2014 season that it would be his last, and he joined NBC the following year. The first race he worked was Earnhardt’s win in the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona.
Racing figures wished Steve Letarte well on Sunday
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Steve Letarte’s Twitter timeline was filled with well wishes from racing figures on Sunday, with drivers Anthony Alfredo, Ryan Vargas, and Kris Wright among the first to spot the NBC analyst’s tweet.
“We miss you, man!,” NBC feature reporter Rutledge Wood tweeted. “So glad you’re OK!”
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