![\"mattkenseth\"](\"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/files\/2013\/02\/mattkenseth.jpg\")
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When Matt Kenseth chose to join Joe Gibbs Racing last year there were bound to be a few changes. One of the most important changes for Kenseth was getting a new crew chief in Jason Ratcliff, another was finding a replacement for longtime spotter Mike Calinoff.<\/p>\n
Calinoff stayed at Roush-Fenway Racing causing Kenseth to seek out a new spotter for the 2013 season.<\/p>\n
Finding a replacement for Calinoff was no small task. Kenseth and Ratcliff listened to hours of tape before finding the right guy to serve as the eyes above the track.<\/p>\n
They found Chris Osborne.<\/p>\n
Osborne previously served as the spotter of the No. 22 car at Penske Racing.<\/p>\n
“There’s a lot of things I look for,” Kenseth told the NASCAR Wire Service. “One thing is the way they talk, how clear they sound, their accent — all that stuff, so it’s something you can understand — somebody that doesn’t get excited, somebody that’s calm, and gives you all the information.<\/p>\n
“I was excited with what I heard (with Osborne), and that being said, when you do that research, you don’t want to find somebody where you need to change 10 things. I liked the information that he was giving the other guys, and I was like, ‘Man, just go do your deal; if we have to make any adjustment, we’ll make ’em.’ And we really haven’t had to make any adjustments. I haven’t really told him to do anything different.”<\/p>\n
Kenseth’s first official race with Osborne as his spotter will be the 55th running of the Daytona 500. Last year Kenseth won the Daytona 500, his second win in the event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Matt Kenseth chose to join Joe Gibbs Racing last year there were bound to be a few changes. One of the most important changes for Kenseth was getting a new crew chief in Jason Ratcliff, another was finding a replacement for longtime spotter Mike Calinoff. Calinoff stayed at Roush-Fenway Racing causing Kenseth to seek […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6297,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[319,417],"coauthors":[675],"class_list":["post-6296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cup-series","tag-joe-gibbs-racing","tag-matt-kenseth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6296"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}