November 5, 2019 | By Lee Spencer

Luke Lambert leaves RCR for Roush Fenway Racing, Randall Burnett named crew chief of the No. 8 Cup team

Luke Lambert is moving his toolbox to Roush Fenway Racing in 2020.

After eight seasons as a crew chief with Richard Childress Racing, the 37-year-old Mount Airy, NC native will have the opportunity to oversee the No. 17 team and Chris Buescher’s return to RFR.

“We are certainly excited to have Luke Lambert joining our organization and taking over the reins of the No. 17 program,” said team owner Jack Roush. “Luke has a strong engineering background and also the ability to energize and lead a team. We look forward to pairing him with Chris next season and seeing what they can do on the track.”

Lambert, who graduated from NC State in 2005 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, most recently worked with the No. 8 RCR team and rookie driver Daniel Hemric. In 258 NASCAR Cup starts, Lambert’s teams have posted one win, one pole 24 top fives and 72 top 10 finishes.

Lambert tweeted on Tuesday:  “Thank you @Rchildress3 for the opportunity and thank you to all my @RCRracing teammates and friends for 14 years of great memories! I look forward to finishing strong these next two weeks. I’m excited about my future with @roushfenway and thankful for the opportunity.”

Randall Burnett will replace Lambert at RCR. Burnett joined forces with Tyler Reddick, the defending Xfinity Series champion when the driver moved to RCR for the 2019 season. Under Burnett’s direction, Reddick has scored a career-high five wins, four poles, 22 top fives and 25 top 10s in 31 races. The No. 2 team remains third in the standings with one race remaining to decide the Championship 4 contenders.

However, Reddick took a dive in points after wrecking in Saturday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 300 and finishing 29th. He holds an 18-point advantage over fourth-place Justin Allgaier and 36 points from the cutline.

“It wasn’t a hard hit,” Reddick said. “Fortunately, our really fast Alsco Chevrolet took most of the impact back there. I was back there racing with guys that I hadn’t been racing all day long and they were obviously fighting their race cars. And our race car was a lot better than theirs most of the night. Didn’t have a good sequence of restarts, pit stops, not staying where we needed to be on the racetrack and unfortunately tore up a really fast RCR Chevrolet.

“Now we’re sitting in a very vulnerable spot going into Phoenix where we have to fight a little bit harder than we want to and could very well put us in the same situation again that we were trying to avoid (at Texas). We’ll just have to go to Phoenix, dig down deep and pull a solid finish out of it so we can get to Homestead and do what we deserve to do, battle for a championship and take it to them.”