by Mark McCarter, Special to FOXSports.com

There is the crackly sound of static. In the background, there is the deep roar of motors, like the sound of God clearing his throat.

Listen.

One crew chief is calmly discussing with his driver the subtle tweaking needed to make a car more driveable.

Another crew chief is lobbing out attaboys.

Another is dishing blue words right back at an angry driver.

Another crew chief has assumed the tone of a cop trying to talk a distraught man off a 20th-floor ledge.

"Communication," says points leader Jimmie Johnson, "is everything."

There is a Kurt Vonnegut novel called Slapstick. It centers on a brother and sister who, when apart, are essentially lost balls in high weeds. However, when they put their heads together, actually touching, they reach genius level.

That's what a good crew chief-driver combination does. Says veteran driver Buddy Baker, "There's never just been a winning driver."

Some are better than others at the art, obviously.

Some are worse. The crew chief-driver divorce rate makes Jennifer Lopez's love life seem placid in comparison. The most high-profile one of late, coming with supermarket tabloid-type attention, was Michael "Fatback" McSwain being released as Bobby Labonte's crew chief, despite a top 10 spot in the standings.

But in most cases, the standings provide the best measuring stick.

"There's nobody up there in the points where the crew chief and driver don't have a good relationship," says Ray Evernham, a car owner and once a champion crew chief with Jeff Gordon.

Especially with Johnson in first place, with crew chief Chad Knaus. "Right now," Evernham says, "it's obvious they are at the top of their game."

Other than success and excellence in communication, the best driver-crew chief combinations seem to have little in common. They're like one of those variety packs of cereal -- six different boxes, six different flavors.

Chad Knaus and Jimmie Johnson celebrate in Pocono's Victory Lane in June (Sherryl Creekmore/NASCAR)

1. THE KIDS: Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus

Knaus once described Johnson's relationship with team co-owner Jeff Gordon as "like peanut butter and jelly." It might be even more apt for Johnson and Knaus.

Johnson has had such a lead in the Nextel Cup standings that he and Knaus have been able to experiment in the mid-summer races, trying out things that will work in crunch time.

It's worth noting that in crunch time last season, they had nine top eight finishes in the final 10 races, which is as good a reason as any to tag them as favorites for this year's title.

"They're probably the best with Jimmie communicating what he needs in the car and Chad giving it to him," says Robbie Loomis, Gordon's crew chief.

Says Johnson, "It's so cool. I can describe what I feel. I don't have to worry about what he's putting in there around me because I believe in him. I just describe when I need some help, when the car may not be right, and he can visualize what I'm saying and take care of it.

"It's really an amazing deal."

Robbie Loomis pushes Jeff Gordon to Victory Lane at the California Speedway in May. (Robert Laberge / Getty Images)

2. THE VETERANS: Jeff Gordon and Robbie Loomis

Loomis, a dirt-under-the-nails guy from his long stint at Petty Enterprises, joined Gordon when Evernham went to work for Dodge. For much of the 2000 season, they were a couple dancing to different tunes.

Finally, Gordon took Loomis to dinner one night in Richmond after a late-summer test. "He talked a lot about the relationship he had with Ray and the incredible seasons they had. It gave me a lot of inner peace that I was the one he believed in," Loomis says. "Through good days and bad, I was going to be his crew chief, and he was going to be my driver."

Oh, yeah.

Gordon and Loomis won that race at Richmond. And finished in the top 10 in 10 of the final 11 races. And won the series championship the next season. And might be, with the advantage of experience, a good bet to waltz to another title this year.

Spend a day on pit road at Texas with Tony, Greg Zipadelli, Joe Gibbs and the Home Depot Racing team. Check out Tony's race day photos. (Motorsports Management / TonyStewart.com)

3. FIRE AND, WELL, A BIT LESS FIRE: Tony Stewart and Greg Zipadelli

Stewart's volcanic nature is old news. You'd think, then, that "Zippy" would be the opposite end of the spectrum: icy cool -- all the better to counterbalance Stewart's fire. Nope.

"He's actually pretty high-strung, too," says crew member Jerold Shires. "He keeps it under control. But sometimes, when it goes bad, that Italian comes out in him."

Says Loomis, "Zippy is able to work through things with Tony on the good days and the bad days and the days when everything has been stirred up in the media. I think Zippy's the one guy that can reach Stewart."

"I've been racing 25 years this year," Stewart says, "and I can count on one hand the guys that I have a relationship and bond like I have with Zippy."

Tony Eury Sr. and Dale Earnhardt Jr. share a laugh during testing at Daytona in January (International Speedway Corporation / Special to FOXSports.com)

4. THE GEEKS: Ryan Newman and Matt Borland

Buddy Baker has been a longtime advocate, mentor and occasional test pilot for Newman. Baker laughs that he is the king of knowing what not to do because he has tried everything once. It's seat of the pants, not bytes and data. Which makes him polar opposite to Newman and Borland.

"Engineering degrees," Baker says, asked about their magic. "Both of them speak in terms that every once in a while I go, 'Does that mean springs, or what?' They'll say, 'P.F. times two equals four-point-oh-six,' and I go, 'What?' "

Perhaps the analytical approach is the best way to explain the team's stunning record: a series-best eight wins in 2003 and pole-winning qualifying efforts in nearly one-quarter of the Nextel Cup events in the past two years.

Baker says, "The crew chief has to be the smartest person around." On this team, that's a tough call.

Ordinal out of range

5. THE CHAMPS: Matt Kenseth and Robbie Reiser

It was all going so fast. The Kenseth-Reiser duo was thrashing late in 2003 to make sure its early, dominant lead in the points standings was safely bubble-wrapped. Then came all the demands on the champion -- you know, the dinky stuff, like dinner at the White House.

Finally, one night in New York during the week of the NASCAR banquet, Kenseth and Reiser had a few minutes to slow down. "We sat in a hotel room and watched Monday Night Football and drank a few beers and talked about what we had accomplished," Kenseth says.

That was a championship, earned by the numbing consistency of 25 top 10s in 2003 after a five-win season in 2002.

It's not always perfect. "Sometimes," Kenseth says, "he'll say something, and I'll look at him funny like 'That doesn't make sense,' and he'll look at me in the same way. Yeah, maybe we disagree sometimes about what to do with the car. But that's a good thing. If we thought the same thing about the car all the time, if I didn't have somebody with different ideas, I could do it by myself."

Ordinal out of range

6. FAMILY FEUD: Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Tony Eury Sr.

This is racing's version of The Osbournes. Much yelling. Much of it R-rated. Much love. Much success among these cousins that stretches to car chief Tony Eury Jr.

Until Earnhardt's crash while moonlighting in a sports car, the team was closest to Johnson in the standings. Many in the garage area might suggest the group is too close, too loyal, too stubborn to become a championship team. Junior will have none of that.

"I don't really know what it would be like to go to the racetrack with anybody but Tony Jr. and Tony Sr. I don't know if I'd want to, really," Earnhardt says.

"They're family. It's hard for a lot of people in this business to understand, but how much I care about them overrides even the worst season you can have. That's more important to me. I've always felt like I would race with them forever.

"There's never a day that I look over at Jimmie's car and wish I was driving it instead of my own. As long as I've been working with these guys, I don't know if could (switch to somebody else). You could put me with Chad, but you might not have the same results."

Sure, two heads are better than one -- but genius isn't always that simple.