Trouble in Turn2

Elevators and Imitators

Eleven races into the season is almost one third of the way home. Some teams are exceeding expectations while others are underachieving. That’s obvious enough. While the points show one picture, the driver ratings can reveal some differences. A driver with a high driver rating shows

Carl Edwards is 4th in driver rating but sits in 7th place in the standings. Obviously without the 100 point penalty Edwards would be 4th in points. Jeff Gordon is 10th in points but owns the 7th best driver rating. A mechanical failure at Daytona and a nasty crash at Las Vegas erased otherwise strong runs at these tracks. It highlights how damaging engine failures and bad finishes can be to a driver’s points. Outperforming your points total is a good sign for the rest of the summer. I fully expect both Edwards and Gordon to climb higher in the standings and score more top 5’s.

Jeff Burton is second in the points but 8th in driver rating. It’s pretty clear that Burton’s great start is due more to compiling points and avoiding trouble than it is having fast, dominant cars. Avoiding trouble is obviously a testament to Burton’s skill, but it’s harder to sustain than simply running in the top five every week. Every driver will lose an engine, get caught up in a wreck or get a flat tire at the wrong time. Making your own luck by having top five cars every week is a lot more reliable than trying to outlast everyone and sneaking into the top ten or top five.

Elevators: Drivers with the biggest positive differences between points and driver rating
Casey Mears +6
Elliott Sadler +5
Dave Blaney +5
Matt Kenseth +4

Imitators: Drivers with the biggest negative differences between points and driver rating
David Gilliland -7
Clint Bowyer -6
Jeff Burton -6
Bobby Labonte -5
Travis Kvapil -4

The numbers give a decent snapshot of who is running well compared to finishing well. Maybe over or underachieving is the wrong word. Drivers deserve credit for passing as many cars as they can, with whatever method they can. The only point of these numbers is to get a glimpse of which drivers are capable of a strong summer or who might be ripe for a tumble.

Things can obviously change. The CoT is far from perfected, so there is a great opportunity for teams to find new advantages. Burton and RCR could suddenly find something in a test that pushes their cars closer to the front. Or maybe, in the copycat world of NASCAR, everyone might simply catch up to Gibbs and Roush and even the playing field. Younger drivers will likely gain more confidence and experience which could lead to better results. An older driver might get a new crew chief that rejuvenates a team. A team that suffers from bad luck suddenly feels the need to change personnel, resulting in even worse performances. There are tons of variables that could change the numbers.

So who do you think could climb the ladder or go down the chute this summer?