Trouble in Turn2

It’s time for the annual pastime of making predictions. Earlier this week I made some general predictions about what 2008 may hold. Now it’s time to make my best guess at who will be the dirty dozen to stand on stage after the fall Richmond race with goofy, over-designed Sprint graphic hats and pose for Chase pictures (you may want to bookmark this for gloating later). In particular order:

• #48 Jimmie Johnson His team is the best in Cup until someone rips the mantle from his shoulders.
• #20 Tony Stewart He’s a lock unless the transition to Toyota hits a major roadblock.
• #17 Matt Kenseth Has never missed the Chase and he is consistent everywhere. Well, except road courses, but those don’t really count!
• #2 Kurt Busch Busch is good enough to overcome any and all of Dodge’s inadequacies.
• #18 Kyle Busch A Cup to match his brother’s is coming within the next two years.
• #99 Carl Edwards Roush will be better this year and Edwards could be a darkhorse title contender.
• #29 Kevin Harvick It’s go time for Happy and Berrier.
• #88 Dale Earnhardt Jr Wins? Check. Chase? Check. Championship? Not yet.
• #24 Jeff Gordon It’s tough to top 2007. He’ll regress some and might face a tougher year than expected.
• #1 Martin Truex Jr Truex is the primary beneficiary of DEI’s new direction.
• #07 Clint Bowyer Last year was not a fluke.

If you’re keeping score at home, you’ll notice that’s only 11 spots. That’s because I’m baffled on the 12th spot. The competition this year could be tighter than last year and I have four main candidates with their Pro’s and Con’s towards making the Chase.

#12 Ryan Newman Pro: Newman is a top 12 talent. Penske has everything Newman needs.

Con: Penske doesn’t always utilize all the tools properly. A third car could thin the organization.

• #9 Kasey Kahne Pro:If he avoids wrecks and GEM regains their 2006 speedway form, he’s in.

  Con: Dodge as a manufacturer is well, Dodgy. How do they handle the CoT?

• #42 Juan Pablo Montoya Pro: Showed incredible progress in rookie season and has world class ability.

  Con: Ganassi equipment is still second-rate until further notice.

• #31 Jeff Burton Pro: Made the last two Chases and RCR has all the tools.

  Con: The competition looks stiffer this year and it’s hard to see RCR getting three berths again.

• #11 Denny Hamlin Pro: Gibbs and Toyota looks like a fierce combination. Hamlin keeps improving.

  Con: Something was sour with Hamlin during the Chase last year. Is he due for a letdown?

So you tell me, who is the 12th man in the Chase? Do you agree with the top 12? Tell me your top 12 picks.

A few weeks ago I wrote a list of ten fearless predictions. Fearless as they were, they were also written with my tongue lodged in the side of my cheek. It’s easy to hide behind a satirical list, but it’s time for a list of things that could seriously happen this year, and we’ll start with the boldest one. [Tease: There is something pretty cool at the bottom that I can’t take credit for. So if you were thinking of navigating away because you think this/I is/am lame, at least scroll to the bottom of the post for something entertaining.]

1. Jeff Gordon will barely make the Chase. Gordon had a phenomenal 2007 season. 30 top 10’s, 6 wins and only one DNF are incredible numbers and it will be hard to duplicate. Part of it is simply regression to the mean. The other part is that Gordon typically faces more DNF’s (9 in 2005, 7 in 2006) and that will drain points. In recent years Gordon and the team have also been slow to make, or adapt to, adjustments. In 2005 with the rise in popularity of coil-bound setups, Gordon languished all summer as the team struggled to get Gordon comfortable on intermediate speedways. If Gordon has anything close to a weakness it would be his intermediate speedway program. With a brand new car at this type of track, there’s a very legitimate chance that it takes Gordon a while to get up to speed.

   It’s not simply citing 2005 either. Last year in a spectacular season, Gordon and Steve Letarte were slow to change their gameplan in the Chase while Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus were winning 4 straight races with a more aggressive approach. That cost Gordon the title last year. Gordon is strong at enough tracks to make the Chase, especially a field of 12, but if it’s more of a struggle than normal look no further than DNF’s and how he runs at intermediate tracks.

2. Regan Smith will win Rookie of the Year. Smith got a gradual introduction to the Cup series last year thanks to his apprenticeship with Mark Martin. He does a good job of keeping the car on the track. DEI also provides the top equipment among the companies fielding rookies in 2008. The other rookie candidates will all take more time to adjust to stock cars, not to mention racing at the Cup level. Sure Juan Pablo Montoya surprised last year, but he was in a different class. 2008 will also mark only the second season since 2000 that a rookie doesn’t win a race.

3. Sonoma and Watkins Glen will be the most exciting, and competitive races of the year. Watkins Glen was arguably the most unpredictable and exciting race of 2007 and the road courses will only get better this year. With the infusion of open wheel drivers, the starting field could feature a dream lineup of top road course drivers like Juan Pablo Montoya, Dario Franchitti, Sam Hornish Jr, AJ Allmendinger, Jacques Villeneuve, Patrick Carpentier, Boris Said, Ron Fellows, Scott Pruett. Now factor in the old guard featuring drivers like Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Robby Gordon, Kevin Harvick, Kurt Busch, Ryan Newman and Jamie McMurray and you have a lot of drivers that could light up the serpentine courses (and their tires). The heavier CoT can also accommodate more bumping without the cars losing control. That means beating, banging, flipping (birds, not cars), shouting, shoving, and for fans excitement.

4. Toyota will win 6 races. At first glance that number sounds like a lot, but think about it. Tony Stewart has never won less than two races and 7 out of 9 seasons he’s won at least three. Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch also figure to win one or two races each. Gibbs alone will approach the 6 win total. Further down, Brian Vickers and Dave Blaney both had several good wins in 2007 despite the weak Camry engine. It’s not crazy to think either driver could find victory lane. In fact Vickers had arguably the best car at Charlotte until he lost the power steering late and Blaney finished 3rd at Talladega.

5. Kyle Busch will be Gibbs’ most successful driver. When Shrub was with Hendrick, the team had Cup champion past (Jeff Gordon), present (Jimmie Johnson) and future (Busch). Busch’s move to Gibbs doesn’t change that the fact that he will win a Cup championship. It probably won’t happen this year, but he is excellent at nearly every type of track. His 97.8 driver rating was 5th best and in his fourth Cup season, he is hitting his stride. This isn’t a knock on Tony Stewart, who should have a great year, it’s just a statement of how good Kyle Busch will be in 2008.

6. A team will alter their full schedule plans Last year it was Ginn, this winter Morgan-McClure quietly closed their doors, and this year could take its toll on another team. With so many teams with high profile sponsors all vying for the same real estate in the 43-car field, simple math shows there isn’t enough room for everyone. As a result some sponsors will not want to hang around if they can’t get exposure for their brand. That will force a team to either dig deep in their own pockets or scale back. Prior to last week this could have easily been Robby Gordon Motorsports, but he is probably safe thanks to Gillet-Evernham’s shelter.

   Now the most likely teams look like BAM, Furniture Row, and Front Row motorsports. They are each alredy on shoestring budgets, but the bigger teams are not immune either. Haas-CNC, Yates and BDR all face sponsorship hurdles and that might result in skipping a few races during the season. Like Metallica says, Sad but True.

Something Cool

I got an email out of the blue yesterday from someone named Ryan Parker. He writes topical sports songs and his latest is sort of an ode to NASCAR and the 2008 season. It’s really well done and he told me it took about 8 hours for the whole process. You can see all of his songs at his website.

The word on the street is that Casey Mears drives for Hendrick Motorsports. Based on most NASCAR publications and promotional pictures it would be easy to think of HMS as a three-car galaxy of superstars. Mears is a solid driver in his own right. In fact Mears finished one spot better than his higher profile teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. in the 2007 point standings. Don’t feel bad for Mears. Sure he gets as much attention as an extra on Oceans 13, but his situation continues to improve with Hendrick.

It took Mears the first third of the season to settle into the #25 car. A rash of wrecks didn’t help and it pushed Mears to the edge of the top 35 cliff. He eventually clawed his way back to the teens in the standings. Then came the big breakthrough. At the Coca Cola 600 Mears ran in the top 5 all night and then endured on fuel mileage for his first career Cup win. He followed that up with two top fives in the next three races.

He set career highs in wins, top 5’s, top 10’s and lead lap finishes. The first three numbers are obvious, but improving his lead lap finishes is a credit to his new Hendrick equipment. The cars are there for Mears to take advantage of, now the rest is up to him to avoid wrecks and find the right setup.

New crew chief Alan Gustafson will handle most of the heavy lifting on car setups. Last year Darian Grubb came from the engineering team to be Mears’ crew chief. Grubb had to rebuild the #25 team and quickly grow into the crew chief’s role, both of which contributed to Mears’ slow start. Now Grubb moves back to engineering to make way for one of the top young crew chiefs in the sport. Gustafson has spent the last three seasons with Kyle Busch and the #5 team, where they’ve won 4 races. After assorted headaches with Busch, Mears is surely a treat for Gustafson.

Mears showed improved consistency, but the next step is running closer to the front. He had 12 races where finished 11th-20th and only led 33 laps in 2007. Whittling 15th place finishes down to top 10’s would mean a nice jump in points. It’s a simple plan, but will be tough with so many other top drivers vying for the same space on the track.

His comfort is found at the intermediate tracks where he has experienced the most success. Tracks like Texas (4 top 10’s in 5 starts), Las Vegas, Kansas and Pocono comprise the type of fast, gradually-banked tracks that apparently fit Mears’ style. Mears weakness continues to be places like Phoenix, Loudon and Richmond. He has one career top ten in 28 career starts at the three sister tracks.

Can he make the Chase? Some have pointed to 2005 when Roush Racing placed all five of their drivers in the season ending playoffs as a sign that Hendrick could land all 4 drivers in the 2008 Chase. So sure, it’s possible. The big difference then, was that Roush perfected the 2005 aero package while other teams, including some Hendrick cars, struggled mightily. The CoT is in its second year and while Hendrick shot out to a large lead last year, the rest of the sport is bound to close the gap this year. In other words, last year was the more likely season to place a whole organization in the Chase. Mears had a nice 2007, and another win at a speedway or superspeedway is entirely possible in 2008. Beyond that, it’s hard seeing Mears vault over so many drivers to make the Chase.

For this week’s column I was going to include a photo of the view from my couch, but due to a combination of no racing and me being overstuffed from two Thanksgiving meals, the view was of our ceiling. It was only seven days ago that Jimmie Johnson was trying to figure out how to cram a 4 foot long check into his wallet. He still might be doing that but it already feels much longer than a week since the season finale for the Nextel Cup. Go ahead, try and find a news story on your favorite website. Find anything?

The holidays are partially to blame for the lack of news as nearly everyone involved with the sport disperses around the country. The other factor is that after all the wild news stories in 2007, what could possibly be a surprise at this point? Anything short of Jack Roush announcing that a 7 year old from Reykjavik will drive the #26 in 2008, the news well is pretty dry. While actual NASCAR news is as available as an unbeaten college football team, there are a few good opinion pieces from the past week.

• David Poole, one of the best NASCAR writers there is, wrote about how the best thing NASCAR could do between now and February is nothing.
  

  The sport needs a year to stabilize.

  Let teams run a couple of races at every track with the new car. Let the tweaks made to the Chase before 2007 run another year. Allow the major changes, like Dale Earnhardt Jr. to Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing switching from Chevrolet to Toyota, play themselves out.

  He is exactly right. There has been too much change in the last three or four seasons, it’s difficult to see what actually works because nothing is given enough time. Poole also pleads for patience on the part of fans. This is equally true. To us fans it’s always better back in the day, but how can that really be? Richard Petty used to compete against three or four other drivers for wins while the other 50 cars came simply to fill the field. And the winner back then would more often than not win by laps. It’s very easy to point to the the 1979 Daytona 500 and think every race was a nailbiter, but that’s not really true either.

• Last week in this space I asked aloud(in the electronic sense) how NASCAR could make the Cellphone Cup Series more like the Craftsman truck Series. Larry McReynolds thinks tires would help a lot.
  

  What a softer, grippier tire does is solve a couple of issues. When we go to Darlington, the track just wears the tires out, it doesn’t matter if we go with a soft tire or a hard tire. Now they’ve resurfaced it, so it’s going to be a different animal, but to me what always made Darlington and Rockingham a good race was that the surface was pretty worn out, the tires would start to wear out, the cars would start to slide around, and then the guys who had their cars handling the best would prevail. And when we had a caution, there wasn’t any of this, “staying out and keeping track position.” By gosh, caution came out and everybody came in and changed tires. To me, if they put a softer tire on it, they start driving good, and it helps the driver feel the car, but the car will give up on long runs and the guys that have their package the best will be the best.

  I agree, the tires are key. A hard tire like what we have seen at Charlotte, Daytona and Las Vegas in recent years lends itself to boring racing where no one can control their cars and everyone gets spread out. The one point I disagree with McReynolds on the piece about softer tires leading to better long green runs. While this would in theory play to the better handling cars, a softer tire usually leads to more cautions, negating the advantage it’s designed for. In 2005 NASCAR shortened the spoiler on the cars and in turn softened the tire compounds. That led to more cautions, which brings with it shorter green flag runs. McReynolds’ idea is the right one, but I’m not sure it is the perfect solution by itself.

• Scene Daily’s Jeff Gluck gives his reasons why the Truck Series is better than Cup. I would also add to the list, consistently closer points battles that produce natural drama.

• Finally, SI.com writer Tim Tuttle gives a pretty complete list of the top offseason stories to follow. In the meantime I will try and uncover some real news, even if I have to head to Iceland to do it.

Coming tomorrow: A breakdown of the Chasers.

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