Trouble in Turn2

Prior to the 2008 season I made a list of six things that would happen this season. After 15 races we can already begin drawing conclusions about some of the predictions. Some have been right on, some have been off and some are still unknown. Overall, I’m surprised how accurate they were (this is the same guy that said Kurt Busch would win at Sonoma).

• Jeff Gordon will barely make the Chase

  What I said,
  

  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.

  Gordon ran very well in the first handful of races but didn’t get the deserved finishes. Since Atlanta, however, it’s been a mixed bag for the #24 team. Gordon has been strong at traditionally comfortable tracks like Martinsville and Darlington. At other intermediate tracks like Atlanta, Texas, Charlotte and Michigan the #24 has been a mess. Gordon is still nabbing enough strong finishes from strategy to ensure he’s in position to make the Chase, but he hasn’t won a race and isn’t really close to winning one. His current position in the standings masks some of the problems with the #24 and at this point it’s clear they are a long ways from challenging for a championship.

• Regan Smith will win Rookie of the Year

  What I said
  

  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. 2008 will also mark only the second season since 2000 that a rookie doesn’t win a race.

  Smith is certainly not lighting the Cup scene on fire, but despite a rough start he is finishing races. He has five finishes of 21st or better. The Rookie of the Year criteria is based on the best 17 races for each driver, so the race is far from over. Sam Hornish Jr is his closest competitor and is showing great progress in his stock car transition.

• Sonoma and Watkins Glen will be the most exciting, and competitive races of the year.

  What I said
  

  With the infusion of open wheel drivers, the starting field could feature a dream lineup of top road course drivers and top stock car drivers. 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.

  There was beating and banging and some weren’t happy, but sadly the leader was able to get away easily (granted the leader stayed on track). Watkins Glen still offers hope for some serious fireworks.

• Toyota will win 6 races.

  What I said
  

  At first glance that number sounds like a lot, but think about it. Gibbs alone could 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.

  Check this one off the list. After 15 races, it’s pretty clear that this prediction was a little tame. The addition of Gibbs transformed Toyota’s engine package into one of the strongest in the sport. As for Vickers, he has three top fives and four top tens. He is coming very close to finding Victory Lane.

• Kyle Busch will be Gibbs’ most successful driver.

  What I said
  

  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.

  Tony Stewart is still poised for a big summer, but it’s clear that the #18 car is fully operational. Busch has already won 5 races (more than his career total entering 2008), leads the points race and looks capable of winning almost every week, including a championship this year. He has also won 4 Nationwide and 2 Truck races and pulled two triple-headers this year. Busch is still a lightning rod for controversy but it’s hard to ignore the results.

• A team will alter their full schedule plans

  What I said
  

  Now the most likely teams look like BAM, Furniture Row, and Front Row motorsports. They are each already 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.

  Bill Davis Racing shut down the #27 car earlier this season. While most other cars appear safe for the season, several still remain unsponsored. NASCAR is feeling the effects of the recession, and it’s hard to see teams willing to keep paying the bills out of their own pockets for too long.

I just finished watching Days of Thunder, and despite knowing almost everything that would happen, I still found it more enteraining than Sunday’s Best Buy 400 at Dover. Officially the race had 17 green flag lead changes. In reality it was a three car race with most lead changes (9) only occurring during green flag pit stops. Essentially Kyle Busch’s pit crew beat Carl Edwards’ and Greg Biffle’s. By lap 160 Jeff Gordon made his way into fifth place and the top five never changed again. One point to make was that the lack of excitement didn’t have very much to do with the lack of lead lap cars, it was simply a race with long green flag runs and not much passing. There were times when cars would ride nose to tail for 20 or 30 laps with neither able to pull away. Busch summed up the lack of excitement this way,

“It wasn’t I guess all that exciting. You know, that’s a product of what we’ve got going on here. We’re working on trying to make our cars go as fast as they can. The faster we make them go, the more aero-dependent they’re going to be. The more you put out on the racetrack, the more the air is going to get screwed up. You know, we’re all fighting for space. We’re all fighting for air. We’re all fighting for everything. Sorry it wasn’t exciting.”

It’s not Busch’s fault the race was boring, nor is it the teams’ fault. With the CoT still in its infancy, there will continue to be snoozers like we saw at Dover. It’s not pretty to watch, but expect more of the same as teams, Goodyear and NASCAR all get a grasp on the car.

The one nugget of excitement came on lap 19 when several top cars collected after Elliott Sadler and David Gilliland made contact. First Tony Stewart, then Denny Hamlin and finally Bill Elliott and Scott Riggs all took turns diving on the hog pile in turn 2. As you might expect, the reactions were varied. First Stewart:

“I take 100% responsibility — it’s my fault for being even anywhere close to Elliott (Sadler). If I’m within a half a lap of him, I expect that to happen. It’s my fault — I’m the one that hit him. When I hit him it caused all the guys behind us to wreck. So it’s my fault.”

Obviously there is still some residual ill-will from Stewart for the wreck at Darlington. Stewart has had wrecks in three of the last five races, and last week had a win snuffed out by a flat tire. Common sense says Stewart will rebound during the summer months, but he had similar problems in 2006 and failed to make the Chase. It’s definitely something to watch.

Meanwhile teammate Denny Hamlin received a lot of heat for plowing into the wreck late. It did appear that other drivers managed to slow down in less time than Hamlin, but Elliott and Riggs were even further behind Hamlin and still couldn’t stop in time.

“It’s so tight off of turn two right there. I feel bad for Elliott (Sadler). I came piling in there way late. I had the 43 (Bobby Labonte) right on my bumper trying not to get hit from him. When I heard wreck off turn two I immediately was on the brakes. It’s just these cars don’t stop as well as they had in the past. Luckily, I wasn’t the last one. It looked like guys even behind me piled in there. It’s just part of the race track.”

While I find it a little easy to blame the track and the heavier car, something obviously caused problems for numerous cars in the accident. After his incident last weekend in the Nationwide race, Hamlin is probably not a popular driver with many fans, but it’s not really fair either.

Other Notes

Nice runs by Dave Blaney, Travis Kvapil and Juan Pablo Montoya. All scored top 12’s. Meanwhile Sam Hornish Jr finished 19th to return to the top 35. The finish was his second top 20 and moved him all the way to 33rd in the owners standings. Meanwhile thanks to a steep 150 point penalty earlier this week and a bad wreck on Sunday, Scott Riggs and the #66 car fell outside the top 35. With the other Haas car missing another race, things are getting tough in a hurry for Haas-CNC.

Fox did a good job this year with their NASCAR coverage (although I could have passed on the letter grades feature today). Now it’s on to TNT. At least Kyle Petty will keep things fresh.

For the second straight year Tony Stewart led the Coca Cola 600 late. Last year he was beat when several drivers gambled on fuel. This year Stewart aced the pit stop, came out first and looked like he was on his way to winning his first Coca Cola 600. Then with two laps left he cut a tire, once again sullying his run. Stewart’s disappointment became Kasey Kahne’s elation. As predicted, Kahne ran well at Lowe’s. His driver rating was a race best 131.8 and he led 66 laps. He was also a little fortunate that other top cars like Stewart, Dale Earnhardt Jr, Kyle Busch and Jimmie Johnson all had problems. This week as countless blogs and media websites talk about how Kahne is a championship contender, keep in mind that this is based off of Kahne’s performance at one track. He has been average at every other track in 2008. Five laps led and no top 5’s prior to Charlotte does not prove that Kahne is ready for a breakout summer.

• I have resisted declaring a problem with Jeff Gordon and Matt Kenseth as long as I could, but they now officially have problems with their intermediate programs. Neither could find the top ten until they each outlasted enough cars with some help from fuel mileage. Lost in his ability to finish well is the fact that Kevin Harvick is not running well either, and hasn’t at intermediate tracks in two years. each of the three is good enough at other tracks to still make the Chase, but winning races will be tougher to come by. The good news is that the summer does not feature a glut of intermediate tracks. The bad news is that the Chase does.

• David Reutimann scored his first Cup top ten and ran inside the top for almost two thirds of the race.
  

  “It was a good effort for everybody at Michael Waltrip Racing and Toyota did a great job — UPS for sticking with us through this whole program and we haven’t really done much to deliver any good finishes. I think this is maybe a start for things to come and I appreciate them sticking with me and everybody at the shop. I managed to run the top side of the race track all night without knocking the right side off, so that’s a good start. I enjoyed it — the guys did a great job and the pit stops were good. All in all our team’s coming together and I can’t wait until the next race.”

  Sam Hornish Jr also posted a career high of 12th.

• While seemingly every top car experienced some kind of setback, Jeff Burton spent 398 of 400 laps in the top 15, only falling out for green flag pit stops. It’s becoming Burton’s trademark, running well without incident and getting everything out of the car without pushing it too far.

• Have you noticed that most of the NASCAR themed commercials are shot at Phoenix Raceway? Why is that?

• A nice touch by Fox to make suggested pit adjustments throughout the night. It’s something that appeals to more advanced fans. The NASCAR 101 stuff is great, but for the fans that watch every race, it’s about time that the broadcast gives something to them too.

• It was amazing that BrianVickers’ stray tire avoided more trouble. Even after smashing into David Gilliland’s hood, the tire still had enough speed to roll several hundred yards and bounced over a fence and into a camper. That is a 25 pound tire that broke loose from a car going 170 mph and it dropped onto a canvas tent. Nothing was really mentioned about this, but that could have been scary.

• With Memorial Day on Monday, I also want to thank all of the people that allow me to watch and write about NASCAR from the comfort of my couch with nary a thought about my life being in danger. This comfort and freedom that we all enjoy is due to our armed forces, past and present. Thank you.

For more racing news and opinion, check out Racing Nation.

Junior fans, be honest. If it was anyone other than Kyle Busch, would you be so upset right now? Would Busch’s wreck with Junior in the closing laps have been such a big deal? Well, probably since it involved the biggest star in NASCAR, but it’s hardly fair to Busch. It was a racing incident plain and simple. It wasn’t any different than Tony Stewart and Kevin Harvick at Bristol earlier this year or hundreds of similar wrecks resulting from hard racing over the years.

In light of a tense situation, Busch did have one of the best quotes of the night after the race,

I don’t know why they[ the fans] were telling me I was number one, I was in second place. Clint Bowyer got the lead from me — they were all confused I guess, too many old (Dale Earnhardt) Jr. Budweisers.

• Denny Hamlin had the NASCAR equivalent of pitching a no hitter, only to cough it up on a home run in the bottom of the ninth. Actually, getting a flat tire after leading 381 of 382 laps was like watching your center fielder turn a single into an inside-the-park home run.
  

  It’s tough to say. I mean, you can’t whine about it. It wasn’t meant to be. God didn’t want me to win today, and there’s a better time for us to win, evidently. Today is just not our day.

  Hamlin had 1 green flag pass all night, which is usually a bad thing, except when there is no one else but lapped cars to pass.

• The top ten cars stayed essentially the same all night long. Part of the reason was because a lot of decent cars got caught up in an eleven car pileup. Jimmie Johnson, Kurt Busch, Matt Kenseth, Juan Pablo Montoya and others all got collected after Patrick Carpentier was sent spinning. Jamie McMurray suffered minor damage in that crash, so he went back for seconds later in the race. Somehow Jeff Burton snaked through with minor damage and went on to finish 11th. The way the track clogged so quickly reminded me of another short track Big One from the 2005 Bristol race.

• Speaking of Kenseth, he now sits in 22nd place in the standings, 204 points outside of 12th place. In 2005 he was 21st after the Richmond race, but thanks to a furious summer rally he made the Chase. The good news is Kenseth typically runs well at the next three tracks, Darlington, Charlotte and Dover. There is a lot of time left.

• What was Michael Waltrip thinking when he continued bumping Casey Mears under caution? Mears was running one lap down in 16th. There was no way Mears meant to wreck Waltrip. For the lovable image Waltrip likes to project, it’s interesting how many times a year he gets called to the NASCAR hauler.

• The top 35 fight rages on. Dave Blaney’s 18th place finish (and best run of 2008) put some pressure on 35th place Sam Hornish Jr. 32nd place David Reutimann is only 10 points ahead of Hornish, with Waltrip and Regan Smith sandwiched in between. With the unfriendly confines of Darlington up next, the positions at the back of the field could change quickly.

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It feels like the Cup boys were just at Daytona, but eight races later the year is one fourth over. I’ve already discussed a few things we’ve learned so far, but it’s time to check out a few teams and drivers and hand out some grades for the quarter. It’s not a final grade (NASCAR is on semesters, right?), but more of a progress report.

These grades aren’t based strictly on performance, but more on preseason expectations. So a car or team expected to run in the thirties that is running in the teens or twenties is a bigger deal than Carl Edwards or Kyle Busch running well. It’s not a surprise that those two are winning races.

Sam Hornish Jr is coming to NASCAR and if you believe what bloggers say, he has no chance at success. Obviously beginning your Cup career by not qualifying for your first six races is ripe for skepticism, but Hornish has quite a few advantages compared to other open wheel converts.

Penske Power

Of all the recent open wheel imports, Hornish is the guy with potentially the best equipment. Both Kurt Busch and Ryan Newman consistently run in the top ten and with slightly different circumstances could have won 4 or 5 races combined. Compare that to the virgin efforts of Bill Davis and Red Bull at Toyota or the inconsistent outfits at Ganassi and Evernham and it’s pretty clear that Hornish will have room to grow into his equipment rather than the reverse. One point to make here is that Penske’s 3rd car in 2004 and 2005 was a major downer and could remain that way. On the other hand why would they contract in 2006 only to expand again for 2008 unless the team felt more capable of running three cars?

A Good Mentor

When Montoya needed advice he had to rely on two sophomore teammates at the Cup level. Sam Hornish has the luxury of picking the brain of someone who has already made a successful transition, Ryan Newman. Newman came at a younger age, but had a similar learning curve transitioning from USAC to stock cars. Hornish can also tap into Montoya’s and Allmendinger’s experiences from 2007 and learn from some of their bumps and mistakes.

Age

Hornish will turn 28 next July. Excluding A.J. Allmendinger, every open wheel driver is older than 30. Roger Penske can surely afford time to Hornish and that patience could be rewarded later. Most drivers seem to hit their prime sometime in their early to mid 30’s. While Dario Franchitti, Jacques Villeneuve, Patrick Charpentier and even Juan Pablo Montoya are spending their 30’s on a new challenge, Hornish will likely have those years to reach his full potential in a stock car.

Points

This one is still unknown, but if Penske decides to transfer the #2’s points to Hornish’s car it would be a huge step in his stock car growth. Look at Montoya versus Allmendinger this season. A secure Montoya can use every practice for gaining experience and familiarity with stock cars, while Allmendinger has to spend practices doing mock qualifying runs and ensuring the car makes it until Sunday.

Talent

Hornish has 3 IRL titles, an Indy 500 title and 19 career wins. It’s not like he has zero credentials as a driver. It will take time and 2008 has to be considered a transition year, but Hornish may have the best chance of the open wheelers to be a long term star at the Cup level.