Robby Gordon

NASCAR Season Midway Review

Well, Kyle Busch capped off the season’s midway point at Daytona with his 10th career win and his sixth this season.

NASCAR’s premier series is in their first full year with the Car of Today, and it has undergone some criticism.  It actually got so out of hand that NASCAR President Mike Helton called a mandatory meeting to tell drivers to basically, “Shut up and drive.”

The first half of the Sprint Cup Series season has provided NASCAR fans with some good, bad, and very ugly races.

On paper, for the most part, this is a record breaking season for competition.  The California race had a record 33 lead changes, the Coca-Cola 600 had 2,580 green flag passes, that was up almost 900 from the 2007 Coca-Cola 600.  The Michigan race tied a track-best 3,204 green flag passes.

NASCAR is getting more coverage than ever.  TV Ratings are up for the most part from last year.  Although some tracks are struggling with attendance, tracks are still selling out.

NASCAR is also going through some economic hardships.  Sponsors willing to fork out millions of dollars a year are few and far between.  Teams are shutting down, Petty Enterprises sold 50% of their company to Boston Ventures.

The competiton is also even, all four manufacturer’s have won at least three races.  All four manufacturer’s are represented in the top 12 in driver points.  There has been 10 different race winners, 11 different pole winners, 74 drivers have attempted to qualify for at least one Sprint Cup Series race, and 46 driver had led at least one lap.  All evidence that NASCAR has accomplished one goal — make competitors and manufacturer’s even.  Chevy no longer has a stangle hold on the field.  In fact, the first Chevy in the top last week at Daytona will Dale Earnhardt Jr. who finished 8th.

Also, Hendrick Motorsports is apparently struggling.  Despite the fact that they only have two wins, and have three of their drivers in the top six in points.  At this point in the season, Hendrick Motorsports drivers had 10 wins.

Kyle Busch, Carl Edwards, and Ryan Newman all led the points standings for the first time in their careers this year.  And, Kasey Kahne and Greg Biffle are back!  They are both back in the top 12, and Kahne has two wins so far.

And don’t forget.  The most-popular driver is showing that he indeeds deserves the attention.  He ended a two year winless streak with a win at Michigan, he has matched his 2007 numbers already, which is answering the question on how Dale Jr. would perform in 2008 after leaving DEI in 2007.  The answer — Great!

Speaking of DEI, recently, sources close to DEI are reporting that DEI could be sold to Max Siegel for as much as $130 million, which would take Teresa out of the picture.  This is still developing, but could get very interesting.

And, you can’t talk about the 2008 season without talking about Silly Season — 2009 edition.

Rumors have been circulating and some are very tasteful.

Sources yesterday confirmed that Joe Gibbs Racing will go to four teams, and Juan Pablo Montoya would be the driver.  Now, wouldn’t that be a combination.  Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, and Juan Pablo Montoya.  Add Joey Logano in the 20 after Stewart leaves to buy into Haas CNC Racing with Ryan Newman as a teammate, and you get headlines for the rest of the year.

Sources close to Tony Stewart say that he is expected to announce his future plans as soon as Indianapolis in two weeks.

As Silly Season continues to unfold, and the season heats up for the chase — stay tuned to NASCAR FanZone for all your NASCAR updates.

NASCAR Stocks: The Top 10- Moving Up, Going Down

Races like we had in Richmond really make this mor art than science. The stats that are sued to hel determine performance will never reflect that Denny Hamlin and Dale Jr. were the class of the field. But because this is MY system, I’ll do it how I see fit.

There’ll be some changes this week.  

#10- Ryan Newman (unranked last week)- “Rocket” fought his way back with a 6th place finish at Richmond. Newman has sown signs of life the last two weeks, and his recent results are good enough to bump Greg Biffle- who’s weaker in average finish, has no wins and has the same number of top 10s as Newman. Ya have to like this guy, so maybe I’m biased. The dude never complains, no matter how bad things are.

#9- Kevin Harvick (up 1 from 9th)- “Happy” is hangin’ tough. His presence in my top 10 with teammates Clint Bowyer and Jeff Burton is a testament to the depth at Richard Childress- quietly putting them in a league with Hendrick and Gibbs.

#8- Jimmie Johnson (down 3 from 5th)- A 30th place finish will hurt you, no matter how good you are. trust me, I still maintain Johnson will be a top 5 by season’s end, he’s just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Still, he’s too good to stay down long.

#7- Carl Edwards (unchanged)- The circuit leader in wins (3) didn’t hurt himself with his 7th at Richmond. That’s more than I can say for his image, which took a hit in the Carpentier incident.

#6- Tony Stewart (up 2 spots from 8th)- Smoke just barely cleared Edwards, but that 4th Saturday night, helped him in this tight pack of drivers. Stewart really needs a win. I think it will come soon.

#5- Jeff Burton (down 2 from 3rd)- It’s a shame, because this guy’s remarkably consistent. Nonetheless, there are guys making just a little more noise. I feel perfectly justified in ranking J.B. where he is below the guys that I think have been perhaps a little more daring.

#4- Dale Earnhardt Jr. (unchanged)- Junior’s finish obviously doesn’t reflect how good he was. Same story for Denny Hamlin. The win will come soon enough, I just hope he doesn’t press too hard.

#3- Denny Hamlin (down 1 spot from 2nd)- What a bummer! Denny should have won Saturday, a victim of the worst luck. Even with this 24th at RIR, Hamlin’s average finish of 7.2 over the last 5 races is second only to….

#2- Clint Bowyer (up 4 from 6th)- Bowyer is the hot pick of hot week. He’s been hanging around like a stalker for the last several weeks, and he finally got that elusive first win of 2008. Bowyer has an average finish of 6.4 over the last 5 races, best on the Sprint Cup tour. Bowyer’s 7 top 10s ties him with Junior and the #1 guy….

#1- Kyle Busch (unchanged)- Shrub is also #1 a new category “Most Hated Driver in NASCAR.” He’s helping elevate the likes of Tony Stewart and Robby Gordon to sainthood. No matter what you think of him personally, his 6 top 5s are easily the best at the Cup level. People, get over the incident- that was racin’. If he just keep his fool  mouth shut, he might be able to give the new title up.

I just can’t dismis Busch’s talent and performance- hopefully proving to you that this Jeff Gordon fan is not guilty of bias.

Ready to Strike- The aforementioned Gordon showed life at Richmond. Kasey Kahne continues to hang around. Greg Biffle may be down is far from over.

What will happen next? There’s only one way to find out.

 

“Finish Line Throwdown” Re-Buttal: Lighten Up!

Now that I’ve made sure that my health coverage is in place (you tread lightly in the presence of Tagoo48), I have a few things to say amount the comments seen in Thursday night’s post.

Car of Tomorrow: The “Car of Tomorrow” addresses not only addresses safety concerns, it also addresses cost reduction and performance upgrades as well. Tagoo, I think even you’d agree that you can never be TOO safe. Yes, the old cars were not suicide machines. Well, actually, I’d say the HANS device has had as much to do with the absence of driver deaths since that fateful day in Feburary, 2001 as anything else. By the same token, if you can make a car safer, should you not do it? I thank God today I did not have to write a memorial post for Michael Mc Dowell two weeks ago. As far as I’m concerned the safety features did much to enable able the rookie to sit behind the wheel in a back-up car the following Sunday instead of watching the race from a hospital room. That wing on the back has also done a lot of good as a safety feature in spinning crashes. The new car is a safer car. Period.

I’m far from an authority on the cost of putting (and keeping) a car together, but I do know that cost reducation has also factored into the this car’s creation. There are now fewer cars in a team’s fleet than there once were. This car is a tank. More cars are finishing races, and more cars make for better racing.

The new car is still a work in progress. The lack of testing at Texas in the new car was evident by the race we saw, but I think we saw last weekend how the experience was shown by the quality  of race seen in Phoenix where the new car ran twice in 2007. There’s only one way to develop the “new” car into a better racing car- and that’s to get it out there to run races!

That brings me to my next point. To say that this season has been boring is to say that the races at Martinsville, Bristol and Phoenix were not good. I beg to differ! These were good races filled with lead changes, bumper bangin’, dangerous passes and the whole 9 yards! For the love of Mike- can someone please tell me why NASCAR fans are so quick to complain about races and tires when things go wrong and yet they say nothing when things go well??? Has anybody besides the media made comment how we’ve had no tire manufacturer issues since Atlanta? Shouldn’t Goodyear be commended for getting it right the VAST majority of the time? Concerning Texas- have we ever really had a great race there? I haven’t seen one. Is it not a little too simplistic to blame it on the car? Jimmie Johnson complained about the car after that race. Funny- where was this complaining about the “new” car when he was winning the Chase last year in it? Hmm. Interesting.  

Fundamentally, I think the fan base of NASCAR has an attitude problem. If you watch other sports, you see games that aren’t good. Heck, we’ve had boring Super Bowls. Does that mean the NFL should change their qualifying rules? Should baseball change it’s rules because of the 22-inning snooze fest that was the Rockies-Padres game this week? No!

Having said that- NASCAR should allow for change if over the course of time it’s PROVEN that the car in it’s present state is not a good racing machine on the intermediate tracks- the places where the races have not been up to par. But again- I think we need to give racing teams time to get it right. Testing won’t do it. We’ve got to race the doggone thing out there to really get a handle on it. Changes now would create a moving target nobody could hit.

As for race coverage quality, the smart network is the one who gives race fans what they want. I’ll tell you why we know about Junior every time he so much as breaks wins- because the overwhelming number of race fans LOVE Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Junior is the most popular driver in NASCAR- BY A MILE! FOX, TNT and ABC/ESPN would be stupid to ignore him. I actually watched last Saturday’s race with a VERY critical eye, and I thought FOX did a good job of filling me in on the drivers fighting to get in or stay in the top 35. I saw passes deeper in the field…but let’s be honest. Most people really want to know what’s going on up front. 99% of the audience doesn’t care one whit about the battle for 40th between Joe Nemechek and Robby Gordon.

You mentioned Kyle Busch Tagoo, maybe he’d get his own “personal” camera man if he didn’t act like a butt-munch towards the camera anytime he has a bad race. Carl Edwards, Junior, Jeff Gordon and even Michael Waltrip get the coverage they do because these drivers get it. They know that you have to take the good with the bad.

As for victory celebrations- I’m sorry you hate the backflip. It demonstrates orginality. Something that I will agree is seriosuly lacking in NASCAR, but I’m not sure you’re proposed solution will cut it. The best I’d ever seen was Dale Earnhardt’s celebration after he’d finally won the Daytona 500. Now that was cool!

Overall, I think this has been a good season. NASCAR is as competitive as it’s ever been- even though the most serious contenders come from the top 4 or 5 teams. Still, we really have no idea who’s going win it all this year, and that’s good for racing.

We’re going to have good races, we’re going to have bad ones. This is no different than any other sport. I think the sooner we have the attitude of looking for the good in something, rather than getting all bunged up over the bad, the better off we’ll be.

So- be patient. We’re not even out of turn one for the 2008, and a lot of what we’ve seen so far has actually been pretty interesting. I don’t think anyone could have predicted some of the story lines we’ve had so far- whether it be Ryan Newman’s victory at Daytona, HMS only having ONE victory out of 8 races so far, or whether it’s the performance of Richard Childress, Carl Edwards or veteran Jeff Burton.

There’s a lot of season left. As of right now, I wouldn’t change a doggone thing.