Preseason Driver Rankings: #6 Denny Hamlin

02/25/2012 By 1 Comment

Denny Hamlin
No. 11 FedEx Toyota
Team: Joe Gibbs Racing
Crew Chief: Darian Grubb

2011 Stats
Wins: 1
Top-5s: 5
Top-10s: 14
Poles: 0
DNF: 2
Average Start: 17.1
Average Finish: 16.0
Races Led: 15
Laps Led: 450
% Laps Completed: 98.4%
Points Finish: 9th

2011 in a Nutshell
Everyone on the FedEx team knew going into last year, there was a very real possibility that the disappointing way the 2010 season ended would carry over and affect the ’11 season. But a hangover like the one they experienced, which saw a dramatic drop in wins, top-fives, top-10s, laps led, morale, points finish and just about everything else, no one at Joe Gibbs Racing saw coming.

Reasons to Believe
Every year Hamlin has run fulltime, he’s won at least one race … The engine woes which handcuffed his team a year ago, have been addressed … Darian Grubb knows what it takes to win a championship and his calm demeanor over the radio should help put Hamlin more at ease and allow him to focus on driving … On that note, Hamlin seems more focused and has finally put 2010 behind him … A reshuffling of crew chiefs at JGR will inject some new blood into a organization which has grown a bit stale … As a follow-up to the previous point, this team needed a change atop the pit box a year ago due to the continued combativeness between Hamlin and former crew chief Mike Ford … Outside of the road courses and maybe Dover, Hamlin is skilled enough to win anywhere.

Reasons to Doubt
Say what you want about Mike Ford, but the fact is, under his watch the 11 team made six appearances in the Chase and won 17 races … Of the 23 tracks which makeup the Sprint Cup schedule, Hamlin has won on only eight of them … The JGR cars didn’t have a lot of speed in’11 and there is doubt whether they closed the gap in the offseason on the Roush and Hendrick cars … Hamlin isn’t the qualifier he used to be … Mechanical gremlins plague this team and organization.

Area of Strength: Short tracks in Virginia
Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe it’s because he’s more motivated to do well in front of his home state fans, but whatever the reason, Denny Hamlin is at his absolute best at Richmond and Martinsville. Combined, between the two short tracks, he has six wins, 19 top-10s and over 2,000 laps led in just 25 starts.

Area of Weakness: Dover
He’s had his moments, but overall Dover International Speedway hasn’t been too good for Denny Hamlin. Four times he’s finished 36th or worse on the high-banked track, and only once has he only led in the 12 races he’s started. If Hamlin wants to contend for the championship, improving how he runs at the third track in the Chase is an absolute must.

Best-case Scenario For 2012
Darian Grubb duplicates the success he had with Tony Stewart, Denny Hamlin finds his confidence, Joe Gibbs Racing solves their engine and mechanical problems, and it equates to Hamlin doing what he couldn’t do in 2010, and securing his first championship.

Worst-case Scenario For 2012
Hamlin and Grubb don’t mesh, and for the first time in his career Hamlin finishes a year without a win and without being in the Chase.

In Their Words
“To stay successful, eventually you have to make change. The 14 (Tony Stewart) did it after a championship. For us, I know personally that Mike Ford is a winning crew chief and I’m not saying this because I’m trying to endorse him in any way, but I feel like he is one of the top-five crew chiefs within this garage. It was just something that needed to be done and I just feel like we have a great understanding and he is close with my family as well as I’m close with his. He is a friend to me first and he was a co-worker second. Sometimes you just have to make that change as tough as it is.”
–Denny Hamlin

Predicted Number of Wins: 3

The Racing Geek’s Final Thought
I like this driver-crew chief combination a lot and I think with time, they could be a force. But I’m not sure it’s going to be this year. It’s going to take some time before the offseason shakeup at JGR to take effect. However, once it does, it wouldn’t surprise me the least bit if Hamlin replicates his 2010 season, or at least comes close to doing so, and makes a serious run at the title.

Filed Under: 2012, Hamlin, NASCAR, Preseason Rankings, Sub-Feature

Hamlin Looks Ahead After Disappointing Year

10/01/2011 By Leave a Comment

It wasn’t supposed to be like this for Denny Hamlin.

A year after nearly toppling Jimmie Johnson and ending his reign of championships at four, Hamlin was supposed to use 2010 as a catapult for an even better 2011. One that would see him win his first Sprint Cup championship.

Instead, Hamlin has been plagued by unreliable engines, poor communication with his crew chief Mike Ford, and just plain old bad luck. Add everything together and it’s been a recipe for a disappointing, frustrating, and ultimately, unfulfilling season.

It all started ominously enough at Daytona in qualifying for the Daytona 500. Heading out onto the track to take his lap, Hamlin’s steering wheel became dislodged and he took a spin through the grass.

From there, the driver and team which had won a series-best eight races last year, struggled to find its way.

Whether it was getting wrecked at Bristol 30 laps into a 500-lap race or losing an engine the next week at Fontana on day when the No. 11 FedEx Toyota was clearly one of the fastest cars on the track.

Just when the ship appeared to be righted the following Sunday at Martinsville – Hamlin’s best track and a place where he had won the previous three events – lady luck cruelly intervened.

After having led 89 laps, Hamlin hit pit road for what was his final stop of the afternoon. It was then however, the yellow flag waved for a Regan Smith spin, trapping Hamlin a lap down. Although he fought back to place 12th in the final running order, it was yet another sign that 2011 was going to be a struggle.

As the bad finishes piled up, including a stretch where he finished 27th, 15th, 36th and 35th in consecutive weeks, it was only a matter of time before the buzzards began circling signaling that it was time for a much-needed shakeup for the team that had finished just 29 markers behind Johnson the year before.

More specifically, it was time for Ford, the only crew chief Hamlin had worked with at the NASCAR’s highest level, to be shown the door. Despite the fact Hamlin had never missed the Chase in five full seasons and had won 17 times with Ford calling the shots.

A move Hamlin was not in favor of making then or now, even while facing the reality of a season that came nowhere close to meeting anyone’s expectations.

“I feel like Mike is the guy for me. I feel like he’s done a great job,” said Hamlin Tuesday in a teleconference with reporters. “He won me eight races last year. Some of the things that we’ve had go wrong this year is crew chief related, some of them is not. Most of them are not. Some of them are driver related.

“I think at times during the season we’ve gotten off track between the two of us, and I feel like these last four or five weeks the communication has been better.

“I can win a championship with Mike; I really and truly do believe that. But we’ve just got to get our ship righted.”

Even though he did rally to make the Chase for the sixth straight year, an accomplishment in and of itself, Hamlin wasn’t able to shake the malaise that encompassed his team for almost all of 2011 when the green flag waved to signal the start of the playoffs.

In the Chase opener at Chicagoland, Hamlin, after qualifying 27th, made his way quickly up through the field and into the top-10. But a loose wheel followed by a fuel tank that ran dry just miles from the finish, left the native Virginian with another subpar result. This time a 31st-place finish.

More importantly, 41 points behind then point leader Kevin Harvick, it confirmed the obvious: 2011 just isn’t meant to be Denny Hamlin’s year.

That point was further driven home last week at New Hampshire.

On a track where he had always been stout, recording one career victory and an average finish of 7.8, Hamlin saw the final nail hammered in his championship coffin. Finishing two laps off the pace in 29th and leaving Loudon a whopping 66 points behind new series points leader Tony Stewart.

“The run we had going into the Chase where we had three consecutive top 10s, that was the best we had run three consecutive weeks throughout our entire season,” said Hamlin. “So for us to do it eight weeks in a row and then move those top-10s to top-fives would be very, very tough to do.

“Is it possible, yes. Is it likely, no.”

With his title hopes for the year put to bed, the time is now for Hamlin to reset his goals for the remaining eight races. Especially so with Martinsville, Texas and Homestead still on the horizon, all places Hamlin has been to victory lane at recently.

At the very least, he needs to attempt to use the rest of the year to build some momentum heading into the offseason. To set the table for a season in 2012 that will make 2011 nothing more than a distant memory.

“You know, when you have the pressure of winning a championship, a lot goes into that,” Hamlin said. “You’re constantly thinking about not making mistakes, and where do you want to finish this particular race.

“In the position I’m in at this point, we’re going out there and we’re trying to win, and that’s what we need to do to get back on track for 2012 is to win a few races before the season is over, and I feel like a no-points-pressure situation is just what we need.”

 

 

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Photo courtesy of NASCAR Media/Getty Images

 

Filed Under: Gibbs, Hamlin, NASCAR, Sub-Feature

Lessons Learned At The Halfway Point

06/12/2011 By Leave a Comment

When the checkered flag waved on the STP 400 last Sunday at Kansas Speedway, it signaled the official halfway point of the 2011 Sprint Cup regular season. What a memorable first half it’s been.

Through 13 races we’ve had unexpected first-time winners in two of the sports biggest events, a legend finding lost glory, NASCAR’s favorite son returning to prominence, Carl Edwards flexing his muscles on the track, with Richard Childress wielding his fists off of it, Richard Petty Motorsports rising up from the ashes, Kyle Busch getting some form of comeuppance, Juan Pablo Montoya threatening legal action against Ryan Newman for punching him, midrace temper tantrums from Kurt Busch and Martin Truex Jr., which brought in sweeping changes for their respective teams, notable flops from drivers who were expected to contend (Jeff Burton, Joey Logano, Jamie McMurray), secret fines that weren’t so secret, Ford, Chevy, Dodge and Toyota all having won at least once, and a plethora of other happenings which has made this season a worthy sequel to the phenomenal year that we saw in 2010.

Here’s a look back at some of the lessons we’ve learned thus far in 2011.

●With an emphatic victory at Phoenix which snapped his 66-race winless streak, Jeff Gordon showed the racing community that he still knows how to win. The bad news, his bouts with inconsistency likely will prevent him from winning his fifth Sprint Cup title.

●Not only is Jeff Gordon’s former crew chief, Steve Letarte, proving to be a miracle worker; he’s also proving to be a much better crew chief than I gave him credit for this offseason.

●Instead of going out with a bang in his final season with Hendrick Motorsports, Mark Martin – zero wins, one top-five, and four top-10s – is going out with a whimper. It’s all but a certainty that in what is likely his final full season in Sprint Cup, the driver who has finished runner-up in the championship five times will be on the outside looking in for the second straight year when the Chase commences in September.

●Ford (particularly the Roush Fenway cars) is head and shoulders above everyone else. Counting the non-points All-Star Race, cars with a blue oval on their hood have won five events this season. On top of that, points leader Carl Edwards is the clear-cut championship favorite, while teammate Matt Kenseth, with victories at Texas and Dover, is also a fringe title contender.

●As a follow-up to the above point, the Ford FR9 is everything it was cracked up to be and more. Since working out the kinks last summer of their long developed and much-maligned power plant, Ford has seen cars bearing its name make eight trips to the winner’s circle, including Trevor Bayne’s much celebrated victory in the Daytona 500.

●Trevor Bayne, Regan Smith, and Brad Keselowski have all won this season, while Tony Stewart, Denny Hamlin, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Greg Biffle, Kasey Kahne, and Clint Bowyer all are still looking for their first checkered flag of 2011.

●For fear of getting taken to the woodshed, you don’t mess with Richard Childress. A lesson Kyle Busch now knows all too well after the 65-year-old grandfather sent the 26-year-old cowering to the ground in a fetal position last Saturday in Kansas. Also, the expression “Here, hold my watch” has entered our lexicon as phrase that signals someone’s about to put a whuppin’ on somebody.

●The pipeline of young drivers climbing up through the ranks, which seemed dry just a season ago, is now oozing with talent. Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Justin Allgaier, Cole Whitt and Austin Dillon have all shown that they have the talent to one day be winners at the Sprint Cup level. And that’s not even taking into account 20-year-old Trevor Bayne’s triumph in the Daytona 500. Even better for these youngsters is there are more opportunites to compete at the next level than there were a couple of years ago, when Cup team owners shied away from putting a young driver in one of their cars due to lack of sponsorship and the cost involved in repairing wrecked cars through the inevitable growing pains associated with moving up to NASCAR’s top series.

●There is no more schizophrenic team in all of NASCAR than Kurt Busch and his No. 22 team. One week they look like world-beater’s, the next they look like a team coming apart at the seams. For example, last week at Kansas Kurt Busch started on the pole. Yet, as soon as the green flag dropped, the volatile driver was on his radio complaining he had a 43rd-place car. And what happened? All he did was lead the most laps and would’ve likely won had the race had not turned into a game of fuel-mileage. Judging from some of Busch’s comments this season, you’d think he would be somewhere in the teens points-wise. Instead, with a team he rails against almost weekly, he’s sixth overall and has racked-up the third-most top-10 finishes.

●The curse of finishing second to Jimmie Johnson lives on. A year after finishing runner-up to Johnson in the championship standings, Matt Kenseth, Jeff Gordon, Carl Edwards and Mark Martin all went winless and came nowhere close to the form they showed the previous year. Although he’s ran better as of late, and the expectation is he wins today at Pocono, the fact is Denny Hamlin has struggled for much of the year and is still is looking for his first victory of 2011.

●With just two top-10s and buried back in 27th in points, Jamie McMurray’s magical season of a year ago which saw him win a career-best three times, is looking more and more like a fluke.

●NASCAR’s revamping of how one qualifies for the Chase and implementing the two wildcard spots, is turning into a stroke of genius. The greater emphasis placed on winning has produced some outstanding racing with teams more willing to gamble and go all-out for victories than ever before. The ferocity will only get ratcheted up as the regular season dwindles down and the opening Chase race at Chicagoland gets closer and closer.

●Joey Logano may be all hype with little actual substance. The third-year driver, despite driving for the powerhouse known as Joe Gibbs Racing and having two-time championship crew chief Greg Zipadelli guiding the Home Depot team, Tony Stewart’s handpicked successor continues to languish in mediocrity.

This is just a sampling of the lessons we’ve learned halfway through the regular season. All of which brings us to some storylines I’m keeping an eye on as we enter the second half.

Crew Chief Roulette
Being a crew chief is a tenuous position with your job status always in constant flux. But with many a big-name driver – Jeff Burton, Brian Vickers, David Reutimann, Jamie McMurray, and the aforementioned Joey Logano – all struggling to find consistent success, perhaps none more so than in the next couple of months.

We saw the first shoe drop earlier this week when Michael Waltrip Racing announced Pat Tryson had been replaced as crew chief for Martin Truex Jr. Not a surprise, considering everyone knew the noose around Tryson’s neck was tightening following Truex’s meltdown a month ago at Richmond, all of which predicated an overhaul of his pit crew a few days later.

With the pressure to perform higher than ever and with the opportunity to sneak into the Chase now an option thanks to the wildcard, owners will not hesitate to make a change if they feel it will jumpstart their chances to get their driver into the playoffs. As with the stick-and-ball sports, it’s always easier to fire the manager than the players. The same theory holds true in NASCAR, where crew chiefs are often looked at as nothing more than scapegoats.

Wild Road To The Chase
The wildcard to getting a wildcard into the Chase is what happens at the two road courses the series visits each year, first later this month at Infineon and in August at Watkins Glen. Say Juan Pablo Montoya wins one or both of these races; the odds are it will be enough for him to snag a spot in the Chase. The same can be said for Marcos Ambrose, another expert road racer who has had a sneaky good year in his first season with Richard Petty Motorsports.

The King Is Dead, Long Live The King?
We say it every year, but it may apply more this year than any other, as there are some chinks in the armor of Jimmie Johnson and the 48 team. The vaunted pit crew which was overhauled in the offseason is still prone to the occasional blunder on pit road, and the magic wand which Chad Knaus often uses to make the Lowes Chevy stronger late in races seems to have run out of pixie dust. More than anything though, Johnson’s reign may come to an end not because of anything he or his team did or did’nt, but simply because the Roush Fenway camp is that much better. Particularly points leader Carl Edwards who, with the exception of Martinsville, has been stout week in and week out.

What’s Mark Going To Do?
Mark Martin has repeatedly said he has no plans to retire at the end of the year and that he plans to race somewhere in 2012. The question is for what team and in what series? No one wants to see one of the classiest and well respected drivers to ever turn a wheel put out to pasture, but the way things are unfolding there doesn’t look to be a ride for the 40-time Sprint Cup winner.

To be honest, I’m not sure Martin is set on enduring the 38-week grind known as the Sprint Cup Series. Look for an announcement sometime this summer that Martin will run a full Nationwide slate for Turner Motorsports with a handful of Cup races sprinkled in.

Danica Mania All The Time; But For Which Team?
Speaking of pending announcements, it’s all but a certainty that in the next month or two Danica Patrick will make it known she will be leaving IndyCar and will be making a fulltime move to NASCAR, where she will run the entire Nationwide schedule next year in preparation for move up to Sprint Cup in 2012. Like Martin, the question is which team will Patrick align herself with?

Conventional wisdom says she’d be foolish to leave Hendrick/JR Motorsports where she’s grown quite comfortable working with crew chief Tony Eury Jr. and where the equipment is always second to none. However, there are those who say it’s no guarantee that Patrick will continue her association with Rick Hendrick and Dale Earnhardt Jr. and that she, along with sponsor Go Daddy.com, will be taking her services elsewhere.

The Year of The Surprise
From Daytona to Kansas, 2011 has undoubtedly been the year of the surprise. Even after improbable winners at Daytona and Darlington, and an unlikely winner in Kansas, it’s hard to imagine we’ll see another unexpected race winner or amazing finish the rest of the year. One that will collectively make everyone go, “Wow, I didn’t see that coming.” However, with the way things have been going, there is always a chance. I’m not sure who it will be next, or when over the next 13 races it’s going to happen, but the way this season has gone, I think its fair to say expect the unexpected.

 

 

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Photo courtesy of NASCAR Media/Getty Images

Filed Under: Allgaier, Ambrose, Bayne, Busch, Danica Patrick, Edwards, Ford, Gibbs, Gordon, Hamlin, Harvick, Johnson, Kenseth, Letarte, Logano, Martin, McMurray, Montoya, NASCAR, Penske, Roush, Sub-Feature, Truex Jr., Tryson

Monday’s Thoughts: Maturity and Teamwork Propel Busch

05/02/2011 By Leave a Comment

Through the early parts of the season, a popular conversation has been whether marriage has mellowed and matured Kyle Busch to the point where he’s ready to seriously contend for his first Sprint Cup championship.

There have never been questions surrounding Busch’s ability to win, something which he’s done all seven seasons he’s run a full Cup schedule. However the question is, can the temperamental and talented driver harness that talent and withstand the rigors of a championship battle?

That won’t be completely answered until the year is up and Busch shows he can put it all together on and off the track during the 10 most pressurized weeks of the NASCAR season, the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

What’s also not open for debate is just how talented a racer the 26-year-old Busch is. This was further exemplified Saturday with a convincing win under the lights in the Crown Royal 400 at Richmond International Speedway. One that saw him lead 235 out of a possible 400 laps and easily cruise to his second victory of 2011.

“It was a really good evening for us,” said Busch, who now has won the spring Richmond race three years running. “We love coming to Richmond for some reason. It seems to run well for us – we like coming to this place.

“We always tend to have good racecars here.”

While being married will certainly help ground a man (I’ve heard), as will growing old (this I know), another step in the evolution of the “new and mature Kyle Busch” is the closer relationship he has with crew chief Dave Rogers. A partnership that’s had its share of ups and downs, with the most notably down occurring last fall at Texas. That was when Busch melted down on a NASCAR official resulting in him being penalized multiple laps and ended with a plea from Rogers to Busch to stop putting the 18 in a hole they couldn’t climb out of.

Now though, the duo is one of the stronger pairings in the garage.

“I think Kyle and I are definitely a lot closer than we were last year,” said winning the crew chief. “I texted him this week. We didn’t race last weekend and I found myself actually missing him.

“I just enjoy hanging out with Kyle, enjoy spending time with him. Monday is his birthday and I’m excited to have an early happy birthday present.”

Also helping the maturity process is the strong teamwork among the three Joe Gibbs Racing cars. To the point it was Busch’s teammate, Denny Hamlin, who shared some key information with Busch that aided him in securing his 21st-career win. Information neither wanted to disclose post-race and a piece of advice that came back to bite Hamlin as he finished a distant second.

But it speaks volumes about the relationship Busch and Hamlin have, where both go out of their way to help one another. Even if sometimes it can be to the determent of their own gain, much was the case for Hamlin this past weekend.

“They all realize that if I help Denny, Denny in turn is going to help me, and then we can help Joey (Logano),” explained team owner J.D. Gibbs. “It’s kind of one of those things when you give and buy into the concept that, ‘Hey, we are a team, we do help each other out.’ I think ideally you want to race each other for every win, with three of our guys up front at the end of the race. We can live with that outcome, racing each other for the victory. What you don’t want to do is have other guys beating you, you in-house not getting along or communicating.

“I think our guys do a good job. Selfishly they know if they help their teammate out in the long run it’s going to help them out. I think our guys do a good job of that communication, which isn’t easy.”

As he should, considering it’s only to his advantage, it’s a philosophy Busch buys into fully. Who’s to say that this “all for one” mantra combined with his newfound maturity doesn’t payoff for him in an even bigger way and lead him to his first championship six months from now?

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Even though Denny Hamlin was expected to run well this weekend, the fact that he still went out and finished second is a big step towards getting back to the level he was at for almost all of last year.

While a win would be nice for a driver and team that have struggled to find their way this season, rumors surfaced last week (that would later prove to be untrue) of a potential crew chief swap among two of the struggling Joe Gibbs cars. A second-place finish sure is a big boost of confidence for a team that had seemingly been in a funk through the early part of the season.

Although it’s easy to say Hamlin was predicted to run well this weekend, the truth is there already have been a few races this season where they were expected to do well but failed to produce the projected result. First at Phoenix, then at Martinsville followed by Texas, all tracks the No. 11 Toyota dominated at a year ago, but failed to perform well at in 2011.

So to think Hamlin, who coming in had just one top-10 finish in eight races, would be a factor Saturday was not a given.

But there he was running in the top-10 from the drop of the green flag and in position to capitalize if his teammate faltered in the closing laps.

Hamlin certainly hopes this past weekend represents some kind of turning point.

“I hope so,” Hamlin said. “Usually it’s about five, six races before we kind of get going. Maybe it’s just this year, I don’t know what race this is, about eight or so, maybe it’s taken us a few extra races.

“It’s my best finish of the year. I’m ecstatic, to be honest with you. You can’t be mad at second place. Yeah, I want to win, trust me. It burns that you didn’t win. But how we didn’t win I can live with.”

However one race doesn’t erase the previous eight. If Hamlin comes out and resumes his inconsistent ways at Darlington in the Southern 500, a race where he is the defending champion, doubt is again going to creep up. People will wonder if he still hasn’t put how 2010 ended behind him. And finishing second on a track where he generally runs well is quite a bit different from winning regularly like he did a year ago. Something Hamlin knows all too well.

“We know when we come to these racetracks we’re going to be contenders for a win,” said Hamlin. “I never even thought about one struggle that we had earlier in the year when we come here to Richmond. It’s like, Okay, we should win, regardless of what’s happened, how bad we ran up until this point. You forget about all that when you go to a racetrack that you have a lot of success. Hopefully this is the point in which we turn it around.”

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Typically Richmond is a good track for both Jimmie Johnson and Tony Stewart, where combined, the two have six victories. Though both left Richmond with top-10 finishes, it didn’t appear from the outset that either was going to have a productive night.

Johnson struggled with the handle of his Lowes Chevrolet so much so he found himself a lap down at one point.

But as they’ve been known to do, the 48 team continued to fight and eventually hit on a setup that worked well enough for them to get back on the lead lap courtesy of the Lucky Dog, and eventually leave the D-shaped track with an eighth-place finish.

The night Johnson had was almost a mirror image of the one experienced by Stewart. Who like Johnson at one point was a lap down, but persevered, got his lap back via the Lucky Dog and posted his first top-10 since finishing second at Las Vegas six races ago.

Not that the owner-driver was pleased with the result which netted him a ninth-place finish, offering a pretty direct assessment of where he thought his team was at nine races into the season.

“We suck right now. I am embarrassed about how bad our stuff is.”

Okay than, so much for thinking he would credit his crew for their hard-fought effort. Perhaps next time?

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Odds & Ends

►David Ragan’s fourth-place run was his first top-five finish in over two full years since finishing third at Talladega in the fall of 2008.

►Carl Edwards had a relatively quiet fifth-place finish, yet still was able to post his fifth top-five of 2011 and retained his points lead over Jimmie Johnson.

►Thanks to a late-race pit stop, which forced him to forfeit his running position inside the top-10, Dale Earnhardt Jr. saw his streak of seven consecutive races of finishing 12th or better come to an end as he came home 19th. Afterwards, a presumably frustrated Earnhardt didn’t meet with reporters, a move atypical of the sports most popular driver.

►A sixth-place finish by Clint Bowyer was his fifth straight of ninth or better and moved him up to seventh overall in the championship order.

►It was a great weekend all-around for Dave Blaney. First, midweek he and team owner Tommy Baldwin announced Golden Corral would sponsor the team for 19 of the 28 remaining races. This deal will allow the underfunded single-car team to race, and not have to resort to starting-and-parking. Secondly, Saturday night Blaney finished a surprising 13th which marked his best result since a 12th-place at Dover September of 2008, a span of 76 races.

If you would like to contact the author of this post, simply click here, and you can also follow The Racing Geek on Twitter.

Photo courtesy of NASCAR Media/Getty Images

Filed Under: Busch, Gibbs, Hamlin, Johnson, NASCAR, Richmond, Rogers, Stewart, Thoughts

The Sluggish Six

04/27/2011 By Leave a Comment

Eight races into the season and coming off the second off-week of the year, Saturday night’s race at Richmond has the appearance of a last stand for some drivers who had high expectations coming into the year.

Greg Biffle (16th in points), Denny Hamlin (17th), Martin Truex Jr. (19th), Jeff Burton (22nd), Jamie McMurray (23rd), and Joey Logano (24th) were each expected to contend for a spot in the Chase for the Sprint Cup and in some cases, the championship.

However, a third of the way through the 26-race regular season, none of the above drivers have looked like potential titlists and none of the six have yet to win a race this season. Even more problematic, combined the “Sluggish Six” have just one finish inside the top-five and seven top- top-finishes. Certainly not a sign that better things are to come as spring turns to summer.

Hope is not lost though thanks to the new Chase format NASCAR introduced in the offseason.

Instead of taking the twelve highest drivers in points, only the top-10 will get in automatically. The final two spots are being reserved for the two drivers 11-20th in points who score the most wins.

So unlike years past when it might be doom and gloom, Biffle, Hamlin, Truex, Burton McMurray and Logano still have a shot at squeezing their way into the Chase. Granted, all to varying degrees.

To do so, each has to start racing to the level that was expected of them heading into 2011 and not to the level each has shown through the first two months of the season.

That’s no given.

Here is what each of the Sluggish Six must do to qualify for the Chase, the likelihood of each actually doing so, and how they ended up in this position in the first place.

Greg Biffle

What Was Supposed To Happen
A strong second-half last season, which included Biffle making two trips to victory lane, and finishing sixth overall was supposed to carryover to 2011.

What Went Wrong
While two of his Roush Fenway Racing brethren, Carl Edwards and Matt Kenseth have been winning races this season, “The Biff” has been hampered by everything from getting crashed at Daytona compliments of his own teammate, to having chronic refueling issues at Las Vegas, to simply not being able to find the handle of his Ford Fusion.

Chances of Righting the Ship
Out of the six drivers in question, I feel the most confident about Greg Biffle racing for the championship when the Chase rolls around in mid-September. He’s still high enough in points that it isn’t out of the question to think he could drive his way into the top-10 in points. Judging by his recent results – a fourth-place finish at Texas followed by an eighth at Talladega – the speed is certainly there for him to do so.

Not to mention, with a host of intermediate tracks still to come (Charlotte, Kansas, Michigan (twice) and Atlanta), tracks which are Biffle and Roush Fenway’s bread-and-butter, him notching a win or two in the next 18 races is very doable.

Final Prognostication
Greg Biffle and his team are too good for them not to be in the Chase for the Sprint Cup. They’ll be in either because they’ve won a couple of times or they moved far enough up in the standings.

Denny Hamlin

What Was Supposed To Happen
A repeat of 2010, when Denny Hamlin was a tour de force, winning eight times, leading over a thousand laps and finishing second to Jimmie Johnson.

What Went Wrong
Whether they want to admit it or not, Hamlin and his FedEx team have a hangover one gets after a three day bender in Vegas. Also not helping matters is shoddy pit work, continued poor fuel-mileage out of their JGR engines, along with motors that are as reliable as one you’d find in a used car lot.

Chances of Righting the Ship
Dating back to his rookie season, Denny Hamlin has won at least one race every year, and owns multiple victories the last two years. One has to think eventually this team will put 2010 behind them and turn the page to 2011. To the point, it would surprise no one if Hamlin went out and won Saturday night on track where he’s won a race in each of the last two seasons.

Final Prognostication
Based on their track-record you can’t write this driver and team off quite yet, and to do so would be unwise. If Hamlin proved anything last year, it’s that you can’t count him down for the count no matter the circumstances. Although it might come down to the final lap in the last race before the Chase, one way or another, this team will be one of the 12 fighting it out for the title.

Martin Truex Jr.

What Was Supposed To Happen
In year two of his tenure at Michael Waltrip Racing and working with noted crew chief Pat Tryson, Martin Truex Jr. was at the very least expected to be more consistent, and if everything went according to plan, would likely top-15 finish their way into the Chase.

What Went Wrong
After a solid start which saw him as high as seventh in the standings, Martin Truex Jr. has hit a wall in back-to-back weeks. Literally. Suffering a harrowing wreck at Martinsville when his brakes gave out, then the next week at Texas, he again found the wall hard in a multi-car incident.

Chances of Righting the Ship
Because he doesn’t run up front enough and contend for victories regularly, it’s hard to image Truex winning enough races to snag one of the two wildcard spots. If he gets in, it will be because of where he’s at in points. And right now it’s hard to image the 56 team racking up enough points to qualify.

Final Prognostication
A crew chief change may soon be in the cards for this team, but even that won’t be enough to salvage Martin Truex Jr.’s season. In the end, this team will be on the outside looking in simply because they’re just not good enough.

Jeff Burton

What Was Supposed To Happen
A return to the form of a year ago, a form which had Jeff Burton looking like a darkhorse title contender for much of 2010, and not the driver-team combo which continually shot itself in the foot during the Chase.

What Went Wrong
In a nutshell, everything went wrong. At Daytona where he was one of the heavy favorites, Burton blew an engine, a rare occurrence for an Earnhardt-Childress motor, but a devastating one nonetheless. Followed by getting caught up in wrecks at Phoenix and Bristol, two tracks he traditionally runs well. On top of all this, there have been the continued misadventures by driver and team on pit road. Add everything up and the 31 team has yet to score a finish inside the top-10.

Chances of Righting the Ship
Because he’s such a good guy, you want to believe Jeff Burton can turnaround what really has been a dreadful start to 2011. Although the sad truth is there is no tangible evidence to suggest this is a realistic scenario.

Final Prognostication
It’s win or nothing for Jeff Burton. If he’s going to make the Chase for the second straight year and for the fourth time in six seasons, he’ll do so via a wildcard. While I always hate playing the role of Debbie Downer, it’s hard to have confidence in a driver who hasn’t been to victory lane in 85 starts.

Jamie McMurray

What Was Supposed To Happen
With three victories, two of which came in high-profile events, and a 13th-place finish in the yearend championship order, 2010 was supposed to springboard Jamie McMurray into the Chase for the first time in his career.

What Went Wrong
The speed this team showed last year has mostly vanished. And when the performance has been there, the luck hasn’t; from mechanical issues at Daytona, to getting swept up in a wreck at Phoenix, to flat tires and running out of fuel at Texas. Simply put, the mojo which defined Jamie McMurray’s season a year ago has vanished.

Chances of Righting the Ship
If this were a weather forecast I’d say fair to mostly cloudy. McMurray’s teammate Juan Pablo Montoya has been a constant presence in the top-10 this season, which gives hope that the No. 1 team can maybe glean some of what’s working so well for their Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing teammate. Except in the past, EGR has had trouble fielding two consistent race teams that can contend for victories on a regular basis. From all appearances early on, it looks to be Montoya who will be the flag bearer for EGR in 2011.

Final Prognostication
Jamie McMurray is one of the better restrictor-plate drivers in the garage, and with one plate race still to come in the regular season, it’s not out of the realm of possibilities to think he could find victory lane before the year is out. But unless this team dramatically ups its game on the cookie-cutter tracks, odds are even a single win still wouldn’t be enough for him to make the Chase.

Joey Logano

What Was Supposed To Happen
Coming off a strong sophomore campaign capped off by five finishes of seventh or better in the last eight races, 2011 was supposed to be the year where Joey Logano lived up to the sizeable hype which accompanied his arrival on the circuit three years ago.

What Went Wrong
Engine woes have plagued Joe Gibbs Racing this season and the driver who’s been most affected has been Joey Logano. A DNF due to a faulty valve train resulted in a 33rd-place finish at Phoenix, while at Bristol the engine had a skip in it pretty much from the drop of the green flag. Another issue has been the 20-year-old driver’s continued struggles with car control and learning how to make the best of days when his Toyota isn’t where he needs it to be.

Chances of Righting the Ship
Joe Gibbs Racing is one of the premiere organizations in NASCAR. All one has to do is look at what Kyle Busch has done this season and Denny Hamlin last year to see what the 20 team is capable of if everything comes together. However, Joey Logano isn’t yet in the same class of Kyle Busch or Denny Hamlin. More importantly, he’s still too inconsistent to mount a serious charge up the standings.

Final Prognostication
Joey Logano is capable of putting together stretches where he’s a fixture towards the front of the field. Just look at how he closed out the 2010 season. The problem is, he tends to run hot and cold, and if he is to make the Chase based on points, he’s used all his mulligans for the year and can’t afford another finish in the 20s. With 18 races still to go, that’s a tall task for any driver.

As for getting into the playoffs due to winning, until Logano proves he can win a race based on merit and not through the intervention of Mother Nature, this option is almost not nonexistent.

 

 

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Filed Under: Biffle, Burton, Hamlin, Logano, McMurray, NASCAR, Sub-Feature, Truex Jr.

Monday’s Thoughts: Four Laps Is All The Difference

04/04/2011 By 1 Comment

Four fewer laps and Dale Earnhardt Jr. would have snapped his 98-race winless streak that at times, felt more like 198 races.

Four fewer laps and unquestionably the sports most popular driver would have returned to victory lane for the first time in eons.

Four fewer laps and Junior Nation would have certainly torn down the grandstands in a wild celebration that surely would have lasted well into the night.

Four fewer laps and NASCAR officials, along with their television partners, would have been popping corks and spraying champagne as if they had personally won the race.

Except sometimes there are no fairytale endings and prince doesn’t end up marrying the princess.

While other times, occasionally the bad guy tops the hero and leaves him wondering what he did wrong.

Yesterday, before a packed house of 60,000 fans doing their best to will the prodigal son to victory, Kevin Harvick, adorned in a black car befitting the villain role he was playing, muscled under Earnhardt 2 ½ miles from the finish and sped away for his second win in as many weeks.

“I could see the people just going crazy coming off of turn two when he took the lead from Kyle (Busch),” said Harvick, who won for the 16th time in his career. “And as I was catching him, ‘I’m like, man, I’m going to be the bad guy here. But I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do.’”

But no one’s going to begrudge Harvick for doing what he’s paid to do. His job is to win races for team owner Richard Childress. And judging by the results over the past year and change, which has seen Harvick win five races and mount a serious charge at his first Sprint Cup championship, it’s a job he’s quite good at.

“I know the fans want to see him win,” Harvick acknowledged in the media center afterwards. “I want to see him win. I want to see Dale Junior win. It would be great for the sport and I think today went a long ways to showing how competitive that they can be racing for wins, and that’s what we need.

“We all need him to win. But I’m not going to back down.”

Even Harvick’s car owner would like to see the son of the legend, who once drove for him, back in victory lane. With the only caveat being it can’t come at the expense of one of his four cars.

“We all want to see Dale Junior win a race,” declared Richard Childress, who won at Martinsville for the first time since 1995. “If one of our four cars can’t win, I’d like to see him win. But you don’t want to let him win at your expense. And Kevin had to do what he had to do right there at the end and I was proud of him.”

And it’s not as if Harvick doesn’t understand what it’s like to be in Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s position.

Just last year, Harvick himself was immersed in a 115-race stretch that spanned almost three full seasons where he failed to win a Cup points-race. A period of time which left him questioning the ability of his team and more importantly himself.

Now, a year after returning to his winning ways, Harvick is a frequent visitor to victory lane and is regarded as a serious threat to unseat Jimmie Johnson. So yesterday’s victor can relate to the frustration Earnhardt is experiencing. Frustration that was still evident in Earnhardt after a race that lasted 3 hours and 32 minutes and saw him post his best finish since last year’s Daytona 500.

“Dale Junior will win races, said Childress. “He will come back. We have been in that situation. We have had a long dry spell, so I know what it meant if he could have won that race.

“But like I say, we did what we had to do and that was, win the race.”

If there was anything that was made clear post-race, it was this: The Fire in Dale Earnhardt Jr. to win burns deeply.

“We had an opportunity to win the race,” said Earnhardt. “I’m disappointed that I didn’t get the job done and it will probably bother me more and more as the night goes on.

“I’ll probably think about it a million times what I probably could have done differently.”

It’s an inferno that’s not going to be tempered just because of one good finish. Despite the promise he and new crew chief Steve Letarte have shown in the six races they’ve worked together, and despite a performance which moved the driver up to eighth in points and reinforced the widespread belief that he and Letarte are close to a breakthrough.

“I think if I know what’s best for me, I should probably have a good attitude about what happened today and probably go into the next race and use it as momentum and confidence, like any other good driver would do, instead of worrying about how close we came.”

Sunday is to be looked at as a building block for a team struggling to climb out of the abyss. The next step is winning. Something Earnhardt feels his team is close to doing and has confidence that they will do so soon.

“I should be thankful and grateful that I had the opportunity I had today and for the opportunity I got to work with the team I’m with. To even be here competing, and take this momentum and take what looks like to be a better start to the season than I’ve had in a while to the next racetrack and just keep trying to plug away.”

Yesterday Earnhardt had every reason to be proud, and dare I say, optimistic that brighter days are ahead.

In a race that featured a track-record 31 lead changes, he looked a lot like the driver who once won six races in a season and on three occasions has finished fifth or better in the yearend standings.

But if there is something for him to lament, it’s the fact that Sunday’s race wasn’t four laps shorter.

###

They entered the weekend as the prohibitive favorites. Combined they had won the last nine Martinsville races and as such, victory number 10 seemed a mere formality. For much of the Goody’s Fast Relief 500, Denny Hamlin and Jimmie Johnson lived up to the hype.

Hamlin ascended to the point from his fifth starting-position by lap 35 and on the day led a total of 89 laps. Whereas Johnson led 65 laps after starting 14th and looked to be inline for his seventh win on the oldest track on the NASCAR schedule.

But thanks to a series of miscues on pit road, neither Johnson nor Hamlin factored into the outcome, as they finished 11th and 12 respectively.

Johnson’s chance at winning was wiped out when during his final pit stop of the afternoon, he was flagged by race officials for speeding. A penalty which Johnson vehemently questioned.

“I wasn’t speeding,” Johnson said. “They (NASCAR) didn’t like how it looked, the way I managed my timing lines. Had this happened one other time where I do a good job with my timing lines to know exactly where I needed to accelerate and where I needed to stop.

“There is just no way. People will say whatever. But with the math and the way we know our timing lines, there is just no way. You accelerate real hard through your timing zone. A lot of guys get dinged for that. I’ve been dinged a couple of different times. Usually you get dinged when you pass someone or break the plane of the car in front of you. With no one there, I accelerated like I always so from my mark. There is just no way. There is just no way.”

As for Hamlin, any chance he had at the win was severely undermined by continually slow stops by his pit crew. It got to the point that crew chief Mike Ford had little choice but to call in a replacement for his front tire changer mid-race.

It still wasn’t enough for Hamlin who was noticeably irritated when he stepped out of his car.

“We need to work on who we’re going to have change tires for us I guess. Things like that, it’s pretty tough. Especially mid-season. You’ve got chemistry and stuff that you’ve got to deal with, but at this point you either work with what you’ve got or try to find someone that maybe can do a better job.”

Adding to Hamlin’s frustration was this was supposed to be a race that helped turnaround a season which has yet to find any traction. Although a 12th-place finish is better than the 39th-place finish he experienced last week at Fontana, he still has yet to resemble the driver who won eight races a year ago and finished runner-up in the standings.

“It’s disappointing for sure,” Hamlin said. “We’re going to another good track next week for us. We have to get rolling. We have to get some good, solid finishes. At this point, I’m just happy we finished the race being everything that’s going on. We’re making slow and steady progress I guess.”

###

Odds & Ends

● It’s been stated many times prior, but it needs to be said yet again: NASCAR needs to be commended for their diligent work in implementing all the safety features that they have. This was on display again yesterday after the throttle hung in Martin Truex Jr.’s Toyota and he crashed violently into the Turn-3 wall. An accident in which he wouldn’t have walked away from like he did if this had been 10 years ago.

 ● Jeff Gordon (5th) posted his first finish inside the top-10 since winning at Phoenix.

 ● Matt Kenseth battled back from a lap down to finish in sixth, his third consecutive finish of sixth or better.

 ● Looking at the box score it will show polesitter Jamie McMurray led 31 laps and finished seventh. From all appearances a rather routine day. But it was anything but uneventful, as a loose lug nut less than 150 laps from the finish forced the 2010 Daytona 500 winner into scramble mode. But thanks to a fast car and flawless pit stops the rest of the way, McMurray was able to net his first top-10 finish of the season.

 ● A 13th-place finish yesterday represented Joey Logano’s best result of 2011.

 ● Engine related issues relegated Paul Menard to his worst finish (38th) since joining Richard Childress Racing.

 

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Filed Under: Childress, Earnhardt Jr., Hamlin, Harvick, Johnson, Martinsville, NASCAR, Thoughts

Hamlin Counting On Martinsville For A Jumpstart

03/31/2011 By Leave a Comment

 

When the circuit travels to Martinsville Speedway, it is a time of great anticipation. The half-mile track, nestled in the mountains of Virginia, harkens back to the sports roots. A time when the NASCAR scheduled mainly consisted of races on bullring tracks throughout the southeast, and drivers regularly battled with their bumpers on the track and with their fists frequently off of it.

But if you were to survey the garage and ask drivers whose most looking forward to Sunday’s running of the Goody’s Fast Relief 500, the almost universal response would be Denny Hamlin.

Not only because Martinsville is a track Hamlin has dominated on to the tune of four wins and nine consecutive finishes of sixth or better, but more importantly, because it offers him a perfect opportunity to turn around what has been a stagnant start to his 2011 season.

Entering this weekend, the native Virginian has looked nothing like the driver who won eight races a year ago and finished a close second to Jimmie Johnson in the yearend points.

Through five races Hamlin has collected one finish inside the top-10, has an average finish of 22.2 and finds himself 21st in the standings, 75 markers behind points leader Carl Edwards.

But let’s be honest; coming out of the gate slowly is something that’s familiar to the No. 11 FedEx team.

Since joining the team fulltime in 2006, Hamlin’s point position after five races has been 17th, 9th, 15th, 8th and 19th. So it’s not as if this year is all that different from the previous ones in that regard. Especially last year, where Hamlin posted five consecutive finishes of 17th or worse and looked nothing like the championship contender he was expected to be.

This weekend is shaping up to be a pivotal one for the 16-time race winner. Much like he did a year ago, Hamlin needs a good run Sunday to turnaround his season. Not that the confident, some would say cocky, driver is worried.

“[The] Martinsville spring race always seems to be the springboard for our season,” Hamlin said last week during a teleconference to promote his upcoming charity race at Richmond. “Whenever we have struggles for the first five races or so, Martinsville falls around that fifth or sixth race of the season for us, and that’s when we hit our momentum, as soon as we get there.”

However, there’s only so much Hamlin can do to ensure he leaves Martinsville with the finish he needs. If you give him a car capable of winning, odds are he’ll find a way to get it to the front and victory lane.

The downfall to Hamlin’s season thus far is that Joe Gibbs Racing, which typically produces some of the most reliable cars in the garage, has been inundated by engine problems.

In every race this season, from Daytona to Auto Club Speedway, at least one JGR engine has had an engine-related issue of some sort. Taking prerace engine changes into account, six times in 2011 either Hamlin, Kyle Busch or Joey Logano has had difficulty with their engines that either necessitated an engine change altogether, or saw their day come to a premature end in the race.

Something Hamlin himself experienced firsthand last Sunday at Fontana. On that day, Hamlin had a strong car and looked to be inline for his first top-five finish of the season. But a parts failure almost halfway into the 400-mile race put an abrupt halt to what should have been a good points day for a driver who desperately needed one. As a result he left with another poor finish, 39th-place.

“It’s disappointing for sure,” said a dejected Hamlin afterwards. “We had a good car and I was just kind of playing with my teammate there early. We lost some power early on in the day when we started dropping positions. We didn’t know exactly what it was. Obviously, it was another engine failure and what not. It’s frustrating from my stand point.

“We got some really good tracks coming up for us.”

Ultimately, Hamlin has confidence in his team to resolve the number one issue that’s been holding them back this season. And why shouldn’t he? It is after all the same organization which won a series-best 11 races in 2010 and has seen its three cars win a combined 31 times since 2008.

“The good part about it and the reason I don’t panic is I know I’ve got a really strong race team,” said Hamlin. “Obviously we’ve been contenders over these last five years for a reason: that’s because of the core group of guys working on this team, and they continue to give me good racecars every weekend.

“For me, it’s pretty encouraging. Until we get to probably six or seven races before the Chase starts, that’s when you got to really analyze where you’re at in your points position.”

 

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Filed Under: Hamlin, Martinsville, NASCAR, Sub-Feature

Monday’s Thoughts: Harvick Outduels Johnson For The Win

03/28/2011 By Leave a Comment

Be it baseball, basketball or NASCAR, every sport is bound to have a clunker or two throughout the course of a season. Not every game/race is going to be a memorable event that leaves fans talking for days. That’s just a fact.

For the first 380 miles of the Auto Club 400, it seemed all but a given that Kyle Busch was going to win in a rout. There was simply no car on the track that could hang with the 18 car for any extended period of time. On top of that, the field, as it often does on the two-mile racetrack, strung itself out and we saw very little side-by-side racing.

The race was shaping up to be the very definition of boring and forgettable.

However a spirited three-way battle in the closing laps between Busch, Kevin Harvick and Jimmie Johnson gave us an ending which left fans, both at home and at the track, happy with what transpired.

Seeing Busch trying to feverishly hold off a determined Johnson and Harvick was as good a battle that we’ve seen on the track in recent memory. That it featured three drivers who won a combined 12 Sprint Cup races last season made it all the better.

The icing on the cake though, was the mano-mano duel on the last lap that transpired between Johnson and Harvick just after they worked their way by Busch.

Johnson was doing everything in his power to keep the No. 29 car behind him, while Harvick glued his front bumper to the back of the 48 as the two charged into Turn 3. It was then that Harvick squeezed his car between the wall and Johnson and powered to his first win of 2011.

“I really had a good run coming off of turn two, and he (Johnson) rolled up in front of me, so I just laid on the back bumper all the way down the back straightaway, gave him a couple seconds to think about what was going to happen going into turn three,” said Harvick.

“The reason I did that, I just needed the one lane up top. I knew what I was going to do. I was hoping he would just roll through the middle of the racetrack or on the bottom or something.

“So it all worked out.”

Johnson was so enamored with the move Harvick executed on the white flag lap; he took to Twitter after the race to express his admiration.

“Great job @KevinHarvick, took some balls to pull off that outside pass,” Johnson tweeted. “Congrats.”

A race that had been filled with boredom and little to no action instantly became a race everyone will be raving about for the next week.

That is unless you were the driver who led 151 of 200 laps and seemed destined to win for the second week in a row. Except even Kyle Busch, who slid back to third, had to admit the last 10 laps was the kind of racing that makes fans standup and take notice.

“It’s never over till it’s over,” Busch said post-race. “That’s why it’s called racing. That’s why you have to wait till the checkered flag to see what happens.

“For all the fans that went home early when I was leading, with 20 to go, they missed a good finish, an exciting finish, with those two guys being able to battle it out on the last lap.

Don’t let the fact that Harvick only led one lap all day cloud your judgment in thinking he didn’t deserve the victory. It doesn’t matter how many laps you lead, the only lap that counts is the final one. That’s the lap that pays the most money and dictates how points awarded.

When it counted the most, it was Harvick who was standing the tallest. In the process, he defeated the driver who’s been a thorn in his side for the last couple of years. As was the case last year when in this race, Harvick came up short on the last lap and wasn’t able to pass Johnson for the win, despite having the dominant car. He lamented the loss afterwards with his famous quip about the 48 having a “golden horseshoe up their ass.”

“This race one year ago is what helped us win today, by being patient, not taking yourself out of the race, having something there at the end until it was time to go,” explained Harvick, who won for the 15th time in his career.

“I mean, those guys are five-time champions, won a ton of races. We feel as a team we can race right with ‘em, but so does everybody else. There are a lot of other guys that think the same thing, but nobody’s beat them in five years. We’ve just got to keep chipping away at it.”

###

Preseason I was convinced Denny Hamlin and his FedEx team would suffer some sort of hangover after losing the championship in the manner they did. I didn’t think then and I don’t think now, that the hangover was going to last the whole year. But it would be enough to prevent Hamlin from coming anywhere close to matching his stellar 2010 season.

Five races into the year with Hamlin mired back in 21st in the standings, it would appear as if my prognostication for once was spot-on. Except for the fact the 11 team’s struggles this season has nothing to do with how they coughed the title and ended ’10.

The biggest culprit to Hamlin’s slow start can be attributed more to the numerous issues Joe Gibbs Racing has had with its engines.

All three JGR drivers, but more so Hamlin and Joey Logano, have been plagued this season with reliability issues. On Sunday, it was more of the same.

Logano had to forfeit his third starting position after a prerace engine change necessitated that he move to the back of the field. As for Hamlin, his engine woes surfaced about 80 laps into the race at a time he was comfortably running in the top-five, and looked to have a car close to the performance-level of his teammate Kyle Busch. The faulty engine, likely due to a bad part, saw Hamlin end the day 39th in the running order. 

If there is a silver lining in all this, it’s that slow starts are something the 11 team is very familiar with. Last season, the team opened with five consecutive finishes of 17th or worse and looked flat. But things quickly changed for the better with a win in the fifth race of the year at Martinsville. From there, the switch was flipped and Hamlin sped to seven more victories over the next 30 races.

Wouldn’t you know it, next week’s race just happens to be at Martinsville, where Hamlin has won four of the last six races.

###

Odds & Ends

● Team Red Bull Racing had its best outing since Daytona last July, with both Brian Vickers (8th) and Kasey Kahne (9th) posting finishes inside the top-10.

● In his 150th Sprint Cup start, polesitter Juan Pablo Montoya came home 10th.

● With a seventh-place run, Clint Bowyer recorded his first top-10 finish of 2011. The finish jumped him up seven spots in the standings to 17th.

● A dismal day which saw him finish 17th cost Kurt Busch his points lead, as both Carl Edwards, who finished sixth, and Ryan Newman, fifth, passed Busch in the championship order. Sunday marked the first time this year Busch finished outside the top-10.

● It was announced Sunday morning that Austin Dillon will be making his Sprint Cup debut later this season in a car fielded by Curb-Agajanian Performance Group. The grandson of Richard Childress is the reigning Truck Series Rookie of the Year.

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Filed Under: Auto Club Speedway, Bowyer, Busch, Childress, Dillon, Gibbs, Hamlin, Harvick, Johnson, Kahne, Logano, Montoya, NASCAR, Thoughts

Monday’s Thoughts: Stewart Stumbles; Carl Cashes In

03/07/2011 By Leave a Comment

When you’re in Las Vegas, it’s only natural to gamble. After all, that’s what you do when you visit the city where you have the option to pop a quarter into a slot machine at every corner.

Like the majority of those who come to the desert looking to strike it big, Tony Stewart left Sin City disappointed, frustrated and wondering where it all went wrong, after a late gamble saw the owner-driver give away a race that he should’ve won.

Throughout the day, Stewart’s No. 14 Chevy was the class of the field as he led a race-high 166 laps and consistently pulled away from the field with relative ease.

But Stewart’s house of cards came crashing down on lap 153. It was then, during a pit stop, an air wrench got stuck in the left rear of his car. Unaware, Stewart drove off with it still attached. That’s a penalty under the NASCAR rulebook, one that requires the offending party, in this case Stewart, to serve a drive thru penalty.

The punishment dropped the 2002 and ’05 Sprint Cup champion back to 23rd and from there he was in catch-up mode the rest of the afternoon.

In an effort to recuperate his lost track position, crew chief Darrian Grubb called for two-tires on the team’s second to last pit stop of the day. The move worked as Stewart jumped his back in the lead.

But the gamble came with a price.

With just about everyone behind him taking four tires on the same pit stop cycle in which he took two, it put Stewart in a position where he was going to have to get four fresh Goodyear’s on his final stop. While at the same time, it opened the door for those who had taken four tires to go with just two during their final pit stops of the afternoon.

A classic no-win proposition for Stewart in a town filled with them.

“I honestly think we had the car to beat today, we just gave it away,” said a dejected Stewart. “Just shot ourselves in the foot two weeks in a row now.”

However, it wasn’t all doom and gloom for Stewart, as his runner-up finish moved him into a tie with Kurt Busch atop the standings. Not that Stewart was thinking about that afterwards.

“I probably should (feel solace in finishing second), but that’s not in my makeup,” said Stewart. “I mean, it kills me to throw a race away like that, especially at a place we haven’t won at yet. This was a big deal today, and when you lead that many laps and have a car that’s that fast and you lose it.”

When you gamble trying to hit it big, the odds are you’re going to roll snake eyes. A lesson Tony Stewart now knows all too well.

###

If there’s a driver who can sympathize with Tony Stewart’s plight, it would be the guy who was celebrating in victory lane at the end of 400 miles of racing.

A week ago in Phoenix, Carl Edwards had a car underneath him that was as good as he’s ever driven. It was a car that should have won the race, as long as he kept the engine running and the car in one piece.

Except that’s easier said than done.

Contact with Kyle Busch led to Edwards hitting the wall and a potentially winning racecar was turned into a crumpled one.

The emotions Edwards felt then were the exact feelings Stewart felt seven days later. Funny thing is though; Edwards didn’t feel like he was owed one after what happened in Phoenix.

“It is amazing that it worked out this well,” Edwards said. “It isn’t something you can count on you know. It was a long week.”

With the win he lost now found, Edwards can rejoice in what has been a fantastic start to his 2011 season. Three races into the year, the Roush Fenway driver has had a car good enough to win each week, and as a result, he finds himself just seven points out of first in the standings.

“This is the best start to a season that I have ever had, said Edwards,” who won for the 19th time in his career. “I am really excited about the season. This is a great start.”

It is a great start that could easily turn into more, as five of the 10 previous winners in Las Vegas have gone on to win the championship.

Although it’s hard to call anyone a favorite so early in the year, it’s clear which driver has asserted his dominance heading into the first bye week of the season.

It’s the same driver who’s won three of the past five races dating back to last year and left Vegas like so few of us do – a winner.

###

There was an international flavor Sunday among front running cars, with Juan Pablo Montoya and Marcos Ambrose each turning in outstanding runs, which netted them third- and fourth-place finishes, respectively.

Montoya’s third-place finish represented the second time this season he’s finished sixth or better. Add it up, and he’s a solid fourth in the standings, just seven markers behind co-leaders Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch. A far cry from last year when a 37th-place finish in this race saw him leave Vegas 26th in the standings and already on the verge of being eliminated from the Chase.

“To get a top-five here today in Vegas after what happened the last few years here it’s amazing,” Montoya stated. “We had a really good Daytona, bad Phoenix and we ran good here. Three good finishes at least in points is good.”

Ambrose, making his third start for the revamped Richard Petty Motorsports team, this was a day that he needed after a disappointing Daytona (37th-place finish) and a subpar day at Phoenix (16th.)

“There was a ton of good energy out here today, just a ton of good energy,” said the Australian native. “I am really happy with the finish.”

In his third race with a new team, the former Australian Touring Car champion is hopeful this is the start of something special.

“It was a great day. It was a great first top-five for RPM. I have to thank Richard Petty for believing in me and giving me a shot. It is going to be a great year.”

###

It hasn’t been flashy nor has it been necessarily pretty, but the pairing of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and crew chief Steve Letarte is quickly proving to be an effective combination.

The 88 team struggled to find the handle on their Chevrolet throughout the weekend. They never were quicker than 25th in practice and in qualifying they were only able to clock in the 33rd fastest time.

But like we’ve seen at Daytona and Phoenix, the 88 team is proving to be a gritty bunch. Earnhardt didn’t get down on himself like he has the past couple of years, and as such, was able to provide good feedback to Letarte, who continued to make good adjustments with each passing pit stop. The end result was a car Earnhardt could drive through traffic and by mid-race, was solidly in the top-10.

When the checkered flag waved, Earnhardt crossed the line in eighth and had his second top-10 finish in has many weeks.

“We made some great adjustments and the car just drove better and better,” said a smiling Earnhardt. I just kept describing what I was feeling and what I thought I needed and Steve was really hitting right on it about every time.

“I’m happy. It’s a fun team; a great group of guys. I’m proud to be a part of it and hope I can keep working well and keep doing well.”

It was a happy, confident, and dare I say optimistic, Dale Earnhardt Jr. That’s not something we’ve seen too much of in the last couple of years.

###

Odds & Ends

●It was an unhappy homecoming for Kyle Busch, who rolled into this weekend as the points leader, but dropped 13 spots in the championship order after a motor failure 107 laps into the race.

●Jeff Gordon was a victim of one of the numerous tire failures we saw on Sunday. Last week’s winner lost his right front tire 74 laps from the end and slammed the wall hard in Turn-4 and finished 36th. Luckily for him, the Safer Barrier allowed him to escape without injury.

● Brian Vickers’ 10th-place finish was his best effort since finishing 10th at Darlington last May, when he was forced to step out of the car the following week for the remainder of the year, due to blood clots.

●Despite starting last due to a pre-race engine change, Denny Hamlin turned in his first top-10 finish (seventh) of 2011.

●Jimmie Johnson was a non-factor and had a pedestrian 16th-place finish.

 

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Photo courtesy of NASCAR Media/Getty Images

Filed Under: Ambrose, Busch, Earnhardt Jr., Edwards, Gordon, Hamlin, Johnson, Las Vegas, Letarte, Montoya, NASCAR, Stewart, Thoughts, Vickers

Preseason Driver Rankings: #8 Denny Hamlin

02/18/2011 By 1 Comment

Denny Hamlin
No. 11 FedEx Toyota Camry
Team: Joe Gibbs Racing
Crew Chief: Mike Ford

2010 Stats
Wins: 8
Top-5s: 14
Top-10s: 18
Poles: 2
DNFs: 2
Average Start: 17.2
Average Finish: 12.9
Races Led: 20
Laps Led: 1,184
% Laps Completed: 97.7%
Points Finish: 2nd

2010 in a Nutshell
Denny Hamlin won eight times, collected 14 top-five finishes, 18 top-10s and led the third-most laps. But his success in 2010 was overshadowed by how the season ended, where a series of mistakes by him and his team resulted in Hamlin falling 33-points shy of winning his first Sprint Cup championship.

Best-case Scenario for 2011
The best-case scenario for Denny Hamlin is that he finds a way to replicate the year he had in 2010 with only two changes. One being how his team manages their fuel strategy and two, Hamlin doesn’t hit the panic button in the last race of the season and go for a spin through the grass less than 30 laps into a 400-mile race.

Worst-case Scenario for 2011
Like the morning after a bender in Las Vegas, Denny Hamlin can’t shake his hangover and the bitterness of losing the title in the manner he did. The hangover lingers for most of, if not all of 2011.

Reasons to Believe
Yes, the 48 walked away with the championship hardware, but the 11 has been the superior team since the fall of 2009…Hamlin is adamant that he has put the end of 2010 behind him and that all last season did, was make him hungrier to win in 2011…Joe Gibbs Racing is arguably the best organization in NASCAR…Mike Ford doesn’t get the credit he deserves for the masterful job he has done in building this team and helping his driver mature both on and off the track…No matter the kind of oval – superspeedway, intermediate, short track, flat-mile – Hamlin excels on them all…This team is capable of rolling off multiple victories in a row and is downright scary if they’re clicking.

Reasons to Doubt
The way this team coughed up the championship has to have some sort of negative effect…Hamlin’s overconfidence, often construed as cockiness, sometimes can be a determent…Has Joe Gibbs fixed their issues with fuel mileage?…The 11 has a way of self-destructing at the absolute worst time possible (remember Phoenix?)…It’s going to be awfully tough for the 11 team to come anywhere close to matching what they did in ’10…How strong is the chemistry between Hamlin and Ford after Texas and Phoenix and what happens to Ford, if this team is slow to come out of the gate?

Area of Strength: Martinsville
Like a lot of great drivers – and yes, Denny Hamlin is a great driver – he is successful on just about every kind of track on the schedule, and has few weaknesses behind the wheel. But like Dale Earnhardt was at Talladega and Darrell Waltrip was onetime at Bristol, Hamlin has become virtually unbeatable at Martinsville.

He owns three-straight victories on the half-mile oval and four overall, not to mention 10 top-10s in 11 career starts and has an average finish of 6.1. It is a track he absolutely owns. What was once a track where Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson dominated has now become Hamlin’s own personal playground.

Area of Weakness: Long Memory
Denny Hamlin is resolute that he’s going to be able to put 2010 behind him. To him it’s a non-issue. There’s nothing he can do except learn from it and use it to make himself better the next time he’s in the same position.

Okay, I can buy Hamlin’s remarks. I can see how last year’s disappointment could end up making him a better driver down the road. But to say that last year won’t have some sort of negative impact on his 2011 season is misguided. You can’t come that close and lose in the manner that Hamlin did, and not have it affect your performance on the track.

Predicted Number of Wins: 3

The Racing Geek’s Final Thought
Here’s the thing. Since 2000, if you look at where guys who finished second in points are in the standings the subsequent year, only one driver – Bobby Labonte in 2000 — was able to go on win the championship.

When you factor in how Matt Kenseth, Jeff Gordon, Carl Edward and Mark Martin did the year after getting knocked out by Jimmie Johnson, it’s hard to image Denny Hamlin being able to pick himself up off the mat and mount a serious challenge in 2011.

Whether he wants it to be or not, the 2010 championship runner-up is going to have to deal with questions about last year all season. Only making it all the tougher to forget.

My prediction is by the end of the year, Hamlin, who will win some races and at times look like a title contender, will admit that 2010 carried over and cost him a finish in the upper-echelon of the yearend standings.

 

If you would like to contact the author of this post, simply click here, and you can also follow The Racing Geek on Twitter.

Photo courtesy of NASCAR Media/Getty Images

Filed Under: 2011, Gibbs, Hamlin, NASCAR, predictions, Preview
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