Johnson

Preseason Driver Rankings: #4 Jimmie Johnson

02/26/2012 By The Racing Geek Leave a Comment

Jimmie Johnson
No. 48 Lowes Chevy
Team: Hendrick Motorsports
Crew Chief: Chad Knaus

2011 Stats
Wins: 2
Top-5s: 14
Top-10s: 21
Poles: 0
DNF: 2
Average Start: 12.9
Average Finish: 11.9
Races Led: 23
Laps Led: 1,115
% Laps Completed: 99.2%
Points Finish: 6th

2011 in a Nutshell
After five consecutive championship seasons which continually showcased the talent, depth, resolve and unflappability of the entire 48 team, the streak finally came to an end. That it came to end the way it did with Jimmie Johnson putting together statistically the worst season of his career, was not expected.

Reasons to Believe
Jimmie Johnson didn’t magically forget how to drive a racecar and Chad Knaus didn’t all of a sudden forget how to tune a car to go faster … The same core group which won five straight titles is still in place … After a season he referred to as both disappointing and frustrating, Johnson is determined to fight his way back to the top of the standings … A very focused Hendrick Motorsports could spell trouble for the competition … Johnson may not get the credit he’s due, but he is a damn fine racecar driver who has the talent to win anywhere … While they may not admit it publically, there’s a sense this team allowed themselves to get complacent, and the letdown of last year has allowed everyone on the 48 team to refocus … They were their own worst enemy last season continually throwing away potential wins and good finishes … Johnson has never won fewer than two races in a season and is the only driver to have qualified for every Chase For the Sprint Cup … He has racked-up over a thousand laps led for five straight years.

Reasons to Doubt
Career-lows in wins in 2011, and maybe more worrisome, is his win total has dropped for each of the last three years … Fatigue and the possibility of burnout is an issue with Chad Knaus. One has to wonder how much longer he can continue in his continued role … The communication between Johnson and Knaus wasn’t there in 2011 and if that isn’t fixed, title No. 6 is nothing more than a pipedream … Furthermore, it seems as if both driver and crew chief are at the end of the rope with one another and a drastic change needs to occur … Yes, I know they won at Talladega last spring, regardless, how to approach the restrictor-plate races at Daytona and Talladega continue to confound Johnson and Knaus … Despite last year’s overhaul, the pit crew still is mistake-prone and slow.

Area of Strength: Resolve
Jimmie Johnson has been very candid about how much not winning the championship last season has bothered him. Listening to him speak over the offseason it’s apparent he is as determined as ever to get back what he thinks belongs to him. A fired-up and hungry Jimmie Johnson could be a very scary thing for the competition in 2012.

Area of Weakness: Fatigue
Last year, this group gave off the impression of a team that was worn-out. Understandably considering the microscope they’ve been under for the last five-pus years. And maybe an offseason devoid of all that goes into being the Sprint Cup champion is what Johnson needed. That said, this is something to monitor throughout the coming season.

Best-case Scenario For 2012
With last year nothing more than a blip in the record books, and after a stress-free offseason which allowed him to recharge his batteries, Johnson once again becomes the dominant force in Sprint Cup – winning the most races and stomping the competition in route to his sixth title.

Worst-case Scenario For 2012
Instead of 2011 being a blip, it is actually a precursor of things to come. The relationship between Johnson and Knaus continues to disintegrates, to the point Knaus announces late in the summer he’s stepping down as crew chief of the 48 – effective immediately. While Johnson does get to Victory Lane a couple of times, it’s clear this team is no longer what they once were.

In Their Words
“I didn’t realize that over the five years or six years that we didn’t change as much maybe as we needed to and evolve. It’s tough to leave a successful road map and Chad and the team and I have been good at reinventing ourselves each year. But until the streak was broken, looking back at this off season what we have been through and trying to rebuild the team and make sure we are looking at everything we can, we have a different depth. I’m focusing on my interaction with the team, how I provide information with the team, what information I’m looking at. There are a lot of things I haven’t done in the past and I felt like I was one of the most in-depth drivers out there and I’m trying to even take those steps further now. So, because of the loss we have been able to dig deeper and get away from the road map we’ve built and challenge ourselves more. We have to reinvent ourselves in some ways this year and we are ready for it.”
–Jimmie Johnson

Predicted Number of Wins: 4

The Racing Geek’s Final Thought
While I have questions about how much longer Chad Knaus is going to be the crew chief for Jimmie Johnson, I don’t question that the sum is greater than the parts. No matter who’s atop his pit box calling the shots, Johnson driving Chevrolet’s from Hendrick Motorsports is more than enough to go to war with. And if nothing else this season, the man who won five straight championships will show his run is far from over.

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

Appreciating Jimmie Johnson’s Reign

11/15/2011 By The Racing Geek Leave a Comment

After five years, a myriad of challengers and numerous critics who suggested his dominance was nothing more than a byproduct of what they perceived as a contrived way to determine a champion, Jimmie Johnson’s reign as Sprint Cup champion will officially come to an end at five.

One of the greatest runs in not just NASCAR history, but sports history, came to a close yesterday when Johnson was officially eliminated from title contention.

That Johnson’s supremacy came to an end isn’t all that surprising. After all, nothing in sports or life for that matter lasts forever.

No, the surprising thing is the manner in which his run of five consecutive titles came to an end.

The backbone of the 48 team has always been their resiliency. There was never a situation where Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus didn’t somehow magically rise from the ashes and not only persevere but, thrive.

Go back just one year to Texas when Knaus decided midrace to bench his underachieving pit crew due to their continued missteps that cost their driver numerous and valuable positions on the track.

This gutsy call was viewed by many as a serious blow to the chemistry on the 48 team. Mike Ford, the crew chief for Denny Hamlin – the man Johnson was looking up at in the standings – saw this as a move which would tear the 48 team apart at the seams.

Johnson and particularly Knaus were unflinching then and now that this was the best decision to make if they were to win their fifth straight title.

To them, continually losing ground on pit road was inexcusable, and worst, it would without question lead to Johnson not winning the driver’s title. To do nothing would be accepting mediocrity. And that was unacceptable for the team which was in the midst of rewriting the NASCAR record book.

The move, controversial at the time, paid dividends as the replacement pit crew was virtually flawless the last two races of the year and propelled Johnson to his fifth Sprint Cup.

That resolve was also evident in 2007.

It was then, when Johnson just one year removed from winning his first title, found himself 68 markers behind teammate Jeff Gordon with five races to go.

With their backs against the wall, the 48 team went on to what can be classified as an epic run. A run that saw them go to Victory Lane four straight times and culminated with Johnson narrowly defeating Gordon to win his second series crown.

However, the ability to turn adversity into success and not flinch under the enormous pressure associated with running for a championship seemingly disappeared during this year’s Chase.

Whether it was running out of fuel on the final lap in the opening round of the Chase at Chicagoland which cost him a surefire top-three finish, or poor strategy and decision-making at Talladega, or over aggressiveness at Charlotte which sent him crashing head-on into the Turn 2 wall, all but ensuring NASCAR would have a new champions for the first time since 2005. The 2011 edition of the Chase has been the antithesis of what has come to define Johnson’s run as a champion.

This in no way is meant to diminish the accomplishments of this year’s title combatants Carl Edwards and Tony Stewart.

Both have risen up to the challenge in their respective ways; Edwards through dogged consistency and Stewart through sheer willpower. As such, each has put themselves in the position they’re in to unseat Johnson.

That said, not having to go toe-to-toe in the last race of the year with a driver who has ice in his veins along with an innate ability to rise above any obstacle thrown in front of him, does make things a smidge easier for the two title contenders.

There’s no denying that since 2004, the omnipresent Johnson has cast a significantly large shadow over the championship proceedings. If you don’t think that plays into the outcome of who wins, just go back to last year, when Denny Hamlin rolled into Homestead with a 15-point lead over Johnson.

But the pressure of the moment got to Hamlin. 22 laps into the 400-mile race he spun himself out and opened the door for Johnson to walk through and claim title number five.

Since then, Hamlin has been a shell of his former self.

The once confident, borderline cocky driver has had a “woe is me” attitude all season that’s dramatically affected him both on and off the track.

The abyss Hamlin has found himself in can be summarized just by looking his win total last year compared to this year. In 2010, he won nine races and was a threat to win several others. This year however, he’s tasted victory just once and is a dismal 10th in the championship standings.

Things have gotten so bad that Hamlin has taken to seeing a sports psychologist to help him cope with losing to Johnson in the manner in which he did.

Facing that frustration and disappointment is something neither Edwards nor Stewart will have to deal with this Sunday in South Florida.

This is not a eulogy and by no means am I saying Johnson will never hoist his sixth Sprint Cup trophy.

At the age of 36, the native of El Cajon, California has many peak years left in the sport. Mentor, car owner, rival and good friend Jeff Gordon is still winning races on the other side of 40, and Dale Earnhardt himself contended for a championship at the age of 49.

As long as Johnson remains with Hendrick Motorsports – his contract doesn’t expire until 2015 – and Knaus continues to guide the 48 team with the same fiery determination he’s used to build the team from the ground up, Johnson will continue to be a force in NASCAR.

Whether that means he eventually exceeds Richard Petty and Earnhardt’s mark of seven championships still remains to be seen.

If he does, it will just further reinforce Johnson’s legacy.

Save for the fact, after five consecutive championships and dominating NASCAR in a way that no on has done before or will likely do anytime in the near future, let’s be honest, it’s a legacy that’s already been cemented.

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Photo courtesy of NASCAR Media/Getty Images

Filed Under: Johnson, Knaus, NASCAR, Sub-Feature

As The Title Turns In Kansas

10/11/2011 By The Racing Geek Leave a Comment

Every battle has a turning point. That one critical moment where things either begin to turn in your favor allowing you to seize control, or turn against you causing you to regress backwards leading to eventual defeat.

While it’s still too early to tell, it’s looking as if Sunday’s running of the Hollywood Casino 400 on the mile-and-a-half Kansas Speedway is going to go down as the turning point in this year’s Chase for the Sprint Cup.

First and foremost, yesterday was a monumental day for a face we’ve grown accustomed to seeing in Victory Lane in years past, but who’s “struggled” to recapture that same success in 2011.

While the consistency that has become Jimmie Johnson’s hallmark during his five-year reign as champion has been there this year, one thing has noticeably been missing for the No. 48 Lowes team.

Wins.

Before Sunday, Johnson had been to Victory Lane just one this season, and that had came at Talladega, where luck and being in the right place at the right time is more paramount than having a fast car.

But yesterday Johnson sent a loud reverberating message to those whom dare to question whether he was going to be a player in this year’s Chase.

From the drop of the green flag, the No. 48 Lowes Chevy was on a mission. Quickly ascending from his 19th starting position to the front of the field, where he would stay throughout the afternoon. All total, Johnson flexed his muscles by leading a race-high 197 laps, and at one point was so dominant he had a lead of over 14-seconds.

“We showed today what we’re capable of when we’re all performing at the top of our game, and hopefully we can do that for six more weeks,” said Johnson following his win yesterday.

His second victory of the year moved him up to third in the standings, just four markers behind points leader Carl Edwards and made it crystal clear to everyone that the road to the championship still runs through the man who’s now won 55 Cup races in his career and has had a stranglehold on the title these last five years.

However Kansas wasn’t just a turning point for Johnson as there were others who used Kansas to make a statement.

Throughout the race Sunday, Carl Edwards was stricken with an ill-handling Ford Fusion, running mid-pack most of the day, and even was as low as 25th at one point. It was all but a certainty that he was going to take a big hit in the points.

But three-fourths of the way through the 400-mile event, crew chief Bob Osborne finally was able to diagnose what ailed Edwards’ mount.

“We had the wrong front suspension settings in the car,” said an ecstatic Edwards. “Bob [Osborne] and I together in practice, we prepared the wrong setup, and when they dropped the green I realized we were in deep trouble. So Bob made adjustments to the setup, made some bigger adjustments than we would normally make, and then we were very fortunate with the late race caution and being able to get two tires and have a shot to run up there through the traffic.”

The adjustments propelled the Roush Fenway driver through the field, and when the checkered flag flew, there was Edwards scoring an astonishing fifth-place finish. A result which had him beaming post race and proclaiming that this result was as good as a win.

“I cannot believe we finished fifth, it feels like a win,” said Edwards. “I cannot believe from the way the day started, to finish like that is spectacular.

“I do not deserve to be sitting up here. We should have finished 15th or 20th, so it all worked out in our favor.”

It’s easy to see that if Edwards does go on to win his first Sprint Cup title, Kansas is going to be the race where he looks back and says, this where he won it and seized the moment.

A day that could have been catastrophic, instead turned opportunistic as Edwards was able to regain sole possession of first-place in the championship order by one point over Kevin Harvick.

Harvick, like Edwards, is another driver who wrestled with a car that wasn’t up to snuff for much of the day. But like Edwards, Harvick and his Budweiser team continued making adjustments and by race end he was able to leave with a top-10 finish (sixth) and is very much in the title picture with some of his best tracks still to come.

Hunkering down and making the best out of a situation is how championships are won. It’s a lesson Harvick and Edwards are both well aware of, having both been on the wrong end of close championship battles.

Being steady and reliable and being able to turn proverbial lemons into lemonade is what winning championships is all about. But just as Kansas buoyed the championship aspirations of Johnson, Edwards and Harvick, it conversely put a pin in the title balloons of two other drivers.

The popular consensus heading into the Chase was that Jeff Gordon was going to seriously contend for his fifth Sprint Cup title. Instead, the promise which he showed throughout the regular season has disappeared. A fine fourth-place finish at Dover had been sandwiched between mediocre finishes of 24th and 12th at Chicagoland and Dover.

Thusly, Kansas was supposed to represent the place where Gordon’s “Drive For Five” would be kicked into high gear.

But with a blown engine that left him 34th in the final rundown and 10th in the standings, 47 points behind Edwards, Kansas has now become Gordon’s Waterloo.

Unlike Gordon, Tony Stewart struggled dramatically during the regular season, going winless and barely squeaking into the Chase. But unlike his counterpart, once the playoffs started, Stewart found his form, becoming just the second driver to start the Chase with consecutive victories.

Except an awful race at Dover, where he finished two laps down in 25th, stunted his momentum. If Stewart was to be considered a serious title contender, he would need a good result in the Sunflower State.

And for much of the afternoon a good run appeared to be on the horizon. With Johnson running away with things, the race was for second, and for 130-laps second was a position Stewart held.

But a mishap on his final pit stop which saw Stewart lockup his brakes and slide through his pit box sent him spiraling down the running order.

A 14th-place finish isn’t too terrible in the grand scheme of things, but accompanied with what happened the week before, it all but assures Stewart will not be the first owner-driver since Alan Kulwicki to lift the championship hardware at the end of the year.

After a disappointing weekend, and barring something miraculous happening, for Stewart and Gordon, their quest to win another championship is going to have to wait another year.

For Johnson, Edwards and Harvick, their quest to win a title is very much alive thanks to the respective battles each won in Kansas.

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Photo courtesy of NASCAR Media/Getty Images

Filed Under: Edwards, Gordon, Johnson, Kansas, NASCAR, Stewart, Sub-Feature

Johnson Is Down, Not Out

10/01/2011 By The Racing Geek Leave a Comment

Through 567 laps encompassing two full races, the 2011 Chase for the Sprint Cup has already taken more twists and turns than a Hitchcock thriller.

There’s no one who foresaw Tony Stewart going two-for-two to start the Chase. Not after a regular season where the current points leader wasn’t running up front, wasn’t finishing in the top-five with any regularity, and certainly, wasn’t winning any races.

He is after all the same person who railed against the team he owns, saying even if they did make the Chase; it wouldn’t matter because they were going to be a complete nonfactor anyway. And all this came after a ninth-place finish at Michigan.

Nevertheless, with no disrespect to what Stewart has accomplished over the last couple of weeks, the bigger surprise in the Chase is not him, but instead where the guy he’s looking to dethrone is sitting heading into Sunday’s AAA 400.

Two races in and the man who’s had a stranglehold on the championship the last five years is sitting a surprising 10th in points. An uncustomary position for Jimmie Johnson, who’s never found himself this low in the Chase standings.

But despite the unusual start to the Chase, no one is ready to concede that Johnson’s reign is about to come to an end; least of all Johnson.

“I don’t think we’re looking for the walk-off home run by any means right now,” said Johnson Friday in his weekly presser. “It’s just finishing where we should. At Chicago we didn’t have the fortune to finish where we should have and that is just the way it works with fuel mileage. Last weekend, there was some contact on-track. This weekend, we’ve got to go out and finish where we should.

“I don’t think we’re in a position where it’s win or nothing. We need to get a top-three run here. There are still eight races left.”

If you expected the 48 team to panic after uncharacteristically finishing 10th and 18th at Chicagoland and New Hampshire, you haven’t been paying attention the last five years.

No matter your thoughts and feelings on Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus, no team in the garage is as resilient as the team who in Chase races has more wins, top-fives and top-10s than anyone else. Bouncing back from adverse situations has become as much the trademark for the Lowes team as them holding the championship trophy at the end of the year.

Dare I say, this team thrives on adversity.

In 2006, Johnson was the heavy favorite to win his first Sprint Cup title. But a crash in the opening Chase round at New Hampshire and the resulting 39th-place finish sent him spiraling down the championship table, as he left Loudon 139 markers out of first.

And when he finished 13th at Dover the following week, 14th at Kansas the week after that and 24th at Talladega the week after that, it appeared all but a certainty that his first series crown was going to have to wait another year.

But with their backs against the wall, the 48 team flipped the switch and went on a tear. Finishing second, first, second, second, second and ninth in the remaining six races with Johnson comfortably winning his first championship by 56 points over Matt Kenseth.

The following scenario played out much the same way the next year, as the 48 was again a bit sluggish out of the Chase gate. It was that year, 2007, if you remember when Johnson rolled off four consecutive victories and posted a sizzling average finish of 5.0 in the 10 Chase events to snatch the title away from teammate Jeff Gordon, who himself posted an average finish of 5.1 in the Chase.

As such, it wouldn’t be unprecedented if Johnson once again did the unthinkable and rallied back to not only be a factor in the championship fight, but win his sixth straight title.

Although there was tension over the radio between Johnson and Knaus last week in Loudon, when Johnson grew tired of Knaus’ incessant cheerleading, this duo is still formable and is showing no signs of cracking.

“When you work with someone as long as we have, for over 10 years now, there are hot spots and buttons that can be pushed that send someone over the edge,” explained Johnson. “We know what took place last weekend and he [Knaus] knows at times I can be frustrated with his cheerleading. It’s nothing new to us.

“I know a lot of people are reacting to it and think that it is something abnormal. Yes, it wasn’t our finest moment on Sunday, but, it is what we deal with. It’s been part of what we’ve been dealing with for 10 years.”

Helping Johnson’s cause to climb back up the standings is how well he navigates his way around the track known as the Monster Mile.

In 19 career starts at Dover, he has made six trips to Victory Lane, tops among all active drivers, and has won three of the last five races on the high-banked track. That success accompanied with recent history furthers the notion that it’s too early to count the five-time defending champ out.

“As far as the No. 48, it doesn’t matter,” said Jeff Gordon, who himself knows how dangerous it is to count out his teammate prematurely. “They have gotten off to slow starts in the Chase before and they do miraculous things so you can’t ever count them out, and I wouldn’t count them out this year either.

“To me this is a big weekend for them. This is a track that he really gets around well and that team does well here, so they can get themselves right back in it in a hurry.”

Not everyone agrees however with the sentiment expressed by Gordon.

“I’m trying not to focus on him because he might not be the guy to beat at the end of the Chase,” said Carl Edwards, currently fourth in points. “He might be the wrong person to focus on.”

Regardless, the facts are the facts. With eight races to go Jimmie Johnson may be down, but he certainly isn’t out. So consider yourself warned. If you dismiss Johnson, you’re doing so at your own peril.

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Photo courtesy of NASCAR Media/Getty Images

Filed Under: Johnson, Knaus, NASCAR, Sub-Feature

A Formula To Determine The Favorite

09/15/2011 By The Racing Geek 1 Comment

When the leaves start to change colors the most popular question among both fans and competitors alike is “Who is going to dethrone Jimmie Johnson?”

Though Matt Kenseth, Mark Martin, Carl Edwards, Jeff Gordon, Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick have all made valiant efforts to topple the 48 juggernaut, Johnson along with ace crew chief Chad Knaus have thus far fended off each and every challenger for the crown.

That the 48 will be able to do so again this year however remains open for debate.

The 2011 Sprint Cup Series has been as wide-open a season as NASCAR has seen in years. In 26 regular season races 15 different drivers have made at least one trip to victory lane, including five first time winners in Trevor Bayne, Regan Smith, David Ragan, Paul Menard and Marcos Ambrose.

Due to the volatility atop the leaderboard each week, we’ve seen a cornucopia of drivers have the label of “championship favorite” thrust upon them. At various points Carl Edwards, Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, and of course, the five-time defending champion, Jimmie Johnson, all have been looked at as the driver most likely to drive away with the championship hardware when the season concludes nine weeks from Sunday.

And the above list doesn’t include Brad Keselowski and Matt Kenseth, both of whom have won multiple races and have shown at times the consistency needed to be the last man standing come Homestead.

So what are the keys to deciphering who is a legitimate contender and who is nothing more than a pretender masquerading as a challenger?

A year ago I came up with the following criteria to determine who will be crowned the champion after 10 weeks of hard racing, and 12 months later, everything still holds true.

1) Winning matters
Only once in six years has the eventual champion not won a race during the Chase era (See: Stewart, Tony; 2005). Why is that? The answer is pretty simple actually. Drivers who win championships have to finish at or near the front on a weekly basis. If you do that enough times, which you have to if you want to be in title contention, odds are that things will break your way at least once and you will find yourself in victory lane at the end of the day.

If you’re good enough to win a championship, you’re good enough to find a way to win at least once in a 10-race span.

When trying to determine whether a driver has a realistic shot at winning the title, I ask myself if I believe said driver is good enough to win a Chase race. If the answer is no, then there is no way that I would have confidence in picking that driver to win the championship.

Take Dale Earnhardt Jr. for example.

Does anyone outside the most delusional members of Junior Nation really expect their driver to even sniff the points lead let alone win his first title? No. And that’s because he hasn’t won a race since the summer of 2008, a span of 199 races without a collecting a checkered flag.

If Earnhardt can’t win a race in a year where even the much-maligned duo of David Ragan and Paul Menard won, how are we supposed to have confidence that Driver 88 is all of a sudden going to be able to flip the switch and run up front with the likes of Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Busch?

2) Bonus points are huge
The second criteria for predicting the Chase goes hand-in-glove with point number one. Bonus points for leading a lap and for leading the most laps can add up quickly. The best example of this is the 2004 Chase when Kurt Busch won his first and to date, only Sprint Cup championship over Jimmie Johnson.

In the closest title fight ever, Busch led at least one lap in nine of the 10 Chase races and the most laps in two of them for a total of 55 extra points. Whereas Johnson was able to only collect 30 additional points. Busch’s final margin of victory that year was just eight points. This underscores just how important leading laps and collecting bonus points are in the Chase.

With the margin of error this season razor thin, every little point could be the difference between championship glory and being an afterthought.

3) Consistency is everything
Leading laps is a good thing, winning is an even greater thing, but the thing that really can make or break a drivers championship aspirations is avoiding multiple mistakes that can lead to poor finishes.

It’s hard and borderline impossible to go 10 races without having something bad happen. Whether this is a tire going flat, an engine letting go, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Minimizing these things and making sure you don’t put yourself in a hole that you’re not capable of getting out of, is vastly important.

Only one time since 2004 has an eventual champion had more than one finish outside the top-20. When Jimmie Johnson did this in 2006, he needed a five race stretch where he finished no worse than second to claw his way back into the title picture. Johnson was lucky to be able to overcome his pratfalls, but there is a reason why no other driver has been able to overcome the same type of adversity. It’s damn near impossible.

Whereas in previous years a driver was able to overcome one, and maybe two poor finishes and still have a shot at winning the championship, that is no longer the case.

Due to NASCAR’s 43-1 point system which they introduced in the offseason, consistency is the name of the game like never before. A finish in the lower half of the running order will sink a driver’s championship hopes quicker than a random iceberg sunk the Titanic.

So who’s going to be the 2011 Sprint Cup champion?

Using the above criteria the answer is a fairly simple one.

It’s the same man who’s won the last five. For no other reason than the fact he excels in the three most important areas to paramount to winning a title.

All it takes is a quick glance at the record book to see that Jimmie Johnson wins more proficiently than anyone else. In Chase races alone he leads all drivers with 19 victories, 11 more than second-place Carl Edwards.

Not surprisingly considering the above stat, the 48 Lowes Chevrolet has paced the field a series-best 3,423 laps. Almost double the total of the next driver on the list, Matt Kenseth.

When it comes to consistency, again, not surprisingly, there’s no one in the class of the driver dubbed “Five-time.”

In the 70 Chase races that have been run since the Chase was introduced prior to the 2004 season, Johnson has finished in the top-10 an astonishing 54 times. In large part because no team knows how to salvage a bad day and turn it into good one as the 48 bunch does on a semi regular basis.

As in Phoenix last year or Texas in 2008 proved, as bad as Johnson’s car may run in the beginning or mid-portions of the race, when the checkered flag flies the 48 car more often than not somewhere in the top-10, or at least close enough to it where the points damage is minimal.

Few, if any, drivers and teams can match let alone exceed that resiliency. Although other drivers have won more races this season, and other drivers have looked more dominant at times, the smart money is on Johnson to complete his six-pack of championships.

As the saying goes, “To be the man, you have to beat the man.” And for the last five years running we’re still waiting for someone to beat Jimmie Johnson.

Until someone shows me otherwise, he’s my pick to once again win it all.

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: Chase for the Sprint Cup, Johnson, NASCAR, Sub-Feature

Lessons Learned At The Halfway Point

06/12/2011 By The Racing Geek 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.

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: 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: Edwards Wins Ho-Hum All-Star Race

05/23/2011 By The Racing Geek Leave a Comment

It was as memorable a moment as we have seen in quite some time in NASCAR’s annual non-points affair featuring the sports best. A moment that through the years will certainly live on via countless replays and discussion.

The only problem is it didn’t occur in the 100 laps that constituted the 27th running of the All-Star Race. A race that is supposed to be defined by its no holds barred, anything goes, there’s nothing a driver won’t do in an effort to walk away with the million dollar prize awarded to the victor mentality.

Instead, it happened after the race had already been decided and many fans had lost interest in the proceedings when it become all but inevitable that Carl Edwards was going to be the one holding the gaudy oversized check in the winner’s circle.

The moment in question was when Edwards in the usual celebratory fashion, decided to drive through the infield sideways to celebrate his dominating win. A move many drivers before him have performed to commemorate a victory. The only difference this time, due to a dip in the grass, Edwards race-winning Ford Fusion sustained heavy damage to its frontend, and nearly flipped in the process. A car that had been so dominant all night long was suddenly mortal. Steam emanating from its engine and having to be towed to victory lane.

To the victor go the spoils. And after a night where he clearly had the superior car pretty much throughout the 150-mile event, and out restarted Kyle Busch, regarded as the best restarter in the business, for the final 10 lap sprint to the finish, a wrecked racecar is slightly easier to swallow.

“You never know what comes from misfortunes, Edwards rationed, when he spoke with reporters afterwards. “It was definitely unfortunate that I tore up that racecar. Like Bob (crew chief Bob Osborne) said, we got another one at the shop. It might be the difference in winning the race at the Coke 600.

“I’m going to have confidence that something good will come out of it.”

The winning crew chief wasn’t quite as optimistic.

“The only positive I can see here,” said Bob Osborne, “is that Jack [Roush] allows us to build a new car.”

Either way, it’s only fitting that in a race stacked with winners from the last year, along with former series champions and a host of other more than capable drivers, that the guy who’s been the points leader for seven of 11 weeks and has more top-10 finishes than anyone else, was standing the tallest when everything was said and done.

After all, this race is supposed to showcase the best NASCAR has to offer, and there’s little doubt that Edwards, who has one victory this season, and could easily have five others, right now is the best.

The relationship between Edwards and Osborne is one of the best in the garage. Further exemplified when the two put their collective heads together before the fourth and final segment to determine what adjustments needed to be made to withstand the forthcoming onslaught that typically is associated with a 10 lap dash to the checkers.

Being the best is going to pay big dividends for Edwards. And soon.

You see, following the season his contract is up with Roush Fenway Racing. Although, Edwards has stated all along he wants to remain with the only organization he’s ever driven for, he is open to leaving Roush Fenway if another team comes along and offers him a better opportunity to win races more consistently.

His car owner knows there are few, if any, drivers who bring to the table what the 19-time Sprint Cup winner does.

“Carl is a rockstar,” Roush said. “He’s the only back-flipper in the field. He’s the first one to crawl up into the stands. Some of the drivers wouldn’t go up in the stands like that after a race, and for good reason. But Carl, he’s well thought of and he’s out there doing things that other people wish they thought of first, and he drives the hell out of our racecars.

“He’s a draw for sponsors and a rallying point for his team.”

Although on the surface it appears as if Edwards is the one holding all the cards in the negotiations, that’s not necessarily true. The owner dubbed “The Cat In The Hat” actually might be the one sitting in the catbird seat.

As I went in-depth about a few weeks back, Edwards’ options aren’t very intriguing. Barring an unforeseen scenario where a ride unexpectedly opens up at Hendrick, Gibbs, or Childress, there isn’t a team that can offer the All-Star Race winner the caliber of equipment as the team for which he’s currently driving.

Just look what transpired this weekend where the overall strength of Roush Fenway Racing was on full display.

Saturday night, we saw Edwards’ teammate, David Ragan, earn his way into the All-Star Race with a win in the Sprint Showdown qualifier. Later, in the first segment of the four-segment main event, it was Greg Biffle speeding away with the victory, with Edwards taking top honors in the next three segments.

And yesterday, in the Nationwide Series race at Iowa Speedway, Edwards finished second to Roush developmental driver Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who posted his first career series victory.

What Edwards needs to ask himself is why would he want to leave an organization which through the first third of the season has clearly established itself as the number one team in NASCAR. Going anywhere else would be considered a downgrade from his current situation, which is the exact opposite of his stated goal of wanting to be aligned with a team that can best help him win races and championships.

For the time being, let’s put the contract stuff on the backburner and acknowledge the almost flawless performance Edwards displayed Saturday night. With one notable exception: An ill-advised trip through the infield.

Perhaps Jack Roush will write that into Edwards’ next contract that he has to stick to celebrating victories with back flips and going into the grandstands to shake hands with the fans?

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Besides Carl Edwards’ off-road excursion, the one storyline to take away from this year’s All-Star Race, was the lack of action stemming from Saturday night’s festivities.

The All-Star Race is always heavily promoted as the one race each year where drivers let it all hangout, and only care about one thing – winning.

But instead of hard racing with the usual array of drivers vowing revenge in the garage post-race, this year’s race was as bland as a Jimmie Johnson championship speech.

It has nothing to do with the fact that there weren’t any multi-car wrecks or a driver intentionally wrecking another. As I’m not some rube, who only watches racing just for the spectacular wrecks and the fireworks that often follow.

I watch because I want to see the best stockcar drivers in the world go at it with a ferocity that we don’t usual see in the 36 races throughout the year where points are awarded.

That means plenty of hard, clean, side-by-side racing, where no quarter is asked and none is given.

Except there’s no way you could watch all 100 laps Saturday night and think this was somehow different than what we see throughout the season.

But that’s not necessarily the fault of the drivers.

The culprit is how big of a factor being in clear air plays on a track the size of the 1.5-mile Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Due to aero dynamics and the fact that the tires Goodyear brings to the track are lasting longer, to the point speeds are now the same between a driver with two fresh tires underneath him compared to one with four, cars are more apt to get strung-out. Thusly, we see more single file racing. As you hear all the time, track position is now everything. Even if a driver has a fast car with fresh rubber, it doesn’t mean a thing if they’re running in dirty air.

Nowadays, the quickest way to turn a potentially winning car into average one is put it back in traffic.

However, sometimes there are races where one team hits on a setup and is simply head and shoulders above everyone else. Much like the 99 team was on Saturday.

“The most frustrating part is when you have a shot to win or when you feel like you have a shot to win and something happens to you,” said second-place finisher Kyle Busch. “Those are really frustrating because you never know how it would turn out.

“Tonight we flat out got beat. There’s nothing to hang our heads about; there’s nothing to be frustrated about tonight. We just didn’t quite have enough when we needed it.”

This happens. But that doesn’t excuse what we saw throughout the rest of the field, where things were rather mundane. Especially in light of this being a race where being conservative is the antithesis of what the evening is all about.

“From my vantage point, it was kind of a tame race today. Sorry, we didn’t give you any scoop or drama,” said a smiling Busch.”

I can accept that not every All-Star Race is going to be a gem. But when the drivers start apologizing for the lack of action, it should be cause for concern for everyone involved.

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Odds & Ends

●To the surprise of no one, Dale Earnhardt won the fans vote and as such, nabbed the final spot in the All-Star Race. Unfortunately, the fans who voted for the 2000 winner of this race weren’t able to help him find the handle on his Chevrolet and he finished a rather pedestrian 14th.

●You don’t often see Chad Knaus make the wrong decision, hence why he’s called “The Mastermind.” But for the second week in a row, he misjudged how many tires to take during a pit stop and it cost his driver a potential victory. Consequently, the indecision by the head wrench for the five-time defending champion may be grating on the nerves of his driver. Usually, Jimmie Johnson is the definition of calm, except on Saturday he and Knaus had quite a few terse exchanges on the radio about the handling of their Chevrolet, as well as track position which the No. 48 team found itself on the wrong end of.

Is this a chink in the armor everyone has been looking for these last five years? No. To me, this is nothing to be concerned about long-term. Saturday was an atypical race all around for a team where anything less than perfection is deemed unacceptable.

●He’s often the butt of my stupid, and let’s be honest, often sophomoric jokes, but let’s give some love to David Ragan who showed fine form in winning the Sprint Showdown. Although the results haven’t always been there in 2011 (remember Daytona?) for the much maligned driver of the No. 6 Roush Fenway Ford, the fact is, he has run this season far better than the results showed. Almost to the point it wouldn’t be all that surprising to see Ragan win sometime before the year is out.

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Photo courtesy of NASCAR Media/Getty Images

Filed Under: Busch, Charlotte, Earnhardt Jr., Edwards, Johnson, Knaus, NASCAR, Ragan, Roush, Thoughts

Monday’s Thoughts: Two Is Better Than Four at Dover

05/16/2011 By The Racing Geek Leave a Comment

Through the first 340 laps it appeared a virtual certainty that either Jimmie Johnson or Carl Edwards would leave Dover with their second win of the season. Respectively, the two led 207 and 117 laps and neither was far from the lead at any given point of the 400 lap/mile race.

If there was someone who could topple the two giants of the Monster Mile, Clint Bowyer was the leading candidate. The Richard Childress driver had worked his way back from being nearly a lap down earlier, and took the top spot from the 99 and 48 on Lap 334 for 29 laps.

Except this wasn’t a normal race at Dover. Instead, this race featured ever changing track conditions thanks to the continued rubber buildup on the one-mile concrete oval. From the drop of the green flag it was obvious the Monster Mile was nothing more than a one-groove racetrack, where one bobble would quickly move a driver up out of the preferred line and consequently lose positions on the track.

As things played out, it was track position and not having a fast car that ultimately played the pivotal role in deciding the outcome.

Thanks to a single-car incident involving Juan Pablo Montoya 38 laps from the finish, teams had a crucial decision to make. A) Come in to the pits and put four fresh Goodyear’s on; B) Hit the pits but only take two tires; or C) Stay out on the track and gamble that the tires you have are fresh enough to make it the finish.

Bowyer, Edwards and Johnson all went with option A. A decision which I thought was the right one to make under circumstances, considering Dover typically chews up tires and there were still quite a few laps left in FedEx 400.

But on this day, on this track, with tires that showed little wear, it was a decision that came back to bite the three frontrunners. Not to mention, a move that caused me to eat a plate full of crow afterwards.

The beneficiaries in all this were Matt Kenseth, who had steadily worked his way into the top-five after starting 23rd, and Mark Martin, who was no better than an eighth-place car all day. Both correctly figured that their only chance of winning was to roll the dice and gamble on track position. With Kenseth taking only two tires and Martin completely foregoing a trip to pit road for fresh rubber.

This decision proved to be a wise one as the final 34 laps went caution free. The favorable track position, along with the clean air that goes with it, allowed the two veterans to pull away from the field. When the checkered flag waved, Kenseth had picked up his second victory of 2011 while Martin’s runner-up finish represented his first top-five finish since Texas last fall.

As for the three drivers who combined led 353 laps, playing it safe and taking four tires proved to be their downfall. Bowyer and Edwards could only fight their way back to sixth and seventh in the final rundown, while Johnson crossed the line in ninth.

“I guess in our minds we didn’t think that would take place, so many guys taking two [tires],” said Jimmie Johnson, who has now led the most laps in the last five Dover races. “It was certainly the call. I knew basically from the numbers we were in trouble when we left pit road and there were so many guys in front of us. It is just the way it is.

“We had a great race all day. Led a lot of laps but unfortunately, not the one at the end that counted.”

So the victory, in a race which two drivers dominated pretty much throughout and another had put himself in position to win, instead went to a driver who himself said he had a 15th-place car.

If there’s one lesson we’ve learned in a season in which Trevor Bayne and Regan Smith have won the two biggest races, it’s that anything can and often does happen. Rarely is the car sitting in victory lane at the end of the day, the one who actually dominated the proceedings.

Conversely, for those who think maybe Kenseth didn’t deserve the victory, the counterargument to that is strategy and track position has long been as much a part of NASCAR as oversized engines and crew chiefs skirting the rules through dubious means.

As winning car owner Jack Roush vehemently pointed out post-race, it’s not as if his driver wasn’t strong all afternoon.

“If anybody was watching the lap checkers, Matt drove from 23rd to the top five,” Roush said in the media center. “As hard as it is to pass, as hard as it is to deal with this Car of Tomorrow, struggling there, when I saw that, I figured the 17 was the equal of the cars running up front based on my look at it.

“They didn’t back into this thing. They deserved to be up there. Between the two of them (Kenseth and crew chief Jimmy Fennig), they made the gutsy call for two tires. As many times as they’ve been burned by it, I was surprised they did that.”

Yeah, Kenseth may have stolen this victory, and who cares if the only thing he was missing in victory lane was a mask and a pistol. Often in racing you lose races you should win; other times you win races you had no business winning.

Either way, the record book will show Kenseth notching his 20th career Sprint Cup. And really, that’s all that matters.

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As his one win and three second-place finishes can attest, no driver in 2011 has exhibited the consistent speed that points leader Carl Edwards has week in, and week out. A trait once again on full display Sunday as outside of green flag pit stops, he never ran outside the top-10, and would have likely finished first or second if that fateful yellow flag 38 laps from the finish wouldn’t have come out when it did.

At the time Edwards was running second, and he and crew chief Bob Osbourne as detailed above, elected to go with four tires instead of two. Their thought process being they had enough laps to work their way up to the front even if a couple of drivers either just took two or didn’t pit at all.

The flaw in that plan was more teams gambled than they expected, and therefore the 99 team found themselves in a position where winning was no longer a possibility.

Surprisingly, Edwards wasn’t regretting his ill-fated decision that cost him a chance to notch his second victory of the year.

Something that I guess is easier to accept when you’ve had the kind of year that the Roush Fenway driver has had. Instead he had to settle for his ninth top-10 finish in 11 races and expanded his points lead over second-place Jimmie Johnson by 24 markers.

“That is too tough of a choice (two-tires vs. four) to make right there and I don’t blame Bob Osborne one bit. I thought we would be able to march up through there and I thought the race would be between Clint and I. I did see a couple cars go fast early on two tires but I really felt we were going to have something.

“If we had had a caution who knows what would have happened? You can’t look back, you have to look forward. We still have the points lead and the fastest car here today.”

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For the second race in a row at the Monster Mile, AJ Allmendinger looked to be inline for his first career victory. Starting second, thanks to a fast practice time Friday after qualifying was rained out, the former open-wheel standout quickly asserted himself as one of the cars to beat. Although his Best Buy machine wasn’t in the same class as the 99 or 48, the No. 43 Ford was a fixture up front, running solidly in the top-five.

But just like last fall, factors outside of Allmendinger’s control contributed to him getting a finish less than he deserved. This time around a sickly engine running on only seven cylinders sent the 29-year-old driver to the garage prematurely.

A disappointing end to a day once filled with so much promise.

“I don’t know, it was weird because it all happened at once and there was no sign of it. We were going to run them down and all of a sudden off of two it went. It was getting steadily worse. Doug Yates and all the guys at the engine shop do a great job. We had a ton of horsepower and this rarely happens.

“Honestly it sucks. I really wanted this for us and Ford and Best Buy and everybody; The King especially. I hate this.”

The 37th-place finish knocked Allmendinger down five spots in the standings to 16th and again made me wonder what would happen if the talented, star struck driver was driving for a team that matched his talents. A moot point, considering last August he signed a contract extension with Richard Petty Motorsports that will keep him with the two-car team for the foreseeable future.

Sunday was another race in a long line of them this season where Carl Edwards had a car good enough to win, but came away with a finish less than he deserved.

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: Allmendinger, Dover, Edwards, Johnson, Kenseth, NASCAR, Roush, Thoughts

Monday’s Thoughts: Maturity and Teamwork Propel Busch

05/02/2011 By The Racing Geek 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.”

###

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.

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Photo courtesy of NASCAR Media/Getty Images

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

Monday’s Thoughts: Talladega Fulfilled All Our Expectations

04/18/2011 By The Racing Geek Leave a Comment

Twice a year the Sprint Cup Series rolls into Talladega. Each and every time you’re guaranteed three things: a high amount of lead changes; multiple wrecks, often involving a gaggle of cars; and of course controversy – lots of it and in heavy doses.

Sunday’s running of the Aaron’s 499 certainly didn’t disappoint. Jimmie Johnson tied the mark for the closest finish in NASCAR history since the advent of electric scoring. At the same time mangled cars and angry, frustrated drivers were scattered across the garage.

As was expected, two-car tandem racing ruled the day with drivers pairing off and working together around the 2.6 mile track.

From the drop of the green flag it quickly became apparent the four Hendrick Motorsports cars, which started in the first four positions, had a gameplan in place that plan involved Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin working as one unit and Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr. doing the same.

A plan that worked to perfection, as the pairs stuck together all afternoon, all the while escaping the numerous incidents which engulfed many a driver.

When it was time to make a move toward the latter stages of the 188-lap race, there was Gordon and Martin, and Johnson and Earnhardt running up front and in prime position for the win.

But it was Johnson, with a strong push courtesy of Earnhardt, who made a bold move inside the duo of Gordon and Martin and dashed ahead of Clint Bowyer who was being pushed by Richard Childress teammate Kevin Harvick, and won by a margin of .002-seconds.

Despite posting his second straight runner-up finish, Bowyer wasn’t quite as enamored with his place in the record-setting finish, as he got little satisfaction in losing a race in the narrowest of margins.

“Hell, no, that sucks,” Bowyer said jokingly. “It’s never very good to know you made NASCAR history by losing. Sooner or later I need to start making history by winning.

“That guy’s won enough.”

It was a victory that without question wouldn’t have been achieved without the efforts of Earnhardt, who was credited with a fourth-place finish.

Even though he hadn’t won a race in 100 starts, the five-time Talladega winner dutifully played the role of loyal teammate all afternoon. He was in constant communication with Johnson throughout, and he even called for the two to swap positions late in the race even though he was leading, as they were faster with the 48 leading the way and Earnhardt doing the pushing.

This decision ultimately proved to be the difference maker.

“I can’t thank Junior enough,” said a grateful Johnson. “He made the decision that my car was faster leading. And the way these things are finishing up, the lead car is going to get the win.

Johnson showed his appreciation on pit road when he beckoned Earnhardt over and then proceeded to hand him the checkered flag. A gesture Earnhardt appreciated, but didn’t think he deserved as he attempted to hand the memento back.

“I handed it to him,” explained Johnson, “and he (Earnhardt) said, ‘Man, I don’t want that.’ I said, ‘Well, I have to give you something for the push and working with me.’ He said, ‘No, that’s what teammates do.’

“I smiled and I said, ‘Take the damn flag. I’ll give you the trophy, too.’

“He says, ‘No, I don’t want the trophy. I’ll take the flag, though.’”

Like he usually does and like he did yesterday, the five-time defending series champ came out on top and Earnhardt ended up hanging onto the keepsake.

At any rate, Johnson couldn’t stop expressing his gratitude towards his wingman. Knowing that without him, there was no way he would be credited with the win, the 54th of his career.

“Junior was more worried about the team having a good performance than anything,” Johnson said. “We worked together all day, and in the end he was responsible for this win. I can’t thank him enough.”

However this day was more than just one driver helping another.

Once again, there were a bevy of drivers upset with a rules package that gave them little choice but to run in pairs. As a result, the trailing car had almost zero visibility, which often led to drivers running over the top of one another.

One of those drivers swept up in one of the three multi-car wrecks was last week’s winner, Matt Kenseth. His day ended when Kyle Busch was tapped from behind by his Joe Gibbs teammate Joey Logano coming out of Turn 2.

“This two-car thing is really hard as a driver,” an exasperated Kenseth said standing beside his wrecked Ford Fusion. “If you’re the tail car, you can’t see anything. All you can see is the spoiler in front of you and going that fast and not being able to see is not the most comforting feeling.

“You catch people real fast and you have to have a lot of faith in the guy in front of you. You’re gonna spin people out because they make a quick move and you’re shoving them as hard as you can shove them doing 200 miles an hour. If they make a move too quick, they’re gonna crash. It’s a difficult environment to race in to say the least.”

Of course the guy who won had a different perspective of how the racing went.

There is some technique required now,” Johnson said. “Instead of just running wide-open all the time and just sitting there in a guy’s tire tracks, now there’s some work required and some skill. I think that this racing is fun, and certainly easy for me to say because I won, and probably if I crashed I would be bitching and moaning.

“But it was a good day. When you have this many lead changes for a Cup race, that’s a good thing.”

Another less talked about controversy is whether Johnson committed a NASCAR no-no when making his winning pass.

Video and still photographs suggest at the very least the left-side tires on the 48 were touching the yellow line, which at Talladega and Daytona is marked as out-of-bounds. If that were indeed the case, and the 48 did go below the yellow line to make a pass, Johnson’s victory should be forfeited and the win would then be given to Bowyer.

It’s not as if NASCAR is afraid to make such a call.

As recently as February in the Budweiser Shootout at Daytona, the sanctioning body took away an apparent win from Denny Hamlin when it was deemed he went below the yellow line right before the start-finish line. And three years ago on this very same track, Regan Smith was denied the win when it was declared that he went out-of-bounds, much in the same spot as Johnson, in attempt to get by race-leader Tony Stewart.

Post-race, NASCAR was quick to state that no penalty was forthcoming and Johnson’s pass was very much within the rule book.

“I have not seen the video yet, and I was not focused on where that yellow line was,” said Johnson. “I was more worried about causing a big pile up and luckily the 5 quit coming down and then the 24 pulled back up.

“There’s so much going on at the end of that thing coming to the stripe and I don’t know what anybody could have done differently. When you’re four-wide across a start-finish line, I think that’s a pretty damn good race.”

NASCAR’s ruling is supported by the fact nary a driver voiced a dissenting opinion. Kevin Harvick even took to Twitter in defense of Johnson.

“[D]ear people, the 48 did not go below the line, he won the damn race in Talladega fashion…roll on with it,” Harvick tweeted.

At the end of the day, what would a race at Talladega be without a little controversy? Not to mention a photo finish, and a pile of torn up racecars. With this year’s newest wrinkle being the driver who finished fourth walked away with the checkered flag.

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: Bowyer, Earnhardt Jr., Harvick, Johnson, Kenseth, NASCAR, Talladega, Thoughts

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