Monday Morning Crew Chief

Finally, a NASCAR season without major changes

2012-01-27T20:59:00.002-06:00

After years and years of changing nearly every aspect of the sport, NASCAR believes the 2011 season went well enough that everything will be pretty much the same for 2012.

Thankfully, during this year’s preseason media tour NASCAR officials didn’t announce any big changes to the points system or schedule, and it didn’t any issue mandates on how drivers should act.

Sure, the cars will run new electronic fuel injection engines, but that likely won’t create a noticeable difference in the racing.

Beyond that, the cars, points system, schedule and rules will be nearly exactly the same as last season, and that is a very good thing.

NASCAR has always been a sport that embraces change, but it really kicked the changes into high gear during the last decade.

Since 2000, the sport has brought in new tracks while eliminating others from the schedule, it has a different car model, a playoff format, new title sponsors in all three national touring series and a new points system, just to name a few.

Back when NASCAR started to make all of these changes, the sport was still growing in popularity and gaining more and more fans each year. Much of the talk at the time was how to make changes to the sport to continue to bring in new fans.

So, NASCAR dove in head first to making changes to spice up the sport. The competition changes began with the introduction of the Chase format in 2004 and ended with the double-file restarts that began in mid-2009.

In between, rules such as the Lucky Dog, wave-arounds and green-white-checkered finishes crept into the sport.

Now, not all of those changes are bad, and the sport will still be exciting and fun to watch regardless of the rules NASCAR puts together. The biggest problem with the changes was the amount of changes that happened in a relatively short period of time.

During that time, some fans simply became fatigued from all of the changes and decided to throw their hands up and skip out completely. It would likely take several races for a fan from 10 years ago to understand how the sport works these days.

It is difficult in any sport to build a fan base when the sport changes so much.

Yes, some fans go to races just for the experience of watching 43 racecars charge around the track at the same time, but a lot of fans have a passion for the sport that goes deeper than the simple sights and sounds of a race.

They want to understand what is happening in all aspects of the sport, from the drivers personalities to how the cars work to how teams prepare for a race, as well as the strategy involved throughout the event.

Unfortunately, the changes of the past decade have made it difficult for even the most die-hard fans to keep up.

The sport would likely be just fine if many of these changes had never been made. The sport survived for 50 or so years before everything changed, and it would have survived without them. There will always be a market for stock car racing, even though the size of that market could surely be debated for years.

NASCAR may have made more money during the 2000’s in part because of some of its changes, but it also shook up the fan base.

The only changes that absolutely had to be made were the introduction of the SAFER barriers at all tracks and the Car of Tomorrow. As much as people hated the look of the car, it has saved several drivers from serious injuries or worse. Plus, NASCAR will fix the ugly problem next year with the new 2013 car models.

For those who liked last season, get ready for what NASCAR hopes is more of the same.

For many, just having the same rules for two consecutive years will be a welcome experience.

Miss the Hall of Fame inductions? Yeah, so did everybody

2012-01-20T21:47:00.004-06:00

The NASCAR Hall of Fame enshrined five new inductees Friday evening, but hardly anybody actually saw it happen.

That’s because SPEED was preoccupied with the Barrett-Jackson car auctions Friday night and decided to put the Hall of Fame inductions on tape delay. That means the only people actually able to see the ceremonies live were the people actually in attendance.

What makes the situation worse is the inductions are not only on tape delay, but SPEED decided to not show the ceremonies until 6 p.m. ET Sunday, a full two days after the actual event and right in the middle of the NFL Championship games. Are you kidding me?

I understand television is a business, and SPEED makes money by showing the Barrett-Jackson auctions, but come on. This is the event where the legends of NASCAR are honored, and it’s going to be shown on a two-day tape delay.

SPEED will showcase another 11 hours of the Barrett-Jackson car auctions Saturday and maybe programming contracts didn’t allow that to change, but the audience Saturday morning would even likely be larger than what SPEED will get with the Sunday afternoon timeslot.

One of the supposed problems with NASCAR is that the Chase coincides with the start of the NFL season, which hurts the television ratings during the most important time of the NASCAR season.

Now SPEED decided to once again go head-to-head with the NFL in late January, as well. There is no doubt the induction ceremonies will get mercilessly spanked in the television ratings. Even the most diehard NASCAR fans will find it tough to skip football to watch a ceremony.

I guess I thought NASCAR had outgrown the days when its events didn’t make live television. Instead, this weekend NASCAR returned to the ABC Wide World of Sports days when snippets of the races were the only NASCAR racing fans got to see on a given weekend.

I understand NASCAR wanted to make the Hall of Fame inductions part of a preseason “NASCAR Acceleration” weekend to get fans in the Charlotte area pumped up for the season, but not airing the induction ceremonies live flies in the face of NASCAR’s overriding goal for the last decade: expand its fan base.

If this was how NASCAR approached its decisions, we’d probably still have two races at Rockingham and Darlington and would not have races in Chicago or Kansas.

The Hall of Fame induction ceremonies are also an evening that celebrates the history of the sport, and it is important for fans to either learn about that history, or relive the excitement of those days. That’s what the Hall of Fame is all about.

SPEED does a great job with the Hall of Fame biographies on each inductee, but there were a ton of programs the network could have shown this weekend. Shoot, last weekend it spent 21 hours showing mostly singe car testing runs at Daytona.

NASCAR doesn’t own SPEED and therefore has little control of how the network chooses to cover the sport. However, SPEED, which has branded itself the official network of the NASCAR Hall of Fame, should have found a better way to handle the Hall of Fame’s biggest event.

Hopefully inductees Dale Inman, Cale Yarborough, Darrell Waltrip, Glen Wood and the family of Richie Evans had one of the best evenings of their lives. Too bad hardly any NASCAR fans were able to watch the legends of their favorite sport honored.

NASCAR gets close to Daytona package during test, but won’t do away with two-car draft

2012-01-14T20:51:00.006-06:00

NASCAR and the Sprint Cup Series teams got down to business for three days this week to hammer out what style of restrictor-plate racing we will see this year.

Teams hit the high banks Thursday at Daytona International Speedway and went straight to the now-common two-car draft. Speeds reached 202 mph, and it looked a lot like what we have seen the past couple of years.

NASCAR came back Friday with a larger restrictor plate and more rules designed to make it tougher to do the two-car draft. Speeds reached 206 mph during two-car drafting runs with the larger plate, but we also finally saw a session of three-wide pack racing.

As Saturday rolled around, NASCAR brought back the smaller restrictor plate and a few more rules related to air flow into the engine. The top speeds in the two-car draft reached 201 mph, but it looked like drivers had a difficult time staying hooked together for multiple laps.

Before the test started, everybody talked about how NASCAR wanted to eliminate the two-car drafts and bring back the huge packs. Well, it turns out the leaders at NASCAR don’t want to completely eliminate the two-car draft, but rather make it difficult enough so drivers only use it sparingly.

The sport got closer to a workable rules package for Speedweeks, but it could have gotten closer to taking away the two-car draft.

Almost every team will bring back a car for Speedweeks in February that is faster, has more-efficient cooling and all of the tricks teams add to the cars they are actually going to race. The teams certainly gained a lot of data this week, but a lot of that goes into making the Speedweeks cars better, not necessarily making the test car better.

All of that means the sport could still face issues about the style of racing during Speedweeks. The sport went about as far as it could on the cooling-system restrictions, but if teams come back with better cars for Speedweeks, they might still be able to do the two-car draft for at least five laps without switching.

Fans have voiced their displeasure with the two-car draft and while it does make for boring practice sessions, it isn’t going to go away completely.

One of the ideas some drivers took to NASCAR was to move the grill opening more to the left on the front of the car. That would make it nearly impossible to push another car without blowing the engine because the pushing car currently has to hang out to the right to get air to the engine.

With the grill on the left side of the car, the pushing driver wouldn’t be able to get air to the opening and would instead have to lay off the bumper.

That was probably an impractical change to make in the middle of a test, but it is something the sanctioning body could look at if it truly wanted to do away with the two-car draft.

But it doesn’t.

NASCAR Vice President of Competition Robin Pemberton said on the SPEED broadcast that NASCAR wants a combination of pack racing and two-car pushing. That’s all well and good, but if teams come back to Daytona with better cars they might be able to run the two-car draft enough to not create a pack.

Hopefully NASCAR has enough of the same information the teams have to create a rules package that will accommodate any changes based on any improvements teams might make between now and Speedweeks.

As always, the Budweiser Shootout will be the race that tells us what kind of racing we will have during Speedweeks. If it’s more of the two-car draft, expect some radical last-minute rule changes.

That part, at least, wouldn’t be much different than most Februarys at Daytona.

Daytona testing helps kick off anticipation for NASCAR season

2012-01-10T21:21:00.004-06:00

We are technically only about halfway through the NASCAR offseason, but the days of hearing strictly about off-track news are about over.

NASCAR teams will head to Florida this week to the greatest racetrack of them all in Daytona Beach and start testing for the fast-approaching Speedweeks.

Gosh, it is going to be nice to see cars back on the track. Plus, the teams will be doing more than just logging laps during the three-day test session that begins Thursday.

NASCAR made several rule changes after the season designed to change the style of restrictor-plate racing back to the large packs instead of the two-car drafts.

It will be interesting to see if those changes have much of an effect on the style of racing. NASCAR's similar attempts last year didn’t do much to break up the two-car drafts.

More than anything, it will just be nice to know that the dark, quiet winter is almost over.

Sure, it’s still early January, but the NASCAR action slowly picks up as we move closer and closer to Speedweeks in mid-February.

The Daytona test will run from Thursday to Saturday with Preseason Thunder events where fans can meet drivers and get an early feel for the changes that happened during the offseason.

The following week is NASCAR Acceleration weekend in Charlotte that will culminate with the NASCAR Hall of Fame inductions for 2012.

NASCAR used to hold the Hall of Fame inductions during the week between the All-Star Race and the Coca-Cola 600 in Charlotte, but now it will help fill the void between the start of the year and the start of the season.

Cars will be back on the track at Daytona the weekend after the Hall of Fame inductions with the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona. While this isn’t a NASCAR event, several NASCAR drivers run the race and it is a full day of auto racing. That in itself is therapeutic.

The weeks between the 24-hour race and the Daytona 500 will be filled with the NASCAR media tour that tries to set some storylines for the upcoming season and then it is time to get after it with the big cars on the big track.

All of a sudden the season will be in full swing and NASCAR fans will once again long for the weekends so they can watch the practices sessions, qualifying and the race on Sunday.

We might still be more than 40 days from the official start of the season, but those days will be filled with on-track action, big NASCAR events and the wonderful anticipation of another full season of auto racing.

Welcome back, everybody.

Many NASCAR teams in worse sponsorship situation than when economy collapsed in 2008

2012-01-07T21:06:00.010-06:00

NASCAR teams entered the 2009 season with a bleak outlook in financial and sponsorship terms, but the outlook for this season doesn’t look any better.

In fact, it might be worse.

As the 2008 NASCAR season came to a close, the United States economy was on the verge of disaster, and its struggles quickly affected NASCAR teams.

Many teams had to lay off large parts of their staff, and the Sprint Cup Series went from having nearly 43 fully funded teams to questions about whether enough cars would show up on a race weekend to fill the field.

It turned out that every race still had a full field, but more and more teams showed up to run just the first few laps in a race and then head home while collecting the prize money. Even then, cars with mostly full sponsorship packages filled the top 35 guaranteed spots in a race.

Now cars that finished last season in the Chase might not even have full sponsorship for the 2012 season. Matt Kenseth, who finished fourth in the points standings last year, has sponsorship lined up for less than half of the season so far.

Several teams are still looking to put together a sponsorship package to fund the entire season, and other teams have completely shut down.

Red Bull Racing has fielded two cars since 2008, but it folded at the end of the 2011 season for financial reasons. TRG Motorsports won’t return in 2012 after fielding one full-time car for the past three seasons, and Front Row Motorsports, has yet to announce its plans for the upcoming season.

In addition, some of the big-time teams are cutting back, as well. Roush-Fenway Racing will run Nationwide Series champion Ricky Stenhouse Jr. in the #6 car for the Daytona 500, but it currently doesn’t have any sponsorship for the race, and the #6 car could very well be shut down for the remainder of the season.

The #33 driven by Clint Bowyer for the past three seasons will cease to exist as Bowyer moves to the #15 car for Michael Waltrip Racing. Richard Petty Motorsports recently tabbed Aric Almirola to drive the #43 car, but it doesn’t have any sponsorship as of yet. Even Tommy Baldwin Racing’s two cars currently don’t have a sponsor.

All of these changes could lead to a season where less than 30 teams have sponsorship to run the entire schedule.

Last season 30 teams ran all 36 races. A few others attempted to run every race and didn’t qualify on time. However, this season there could be cars in the top 35 in the points standings that won’t have the money to show up at the track.

TV ratings improved in the 2011 season, and attendance numbers started to stabilize after several years of freefall. At least it appears fan interest in the sport has stabalized, if not started to grow once again.

Hopefully this is rock bottom and money will start flowing back into the sport throughout the 2012 season and years beyond. But, the current situation might be the toughest stretch NASCAR teams have ever faced.

NASCAR offseason picks up again as Almirola gets rare second chance

2012-01-04T21:09:00.004-06:00

The holidays passed and the NASCAR offseason picked up right where it left off with two more driver signings and another team shutting down.

David Reutimann landed with Tommy Baldwin Racing for the 2012 season, TRG Motorsports couldn’t find a driver or sponsor and will cease to exist, and Aric Almirola jumped back into the Spring Cup Series with the #43 Richard Petty Motorsports Ford.

It’s good to see Reutimann get a ride after being fired very late in the season from the #00 Michael Waltrip Racing team and it’s not good to see another team leave the sport, but the biggest winner of the week is Almirola.

Sure, the #43 car currently doesn’t have a sponsor and could struggle to finish in the top 20 in the points standings next year, but at least he will race in the Cup series once again.

Almirola’s first shot in a Cup ride came in 2007 when he ran six races in the #01 U.S. Army car that he shared with Mark Martin. His best finish was 26th.

The next year he doubled his number of races as he and Martin again split duties to fill the empty #8 seat left by Dale Earnhardt Jr. when he went to Hendrick Motorsports. Almirola did record a top 10 with an eighth-place finish at Bristol in the spring that season.

Since then he bounced around to several different teams and ended up only racing in the Nationwide Series in 2011. He was successful at that level, however, and finished fourth in the points standings while driving the #88 JR Motorports car.

Regardless of his results, Almirola should feel like the luckiest guy in the sport. Not many drivers get a second chance at the Cup level, especially with a top-20 team.

While Almirola drives on Sundays, former Cup drivers such as Reed Sorenson and Elliot Sadler will likely remain in the Nationwide Series and only drive on Saturdays. Others such as David Ragan and Brian Vickers are also on the market and still don’t have a ride lined up.

Since Almirola got the job, the attention will now turn to how successful he can be in that car. Remember, the #43 car isn’t in the NASCAR elite anymore, and it hasn’t been for nearly two decades. Although the car has 198 victories, it hasn’t really come close to reaching Victory Lane since 1999 when John Andretti won at Martinsville.

A.J. Allmendinger put together the best season the #43 car has had since Bobby Labonte finished 18th in the points standings in 2007. Allmendinger finished 15th in the points standings in 2011 and 19th in 2010. Before that, the #43 hadn’t finished in the top 20 in points since Andretti’s year in 1999.

Overall, there probably shouldn’t be very high expectations for the #43 car in 2012. The vicious cycle between mediocre runs and horrible runs could easily continue for that team this season, especially if it has trouble finding sponsorship.

It’s an unfortunate situation because the organization just came off of its best season with two cars in the top 20 in the points standings, and now it is back to the same struggles it dealt with the previous season when it almost went bankrupt.

Maybe we’re overstating the negative of this situation. Maybe the organization has potential sponsors about ready to sign on and Almirola will follow in the footsteps of the five first-time winners of 2011 and burst back onto the scene.

In any case, Almirola has a Cup ride, and that’s more than a lot of other Cup-winning drivers can say at this point.

2011 Stewart vs. Edwards championship battle

2012-01-02T10:18:00.002-06:00

Kurt Busch finds a ride, but Silly Season still isn’t settled

2011-12-23T22:02:00.003-06:00

Even though the biggest name of the NASCAR offseason found a ride, the Silly Season surprisingly still contains several unknowns.

Kurt Busch found a landing spot in the #51 Phoenix Racing car after he mutually separated with Roger Penske and left the #22 car Dec. 5 following his tirade in the final race of the season Nov. 20 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

However, that move does little to clear up the jumbled mess his leaving Penske Racing created.

After Busch left the #22 car it looked like he had very few options for a new ride, and that was true. The #51 car is certainly not a sought-after ride by championship-winning drivers. That car is usually battling for a spot in the top 35 in the points standings rather than battling for championship.

Still, most people thought A.J. Allmendinger was going to stay in the #43 car and the seat in the #22 car would be left up for grabs to unemployed drivers such as David Ragan, David Reutimann and Brian Vickers.

Instead, Best Buy left the #43 car, Penske chose Allmendinger,to drive the #22 car and the three previously mentioned unemployed drivers are still without a ride.

Busch had reportedly talked to Richard Petty Motorsports about driving the #43 car, and that would have cleared up a lot of speculation. Busch would go to the #43, Landon Cassill would stay in the #51 and everybody else would be out of luck.

But that’s not how it works this offseason. Busch ended up at the #51 car so speculation can run wild about who will drive the #43 car and how that team will piece together enough sponsorship to run full-time next season.

Ragan has been a contender for nearly every open ride since the season ended, but he has so far failed to get the job. He has been mentioned as an option for the #43 car, but more recent reports say Nationwide Series driver Aric Almirola might be the guy to get a shot in the #43 Ford.

If that happens, Ragan, Reutimann, Vickers and now Cassill will be in an even more dire position as we head into 2012. After an offseason where unexpected openings popped nearly every week, those three former Sprint Cup Series winners might be relagated to a Nationwide Series ride, at best.

Those scenarios will likely play out after the holidays, but the Busch situation is also still a bit up in the air.

Busch will drive the #51 car in the Cup series, but he also might run in the Nationwide Series for his brother’s team, Kyle Busch Motorsports. If he wanted to add another wild twist to this already crazy offseason, Kurt Busch could decide he doesn’t have a shot at the Chase in the #51 car and instead run for the championship in the Nationwide Series.

Since drivers can now only run for the championship in one series, he would effectively throw away the 2012 Cup season.

That would be a bold move considering there is no guarantee a big-time ride will become available after next season, and he might just have to make the best of his situation at the #51 car.

In any case, the 2012 starting grid is far from set, and Busch’s announcement that he found a job didn’t do much to straighten out where everyone will be by the time Speedweeks roll around at Daytona in February.

Busch’s move certainly filled in a puzzle piece, but it isn’t the final one we may have thought it would be when he left the #22 car a month ago.

Allmendinger's move creates even more questions in wild NASCAR offseason

2011-12-21T21:20:00.004-06:00

The twists and turns of a crazy NASCAR offseason continue as a driver who already had a ride for 2012 landed in the #22 Dodge formerly driven by Kurt Busch.

A.J. Allmendinger gets the upgrade and will drive the yellow Shell/Pennzoil car for Roger Penske.

After Penske and Busch parted ways, much of the speculation for who would replace Busch logically steered toward drivers currently without a ride such as David Ragan, David Reutimann and Brian Vickers.

But this year has left no room for logic. Once Paul Menard won the Brickyard 400 we should’ve known something in the universe must be a bit sideways.

This offseason continued the wild ride and has been full of shocking announcements. From Busch leaving the #22 to Allmendinger taking that ride, this year’s offseason has been similar to a restrictor-plate race. After a few laps someone new and totally unexpected comes to the front.

Ragan reportedly had discussions with Penske Racing to drive the #22 car, but Allmendinger joined the party after his sponsor for the #43 car, Best Buy, left to be a part-time sponsor for other Ford drivers Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards.

Allmendinger should do well in the #22 car and a Penske team of Allmendinger and Brad Keselowski should be exciting to watch.

However, this move is really just the first in what will be a fairly long line of driver moves. The three previously mentioned unemployed drivers don’t yet have a ride, and Busch is still trying to find a place to settle.

More logic reasoning would point toward Ragan taking over the #43 car since it is a Ford and he has driven a Ford his entire career, but once again, nothing should be taken for granted this offseason.

Reports last week said Busch might go to Richard Petty Motorsports, and now they suddenly have a spot open.

But, the problem in all of these ideas is the #43 car doesn’t currently have a sponsor. It was amazing Kenseth never attracted a sponsor until Best Buy jumped from one Ford to another, and now the job of finding a full-time sponsor with Daytona testing just three weeks away is going to be quite the project for the people at Richard Petty Motorsports.

The loser in all of this for the moment is Richard Petty Motorsports. One of its main sponsors left early in the week to go to other affiliated teams, and later in the week one of its drivers left.

After coming back a year ago from near bankruptcy to win a race and place both cars in the top 20 in points, the organization is suddenly right back in a very unstable situation.

In any case, the next couple of weeks are going to be interesting. Two teams, the #43 and #51 still need to announce their driver, but several drivers are still going to be without a ride.

Many people went into the offseason with the view that there weren’t many opportunities for drivers looking for a ride. That will still be true as the 2012 season starts, but there will several more drivers in a different uniform than we expected.

Hang on tight, folks. This offseason rollercoaster still has a lot of twists and turns left.

Joey Logano the big winner in latest crew chief shuffle

2011-12-16T22:06:00.002-06:00

The crew chief dominoes continue to fall this offseason as Tony Stewart got his right-hand man back on his team and Joey Logano might have found his winning partner.

Longtime crew chief of the #20 car Greg Zipadelli announced his move Friday to Stewart-Haas Racing where he will serve as competition director and interim crew chief for Danica Patrick.

To fill Zipadelli’s old spot atop the #20 pit box, Joe Gibbs Racing promoted Jason Ratcliff to be the crew chief for Joey Logano in 2012.

Ratcliff moves up after seven years as crew chief for the #18 Joe Gibbs Racing Nationwide Series team.

Two major names in NASCAR, Stewart and Patrick, may have gotten the man they wanted for their team, but Logano might be the driver who benefits the most from this switch.

Don’t get me wrong, Zipadelli will likely be excellent in his job as competition director and crew chief for Patrick. Zipadelli has been one of the best crew chiefs in the sport for more than a decade, and he will surely mesh well with Stewart and his organization.

Believe it or not, the Zipadelli-Stewart duo was not far behind the Gordon-Evernham and Johnson-Knaus pairings.

Stewart won 33 races and two championships with Zipadelli as his crew chief, the most success any driver not named Jimmie Johnson has had since Stewart entered the sport in 1999.

However, life has not been so wonderful for Zipadelli since Stewart left to form his own team in 2008. A young Logano jumped into the #20 Home Depot Toyota full time in 2009 and went on to win one fuel-mileage race that year. He hasn’t won since and has not finished higher than 16th in the points standings.

The adjustment had to be difficult for Zipadelli. He went from calling the shots for one of the greatest drivers of his generation to trying to develop the best thing since sliced bread. The problem was that normal sliced bread isn’t that amazing.

Logano has talent, no doubt, and he has won nine races in his four seasons in the Nationwide Series. But he came into the Sprint Cup Series as an 18-year-old who had not even competed in a full Nationwide Series season, and at times he has looked overwhelmed on the Cup side.

NASCAR drivers, like any other professional athlete, need time to develop. That’s a large part of why the truck and Nationwide series exist. Sure, Stewart achieved success in NASCAR pretty quickly, but he a substantial background in other forms of racing and was 28 years old by the time he was a rookie in the Sprint Cup Series.

Logano won't reach that age until 2018, and he still has a very bright future ahead of him.

That’s why it is important for Gibbs to bring in a guy such as Ratcliff now to work with Logano. Ratcliff has worked with plenty of young drivers, including Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin, during his time in the Nationwide Series and would figure to be a much better fit than Zipadelli for a driver such as Logano.

This is the type of change Logano needed. He obviously wasn’t getting anywhere fast in his current situation, and now he might have the chance to settle in and steadily develop as the top-tier driver everyone thought they would see when he first entered the Cup series.

The #20 might not compete for a championship in 2012, but it should be toward the front of the field a lot more often.

NASCAR starting grid will look much different in 2012

2011-12-11T21:39:00.002-06:00

After a year where hardly any sponsors stepped up to fund big-time rides for new drivers, there will still be a bunch of people on new teams come Speedweeks in February at Daytona.

Sure, there may be one decent ride available at this point after Kurt Busch left the #22 Dodge vacant, but whoever fills that spot will be the seventh driver among those who finished in the top 30 in points last season to either strap into a car for a different Sprint Cup Series team in 2012 or still be without a ride for next season.

In addition to the driver changes, at least 12 crew chiefs who worked for teams that finished in the top 30 in points last year will sit atop a different pit box during the Daytona 500 than the one they sat on at the beginning of the 2011 season.

That means nearly one-third of the teams in the field for the Daytona 500 will look different than they did at that race a year ago. That is amazing considering all of the talk of there being no opportunities to move in the sport and everybody better stick at their current job because there likely won’t be another option.

Of course, many of these moves weren’t made by the choice of the driver or the crew chief. The crew chiefs for drivers such as Greg Biffle and Juan Pablo Montoya were replaced mid-season and crew chiefs for Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin were let go from their respective teams once the season ended.

Team lineups have been relatively stable during the past several years, but 2011 will go down as the year where a bunch of crew chiefs lost their job, or at least changed teams. This sort of shuffle happens every few years, and the stability during Jimmie Johnson’s run of five championships is remarkable considering every other team lost for five years in a row.

Overall, the group of Sprint Cup Series drivers has also remained pretty stable in the last five or six years. Early in the last decade, NASCAR had a large influx of young drivers enter the sport, but once the group of drivers such as Kasey Kahne, Ryan Newman and Jamie McMurray reached the Cup level, the pipeline of young drivers quickly shut off.

Just look at the rookies of the year for the past five seasons. Montoya and Joey Logano both finished 20th in the points in their rookie seasons, but the other three have failed to crack the top 30.

This current group of drivers might not have changed much in the past several years, but this year an entire new group of crew chiefs will take their spots atop the pit box for new teams.

One might think all of the crew chief changes could shuffle the running order at many of the races next season. However, just two of those changes happened to teams that finished in the top 10 in points, and one of them just won the championship. The teams that finished outside the top 10 needed to make changes because the current setup obviously wasn’t working too well.

All of the personnel changes could make for a season similar to 2011 where multiple drivers won their first race and no team really pulled away from the pack. Or, it could make for a season where the same top 10 teams dominate as the other teams work to build their chemistry and performance on the track.

For the sake of many race fans, here’s hoping we get another season where different teams show up at the front of the field each race.

Darian Grubb exactly what Joe Gibbs Racing needed

2011-12-09T22:30:00.003-06:00

After winning a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship and losing his job in the same week, Darian Grubb has found a new pit box for 2012.

Grubb will be the crew chief for Denny Hamlin’s #11 team after Stewart-Haas Racing released him following his championship run with Tony Stewart. Joe Gibbs Racing released Hamlin's former crew chief, Mike Ford, on Tuesday.

Grubb's presence could make a huge difference in the performance of not only the #11 team, but also the entire Joe Gibbs Racing organization.

This wasn’t a stellar season for Gibbs by any means. Sure, two of his three cars made the Chase, but neither Hamlin nor Kyle Busch ever posed much of a threat to the final championship contenders.

Joe Gibbs Racing is one of the big-time organizations. There are haves and have-nots in the sport, and Gibbs is certainly one of the haves. But, this year it was on the lower end of the haves, especially after Hamlin narrowly missed winning the championship and beating Jimmie Johnson just one year ago.

Many people in the sport had high expectations coming into the season for Hamlin, as well as the #18 and #20 Gibbs cars driven by Busch and Joey Logano, respectively.

Hamlin was supposed to strongly contend for the title this season after finishing second and having eight wins in 2010.

This was supposed to be the year of the new Kyle Busch, and this was supposed to be the year Logano became a star in the Cup series and contend for a Chase spot after he posted five top-10s in the final six races to close out 2010.

Instead, Hamlin finished ninth in the points standings with only one win. Busch finished 12th, or last in the Chase, and got himself in enough trouble for NASCAR to park him for the Chase race at Texas and his sponsor to pull its logos off the car for the final two weeks of the season.

Logano never even contended. He finished 24th in the points, nearly lost his job to Carl Edwards and his crew chief, Greg Zipadelli, might be looking to leave the #20 team.

So here comes Darian Grubb, the defending championship crew chief who spent several years working on the #48 team and won the 2006 Daytona 500 with Johnson while regular crew chief Chad Knaus was suspended.

Grubb won’t bring the Hendrick Motorspots books with him to Gibbs, but he will bring in some outside knowledge that is bound to help an organization that struggled with bad-handling cars and engine issues for much of the season.

While Grubb is surely relieved to have found a crew chief job with a high-caliber race team, Gibbs should be more relieved to have found a person with Grubb’s knowledge and experience to help right the ship at JGR.

One person doesn’t usually come in a change an entire organization, but Grubb could be a huge step toward getting JGR back to where it was just a year ago. His hire could also be a big help to Toyota teams, in general, and they need help.

Toyota, which fielded nine full-time cars this season, finished third in the manufacturer’s standings and had just one more win than the five victories scored by the three full-time Dodge teams.

Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota had a lot of work to do this offseason to become competitive again on a regular basis, but signing Grubb will go a long way toward getting Toyota back to the front.

Kurt Busch done at Penske, might be done as a regular contender

2011-12-05T21:52:00.003-06:00

While one Busch brother narrowly avoided losing his job late in the season, the other did lose his job after the season.

Kurt Busch won’t be back in the #22 car in 2012. He and Penske Racing said they agreed it would be best for somebody else to represent the Shell/Pennzoil brand in NASCAR.

Who that somebody else is remains to be seen, but the ramifications of this decision will likely be much worse for Busch than it will be for his former-owner Roger Penske.

Penske has an up-and-coming star in Brad Keselowski, who came out of nowhere to finish fifth in the points standings and threatened to become the face of Penske Racing in just his second year with the team. Plus, the #22 car will be a sought-after ride for many drivers.

Busch, on the other hand, might say he has several options for what to do next season, but there doesn’t appear to be many good options, at least in NASCAR’s top series.

Busch said in one of his many interviews to try and save face that NHRA might be an option. He did compete in the Gatornationals in March, but this is a former NASCAR champion we are talking about. Might he have burned so many bridges that he has to essentially switch sports?

This type of situation is nearly unfathomable. Sure, there have been plenty of prima-donnas in other professional sports such as baseball, basketball and football, but guys with talent usually stick around until they get old enough that they aren’t productive anymore. Examples: Rickey Henderson, Shaquille O’Neal and Terrell Owens.

Busch is still a productive driver. He has been in the Chase four of the last five years and won nine races during that span. If things fell his way, he could be a regular championship contender at Homestead. However, things haven’t fallen his way, but it isn’t because of luck. Busch has cost himself chances to contend for the championship.

No driver gets a perfect car every week, but most drivers are patient, take care of their equipment and try to make the most out of what they have during a given race. Take Carl Edwards, for example. Edwards had a chance to win this year’s championship because he didn’t get down on his team and drove through the rough patches during a race to come up with a good finish by the end.

Busch could be the same way. That #22 team had enough talent throughout the team, good enough equipment and enough funding to finish at or near the top of the standings. But, that didn’t happen because Busch chopped at his own success every time he exploded on the radio, participated in feuds with other drivers and popped off repeatedly to media members.

In the June race at Kansas, Busch told his team within the first 10 laps of the race the car was so loose he would drop all the way to the back of the pack. It turned out the car wasn’t as bad as he first thought, and he ended up with a ninth-place finish and led 152 laps. Part of that is because the crew worked on the car during the race, but Busch never fell farther back than 11th in the entire race.

The NASCAR pickings are pretty slim for Busch at this point. There really isn’t a fully sponsored ride available. Plus, drivers such as David Ragan, David Reutimann and Brian Vickers are also looking for Cup rides, and each of them haven’t burned bridges with teams and sponsors, although it’s unlikely Vickers will be in a Ford anytime soon.

The sad part of this entire situation is how much talent is being wasted. Busch could’ve still competed to win not only races, but championships in the #22 car.

Those types of rides are precious, as Busch will quickly find out while he wallows with a second-tier team in 2012.

Rating the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: 3.3 Stars

2011-12-04T21:19:00.005-06:00

NASCAR journeys into the offseason this year with tons of momentum following one of the best championship runs in the history of the sport. The storylines from this season were as good as any, as were several of the races were. The 2011 Sprint Cup Series season gets a 3.3 Star Rating.

That rating is an average of the ratings from each race this season, excluding the two non-points events and the reader’s choice edition for the Watkins Glen race.

Here is the breakdown of ratings throughout the season:

5 Stars: 8 races

4 Stars: 5 races

3 Stars: 11 races

2 Stars: 10 races

1 Star: 1 race

The 2011 season had more 5 Star races than the past two year’s Monday Morning Crew Chief has rated races, but there were also many more 2 Star races. The good races were really good, while the not-so-great races were worse than normal.

Let’s take a look back at some of the memorable races from this season.

For the first time, the season opened as closed with the best rating possible: 5 Stars. The Daytona 500 started the year off with one of the most incredible races in the history of the sport. Just 20 years old, Trevor Bayne won the race in the Wood Brothers #21 Ford; the first time that organization had been to Victory Lane since 2001. This is a team that no longer shows up to every race, and often it looked like the sport had blown by the Wood Brothers as they struggled to simply remain in the sport. But then, a driver making just the second Cup start of his career, went out and won the first race of his NASCAR career. That wasn’t just his first Cup win; it was his first win in any of NASCAR’s top three divisions.

It’s hard to top one of the greatest Daytona 500 stories ever, but Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards did their best as they fought to the very end of the Ford 400 in the closest championship battle in NASCAR’s 63-year history. There will never be a closer points battle than this year. Stewart and Edwards tied, but Stewart won the title because he won the race, his fifth in the Chase, topping Edwards’ one win early in the year at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Stewart not only won the race and the championship, but he had to come back through the entire field twice and then held off his championship competitor at the end as the top-two drivers in the series this year finished first and second.

Other 5 Star races included Regan Smith’s win in the Southern 500, the Aaron's 499 at Talladega that tied for the closest finish in NASCAR history, as well as a pair of races at NASCAR’s biggest track, Talladega, and its smallest, Martinsville, to finish out October and set the stage for the championship fight.

While there were plenty of terrific races, the season average isn’t all that high because there were more sub-par races than normal. The high number of fuel-mileage races is partially to blame. Those races are often tense as drivers work to conserve fuel, but they usually don’t make for very close finishes and sometimes the winner didn’t have a challenger at the end of the race.

The 2 Star races included the first two Chase races at Chicago and New Hampshire where Stewart won both on fuel-mileage. However, other below-average races came at places such as Dover, Kentucky and Pocono where fuel mileage didn’t come into play.

Those were races, including the two at New Hampshire, where drivers simply couldn’t make much headway on the track. The late summer stretch this year was particularly brutal in some follow-the-leader races. The car designs might be better than when the Car of Tomorrow came out in 2007, but it still needs work. The 2013 car models might help fix some of that, but NASCAR shouldn’t sit back and wait until that change, or next year will again be filled with many 2 Star races.

The lone 1 Star race of the season came in June with the 5-Hour Energy 500 at Pocono Speedway. A morning of rain, and a race filled with debris cautions, mechanical failures and a dominant performance by Jeff Gordon made for one of the longest racedays of the season. The races at Pocono might be only 400 miles next year, but that still wouldn’t have helped this race. It also began a nine-week stretch where only one race received a rating higher than 3 Stars, and that was the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona.

The 2011 season will be remembered as one of the best in many years. All in all, the last two years have been much better than the NEXTEL Cup era and the transition to the new car. This year’s championship run was amazing, but the 2010 battle among Jimmie Johnson, Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick was pretty exciting, as well.

Maybe 2012 will be even better. Now that Johnson doesn’t win everything all the time, we could be headed into a stretch where many drivers are regularly in contention for race wins.

Hopefully you enjoyed the ratings throughout the season. Monday Morning Crew Chief will stay active with offseason news and opinion pieces as NASCAR fans struggle through those long three months that make up an offseason that is shorter than other sports, but always feels longer.

Have a wonderful holiday season, everybody.

Now the other Busch might lose his ride

2011-11-30T20:56:00.003-06:00

Just two weeks removed from watching his brother Kyle barely hold onto his job at Joe Gibbs Racing because of wreckless behavior, Kurt Busch put his own job in jeopardy.

Busch was caught ranting at Dr. Jerry Punch as he waited to start an ESPN interview after transmission problems sent him to the garage early in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Even after NASCAR levied a $50,000 fine and Busch, his owner Roger Penske and sponsor Shell/Pennzoil released their apology statements, rumors persist that Penske might release Busch in the next couple of weeks.

This isn’t the first time Busch has lost his mind and used disrespectful language to a reporter, or members of his own team, so why might this episode get him kicked out of the #22 car? It’s the same problem that plagued his Kyle Busch after he intentionally wrecked Ron Hornaday under caution during the truck race at Texas Motor Speedway.

It’s the reputation he has built.

Kurt Busch has always had his moments where he gets upset and does something that draws a fine from NASCAR, or at least the ire of fans and people involved in the sport. Busch routinely cussed out his team over the radio during races this season and has even taken his owner to task during the middle of a race.

This particular deal at Homestead wasn’t that incredibly different than much of Busch’s behavior throughout the season, and that’s the problem.

Kyle Busch had delivered payback on drivers before, but NASCAR and his sponsors threw the book at him this time because he kept pushing the envelope too far. Well, Kurt Busch has done the same.

In 2005, Busch was suspended by his then-owner Jack Roush for the final two races of the season after he was pulled over on suspicion of drunk driving. Since that point, Busch has had off-and-on controversies with other drivers, as has Kyle Busch.
Whether or not Penske fires Busch, who just completed his second year of a five-year contract, is yet to be seen, but don’t think it is a foregone conclusion that Busch will be gone.

Joe Gibbs worked incredibly hard to protect Kyle Busch throughout his ordeal after the Texas wreck and managed to keep him in the car even when his primary sponsor, M&M/Mars, pulled its stickers off the car for the final two weeks.
However, Penske isn’t Joe Gibbs, and that could hurt Busch in this situation.

Overall, it’s amazing that both of the Busch brothers continue to find themselves embroiled in a mess of their own making. At some point every driver either grows up and becomes a long-time figure in the sport, or he gets shuffled out.

NASCAR’s famous saying to drivers in the hauler after a controversial incident is, “You need us more than we need you.” While it might be tough to think of NASCAR without the Busch brothers after they have been grabbing headlines since Kurt Busch entered the Cup Series in 2000, the sport can go on without both of them.

Penske Racing can also go on without Busch. Brad Keselowski had a great season in the #2 car and finished fifth in the points standings, and there are three drivers who have won in the Cup series that don’t have a ride lined up for 2012: David Reutimann, David Ragan and Brian Vickers.

Plus, other young drivers such as Trevor Bayne and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. are having a difficult time finding a consistent seat in the Cup series. Make no mistake, Penske could easily fill the #22 car with a qualified driver.

It’s a shame the Busch brothers can’t figure out how to handle themselves in a respectful manner. People have said ever since they entered the sport that they are incredibly talented, but they have to mature. Well, they haven’t matured, and Kurt just finished his 11th full season while Kyle completed his seventh. At this point, doubts start to arise that they may never mature.

In an era where sponsorships are difficult to find, the Busch brothers could become two of the biggest flameouts in the history of the sport.

NASCAR’s championship finish mirrors Major League Baseball playoffs

2011-11-25T21:35:00.003-06:00

This must be the year of unbelievable comebacks.

Tony Stewart won the Chase after going winless in NASCAR’s regular season and barely slipped into the final Chase spot based on points before going crazy and winning one of the most exciting championship races ever.

However, Stewart wasn't the only comback champion this fall. He followed the template set by the St. Louis Cardinals when they won the other fall championship on the sports calendar.

The similarities in how the two seasons finished are remarkable. The Cardinals were more than 10 games out of a playoff spot with a month to play, and Stewart said his team didn’t even deserve a spot in the Chase a month before Chase started.

Stewart sat 10th in the points standings just 14 points ahead of 11th when he made that statement after the race in August at Michigan. In fact, Stewart said that Aug. 27, the same day the Cardinals began their climb back into contention.

Both Stewart and the Cardinals squeaked into the playoffs and had to wait until the final day of their respective regular seasons to find out if they would make the playoffs.

They both did and then went on a tear unlike any other their sports had seen from teams so far out of contention with a month to play.

Stewart won five Chase races and the Cardinals beat the teams with the two best records in the National League: the Philadelphia Phillies and Milwaukee Brewers.
The comparisons don’t stop there, however. Stewart and the Cardinals both made the championship game, but neither were content to make those contests any less than thrilling.

Stewart entered the final Sprint Cup Series race of the season at Homestead-Miami Speedway trailing points leader Carl Edwards by three points. The only way Stewart could guarantee himself the championship was if he won the race.

He did win the race, but he had to battle back from adversity throughout the event, and for much of the race it looked like Edwards had the championship in hand as he dominated the first half of the race.

Instead, Stewart took the lead late and Edwards finished second, resulting in a tie for the points lead. Stewart won the championship because he had more wins than Edwards, and Stewart would have lost the championship even if he finished second. There was no margin for error.

The Cardinals also had no margin for error as they entered Game 6 of the World Series facing elimination by the Texas Rangers. The Rangers had the Cardinals down to their final strike twice, but the Cardinals came back both times to win the game on a walk-off homerun by David Freese and win the series the following night.

In both cases, the contest came absolutely down to the wire. It isn’t possible to have a NASCAR points race closer than the tie between Stewart and Edwards, and a baseball team can’t be any closer to being eliminated than the one remaining strike the Cardinals had left.

One would think maybe these types of finishes happen fairly regularly, but NASCAR hadn’t had a championship finish where the top two drivers were separated by less than 10 points since 2004, although the points system changed for this season. Major League Baseball hadn’t had a World Series go to Game 7 since 2002 when the Anaheim Angels beat the San Francisco Giants.

On top of everything else, both championship head coaches won’t return the following year. Cardinals manager Tony La Russa already announced his retirement three days after the World Series ended, and Stewart’s crew chief Darian Grubb confirmed he won’t be atop the #14 team’s pit box in 2012.

This was just one of those amazing years where the championship moment is as thrilling as possible, but it is incredible that those moments in both sports happened in the same year.

Maybe that means we’re in line for a terrific Super Bowl this season, as well.

Rating the Ford 400: 5 Stars *****

2011-11-20T22:11:00.002-06:00

The greatest championship battle in the Chase era concluded in one of the most dramatic finishes possible. Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards put on a show worthy of a 5 Star Rating to close out the 2011 season.

For years and years, everybody involved in NASCAR has dreamed of a race to the championship similar to what happened Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway. It happened once in 1992 when Alan Kulwicki barely beat Bill Elliot for the championship, and it happened again 19 years later as Stewart won his third NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship.

Ironically, Kulwicki was also the last owner-driver to win the championship. Sure, Stewart might have a little more help than Kulwicki did, but this is still something that doesn’t come around very often.

Neither do races such as Sunday’s Ford 400. Edwards had a three point lead coming into the race, started on the pole, led the most laps and finished second. That sounds like an incredibly good weekend. Too bad Stewart, the only driver who could take the championship away, was the guy who finished first.

This race had everything, both good and bad. The championship was close, both drivers had great cars and ran extremely hard all day, it rained, several cars had engine problems and the title finally came down to, as everyone loves to say, “the final corner of the last lap at Homestead.”

NASCAR has tried for years to create a system that provides a final race full of tension, and that is surely what it got at Homestead. The Daytona 500 is usually one of the very few races throughout a season where fans have to consciously remember to breathe because the race is both exciting and important. Well, Sunday’s race had that same tension.

Both of the championship contenders also faced tension throughout the race. Edwards had to watch three Ford engines fail, knowing his could be next, and Stewart faced adversity all day starting with gaping hole in the grill after the first run of the race.

Stewart passed a mind-blowing total of 76 cars throughout the race. The #14 took several blows throughout the day, but Stewart managed to drive his way back to the front every single time. Plus, he did it in exciting fashion. At one point after a restart Edwards was on the high side and Stewart dove low to make it four-wide on the frontstretch. That is exciting racing even if the championship isn’t hanging in the balance.

There will always be debate about whether the car or driver matters more. But, with all due respect to both teams that prepared great cars throughout the Chase, it felt like Stewart and Edwards could’ve raced their cars to the front even if they didn’t contain an engine. Both drivers raced as hard Sunday as we will see any two drivers ever race.

To bring a fitting end to a terrific battle, Stewart and Edwards actually tied in the points standings, but Stewart won because he had five wins to Edwards’ one.

Most of the time fans want to see several drivers in contention to win a race, but having this one come down to just Stewart and Edwards was the best possible scenario. The rest of the field seemed to disappear for the final 37 laps, and that made a perfect setting to decide the championship.

So, now we head into the offseason. That is always a bittersweet sentence, but at least this year fans and people inside the sport can hang on to the excitement of the final race of the season.

This was a wonderful ending.

Thanks to all of the Monday Morning Crew Chief readers this season. Hopefully you have enjoyed the journey that is a NASCAR season. Check back for more end-of-season stories in coming days, and the rating for the 2011 Sprint Cup Series season is scheduled to appear Dec. 2 following the championship banquet.

Great championship battle reaches climax

2011-11-17T21:40:00.000-06:00

Carl Edwards and Tony Stewart have battled as close as any two drivers can battle during the Chase, and that could make Sunday’s race at Homestead-Miami Speedway a memorable one.

Sure, the final race of the year is always a big one. The champion is crowned, several drivers are in their last race with their current teams and it is the last time we’ll see racing again until February.

But often people tend to forget the final race of the season at least as quickly as other races, if not more so.

The fun of the offseason kicks in quickly as the final drivers find their ride for the next year and any other news that tends to drop out of the NASCAR sky. For example, Hendrick Motorsports switched three of its crew chiefs just two days after Jimmie Johnson won his fifth title in a row.

However, this year’s final race could be one that is remembered right along with the 1992 race at Atlanta where Alan Kulwicki won the championship and the 2004 race at Homestead where Kurt Busch survived a tire falling off to still win the closest Chase battle ever.

Good races with intriguing storylines, no matter where they fall on the schedule, have a longer life in a race fan’s mind than another bland championship coronation in the Nationwide Series this year and the not-so-close finishes in five of the first seven years of the Chase.

Yes, other drivers have been mathematically in contention at Homestead, but Stewart had a 52-point lead heading into the last race of his 2005 championship season, and Johnson had a lead of at least 63 points in his first four championship seasons.

Even last year’s race felt like a formality before Johnson raised the trophy after Denny Hamlin wrecked early in the race and effectively ended any chance he had of maintaining the 15-point lead he had entering the race.

But not this year. Edwards and Stewart have both been the two best drivers the last two weeks, and they have been able to put on a show where for once it is OK to forget about the rest of the field. The way these two guys are running, it would probably be an entertaining race if they were the only two cars on the track.

Hopefully the championship contenders qualify close to each other and run up at the front of the field for the balance of the race. This has the chance to be one of the most intense battles the sport has seen in years.

But, that doesn’t mean there will be fender-rubbing and fights after the race. Fans would probably get a kick out of that type of situation, but this race will more likely be a clean, close race that will keep fans chewing on their fingernails until the final laps.

These are two aggressive drivers, and they have as much incentive as any to give everything they have to win Sunday’s race. That’s not to say they haven’t been giving their all. Their battle two-thirds of the way through the race at Phoenix was fantastic.

If they race like that again this week, maybe everyone will remember the final race of the season.

Johnson officially eliminated, but recent performances should be his main concern

2011-11-15T22:03:00.005-06:00

It’s done. It’s over. For the first time in the history of Monday Morning Crew Chief, Jimmie Johnson will not be the Sprint Cup Series champion.

Johnson currently sits fifth in the points standings, 68 points out of the lead and mathematically eliminated from a chance at the championship.

Johnson’s run of championships was bound to end at some point, but it still feels weird not to at least have him in contention at Homestead. He at least had a mathematical shot to win the two Chases before his run of five championships began in 2006. That means he could be a seven-time champion if things had gone right at Homestead in 2004 and 2005.

Wow. Johnson has been simply amazing since he entered the Sprint Cup Series full time in 2002. He has always finished with at least three wins and has finished no worse than fifth in the points standings. Both of those streaks are also in jeopardy heading into Homestead.

Many people have already started to reminisce about how great it was that Johnson made history with five straight titles. What happened to all of the hatred directed at that team when it won all of the time? This happens with every really successful driver at some point. Once he stops winning, all of a sudden people want to relive the past and see him win again. We’re never satisfied.

In any case, Johnson’s performance in this year’s Chase has been surprisingly sub-par. Sure, fuel mileage got him at Chicago and wrecks hurt his finishes at New Hampshire and Charlotte, but the #48 car has run in the middle of the pack after Johnson came to within shouting distance of the lead after a second-place finish at Martinsville.

Since then Johnson has finished 14th at Texas and Phoenix. Usually, Johnson sees an opportunity and smashes the rest of the field and grab tight to the points lead he goes through a stretch of races such as the one at Kansas. He won that race in dominating fashion, leading 197 of the 272 laps.

Instead, Johnson has been mediocre for the balance of the Chase. The race at Phoenix is particularly troubling. Hendrick Motorsports is typically very good at adjusting to changes in the sport, and Johnson has been dominant at Phoenix in the past, but he ran much of the race in the mid-20s and never made a charge toward the front. Even when he took two tires and jumped up to ninth after a caution, he eventually fell back into the 20s.

But, Johnson still sits fifth in the points standings heading into the final race of the season. There are a lot of drivers would dream of a season where they could finish fifth in the points. The problem is Johnson expects to be better than fifth in the points.

Regardless, it feels like Johnson is doing terribly right now because he has become a mid-pack car in the last two races. The concern should be on his performance during the race rather than his finishes. It won’t truly matter where Johnson is in the points again for another 52 weeks, but how he performs in many of the races during that span does matter.

The #48 team might find this to be its most difficult offseason yet because for one of the few times in Johnson’s career his car didn’t drive well enough to even compete near the front of the field.

No matter what the final stats say, that #48 car has to start running better throughout a race before that team can even think about competing for another championship.

NASCAR re-blurs line for aggressive-driving penalties

2011-11-14T21:46:00.006-06:00

Just one week after NASCAR figuratively drew a line in the sand when it punished Kyle Busch, it quickly went back and erased that line when it let Brian Vickers walk free after Sunday’s race at Phoenix International Raceway.

Vickers pushed Matt Kenseth into the Turn 3 wall on lap 178, taking Kenseth out of the race after he took Kenseth out of the championship battle two weeks prior at Martinsville.

Regardless of previous incidents between these two drivers, Kenseth won the pole, had one of the five best cars in the field Sunday and had a very good chance to win the race.

But, Vickers made sure that didn’t happen, just as Busch ended both Ron Hornaday’s race at Texas and his chance at a championship when he ran Hornaday into the wall under caution during the truck race.

NASCAR brought the hammer down as hard as it ever has on Busch after his incident, but it did absolutely nothing to Vickers at Phoenix. It didn’t even park Vickers for a lap or two.

There is certainly precedent for penalties in that type of situation. Even Carl Edwards had to sit out the rest of the spring race at Atlanta in 2010 after he flipped Brad Keselowski, although Edwards didn’t receive any further penalties beyond probation.

What’s different in this situation? Well, the wreck happened under green-flag conditions. Busch did his damage after the caution came out, but the Edwards’ Keselowski wreck happened under green.

NASCAR has done a better job in recent years of staying out of driver feuds, but it may have missed one here. The wreck sure looked intentional even though Vickers denies it.

Maybe NASCAR shouldn't drop major penalties on Vickers as it did in Busch’s situation but this is twice in the last three weeks, and at least three times this season, counting the race at Sonoma when Vickers put Tony Stewart up on the tire barriers in Turn 11.

Plus, Vickers has raced with this type of aggressiveness for much of his career. Most people remember Vickers first win at Talladega in 2006 when he wrecked Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr. on the last lap, but he also spun Mike Bliss coming to the finish line in the Sprint All-Star Challenge in 2005 to grab that win even though it doesn’t count in the record book.

While Busch might get a lot more publicity about his aggressive driving-style and ill-timed payback, Vickers has had his fair share of overly aggressive moments.

The drivers previous records aren’t that different, and all of the Edwards-Keselowski incidents have happened under green-flag conditions, so where exactly is that “know it when we see it” line that triggers penalties?

NASCAR has done well to put more of the police work in the drivers’ hands, but there has to be some consistency. The sanctioning body is dishing out these penalties like a bad home-plate umpire. An umpire might have an odd strike zone, but as long as it is consistent batters generally keep quiet.

Well, NASCAR has dealt with these three particular situations in three completely different ways. NASCAR has always ruled as a mostly benevolent dictator over the sport where everyone has to play by the rules as NASCAR decides them, but it would do the sport well if NASCAR would rule with more consistency.

That would not only help the credibility of the sport, but it would also prevent backlash from fans and others in the sport when these situations happen.

But, backlash means people are at least talking about the sport. We just spent an entire story devoted to the controversy these rulings create.

Maybe any news really is good news.

Rating the Kobalt Tools 500: 3 Stars ***

2011-11-13T18:22:00.008-06:00

Kasey Kahne jumped in and stole the end of the duel in the desert Sunday at Phoenix International Raceway. The race gets a 3 Star Rating overall, but my gosh Carl Edwards and Tony Stewart are putting on a show for the championship.

Edwards and Stewart were certainly the highlight of a race where only four or five guys had a legitimate chance to win, and Kahne was the last one to the party.

Kahne didn’t show up at the front until the second half of the race, but he found himself in front of Edwards by a wide margin after his final pit stop.

Any win is a big win, but Kahne had just two races left to get a win for his Red Bull Racing team, which will fold at the end of the season along with his teammate Brian Vickers’ #83 team.

Kahne said it was fun to win on a new track, as well as break his 81-race losing streak.

“We’ve been right there every weekend, so it feels really good to finally knock one off,” he said. “I’m really excited; it’s been a while. It feels like my first win again it’s been so long.”

Edwards said Kahne’s aggressive driving-style and relationship with crew chief Kenny Francis has helped him succeed in the variety of situations he has dealt with as far as which team he is running for and questions about their stability.

“Those guys are going to be tough for a long time if they can find a groove and if they can stick with one team and have people rally around them,” Edwards said.

Phoenix was the drought-busting track this year. Jeff Gordon also ended a 76-race streak with his win in February.

Besides Edwards and Stewart, A.J. Allmendinger and Matt Kenseth contended early in the race but both fought adversity. Allmendinger had bad pit stops throughout the day and was able to recover to sixth, but Brian Vickers made sure Kenseth’s day ended early when he ran Kenseth straight up into the Turn 3 wall.

That incident will surely bring about comparisons to the Kyle Busch – Ron Hornaday incident a week earlier at Texas, but that is a topic for another day.

The race played out generally as expected despite all of the concerns about the quality of the racing leading up to this weekend. A Bodine brother and Robby Gordon are still wrecking, and it is still incredibly difficult to pass the leader.

Kenseth led the first 36 laps until Stewart made an incredibly gutsy move on the outside to take the lead as he and Kenseth split Geoff Bodine on the frontstretch.

Stewart then put a hurting on the field for the majority of the race. Both Edwards and Kenseth could get close to taking the lead, but neither could get ultimately get around Stewart.

Edwards and Stewart also had a great battle about two-thirds of the way through the race, but Edwards could not get around the #14 car until a late pit stop relegated Stewart to fourth.

The one concern about the quality of racing leading up to the race that came true was the inability to make a pass for the lead. That might be more of a problem with the cars than the track, however. Even though it usually took several laps for a driver to complete a pass farther back in the pack, it was possible.

Overall, the racing groove was plenty wide for hard racing, especially in the first race on a new surface. Stewart actually took the lead after starting in the high lane on several restarts.

As for the larger picture, Edwards and Stewart both had good runs and are still locked in a fantastic championship battle heading into the final race at Homestead. Edwards still leads Stewart by three points. Basically, the driver who finishes better in next week’s race will be the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion.

This is going to be a fun one.

For more photos from the weekend, check out the Monday Morning Crew Chief Facebook page.

Drivers’ weigh in on new Phoenix track

2011-11-12T18:09:00.008-06:00

The Nationwide Series had the honor Saturday of running the first race on the newly repaved and reconfigured Phoenix International Raceway. Overall, the race was not that different than previous races at the track.

Phoenix has always been a track where the bottom lane is the way to go. It generally races similar to a short track but also has a little more room for error than other flat or short tracks.

That margin for error might be a little smaller now with the new pavement, but at least the Nationwide race was pretty similar to previous Phoenix races.

What does that mean for the Sprint Cup Series race on Sunday? Probably more of the same.

Even though there were seven cautions in the Nationwide race, other races at flat tracks such as Richmond and Martinsville had a lot more wrecks than what could reasonably be expected on Sunday.

Carl Edwards said he was nervous about the condition of the track before he got in his car for practice Friday, but he found it to be more forgiving than what he had experienced during the open test session Oct. 4-5.

However, Edwards also said the new surface and configuration leaves little comparison to previous races at Phoenix.

“From the driver’s seat, it feels like a brand new racetrack,” Edwards said.

He also said the new surface will make it difficult to predict who will run well and who will run poorly.

“This is so different. The pavement drives differently, the layout is a little different, the setups are different,” Edwards said. “It’s going to be its own race and that’s why I was a little nervous to come here because you just don’t know how you’re going to stack up.”

Denny Hamlin said he thinks Sunday’s race to be better than many people feared heading into the weekend.

He said the drivers were able to extend the racing groove by about 3 feet Friday, which almost makes a groove wide enough for two cars to race side-by-side. The on-track action Saturday that includes 325 miles of racing for the Nationwide Series and K&N Pro Series West should extend the groove far enough to where it will be plenty wide for the Sprint Cup Series race, Hamlin said.

“We’re going to have a good race, better than what people are expecting,” Hamlin said.

Edwards, on the other hand, still believes it will be difficult to pass on the track, putting a larger premium on strategy and pit stops.

Edwards’ concern about passing showed up in the Nationwide race, which had just two lead changes among three drivers. Once the leader broke free ahead of the field, nobody could catch him, including first-time winner Sam Hornish Jr.

So, the quality of the Cup race is still up to speculation for another evening, and the potential for rain overnight could further complicate the situation. But, the on-track action so far this weekend has shown that at least this race won’t artificially mess with the championship picture.

For more photos from the racetrack, check out the Monday Morning Crew Chief Facebook page.

Kyle Busch thought he might lose his ride

2011-11-11T15:05:00.003-06:00

Plenty of people speculated that Kyle Busch might end up losing his ride after his incident in the truck race last week at Texas, and it turns out the driver thought the same thing.

“Was there a point in which I thought, ‘Do I have a ride?’ Of course there was,” Busch said. “Yeah, I thought that.”

However, Busch said Gibbs never suggested to him that Busch might be fired even though his sponsor, M&M’s/Mars, chose to pull its sponsorship in the final two weeks of the season. Interstate Batteries will grace the hood of the #18 at Phoenix and Homestead.

Busch also said he wasn’t surprised by the penalties NASCAR threw at him in the wake of the incident where he intentionally drover truck series championship contender Ron Hornaday into the wall under caution.

For Busch to not be surprised by NASCAR’s ruling, that means the leadership at Gibbs must have gotten to him quickly after the incident because Busch certainly didn’t sound remorseful in his TV interview right after the wreck.

“If I just lay over and give up everything for Ron Hornaday that is not Kyle Busch's fashion.” Busch said. “I’m sorry it was Ron Hornaday and he is going after a championship, but you can’t blame this all on one person.”

Well, NASCAR did blame it on one person, and Busch quickly joined the rest of the world in understanding what he did was wrong.

Busch said there has always been a gray area within NASCAR rules that everybody tries to push both in how the cars are built and the extent of drivers’ actions on the track.

“With the crew chiefs, with car chiefs, with our body hangers back at the shop trying to figure out how far we can go, you go that far and you push the envelope,” he said. “Sometimes you get slapped, or maybe a little bit worse than that, and I think we saw that this past weekend.”

Jimmie Johnson said drivers have a feeling of what to expect when they are involved in an altercation and they generally try to steer clear of the other driver until he gets to pit road or the garage area, although Brian Vickers still drove by Jamie McMurray at Martinsville when McMurray was sitting on the track waiting to run into him.

Jeff Gordon was in a similar incident with Jeff Burton in last year’s fall race at Texas that led to a fight between the two on the backstretch but weren’t penalized. He said he disagrees with the idea that NASCAR doesn’t have a clear line established for on-track incidents.

“You just saw it. That was the clear line,” he said. “When you know that you didn’t do the right thing, then you know there are consequences.”

One of those consequences is the danger of losing a sponsor.

Gordon said crew chiefs and drivers are expendable to some extent, but sponsors are absolutely not because they have the money that keeps the sport rolling. He said he thinks Busch will lose his sponsor if a similar situation happens again.

Finally, Gordon said he believes this might finally be the incident that wakes Busch up to where he will make some real changes in his decision-making.

“If this doesn’t teach him the ultimate lesson, than nothing will,” Gordon said. “I would certainly have to believe that this would be an eye-opening experience.”

Phoenix might not be much of a wild card race

2011-11-09T22:28:00.005-06:00

Phoenix International Raceway ripped apart its pavement after Jeff Gordon won the second race of the Sprint Cup season in February, and now the track has a brand new surface and configuration.

That has led many people to say this race will replace Talladega as the wild card in this year’s Chase. Those claims might prove to be correct; the drivers sure had concerns about the quality of racing the track will produce this weekend because they had trouble working in a second groove.

However, all of those concerns were about how exciting the race would be, not which cars would run well and which would struggle. This race has been billed as a race where it will be a free-for-all to the front of the field and some random driver could take charge of the race.

That is extremely unlikely to happen. Talladega and Daytona are wild cards, and people had similar feelings when the Car of Tomorrow was first introduced in 2007. Many people thought the new car design would even the playing field and also-rans would become weekly contenders. Well, that didn’t happen.

Kyle Busch won the Car of Tomorrow’s first race at Briston in March 2007, and Hendrick Motorsports went on to dominate the rest of the season and Jimmie Johnson picked up his third consecutive championship.

So, while it might take a little longer for teams to dial in their cars throughout the weekend because they have little to no notes on the new track, this likely won’t be a race where unexpected drivers run up front.

The usual suspects will probably run well, especially those drivers that typically run well on flat, one-mile or less race tracks.

The championship contenders Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards will also probably be near the front because they have to. Teams in the championship hunt have to raise their performance as the season winds down toward Homestead, and they usually do. Last year Johnson and Kevin Harvick finished fifth and sixth, respectively, in the fall race at Phoenix, and Denny Hamlin finished 12th but was in contention to win the race had fuel mileage not set him back.

Overall, this race might not be as much of a surprise and people might think. The good teams will still be good, and all of the drivers will figure out how to race on the new configuration pretty quickly.

As far as the quality of racing is concerned, it’s not like we haven’t had several races this year that have been single-file all day long and nobody can pass. Tracks such as New Hampshire weren’t recently repaved and the two races there were as stale as it gets.

People like to think there has to be at least two grooves of racing to make it exciting, but look at what happened at Bristol Motor Speedway, for example. The one-groove racing was some of the most exciting in the sport. Once the track added a second groove the excitement level noticeably dropped.

Maybe, just maybe, the winner of Sunday’s race will have to use a little bump-and-run move to get to Victory Lane. That would be exciting, wouldn’t it?

The possibility certainly exists for this race to be a wild card where different drivers take control of the race because they magically hit on the right setup and the field parades around the track single-file 312 times. But, it is also quite possible the race will be similar to plenty of other previous races in the Sprint Cup Series this season.

Make sure to check out the Monday Morning Crew Chief Facebook page as the crew chief will be live from Phoenix International Raceway throughout the weekend.

Jimmie Johnson’s worst Cup season could start new era in NASCAR

2011-11-08T22:29:00.004-06:00

Jimmie Johnson’s five-year championship run will likely end this year, and compared to the lofty standards Johnson has set, it will come crashing to an end.

Johnson visited Victory Lane just twice this season. While many drivers would love to have two wins in a season, two wins is a disappointment for the #48 team that has won at least three races and finished no lower than fifth in the standings during Johnson’s nine full seasons.

Wins aren’t everything in NASCAR. Just ask potential champion Carl Edwards, who could win the championship with one win on the season and none in the Chase. But, Johnson and the #48 team have not performed at the same level this year as they have for nearly the past decade and currently sit sixth in the points standings. The only race Johnson dominated this year was his win at Kansas Speedway in October.

For the last nine years, Johnson has been what Jeff Gordon was to the sport during the mid to late 90s. He won a lot, but he also tended to stink up the show in the races he won.

Johnson has also struggled compared to his career norm in categories other than wins. He has 14 top-five finishes and 21 top-10 finishes, which are both close to career lows. He also hasn’t sat on the pole once this season, another feat he has accomplished at least once in every season of his career.

Instead of a bunch of wins, Johnson has finished second or third eight times this year.

In the past, Johnson has been able to turn second- and third-place finishes into victories. Several of his wins would come on weekends where he qualified either on the pole or in the top five, and he would generally be on top of the speed charts in all of the practice sessions leading up to the race.

Those were the weekends where it felt like the race was just a formality to make his Victory Lane celebration official.

Now the championship streak is all but over, and it is amazing how fast the car that might as well have been painted in gold the last five years can start to look flawed. The #48 team’s pit stops have been inconsistent at best for much of the year, the setups have not been spot on and Johnson has been involved in several incidents late in the season that he usually gets out of the way before the Chase rolls around.

Johnson will be a championship contender for years to come, but we may have seen the end of his dominant days. Gordon looked unbeatable for nearly a decade, as well, but he since has struggled to be a consistent championship threat.

There doesn’t appear to be a steady, young driver that is ready to take Johnson’s place as the next dominant driver in the sport, so maybe the next few years will have one of the things the Chase was designed to accomplish in the first place: a little bit of parity.

NASCAR had a different champion in six of the seven years immediately before it implemented the Chase format. It can happen in NASCAR; it’s just been so long ago that many people have forgotten what life was like before Johnson’s championships.

It will look a little weird Nov. 20 to have somebody not in a Lowe’s firesuit raise the Sprint Cup Series trophy at Homestead-Miami Speedway, but there’s a chance that could be the new normal.