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Multimedia NASCAR Mini-Site - Profiles of the 2007 Cup drivers. - An interactive graphic that breaks apart the Car of Tomorrow. - A behind-the-scenes video of making a commercial. - An audio slideshow on race preparation. - A weekly schedule with audio from current Cup drivers explaining most of the race tracks on the circuit. - A video of the "Sticker Man". Site StatisticsThis page has been viewed 272069 timesPage rendered in 0.3939 seconds Total Entries: 1549 Total Comments: 257 Most Recent Entry: 11/16/2008 07:18 pm Most Recent Comment on: 11/05/2008 07:35 am Most Recent Visitor on: 11/21/2008 04:17 am |
Auto Racing
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Chasers Beware! This Talladega 500 may be freaky: Jimmie, Carl and Greg better be on their toes
By Mike Mulhern
TALLADEGA, Ala. So, it this going to be The Wild Card 500? Or are those other nine playoff challengers just wishin’ and hopin’ that misfortune strikes NASCAR’s three tour leaders, Jimmie Johnson, Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle, who have been making a runaway of this championship chase? Matt Kenseth, everybody’s favorite darkhorse: “Everybody talks like it’s a three-horse race, but if you look to where we are compared to fourth, we’re not very far out. So if those three guys got caught up in a wreck here, or all faltered or had some trouble, there would be a lot of guys back in this thing.” So what do these 11 men—Travis Kvapil, Casey Mears, Aric Almirola, Regan Smith, Paul Menard, Mike Wallace, Joe Nemechek, Tony Raines, Brian Vickers, Martin Truex Jr. and Scott Riggs—all have in common? Two things: First, none of them are in the championship chase. And second, they are the top 11 qualifiers for Sunday’s Amp Energy 500. Yes, this is indeed shaping up as a typically weird Talladega weekend. Kvapil, pole winner at 187.364 mph in Doug Yates’ still-winless Ford, and Chevy’s Mears, who is leaving Rick Hendrick at the end of the season and moving over to Richard Childress’ team, will be on the front row for the 2 p.m. ET start. Carl Edwards, 12th, is the fastest of the 12 title contenders. Most of the chasers will be stuck way in the back at the green.
So what to expect in Sunday’s 500? “A few years ago they all tried to get together and do all that stuff like laying back,” Kenseth says. “I don’t know what anybody else is going to do, but I’m going to go race. “All the fans are paying to watch a race. “A couple of years ago a lot of people got in trouble for saying it was boring. But it was boring—Everybody got in a single-file line and waited until 30 to go and then raced. “I don’t think that’s what the fans want to see. And I don’t think that’s really what we want to do. “You’re still going to wreck…but it’s going to be with 10 to go instead of 100 to go.”
Jeff Gordon says “They’re all wild card races now. Anything can happen to anybody at any time. “Just go back to Kansas – we’re two-wide, ten rows deep on those restarts, and you’ve got lapped cars trying to get the Lucky Dog, trying to race for position. You’ve got lead-lap cars trying to race for position. “There were crashes happening every restart. “A lot of people focus on Talladega and Martinsville, but to me it can happen anywhere.” Gordon concedes Jimmie Johnson, Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle have been head-and-shoulders above the rest of the field. “Those guys have been up front every single week battling for the wins…and it’s been impressive, very impressive. How can you not pick those guys as the ones to beat for the championship?” But here Sunday? “You could win this race off turn four on the final lap, that’s just how powerful the draft is here,” Gordon says.
Johnson leads the standings, and his aggressiveness here has sometimes hurt him. What does he have planned? “The only thing I’m worried about is collecting points…and I don’t care how I do it,” Johnson says. “But the problem with ‘riding,’ we found last time, is there were more guys hanging back than were up front. So actually being up front was safer than being in the back. “That’s what we have to monitor. “The goal is to not be in the eye of the storm. So look at who is running in the pack and decide if that’s the crowd you want to run with. “So we’re going to keep a close eye on that and try to run in the area where it’s the safest. “And I imagine you’ll see us 12 guys essentially nose to tail. “Well, maybe eleven….I know Junior is not going to mess with any of that stuff.” Yes, Dale Earnhardt Jr. typically has his own agenda at Talladega (though he hasn’t won here since 2004). “I can’t do that,” Earnhardt says of just riding. “We have a lot of fans looking at us getting up toward the front. I like to get up there. I think that is the safest place to be.
“It is the most exciting place to be. It is where all the action is. And I don’t mind getting up in there and mixing it up.
“In this kind of car, if you are not going anywhere, and you’re sitting there with guys three-wide in front of you, and nowhere to go, you just go back and see who is running in the back, and wait for the crowd up front to cool back down.” Of course after Friday’s crash Earnhardt will be starting in the back.
Engine man extraordinaire Doug Yates (L) and ace crew chief Todd Parrot (Photo: Jerry Markland/Getty Images for NASCAR) “It would be worse somewhere else,” Earnhardt says. “This place, the way these cars drive, it doesn’t matter.” Well, for some, but not for everyone. And Earnhardt wasn’t the only man caught up in that disaster. “I was talking to David Gilliland about his car, and I felt sorry for him to get swept up in that,” Earnhardt said. “He said his backup car wasn’t that good. “But I told him it probably wouldn’t matter in a place like this. He might have more fun with it than he thinks. “It was pretty hairy, and pretty crazy at the end of the race last time (April). A lot of banging and bouncing around. I think it will be the same way this time.”
Denny Hamlin, though he’s a distant 243 points behind Johnson, insists “We’re definitely a part of it. It’s a long way to go. “If those first three guys all get in a wreck and we gain 130 points, then we’re only 100 out. “So are we out of it? No. I definitely don’t think we’re out of it by any means. I’m cautiously optimistic that we can get back in it.” And teammate Tony Stewart? He’s 12 points behind Hamlin; that 40th at Kansas was a killer. “I chalk this up to our whole season—Our season has been like this every week,” Stewart gripes. “This team just can’t get a break. “We’ve just had one of those weird years where we can’t get anything to go our way. “I still have to win some races before this is over with. I don’t want it to be over. I want us to get back on track and win a couple races before the season is over.”
Tony Stewart: He needs a win (Photo: Toyota Motorsports)
THE NASCAR NOTEBOOK Indy star Helio Castroneves and his sports agent Alan Miller are facing charges of tax evasion, and that has some in the NASCAR garage wondering just what’s going on, particularly since Miller is an agent for some NASCAR drivers too. “It’s certainly shocking,” Jimmie Johnson says. “Alan has been my attorney since I was 15 years old. “He’d been a great friend and has helped me with a lot of different things. “I have an outside tax group that I use, so he really is my attorney. As of now, everything is still the same. “I’m learning a lot as time goes on here, and there is still a lot to be investigated and covered. So I’ll certainly keep my eyes on the subject and trying to figure out what’s going on.
Helio Castroneves’ surprising legal problems have sent a shudder through the NASCAR garage (Photo by Marc Serota/Gletty Images) “I’ve got a business to run and need to protect myself and my family, and with everything I’ve done with Alan he has respected my thoughts and me as a driver, as though he was a parent. He has really done a phenomenal job for me. And we’ve been together since I was 15 or 16 years old, and I’ve never seen anything out of character from him. “So I’m shocked. “I know he is shocked. “As time goes on we’ll all learn and understand more. I’m just holding tight right now and making sure that when I start making decisions on what’s going to happen, that I have all the information.”
Teammate Jeff Gordon handles his business affairs a little differently. “Number one—a driver shouldn’t have an agent,” Gordon says. “That’s your first mistake. I think agents do nothing but get you in trouble… and not from a financial standpoint, but I just think they a lot of times think they have the pull in the garage and they don’t. “You need somebody to help you through a negotiation, but at the end of it you should be the one who should be going to that meeting with the car owner and whoever you are negotiating with. “From the other side of it, you should have financial advisors. “I just do it different. Maybe it’s because I came along at a different time. These days people will do whatever it takes to get here, and if they hire an agent to help them do that, then they put their trust and faith in that person.” However Gordon didn’t want to get too involved in discussing the Miller-Castroneves situation: “Let’s not speculate on that situation right now. Let’s let the facts come out, and then I’ll give you my thoughts on it.” Castroneves, Gordon says, “is a great friend of mine. He is going to go through some tough times. That comes along with the good times: When you’re on top people want to tear you down, and sometimes you have to deal with that. “Let’s just see how it all plays out.”
Dale Earnhardt Jr. may be the most popular driver in NASCAR, but that doesn’t make it any easier when he walks into a corporate board room to pitch sponsorship for his Nationwide series team. And times are tough all over. Earnhardt says that means gambling on racing newcomers might not be in the cards for a while. “It is harder now to pull a guy out of the Super Late Model series, a guy who has never been on a radial tire, and plug them in,” Earnhardt says. “Even though those guys would eventually make it at this level without a doubt—they are talented—but you can’t afford to go through the learning curve with them. “You can’t afford that learning curve with them. “Like Clint Bowyer: how many cars did he wreck his first season? I think half the garage didn’t think Clint was going to make it, he was backing in the wall so much. “But somebody has to go through that process with him until he gets out the other end of it and becomes the race driver he is today. “But the economy the way it is now, you can’t hardly afford to do that anymore.” Little wonder that Kenny Wallace says brother Rusty might be wooed out of retirement to get back in a ride. Sponsorship is tough to get right now, all the way around. “We are working pretty hard, and we have a lot of things that are looking really, really good,” Earnhardt says of his Nationwide team. “We have some things wrapped up that we will be looking forward to announcing soon. But we still have several races that we can fill up yet.
“Me and Rick Hendrick (his business partner in this venture) feel like we will race whatever we can afford to race. We won’t put a car out there that doesn’t have a sponsor on it. We can’t afford to lose any money.
“The economy is the way it is, there isn’t much you can do about it. You have to be thankful for whatever you do get. “A lot of these guys are going to walk around empty-handed next year.” What Earnhardt may do for a driver is unclear. “Mark McFarland was doing good until he got injured at Milwaukee, and that set him back pretty bad,” Earnhardt says. “I haven’t really got an eye on anybody at this point. It is hard to pick them out, man. “I can’t say that I knew how good Brad Keselowski was going to be. But I knew he knew how to take care of race cars, and that was what I wanted at the time. He just happened to be a good driver on top of it. So that really worked out. “You look for guys that, number one, are going to take care of your car…because that is how you go broke more often. “You can’t put a hot-shoe in there. Even if he is going to be good one day, you can’t afford to go through that whole season of him wadding up cars. You just have to find somebody who knows how to take care of it.” And that may put something of a damper on NASCAR’s diversity programs. The sport’s annual testing and evaluation session is set for next week at South Boston Speedway, with 26 promising young drivers from all over the country putting their skills on the line, hoping to be among the 14 earning a sponsored ride in NASCAR’s development series next year. NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity program was created in 2004, and 22 drivers have gone through the program. The 2008 class has been particularly successful, with 14 wins at various tracks around the country. And Paul Harraka won NASCAR’s Late Model championship at All American Speedway in Roseville, Calif., the first diversity driver to win a title.
Agree? Disagree? Don’t just brood. Express yourself here, and make your voice heard clearly in NASCAR headquarters in Daytona and Charlotte and in NASCAR race shops throughout North Carolina and the rest of the country.
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