Monday, October 15, 2007

Tony Stewart and Greg Zipadelli Have Their Backs Against the Wall

By Mike Mulhern

  CONCORD
  Tony Stewart now really has his work cut out for him, and he and crew chief Greg Zipadelli have a heck of a challenge over these next five weeks, trying to catch Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Clint Bowyer in time to make a bid for this year’s Nextel Cup championship.
  Just five races into the 10-race playoff chase, it looks like a three-man battle. Can Stewart and Zipadelli change the dynamics?
  They’ve got Martinsville, Atlanta, Texas and Phoenix to get back in the chase, so they’ll have any decent chance at the title in the Homestead finale.
  Saturday’s 500 here was maddening for Stewart. First, his car didn’t run well at all the first 100 laps of the scheduled 334-lapper at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. Then, during a routine round of pit stops, Stewart got pinned in the pits and banged around by other cars coming into their pit stalls just as he was leaving his.
  Little wonder Stewart didn’t leave the track very happily.
  “We made too many mistakes,” Zipadelli concedes. “We had a really good car by the half-way point, which was our goal—the top-five, running some of our best laps of the race, in comparison to the other guys.
  “I think we had a top-two or top-three car at that time.
  “But we made some mistakes on pit road and didn’t get them fixed the way we needed to.
  “So we’re just frustrated; we should be better than that. Those things happen, but they shouldn’t happen to us.
  “We need to be a little more intense and think about everything and be aware of everything.
  “I don’t know…just seems like it is our season right now…
    “But we will keep digging. We will never give up, though it is a little frustrating right now.”
  Having a dinged fender at 180 mph is a distinct disadvantage. So Stewart had to drive his tail off to salvage a decent finish, which he did…
  “With the condition that right-front fender was in, everybody did a really good job,” Zipadelli said. “Normally you can’t even salvage something like this out of that, because these cars are so aero-sensitive.”
  Fortunately for the team Stewart usually runs well at Martinsville this week’s stop.
  Unfortunately so do Johnson and Gordon, who went one-two in a bang-up finish in the spring.
  “Martinsville is a place that the three or four of us in the top-five in points run really well,” Zipadelli says. “I am sure it will come down to one of us.
  “Hopefully we will have good pit stops, keep good track position (difficult, given the dangerous pit road), and do all the things we need to do to have a shot of winning.”
  And the championship?
  “It isn’t over until you tell me mathematically we can’t do it,” Zipadelli says firmly.
  So what did happen on pit road Saturday night, when Stewart first banged into Paul Menard and then Kasey Kahne.
  “The blame is I don’t think either one of them has any respect for each other,” Zipadelli said bluntly about Stewart and Menard. “The kid (Menard), I don’t know, but I do know his crew was clapping when we were working on our car. That is uncalled for and unprofessional.
  “But I am believer in what goes around comes around. Someday he will be good enough to be in that situation, maybe, if he is lucky, and that will probably happen to him. Or he will lose something because he didn’t have respect, or give or take with other people.
  “But we can’t control what others do and how they act; all we can do is control how we respond.”
  Stewart might have recovered from the incident with Menard, which Zipadelli called “a minor thing.”
  But in the frantic seconds later Stewart and Kahne collided.
  “I think everybody got to hollering on the radio and never even saw Kasey’s car,” Zipadelli said. “That is what did the damage.
  “Paul Menard just scraped the paint off, didn’t really do anything else.
  “With us rolling out (of Stewart’s pit), it would have been real easy for him to give us the go-ahead. Not that he has to. It is a give-and-take.
  “If you have respect for people, and they are racing for something you are not, you usually do that.”
  So Stewart wound up losing another 44 points to Gordon.

  At least Stewart still has a shot at the title. Dale Earnhardt Jr. doesn’t.
  And this week Earnhardt will have new crew chief Tony Gibson at the helm, Tony Eury Jr. having already moved over to Hendrick Motorsports to prepare things for Earnhardt’s move there at the end of the season.
  “Martinsville is a place where I think I’ve improved as much or more than at any other track since I joined the Cup series,” Earnhardt says of Sunday’s 500. “Our first few races, it was like a circus. We were flying through the air and smashing into about everything.
  “It’s funny now, but at the time it was agonizing and frustrating.
  “It was a huge learning curve.
  “Then it was like turning on a light switch. The crew gave me some great cars, we started qualifying really well, and we rang up five straight top-five finishes.
  “Now I’m surprised when we don’t run in the top-five.
  “It’s a lot like when we go to Richmond or Talladega: we walk in the track and just expect to be up front.
  “I wondered if things would change with the car-of-tomorrow (back in action this weekend), but we went in there in the spring and led a lot of laps (more laps than anyone else, 137).
  “The thing that’s missing—That’s easy to see. We’ve had a lot of really good days but we’ve never been able to close the deal.”
  Earnhardt finished fifth in April. His best Martinsville run was a third, twice.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Clint Bowyer Passes a Major Hurdle to Stay in the Title Chase

By Mike Mulhern

 
  CONCORD
  Hey, Clint Bowyer is really hanging tough in this championship race, and even Jeff Gordon, redhot as he is now, with six wins this season and on a roll, is taking notice of Bowyer and crew chief Gil Martin.
  In fact Bowyer might well have won Saturday night’s Bank of America 500 if he’d made just a different move there at the end when Gordon’s fuel burped on a late restart.
  For Bowyer, 78 points behind Gordon with five to go, and only 10 points behind Jimmie Johnson, was on his game, at a track where he’s had very little success in his short time on the stock car tour.
  “We finally finished the race here…and second—it’s a loser, but in the big picture it’s a points-save for us,” Bowyer said. “I didn’t qualify the best. But we were able to finish up high. It’s uncharacteristic of me here.
  “I’m always loose here, and driving too loose, and they built a car that’s a little bit tighter. We tested at Nashville and put a lot of effort into it.”
  In the late moments of the 500 the battle appeared to be Gordon trying to hold off Kyle Busch and Bowyer. But when Gordon’s gas began drying up suddenly on a restart, Ryan Newman blasted by all three to take the lead. 
  “I couldn’t believe it,” Bowyer said. “Looked to me like he was going to win his first race of the year.
  “And – Whammy! He ran out of something, ran out of grip looked to me like.”
  And Newman suddenly crashed. That set up another Gordon-Busch-Bowyer sprint, in overtime.
  This time Gordon didn’t make a mistake.
  “Second, it stinks, I’m not going to lie to you,” Bowyer said. “It’s like ‘Man, what could I have done different to win?’
  “This time I probably got lucky finishing second.  Kyle got flipped up there, and he was certainly faster at the end. I thought he would have something for Jeff.”
  Bowyer did his best though: “I was closing on him (Gordon) pretty good, had my car rolling, and he was spinning.
  “Just about the time I moved out, he really checked out.  I think that’s when he shifted and didn’t give me enough time to dart low. 
  “I was trying to wait till the line before I started low, to make sure I was covered by the rule (and not penalized). But I messed up.  I ran in the back of him.
  “He probably would have sucked back by me off of turn two, and that was going to be my only chance. I was way tight there at the end, and I knew the start was going to be my time.
  “When he ran down there (on the apron) and ran out of fuel or whatever happened, everybody checked up.  But there was oil down on the track. I didn’t know if he was in the oil and slipped up. I didn’t know whether to go down low or get out of Dodge because he was fixing to spin out.
  “So everybody was kind of checking up right there to see what was going to happen.” 
  Can Bowyer catch Gordon in these last five races? “I think Jeff has been the guy to beat all year long, not necessarily in the chase,” Bowyer said. “Both those guys (Johnson and Gordon) have been on top of the game, that whole (Rick Hendrick) organization has.
  “Me and my team and our organization have got to pick it up a little bit.
  “It’s going to take them stubbing their toes a little bit for us to catch them. And I’ve got to go out and win races and lead the most laps and run them down.
  “It’s going to take quite a bit of luck. But, you know, we’ve seen stranger things happen.
  “We are picking up our game; we’re coming.  We’ve just got a long ways to go. 
  “They are obviously a step ahead of everybody right now, and we have to pick up the program a little more.”
  So Bowyer, in only his second season on the tour, suddenly finds himself as Richard Childress’ lead driver. “It’s very gratifying,” Bowyer says. “It’s only our second year together, we’re running up front and doing what we’re paid to do. 
  “We’ve won a race, we’re running for a championship, it’s been an awesome year so far. 
  “We have five races to go, and we have to keep this momentum strong and keep everybody with pep in their step and energized.”

Jeff Gordon, With Two Straight Wins, is Looking Inevitable

By Mike Mulhern

  CONCORD
  Jeff Gordon is looking more and more like Mr. Inevitable in this year’s Nextel Cup championship chase.
  And, looking the even bigger picture, his victory Saturday night at Lowe’s Motor Speedway was No. 81 of his career – and puts him within sight of the marks set by legends Cale Yarborough (83) Darrell Waltrip (84), Bobby Allison (84)…and even David Pearson (105).
  Gordon just passed the late Dale Earnhardt in career victories, and if Gordon passes these next four, he would become second only to Richard Petty in NASCAR tour wins.
  So does Gordon, now 36, have another 25 tour victories in him before hanging it up?
  “I don’t know how we got to 81. That’s an incredible number,” Gordon replied. “I just want to savor this win. I’m not even thinking about 82.
  “Do I have 25 wins left in me? We’re just having one of those great seasons, and we’ll see how next season shakes out.”
  Saturday night’s dramatic win in the Bank of America 500 was his second straight, and just about as wacky at the end as last Sunday’s win at Talladega.
  “I’m fired up about this,” an almost gleeful Gordon said after nearly throwing away what looked like a clear win and then hanging on to win. “I was fired up last week, but that’s because it was Talladega.
  “All this week people have been talking about how I haven’t won here since 1999….and all the troubles we went through…
  “And if you don’t win this one, you know somebody you’re fighting in the points race is going to finish ahead of you. Both Jimmie (Johnson) and Clint (Bowyer) have really stepped it up.”
  “We’re fortunate the track came to our car a little at the end, though we did have a little fuel issue like everyone else,” crew chief Steve Letarte said.
  “I got to the backstretch and kept watching the fuel pressure, which was hovering around six pounds, which isn’t much,” Gordon said. “I’d told them under caution ‘This thing is running out of fuel.’ But Steve said ‘No, we’re not running out.’”
  Scott Maxim, the team engineer for Jimmie Johnson, said Johnson’s gas problem “was a problem with the fuel pickup after that last caution, with the cars sitting on the track for so long.”
  Chad Knaus, Johnson’s crew chief: “That’s a bummer. It looked like we were going to recover (from Johnson’s earlier spin) and come out with a top-10.”
  Johnson had to make an extra stop for a splash of fuel while running sixth, and he finished 14th. That leaves Johnson 68 points down to Gordon. “We’re not that far behind, and there are still five races left,” Knaus said. “We’ve got time to bounce back and win this thing.”
  Still, Gordon is looking more and more inevitable.
  Gordon in a title run: “I’ve seen it before….I just hope we can finish it off,” car owner Rick Hendrick said after his operation’s 14th win of the season.
  “The momentum this team has can only be destroyed from inside, not from outside.”
  Indeed for a few moments near the end, with Gordon locked in a tight battle with teammate Kyle Busch – who is leaving at the end of the season to move to Joe Gibbs’ soon-to-be Toyota team – there was a clear tenseness about how hard the two might race each other. Hendrick talked with both, reminding them to ’ be cool.’
  “I was very impressed with the way Kyle Busch handled himself,” Hendrick said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a situation quite like this in my 25 years in this sport, a guy leaving and yet doing so, so well before moving on. Kyle is showing so much maturity.”
  Until the final flurry of yellows, Gordon was running away from the field.
  “I don’t think anyone could have touched us if we hadn’t had that fuel issue,” Gordon said.
  “But I’m glad nobody ran over us when the thing burped.
  “It’s not that we ran out of gas. It’s that there wasn’t enough in the box while we were on the banking. So I ran on the flat. It actually took off great, so good I actually spun the tires terrible.
  “Luckily Clint hit me. He came to victory lane and said ‘I’m sorry I hit you.’ But I said ‘No, thanks, because if you hadn’t hit me you’d have passed me.’”

  Goodyear’s tire choice was again questioned in some quarters and there were a few tire issues. Juan Pablo Montoya was one who blew a right-front and crashed.
  “It looked like a right-front tire went down,” crew chief Donnie Wingo said. “A few people had issues with it. But all of ours (right-fronts) had looked good up to that point, so we really wasn’t worried about it. 
  “We were probably 10 laps away from pitting. He hadn’t said anything about any problems, but it just all went at once.
  “He hit the wall so hard and the tire is tore up so bad that it’s hard to tell, really, what happened to it.”
  Ryan Newman crashed while leading in the final miles and said he thought he had a flat left-rear that triggered the incident. But Goodyear said all of Newman’s tires were still up after his spin.
     
 

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Matt Kenseth Suffers Through Another Dismal Night, But Ricky Rudd Sparkles in His Comeback

By Mike Mulhern

  CONCORD
  For Matt Kenseth this has been a very forgettable playoff series. He’s had so much misfortune the first five chase events that he’s a whopping 442 points behind Nextel Cup tour leader Jeff Gordon with five races still to go.
  “I don’t know where to start,” Kenseth moaned after finishing 34th in Saturday night’s Bank of America 500. “We had a pretty fast car; we just had something weird where we’d run 10 laps and I would get so loose in the corner I could hardly hang onto it. 
  “I have absolutely no excuse. I really feel like an idiot out here. I wrecked twice…and it seems like we’ve wrecked for a month straight. I really want to apologize to my fans. 
  “It’s hard to stress how hard these guys work on this car, and I really feel bad for these guys. I really let them down.”
  On the other side of the picture was Ricky Rudd, who sparkled in his comeback after six weeks sidelined with a bad shoulder injury.
  “It’s good but it’s bad—we ran out of gas when we got the green flag,” Rudd said after sliding home 11th. “I stood in the gas and it was ‘Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh,’ and I pulled over to the inside. And then it took off again.
  “They were saying ‘There’s no problem on fuel.  You don’t need to worry about running on the flat (to keep the gas flowing) like everybody else.’  They said we were good on fuel…but we weren’t good on fuel, so that’s really frustrating.
  “We were seventh, and we would have at least been seventh or fifth.
  “As far as my shoulder, it’s a little sore.  I knew it was hurting. But on a scale of 10 it wasn’t like something you couldn’t bear. It was just like a bad headache.
  “I’ll know more about Martinsville when I wake up Sunday morning and go back to rehabilitation therapy on Monday. 
  “This is different than Martinsville. I’ll have to work it a whole lot more (next Sunday). It’s going to have to get in a little bit better shape. 
  “I don’t want to start Martinsville and get out at halfway.
  “Right now I’m probably a little better than 50-50 for Martinsville.”
  For title contender – now long-shot—Carl Edwards this 500 was a mixed blessing. He rallied to finish fifth: “That’s great for us.  We did not have a fifth-place car, so we’re very fortunate. We were barely a top-15 car.
  “So I’ve got to thank my crew. That was a long run there at the end. All sorts of things are happening, and we ended up fifth.”
  Still, he lost more ground to Gordon, and it’s problematic if he can make up that 240-point gap, unless Gordon falters badly.
  “It’s a great points run for us, we really salvaged something, we got very lucky,” Edwards said.
  His fuel? Yes Edwards sweated that too: “The fuel might have set there and boiled a little bit in the line…and I went down in turn one and Jimmie Johnson’s car kind of quit and mine started missing. 
  “I think a lot of guys were vapor-locking.
  “We got great fuel mileage.  Bob (Osborne, his crew chief) said ‘Just be cautious.’”

Jeff Gordon Makes It Two In a Row,  In Another Thriller

By Mike Mulhern

  CONCORD
  Shades of Kansas City, a late-race gas crisis in an overtime two-lap shootout turned last night’s Bank of America 500 into a thriller, with Jeff Gordon pulling out a narrow victory over Clint Bowyer and Kyle Busch, Gordon’s first win at Lowe’s Motor Speedway since 1999.
  “I can’t tell you how many times we tried to give this one away,” Gordon said after his second straight Nextel Cup tour win, once again in a somewhat improbable finish.
  “Jimmie Johnson, I don’t know what happened to him. He had us all covered. We were racing for second to him.
  “At the end I just kept saying ‘No cautions, no cautions.’ Then I had oil on my windshield from the guy blowing up, and I knew the yellow was coming out…and I was out of gas.
“But what an awesome, awesome day. This is what we’ve been looking for, a win here.”
It was Gordon’s sixth win of the season, and Gordon stretched his points lead by a few in Round Five of the 10-race title chase, which remains a three-man fight, with Bowyer hanging tough in there against Gordon and Johnson heading this week to Martinsville Speedway.
  But it was another tough night for most playoff drivers. Matt Kenseth crashed several times. Kevin Harvick never really got on track, and neither did Denny Hamlin, who had transmission trouble.  Kurt Busch slapped the wall. And Tony Stewart twice got dinged on pit road.
  “This isn’t my best race track, it’s no secret this has been a tough place for me,” Bowyer said. “In the big picture it was a big points day for us….and so we’re not out of it. We’ve got to stay full-court-press and hope for a little bad luck on their end. You hate to look for that, but that’s what it will probably take.
  “I’m just thrilled to get out of here without hitting that fourth turn wall. I hit that wall every time I come here.
  “It will just take a lot of luck on our part and some misfortune on their part (to have a good shot at the title), and then we’ll just have to be ready to take advantage of things.”
  So with five races left this season Gordon stretched his lead over Johnson to 68 and over Bowyer to 78.
  The rest of the challengers are all but out of it: Stewart is 198 points down, Carl Edwards 240 down, Kyle Busch 280 down, Kurt Busch 315 down, Harvick 328 down, Hamlin 349 down, Jeff Burton 366 down, Martin Truex Jr. 378 down, and Kenseth 442 down.
  Johnson finally hit a bump in the championship road, spinning while dominating the 500 and falling to the rear of the field. But once again he displayed that remarkable comeback touch, patiently working his way back up through the pack, up to sixth, before needing a late pit stop for a splash of fuel that left him 14th.
  Gordon then took up the slack for car owner Rick Hendrick, surviving a late-race scare when Johnny Sauter crashed on lap 321 of the scheduled 334, sweating out a 12-minute red-flag delay to clean the track, then botching the restart with five to go.
  Gordon led Busch at that green, with Bowyer right behind. But Gordon’s car sputtered abruptly on the restart, and Ryan Newman blasted up through to the lead when Gordon, Busch and Bowyer got jammed up. “I was surprised Newman was the only guy who blasted by me,” Gordon said.
  Suddenly, as Newman was pulling away, he slammed into the wall hard on lap 331, bringing out another yellow, and stretching the race to 337 laps.
  At that moment gas mileage was suddenly the factor. “When it sputtered going in turn one, I said ‘Well, we finally gave it away,’” Gordon said.
  “I did a pretty good job of not running into the back of him,” Busch said of the jam-up.
  And Gordon, Busch and Bowyer all somehow managed to find enough fuel to finish.
  The race was marred by 15 cautions, for assorted spins, blown tires and crashes. Again Goodyear’s choice of tires here appeared a bit too hard, and drivers had a rough time coming off the corners. And some drivers blew right-fronts, like Juan Pablo Montoya and Robby Gordon.
  But Ricky Rudd made a great comeback after six weeks on the sidelines while his shoulder mended. And Toyota’s AJ Allmendinger, who has had a difficult first year on the tour, also had a solid night, though teammate Brian Vickers, who nearly won here in the spring, didn’t make the field.
 

Greg Biffle May Be Close to a New Deal with Jack Roush

By Mike Mulhern

  CONCORD
  Greg Biffle finally has things going his way out on the track, and he may now also have things going better off the track too.
  He’s getting married in a few days, and he may now be ready to sign a new contract with car owner Jack Roush.
  Biffle has one more year remaining on his current contract with Roush, but Roush wanted him to renegotiate that to a a longer-term contract, in order to make it easier to sign a sponsor. Those talks broke down over the summer, about the time Biffle fell into a slump on the track.
  But that Kansas win may have been just the right tonic to get things going his way again, and Biffle and new crew chief Greg Erwin now finally seem to be clicking.
 

Doctors Examining DEI’s Richie Gilmore

By Mike Mulhern

  CONCORD
  Richie Gilmore, the veteran engine man and now team manager for Teresa Earnhardt at Dale Earnhardt Inc., remains in a local hospital getting treatment for last weekend’s frightening aneurysm, according to Steve Hmiel, DEI’s technical director.
  Gilmore has undergone several MRIs as doctors try to understand just what happened, and he could be sidelined for the next several weeks.

Villeneuve Planning Next Cup Start

By Mike Mulhern

  CONCORD
  Jacques Villeneuve’s next Nextel Cup start could come at Phoenix Nov. 11, Tommy Baldwin, competition director for Bill Davis’ Toyota team, says.
 

NASCAR’s Newest Team Owner, Robert Kauffman, is One of the World’s Richest Men

  So just who is this Robert Kauffman, who just bought a 50 percent share of Michael Waltrip Racing?
  At 43, he’s been a wheeler-dealer in the financial world for years, and he’s a self-made billionaire, listed by Forbes at number 557 on the annual list of the world’s richest men, with a net worth of $1.8 billion. That makes him richer than Bruton Smith and Jim France.
  Kauffman says he’s buying into Waltrip’s operation as a personal venture, not as part of the Fortress equity fund group he helps run out of a London office. Last year Kauffman’s salary was reported to be a whopping $66 million, and he’s got a $1.3 billion stake in Fortress, which he co-founded in 1998. Kauffman is one of Fortress’ five principals, all 40-somethings who have extensive backgrounds in some of the world’s top financial operations.
  Kauffman, a graduate of Boston’s Northeastern University, runs Fortress’ European investments and he also run an Italian subsidiary which is a loan servicing business. One of Fortress’ more interesting investments was in buying up $200 million worth of Michael Jackson’s loans—against the collateral of Jackson’s 50 percent share of the Beatles’ songbook.

Souvenir Sales off, with Dale Earnhardt Jr.‘s Move from DEI

By Mike Mulhern

  CONCORD
  The International Speedway Corp. (NASDAQ: ISCA) disappointed analysts with lower than expected returns for the first nine months of the year.
  The France family’s track holding company, which owns Daytona and Talladega and a number of other NASCAR speedways, reported net income of $63 million on revenues of $563 million from January through the end of August. That compares with net income of $109 million on revenues of $545 million over the comparable period in 2006.
  The ISC said it expects total revenue for 2007 between $810 million and $815 million.
  Some key financials: the ISC has bought out its partners in Chicagoland Speedway; it has all but halted efforts to build new tracks in Washington and New York City; and its earnings from souvenir sales (through Motorsports Authentics) have plummeted, in part because of Dale Earnhardt Jr.‘s announced move from Dale Earnhardt Inc. to Hendrick Motorsports.
  ISC and Bruton Smith’s Speedway Motorsports (NYSE:TRK) jointly own Motorsports Authentics, one of the sport’s biggest merchandisers.
  Speedway Motorsports has said it expects to earn between $106 million and $110 million for the year.
 

Stephen Leicht Mulls Pitch from Richard Childress

By Mike Mulhern

  CONCORD
  Richard Childress had up-and-coming driver Stephen Leicht under his umbrella two years ago but let him get away to Ford’s Robert and Doug Yates. But the Yates, now revamping their entire struggling NASCAR operation, have decided to drop Leicht from their Busch roster at the end of the season, even though the Asheville racer, still only 20, sits ninth in the standings. And Childress would like to bring Leicht back into the fold next season.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Waltrip Selling 50 Percent to London Investor; Dale Jarrett Says He’s Retiring

By Mike Mulhern

  CONCORD
  Dale Jarrett did it with class yesterday afternoon. But then he is one of the classiest guys in this sport, and one of its best spokesmen, willing to be fearlessly outspoken if need be, during his 21 seasons in the big leagues.
  Now, after three months of deep thought, the racer from Hickory has decided it’s time to hang it up. So the three-time Daytona 500 winner, 1999 Winston Cup champion, and son of two-time tour champion Ned Jarrett, gracefully announced his retirement for next spring, when he will turn his Toyota ride, with its UPS sponsorship at Michael Waltrip’s, over to promising rookie David Reutimann.
  Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon take their championship game again head-to-head here in tonight’s Bank of America 500, and the Rick Hendrick teammates could pull further away from their 10 NASCAR playoff rivals in Round Five of the 10-race title chase.
  Johnson, who starts the expected four-hour race from the front row next to pole winner Ryan Newman at 7:46 p.m., is one of the favorites, along with Matt Kenseth and Tony Stewart. Kenseth is essentially out of the title chase, but Stewart, 154 points down, needs to begin a comeback here, and hope Johnson and Gordon both have trouble. Clint Bowyer, 63 points down, is the man under the most pressure, not necessarily to make up a lot of ground here but simply to hold his own and try to chip away.
  That’s the setting here tonight. But the two big stories Friday at Lowe’s Motor Speedway involved Jarrett and teammate Michael Waltrip, who announced he was selling a 50 percent stake in his first-year Cup team to a wealthy British investment man, Robert Kauffman of London, on the same day Jarrett announced he would be retiring from NASCAR racing after next spring’s All-Star race at this track.
  While Jarrett’s announcement has been expected, in one form or another, Waltrip’s sale of half his team certainly wasn’t. And that continues a very worrisome trend in this sport, of veteran racers selling significant shares of their teams to outsiders.
  Kauffman, yet another outsider unknown to NASCAR, runs an international investment group, Fortress (NYSE: FIG), which has more than $43 billion (B) in assets. Its headquarters is in New York, with offices in Dallas, Frankfurt, Geneva, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Rome, San Diego, Sydney and Toronto. But Kauffman says his investment in Waltrip’s NASCAR team is a personal investment. And Waltrip gave credit to his wife Buffy for helping put the Kauffman deal together.
  Why? “I think people should see it as complimentary,” Kauffman replies.
  “Professional sports these days are a business, and you can have an economic return if you can run this like a business. That’s part of the interest, part of the challenge.
  “Michael is a great racer, and he started a team from scratch. But budgets, financial control, that’s all new to him. Setting ride heights, things like that, are his forte.
  “So if I can bring some of the finance side to it, hopefully it will work out.
  “It’s a terrific package, with great sponsors and the backing of Toyota.
  “If you look at the trend of NASCAR and its overall direction, it actually looks like a quite reasonable investment.”
  So is Kauffman doing this deal because of the possibility of NASCAR’s France family eventually franchising teams? “A lot of people toss that word around,” Kauffman says. “Given that I’m a rookie owner, having an opinion about that is probably not my purview. I’ll leave that to Mr. Penske, Mr. Hendrick and Mr. Childress to work that out.”
  Jarrett himself created a very emotional situation with his announcement. “It seemed a lot easier a couple months when I started thinking about this than it is to stand here today,” Jarrett, who turns 51 next month, said slowly.
  “I just came to the conclusion I wanted to back out of (running) all 36 races.”
  While Jarrett seemed at peace with his call, Waltrip clearly wasn’t: “When we worked out the deal to get Dale to come over, I felt it gave us credibility. What a great human being and champion Dale is. I’m proud Dale could stand up and say what he had to say…and didn’t start crying, because I might have.
  “There is always change. And it doesn’t matter a whole lot what’s in the past, and it doesn’t matter what lies ahead…what matters is what lies within. And Michael Waltrip has gotten to see what lies within Dale Jarrett. He’s got a big heart, and he’s a caring person.
  “I just want to say thanks to him for putting us on the map. And I want to apologize to him and David (Reutimann) for not having the team they needed the first part of this year. But every week we’re getting better. And I hope the first guy to win a race for Toyota is Dale Jarrett.”
  “It has been a difficult decision, but I knew that time was coming. I just felt like, with things that have transpired this year, I am ready to do this,” Jarrett says.
  “I can walk away. It’s that time. Are my driving skills as good as when I was 40? Probably not. But qualifying is the hardest part; when we get into the races we still drive the cars.
  “But it’s a younger guy’s sport. The last couple of years haven’t been the greatest…and before it gets any more…..
  “It’s just lined up to be the perfect time. I’ve been driving race cars for 31 years and that’s enough.
  “In no way, shape or form was I asked or forced to reduce my schedule by UPS or Michael Waltrip. This was a decision I made.”
  No Truck racing, no Busch racing, Jarrett insists. And no second-thoughts like Mark Martin.
  “I talked with Terry Bradshaw at Indianapolis about how difficult it is to know when that time is,” Jarrett said. “And he gave me some good advice: ‘Make sure you’re comfortable with not competing any more. Because no one has ever stopped and come back and been very successful again. Once you get that out of your system, then you can go on to other things.’
  “That was the hardest thing, knowing I was going to be okay with that. And there have been a few times when I’ve started to question if this was the right decision. But just like I couldn’t let bad weekends influence my decision, I also couldn’t let good weekends influence me.
  “I feel what I am doing is best for Michael Waltrip Racing…that we move this forward. We have a lot of young guys, and they are the future of Michael Waltrip Racing, and I’m not. So it was time for me to make this decision, and I’m good with it.”

 
  Dale Jarrett calls himself “the luckiest man on the face of this earth. I’ve been fortunate to do what I enjoy doing, drive a race car.
  “And I have made a lot of good friends along the way. 
  “I’ve been fortunate to do it without serious injury, and I am able to walk away from it on my own terms.”
  So now he’s down to the last 11 NASCAR Cup events of his legendary career—the year’s final four, if he can make the fields, and a handful next spring, including the Daytona 500, which he’s won three times.
  Whether owner-driver Michael Waltrip and Toyota will be able to turn things around fast enough to let Jarrett get one more tour win, well, that’s hard to say.
  And Waltrip was emotional at yesterday’s announcement. “Dale had every opportunity just to ride the rest of his career out, but he was intrigued by the possibilities here and the opportunity to turn a new page,” Waltrip said.
    “I love Dale, I love his heart.
  “And we’re not going to quit either.”
  Of course it’s been a very rough season for Waltrip, in his first year as owner-driver, and Jarrett, his lead driver on one of Toyota’s trailblazing teams: “But we’ve made it through the toughest time,” Waltrip said.
  “Fridays, or Thursdays in this case (qualifying) are not a lot of fun. There is so much stress I couldn’t tell you what it’s like. And that does take its toll,” Jarrett, who didn’t make tonight’s field here, concedes.
  “But my coming to Michael Waltrip Racing and Toyota was to help them along quicker. And that can be done in different ways. I don’t have to be in the race car to make that happen.”
  In the emotional press conference Jarrett said he would run Daytona, California, Las Vegas, Atlanta and Bristol, next season, along with the Daytona Bud Shootout and the May All-star event and then hang up his helmet. Jarrett, full-time on the Cup tour since 1987, got his first win in 1991 with the Wood brothers, in a door-to-door battle with the late Davey Allison. And he won the 1999 series championship.  But his last great season was 2002, and he’s only won twice since then, in the spring of 2003 at Rockingham and the fall of 2005 at Talladega.
  Jarrett’s last few years with Ford car owner Robert Yates didn’t go very well, in part because that team got far behind on its engineering operations. This year, his first with Waltrip and Toyota, hasn’t gone well either; he’s qualified for only 20 of the year’s 31 events, he missed making the field here, and his best finish was 22nd in the Daytona 500, an event he’s won three times.
  But Jarrett was almost serene yesterday, content. And gracious: “I can’t say enough about the France family and the people in NASCAR for the opportunity they have provided me. This has been a privilege and an honor to drive a race car I this series. And to drive for the people I’ve driven for.
  “I have raced against some of the best in the business – Darrell Waltrip, Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt. I was very fortunate to come into this sport when it was really on an upswing.
  “I don’t know how it could be much better. The last 21 years have been built around being at a track for more than 30 weekends a year doing exactly what I enjoy doing. My family has paid the price and allowed me to do that, and hopefully I can give some of that back now.
  “I’m going to stay busy and involved with the race team. I’m going to be around for quite a while because I do enjoy this sport and the people.
  “I’ve always been a big dreamer…but I don’t think I could have ever dreamed of this good a career. I’ve been very, very fortunate. When you come into this you hope you can be competitive…and when you become competitive, you hope you can win.
  “When I brought this up to Kelley (his wife), she asked ‘What gave you the idea it was time to do this?’ I told her there were just little signs.
  “I have nothing else to prove in this sport. I never considered myself the best in this sport; there have been guys more talented. But no matter business you’re in, there are different ways to go about doing it.”
  After winning with the Woods, Jarrett moved to Joe Gibbs’ new team, and then to Yates’ team, where he spent 12 years. “It’s been a hell of a ride, and I’ve enjoyed it immensely,” Jarrett said. “The opportunities…not just at the track: to go to the NBA finals, to the Super Bowl, to Augusta to play golf, none of this would have happened if it wasn’t for this wonderful sport.”
  Television is certainly in Jarrett’s future. “Next week we’ll probably get those conversations started…but that had nothing to do with this decision,” Jarrett says.
  And what’s in Waltrip’s future? He says he will continue to field three Cup teams, though the driver for his third team is still up for debate.
  Waltrip just hired former team owner Cal Wells to help general manager Ty Norris run the operation.

 
 
THE NASCAR NOTEBOOK  

  So another newcomer has signed on as a NASCAR team owner, a guy from London who says he’ll be following his investment via the Internet.
  This sport has taken some strange twists lately, and Robert Kauffman’s decision to buy 50 percent of Michael Waltrip Racing is just the latest.
  Kauffman runs Fortress, a publicly traded private equity firm and hedge fund that reported net income of $442 million last year on revenues of $1.5 billion.
  The company, which once employed Presidential candidate John Edwards as a consultant, did an initial public stock offering this past February, opening at $18.50 a share, soaring to $35 a share that day; it is currently trading at $22. Fortress invests in real estate and railroads and plans to expand into casinos and horse racing.
  So why would all these outsiders – like George Gillett, John Henry, Dietrich Mateschitz and Bobby Ginn – suddenly want to get into NASCAR racing?
  “Because there is real money to be made in owning a team, believe me,” one top car owner said, asking not to be named. “Look at Michael’s situation: he’s got $60 million of sponsorship income a year. There is money to be made here.”
  But not every newcomer makes it. Ginn for example bailed out in July, after less than a year in the sport. 

  When it comes to NASCAR retirement, drivers don’t always stay down on the farm. And this weekend Bill Elliott, who just turned 52, is back again in action in the Woods’ Ford. “I really stayed around longer than I thought, but it’s fun to come do this deal,” Elliott said. “Sometimes you get caught in that old rut if you stay too long. So it’s good to get away for a while and then come back.
  “I still enjoy racing. I still enjoy the guys. I just hope we can do some good.
  “You hear Jeff Gordon and a lot of guys talk about when they walk away they’ll just go and that’s it. Rusty (Wallace) pretty much did it. For me it’s just hard to quit cold turkey.
  “What I end up doing the next few years, I don’t know. I’ll just figure it out.
  “The problem is in this sport you have to deal with the pressure week-in, week-out, and that gets unbearable sometimes. If you have a good stretch clicking along, you can overlook a lot of things. But when things start going bad, and you’ve got a family and you’re away from home a lot, it’s about more than you can bear. ‘Hey, I need a time-out. I’ve got to clear my head and start over again.’
  “You used to be able to do that over the winter, but now there’s so much pressure year-round.”
 
  NASCAR has had its planned new Busch version of the car-of-tomorrow in the wind tunnel this week, with Detroit car makers sending engineers over to discuss various options. NASCAR officials have been considering allowing more leeway on the body styling of the new model, which is tentatively set to debut in 2009.

  Russ Wicks has broken the world speed record for a stock car with a run at 244.9 miles per hour Tuesday at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. He was running a 2007 Dodge Charger, based on NASCAR specs.
  The run breaks Wicks’ own previous record of 222 miles per hour. The car was developed by the Dodge Motorsports Engineering group, with Arrington engines.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Ryan Newman Wins the Charlotte Pole, But Talladega Post-Race Analysis is Brutal

By Mike Mulhern

  CONCORD
  So NASCAR’s finest basically dogged it Sunday at Talladega, until the final few laps? Well, yes, some of them are candidly admitting.
  Rather than continue to be cannon fodder for promoters at the stock car tour’s most dangerous track, Cup drivers are conceding it wasn’t quite a 100 percent effort last weekend. And they predicted more of the same.
  Maybe that’s why there were so many empty seats in the fourth turn and on the backstretch….maybe that’s why Daytona promoters have been pushing hard the past several weeks to market next February’s season opener…maybe that’s why Daytona is now even opening ticket sales for next July’s 400.
  Ryan Newman, sometimes known as ‘Mr. Friday’ for his strong qualifying runs, beat Jimmie Johnson to win the pole here last night for Saturday night’s Bank of America 500. Newman, who is looking for his first tour win since September 2005, clocked in at 189.394 mph; that’s a bit slower than Scott Riggs’ pole winning run at 191.469 mph last fall on these same Goodyears. Drivers are running their standard Cup cars, not the controversial car-of-tomorrow.
  One of the night’s surprises was Bobby Labonte, third quickest, coming after a strong run at Talladega: “That was a big step for us,” Labonte said of Sunday. “I think we’re gaining on it. Hopefully we can get some momentum on our side.”
  Another surprise – Brian Vickers failed to make the field. Vickers nearly won the 600 here in the spring. Dale Jarrett and Sam Hornish Jr. also missed the cut.
  But analysis and reaction about the Talladega race was front-and-center. The car-of-tomorrow, some are saying, simply isn’t ready for prime time.
  It may not be politically correct to discuss all this, and finding guys willing to go on the record with their candid complaints has not been easy, because NASCAR officials have been acutely sensitive to such comments. But it’s getting easier.
  And with the NASCAR championship apparently down to Jeff Gordon, Johnson and longer-shot Clint Bowyer, the fallout from Sunday’s follow-the-leader Talladega 500 dominated Thursday at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. Gordon and Johnson, who ran at the back of that pack all day until charging to the front for a one-two finish, both said yesterday that Talladega drivers simply didn’t race too much during the 3-1/2 hours on the track because there was too much at risk.
  Dale Earnhardt Jr. said he was so bored at Talladega he was radioing his crew for NFL scores.
  Winner Gordon said “It’s no secret I’m not a fan of the car. I’m just trying to figure out how to answer that question honestly and still keep my job.
  “We rode around in the pack last weekend because we didn’t want to be part of that craziness. That white-knuckle stuff makes my eyes hurt….and my head hurt when I hit something.
  “We want to work with NASCAR to make this car the future of the sport. We just haven’t gotten there. I’m willing to do my part. I just hope NASCAR is willing too.
  “That’s as politically correct as I can be.”
  Teammate Kyle Busch doesn’t beat around the bus about the new model: “It needs a whole new makeover.”
  Johnson, the teammate Gordon beat at Talladega, with daring last-lap moves, agreed the Talladega was “boring.”
  But Johnson blamed the championship chase, rather than the car-of-tomorrow itself, for that.
  “To be honest with you, the reason it was single-file and boring racing had nothing to do with the car,” Johnson said. “Well, it did have something to do with the cars—The cars are too competitive, and we were all afraid of running three and four-wide all day long.
  “So you had drivers break off into groups. And I chose to be around guys I knew had as much to lose as I did, and pace myself through the day.”
  Those guys Johnson and Gordon chose to run around were at the very back of the field, the Jack Roush drivers.
  All battling to run dead last.
  And don’t think those 155,000 fans in the stands and those millions more watching on ABC didn’t notice.
  When Jeff Gordon runs 37th all afternoon, and there’s nothing wrong with his car, NASCAR executives better take notice.
  When Jimmie Johnson runs 35th all afternoon, and there’s nothing wrong with his car, NASCAR executives better take notice.
  Johnson’s take on Talladega: “You had three chase guys running the field up front, and they took the lane right to the top and tried to control it and keep it single-file for as long as possible.
  “I just think the race not being as action-packed is that 12 of us (the championship contenders) have a lot to lose right now. Those 12 cars and the mindsets they have, and maybe their teammates, broke that pack up…and all that energy and chaos we typically have.
  “But Daytona is totally different. You need track position at Daytona, you need to be up front, and you’ve got about a five to eight-lap window while the tires are still good to make passes and get position. Then we end up single-file because the tires fall off there.
  “But I think the spring Talladega race will be wild and crazy and everything everyone would hope because it’s still early in the year and you’re not counting points closely at that point.
  “But at the fall Talladega race in general has a very good chance of being boring, just because the chase contenders don’t want to get in there and mix it up until the end. You’ve got too much to lose.
  “I really feel it was the chase and not the cars at Talladega.”
  Car owner Rick Hendrick has double-down odds on winning this year’s championship, with Gordon and Johnson, both men typically tough to deal with here and at Martinsville, next week’s Nextel Cup tour stop. By the time these guys reach Atlanta, most of the other title challengers will probably be more worried about that Monday’s car-of-tomorrow test than in their chances of catching Gordon and Johnson in the title chase.
 

  So, if it is now Jeff Gordon versus Jimmie Johnson in NASCAR’s championship race, how do these two size up each other? How do these good friends and business partners deal with the rough-and-tumble races from here on out?
  Well, consider their no-holds-barred battle for the win down the stretch at Martinsville in the spring, where Johnson won, despite some vicious bumps from his teammate, who did everything but turn him.
  It was an unexpectedly sharp dual.
  Whether that’s what to expect now, with the Nextel Cup championship on the line, will be interesting to study. It’s a replay, of sorts, of that Gordon-versus-Terry Labonte title fight in 1996….which Labonte won, despite driving the final events with a broken wrist.
  “We’re certainly still close, though with him now being a father, our social scenes have ventured in different directions,” Johnson says. “We still are very close with Jeff and Ingrid and spend time and go to dinners and do those things.
  “Jeff lives in downtown; I live in South Park. We’re still close, absolutely still close.
  “As time has gone on, he’s helped me get on my feet, and I haven’t needed as much help with some of the business stuff. So our conversation is less on the work side and more on the personal side – like how many diapers he changed this week.   
  “The friendship is still there as strong as it’s ever been.
  “I think as years go on I respect him and what he’s accomplished more and more, especially how he’s carried himself. I have more respect for him today than I did when I started driving for him.
  “And Jeff is at the peak of his game right now. It doesn’t matter which track we’re at, he’s up there, and it’s tough to outscore him.”
  Indeed Gordon is the year’s strongest overall….but he’s 0-for-5 here the last three years, and Johnson is heavily favored to win Saturday.
  But then can Johnson handle the pressure of being the tour leader?
  He and crew chief Chad Knaus tend to perform best when under pressure and coming from behind, as they showed last year: Johnson left Talladega 156 points down, but four races later he came out of Texas with the tour lead and went on to win the title by 56 points.
  But can Johnson handle the pressure of being the leader?
  “I like pressure, I work better under pressure, and I think the team does as well,” Johnson says. “Our history shows we do a better job of coming behind and trying to fight through issues. But I would like to have a chance of holding the lead. I’d love to be in that position and leave here and have a big points lead and get through Martinsville and stretch it out and have to defend.
  “I think our team is plenty capable of doing it.”
  For his part Johnson says he learned during last year’s successful title run that take a mid-week break during this 10-race playoff stretch can make a big difference: “Last year in the chase, when I started enjoying myself, getting away from racing for a day or two during the week, that’s when things all started to fall into place.
  “Chad has recognized that, our team has, and we’ve done a good job of giving all the guys a little time, to get caught up, and to come back to the track with a fresh mindset…and not just punish yourself and pound yourself into the ground.”
  And dealing with Gordon these final weeks of the season, with so much on the line? “I’m not saying it’s a piece of cake, especially if we get to Homestead and it’s Jeff and I fighting for the championship—it’s going to be very challenging,” Johnson says.
  “But through it all, with all the competitive moments we’ve had, we’ve always had a lot of respect for one another. And I don’t see that changing.
  “If we get down to the last race, it will get more intense. But our relationship, and the dynamic we have as teammates and friends, that won’t change.”

THE NASCAR NOTEBOOK

    One of the funniest stories of the year struck here yesterday when it came out that Washington Congressional staffers for the House committee on Homeland Security had been told to get vaccinations for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, tetanus, diphtheria and influenza before heading down to Talladega for last weekend’s 500 and up to Charlotte for this weekend’s 500. The staffers are to study potential health issues at such mass events.
  Yes NASCAR may have its rabid fans, but Charlotte promoter Humpy Wheeler, when he finally stopped laughing, said that Washington call was “like taping your ankles to go to the mailbox.”
  And Wheeler, easily this sport’s best and most innovative promoter (who called once again on car-eating, flame-throwing Robosaurus for last night’s pre-race show), denies the Washington, D. C., move was any PR stunt. In fact, Wheeler was a bit upset at the issue, pointing out NASCAR-country “is not some third-world or fourth-world country.
  “Never in the 50-plus years of NASCAR has there been an outbreak of any kind, other than a few headaches because somebody’s favorite driver ran out of gas….or maybe a morning hangover.
  “Good Lord…..the last thing we need is some poor guy down in Bessemer City saying ‘Oh, I was going to go to that race, but I heard about that hepatitis and I don’t know what it is but I don’t want any of it.’
  “Now I’m afraid to talk to those (Washington) people…afraid I might get the shingles or some other disease they haven’t had a shot for.”
  Jeff Gordon did a double-take too when told about the issue: “I probably shake about as many hands as the President does throughout the year, and I’ve never really considered that one as an option. So maybe I need to now.
  “But there is certainly plenty of merit to building up your immune system. I’ve been one for years that used to get #### a lot. So I went to a nutritionist, and now I take supplements, and I eat better things, and I don’t get #### anymore. So maybe that could be an option as well.”
    Dale Jarrett delayed his announcement about his 2008 plans until today, and it is expected he will announce a limited schedule of Cup races. Jarrett and Jeremy Mayfield could be sharing a Toyota ride with car owner Michael Waltrip. Mayfield, whose career has been on the skids lately, is leaving the Bill Davis team at the end of the season, with newcomer Jacques Villeneuve expected to get that ride.

  Ricky Rudd was back in a car yesterday for the first time since his bad crash at California six weeks ago, which left him with an injured shoulder. He qualified 33rd for the 500.

  George Gillett, one of NASCAR’s newest team owners, in partnership with Ray Evernham, hasn’t been shy about jumping into the stock car world, and he’s adding a new driver to his new team’s mix, Canadian Indy-car racer Patrick Carpentier, taking Scott Riggs’ ride next season.
  Carpentier has only three stock events under his belt, on road courses. He finished 22nd at Watkins Glen in August in his only Cup run. But he won the Busch pole at Montreal and finished second.
  How NASCAR officials might handle Carpentier is unclear, because typically a newcomer has to work his way up from short tracks to intermediate tracks to speedways.
 
  Kirk Shelmerdine, the one-time star NASCAR crew chief, turned part-time Cup tour driver, is making a rare appearance here this weekend, but it was brief, when he failed to make the qualifying cut for Saturday’s 500.
  Next on Shelmerdine’s agenda: a 20-day vacation from Casablanca to Cairo to Lebanon and Greece, with some diving in the Red Sea.
 

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

So How Many Tickets Can Bruton Smith Sell for Saturday Night’s 500?

By Mike Mulhern

  CONCORD
  Well, Bruton Smith hasn’t moved Lowe’s Motor Speedway yet, so there’s still time to see the last race here? Or was that whole political brouhaha over Smith’s plans to build an NHRA drag strip on this property just a tempest-in-a-teapot, such as Smith likes to create when it’s time to get serious about selling tickets?
  But the bottom line might be that, even though this track, built by Smith back in 1960, sits right in the heart of stock car country, with virtually every NASCAR Cup team operation almost within sight, from atop the giant water tower on the backstretch, ticket sales lately just haven’t been up to snuff.
  Whether or not that changes in time for Saturday night’s Bank of America 500 remains to be seen.
  Certainly the rapidly dwindling excitement in the NASCAR championship race won’t help. Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, among the big favorites here, are starting to pull away from the field.
  Consider this: Johnson and Gordon together have nine wins here.
  Consider this: The other 10 title contenders have only four wins here altogether.
  And consider this: Seven of those 10 have never won a Cup tour event here at all. Kurt Busch is 0-for-14; Kevin Harvick is 0-for-13, and he’s led only two laps. Carl Edwards is 0-for-5, but at least with two thirds.
  The only man still within sight of Gordon and Johnson is Clint Bowyer, in only his second season on the tour and already perhaps an overachiever this quickly. Bowyer is 63 points down to Gordon, and he’s got to at least maintain with those two this weekend.
  The rest of the championship pack, well, they can go for broke, because they’re all fading fast.
  If anyone can launch a comeback, it’s probably Tony Stewart…if he’s not still moping over last Sunday’s problems. Stewart is 154 points down, after finishing eighth at Talladega, a race he called “boring,” a phrase repeated by several other drivers about the follow-the-leader affair.
  But Johnson is the man to beat this weekend, coming into tonight’s qualifying runs at 7 p.m.. He’s won five times in his 12 starts at this track, plus he’s won two All-star events.
  Actually this could be Johnson’s week to break away even from teammate Gordon. Over the last five Cup races at this place Johnson dominates this stats, as the fastest lead, the top passer under green, and the best closer.
  Ironically Gordon over those five events has five DNFs, with an average finish of 33rd. He hasn’t won here since 1999.
  If Johnson has much competition, it could come from Mark Martin, whose 17 top-fives are the most of any driver here. And Martin has led more laps at this track than any other man in the field.
  “It is probably my favorite track on the entire circuit,” Martin says. “In my opinion, it’s the greatest place to race in the world.
  “I can remember the first time, in 1982, and thinking ‘Wow!’”
  A big story this week is Toyota….which had an outstanding afternoon at Talladega, where Michael Waltrip won the pole and challenged during the 3-1/2 race until blowing a tire. And Dave Blaney had one of the best runs of his career, finishing third, with a great shot at the win, and putting the Bill Davis team in the 500 field by moving into the top-35.
  Can Toyota teams keep it up? If so, maybe it’s up to Brian Vickers, who ran an amazing 600 here in May, leading 76 laps, challenging for the win, and finishing sixth, despite having no power steering down the stretch.
  Stewart, after losing Sunday, split from the track without comment. Now he says “I feel I let my team down.
  “I don’t know what I should have done different, but I should done something different obviously, because we went—in the last three-quarters of a lap—from third to eighth. 
  “I had a great run on the outside, but all it took was Jeff to pull up there (in front of him), and there was nothing I can do. I’m treed.
  “It’s either push him or get crashed trying to go to the inside by him or run into the guys down on the bottom.
  “It’s not a very fun deal.
  “That doesn’t seem like racing to me
  “Everybody was feeling each other out at the beginning, then we all got in that line on the outside. That outside line got going, and once it started everybody jumped up there. And everybody just peeled around the top scared to pull out of line. 
  “It’s happened that way before, and that’s something the drivers are figuring out. Unfortunately it’s making the racing more boring every time we go to Talladega. 
  “It’s not the track’s fault, it’s not NASCAR’s fault, it’s not our fault as drivers. It just is what it is.
  “The fans are going to be able to dictate what happens more than we are as drivers. I don’t think it really matters what we think.
  “At the same time it’s hard for NASCAR to figure out an easy solution.
  “We could shorten the race to about 60 or 80 laps and cut all the crap in the middle where we’re all riding around absolutely bored out of our skulls. We could still put on a good show and everybody could get home earlier.
  “I don’t see the point in 500 miles, not with the way the race went Sunday and with the way it was in the spring. Both races this year—with two different cars—we had that same deal where we were all lined up on the outside.
  “I don’t see the point of it being 500 miles.”
 
THE NASCAR NOTEBOOK

  Carl Edwards has failed in his appeal of his 25-point penalty for his winning car at Dover being too low in post-race inspection.
  The National Stock Car Racing Commission – this time a committee of John Capels, Grant Lynch, and chairman George Silbermann—rejected the appeal.
  Edwards and car owner Jack Roush argued the infraction was the result of failure of a jackbolt clamp on a jack bolt, and they said being low, like that, was actually a performance disadvantage. Edwards and Roush also said a 25-point penalty during the 10-race championship chase was a much harsher penalty than a 25-point penalty assessed during the regular season.
  The committee said it considered the race there was no indication the infraction was intentional. But it said it was irrelevant whether being low was an advantage or disadvantage, because the car failed to meet post-race height rules.
  The committee also said point-penalties should be handed out “irrespective of a given competitor’s overall standing in the championship points, or in which championship race an infraction occurs.”

  Ricky Rudd, idle since his bad crash at California Speedway Labor Day weekend, will be back in Robert Yates’ Ford this week.

  What a difference a year makes: Mark Martin, for 19 years one of Ford Motor Company’s biggest NASCAR stars, is opening a Chevrolet dealership in Arkansas, near his Batesville home.
  Martin moved from Ford to Chevy on the Nextel Cup tour this season when Bobby Ginn hired him away from Jack Roush. Ginn sold his team, and Martin’s contract, to Dale Earnhardt Inc., in July.

  The newest man in the stunning invasion of NASCAR by outsiders is Scotland’s Dario Franchitti, the Indy-car star who finally is taking up car owner Chip Ganassi on his offer of a Nextel Cup ride.
  Franchitti, making his first run in last week’s Talladega ARCA race, concedes “it was into the deep end for us.
  “We didn’t get a chance to do any testing, so we showed up Thursday, jumped in the Dodge and ran my first laps in a stock car.
  “I managed 15 laps the first day. The second day I managed to double my quota. We started at the back for the race because we had an engine change. It was just a case of coming through the field and learning.”
  Franchitti did some more homework Sunday, watching the Cup 500 from the spotter’s stand. “I’ve watched Cup and Busch races on television but having driven Friday I could see a bit more what was going on. I could see moves happening before they happened. You could see people setting up for those moves. I just got a new level of appreciation for what was going on out there.
  “In the Indy-car the biggest thing is who is in front of you for the draft. With the stock car the guy in front is somewhat important but it’s really the guys behind.
  “Bump-drafting was a new experience. Being out on the track with 40 other cars was a big culture shock….just the different style of racing.
  “I had never seen an oval (high-banked) before, and I went straight into my first race. I didn’t do too badly. You have to learn sometime.
  “It is going to be a heck of a challenge, I’m not underestimating that at all. But this is the path I’ve chosen.”
  Franchitti says the next step of his Cup testing program is still up in the air.

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Jimmie Johnson May be Unbeatable Saturday Night at ‘Jimmie’s House’

By Mike Mulhern

  Jimmie Johnson may be going for the coup de grace this weekend at Charlotte’s Lowe’s Motor Speedway, where he’s dominated play ever since he first showed up on the tour some five years ago.
  Johnson and teammate Jeff Gordon look to be pulling away from the championship field, as NASCAR heads into Round Five of the 10-race title chase.
  And the Charlotte track, sometimes known as ‘Jimmie’s House,’ for his many victories, doesn’t look like a good place for his rivals to make up any ground on him. Except for Gordon, perhaps.
  Nobody has led more laps this season than Gordon and Johnson.
  And Johnson comes home to Charlotte armed with a hot piece of steel: the car he just won at California Speedway with, the same car he won Las Vegas with, and lasts year’s All-Star race. And the backup – the car he won Indianapolis with last year and Atlanta.
  Of course it’s been that kind of year for Chevrolet in general. The marquee has won 21 of the 30 events so far, and Rick Hendrick’s guys – Johnson, Gordon, Casey Mears and Kyle Busch have 13 of those wins.
  Now, yes, the Charlotte track has been a bit wacky lately, with promoter Humpy Wheeler changing up the surface so many times.
  “It’s a track that, regardless of the surface and design of the track, we run well at,” Johnson says. “So I have a lot of excitement looking forward to that race.
  “When we get to that track and we’re off a little bit, sometimes it creeps into our heads ‘Well, it’s not working out. Something’s changed.’ And we put a little bit more pressure on ourselves. But we’re typically excited about it, and I am this year.
  “I think it’s a good opportunity for us to get a win and score some more points in the chase.”
  So is it Johnson-versus-Gordon from here on out? “We put a lot of pressure on both our teams, in the friendly rivalry we have,” Johnson says. “I don’t see that changing.
  “When I see Jeff go by me, I know he is driving the same stuff, and if he is driving by me, then I’d better get up on the wheel and do something.
  “There are still a lot of races left. But as things unfold it could be a situation where we are racing each another.
  “In some ways that is what we would hope for…and in other ways it’s going to be difficult.”
  Meanwhile over in Jack Roush’s Ford camp things are starting to look grim. Carl Edwards is now 200 points down, and Matt Kenseth 313.
  Kenseth could challenge Johnson at Charlotte; it’s one of his best tracks too. But he’s pretty much out of the title chase.
  “The biggest challenge at Charlotte since they redid the track is the surface is really nice and there’s a lot of grip, but they keep bringing such a hard tire, and that’s a big challenge to get hooked up and get grip out of it, especially when they’re cold,” Kenseth says.
  “I don’t know if Goodyear brought back a softer tire or not, but if they did, that would be a big plus.”
  But beating Johnson at this track is going to be a chore, no matter what.
  “The last couple years Jimmie is the favorite every week wherever we go,” Kenseth says. “I don’t know anywhere we go where he’s really not a favorite. Maybe the road courses…and he still does good there.
  “If you have a fantasy league and you had to pick a guy to win every week, you’d pick him and you’d be pretty safe.”
  Another Roush man may now be hotter than the two in the chase, and that’s Greg Biffle.
  “It’s been a long road for us, and we’ve changed people, we’ve changed crew chiefs, so this team has had a tough time,” Biffle says. “But it’s been starting to come together.
  “At New Hampshire we ran decent, and that’s a reflection on our engineering program and everybody understanding these cars-of-tomorrow. Then we ran extremely well at Dover. And then we went back to the old car and win at Kansas; we’ve been working really hard on that program too.
  “So we’ve got those two completely different programs coming together at one time.”
  With that win at Kansas Biffle and crew chief Greg Erwin should be confident this weekend. “But the thing about it is when we ran at Charlotte before, we were running in the top-10 and blew a right-front tire,” Biffle frets. “We had some of the fastest lap times of the race, but unfortunately we didn’t finish.”
  Meanwhile, for Denny Hamlin this hasn’t been a great championship chase, to put it dryly. He’s 267 points down, and it’s probably time to start looking ahead to 2008.
  “We’ve had a really tough last couple months, even the month leading up to the chase,” Hamlin says. “Just a string of bad luck.
  “It seems we can’t go one week without having a pit road incident or a flat tire or bad luck or something on the track or blowing motors….
  “Last weekend we were in ‘the big one.’ We didn’t get a ton of damage but enough to the rear to really affect the car. But we battled back from that to get a fourth, a huge accomplishment for this team.
  “But for all realistic purposes, we are out of it.
  “We were on a pace losing 100 points a race….and we stopped the bleeding. But we’ve got to have days where Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson have days like we’ve had.
  “Our strategy Sunday worked exactly the way we wanted. We stayed up front all day. We stopped the bleeding…but we’ve still got to get some life back in us to get back in this chase.”
  Maybe he’ll get some help from drivers not in the chase. “This year guys that are outside the chase are now starting to be a little bit more aggressive,” Hamlin says. “Even the guys in the chase know they are fighting 11 other guys now, instead of nine, so they are a little more aggressive, because they know to keep up with Jeff and Jimmie it’s not going to take just consistent top-10 or top-15 runs. They are going to have to get Top-fives and Top-threes.
  “Now you’ve got a group of guys, me included, that feel we’ve got to make something happen. So we are going to be more aggressive.
  “Now some like Clint Bowyer (63 points behind Johnson and on the hot seat) need to take the conservative approach and get the best finish they can. We need to go out there and get wins.
  “Trying to keep guys pumped up is the hardest thing to do when you’re having a down time.
  “This year has been a struggle just to keep everyone’s head up, including mine. I’ve never had to struggle like this, I’ve never had the bad luck like this year that seems to kind of plague us at the wrong time.”
 

 
THE NASCAR NOTEBOOK

  Reed Sorenson and crew chief Jimmy Elledge were hit with $25,000 fine and a 25-point penalty by NASCAR yesterday for their car being too low on the front Sunday evening at Talladega. Elledge is on probation till Dec. 31.