Mike Mulhern

Friday, November 07, 2008

Maybe Carl Edwards shook up Jimmie Johnson at Texas, but Johnson rebounded to win the Phoenix pole

Can Carl Edwards catch Jimmie Johnson? Edwards relaxes in the garage prior to practice for the Checker O’Reilly Auto Parts 500 at Phoenix International Raceway. (Photo Credit: Todd Warshaw/Getty Images for NASCAR)

By Mike Mulhern

PHOENIX
Jimmie Johnson bounced back from last weekend’s struggles at Texas Motor Speedway to win the pole here Friday for Sunday’s Checker 500-K, But it was the continuing bad economic news out of Detroit that dominated the NASCAR world. And that news didn’t settle very well in the NASCAR garage here at Phoenix International Raceway, where hundreds of stock car racing crewmen are on pins and needles about their futures in this sport, and where drivers are sweating things too.
Johnson, clocked at 134.725 mph in edging Jamie McMurray and Kurt Busch, won here in the spring—on gas mileage. So, with Carl Edwards’ gas-gamble victory at Texas too, no wonder NASCAR inspectors were giving everyone’s fuel cells a thorough going over Friday.

However the economy has everyone here sweating: Like Regan Smith, who is worried that DEI team owner Teresa Earnhardt won’t be able to put together any deals for some of her four Sprint Cup teams for 2009.

Smith, an impressive rookie, battling for NASCAR rookie of the year with Sam Hornish Jr. over at Roger Penske’s, has nothing lined up for next season, and now there are reports that Earnhardt’s latest negotiations for a merger, with Chip Ganassi, may have fallen through.

In fact, there are some questions about whether or not DEI will even make it through the winter. DEI, to remain a viable NASCAR operation, has to be at least a two-car operation. But there is only one sponsorship for the current four teams.

“There is a lot of concern and curiosity on my part just, because it affects what I’m going to be doing next year, one way or another,” Smith says.

“I still don’t know where I’m going to be—if I’m going to be back at DEI or not, or if it’s going to be a Ganassi team or not....or what’s going to happen.

“There are all kinds of rumors out there.

“I wish I could say ‘Yeah, I’ve got a good idea of what they’re doing.’ but I don’t have a clue.

“I’m learning, just like everybody else is—through the media and on the different internet sites. That isn’t necessary a good feeling when you have to learn your future on the computer.

“But I’ve had a lot of good talks with other teams and feel confident I’ll be in one of those seats that are open come next year.

“This is the series I want to be in, this is the series I need to be in.

“If you look at the 35 best drivers this year I feel I’m one of them.

“I don’t think we’ve ever been at Phoenix (this late in the season) without knowing who basically the 43 Cup drivers the following year were going to be.”

There’s pressure everywhere in the NASCAR garage. Even at Joe Gibbs’, where Tony Stewart is leaving, Joey Logano is struggling, Kyle Busch is collapsing, and fourth teammate Denny Hamlin is trying to figure out just what the heck is going on.

“It’s just real political in the shops, it really is,” Hamlin says. “Just because we know what we want to fix within our team, there are other departments that think maybe there’s a better way to do it than the way we’re doing it.

“A lot falls on (crew chief) Mike Ford’s shoulders. He’s done a great job, and I’m behind him. I really think Mike is one of the best crew chiefs in the garage...with the things he has to work with, I guess you can say.

“We’re not performing the way we were at the beginning of the year. Kyle’s team isn’t performing the way they were. We have to get better....and to do that we’re going to have to have everyone in that race shop be a little bit more open-minded.”

Even tour leader Jimmie Johnson says he’s under the gun, though that 106 point lead over second-place Carl Edwards with two races to go should be a little cushion.

Johnson says he’s more worried about the struggling U.S. economy and its impact on NASCAR racing than anything right now:

“We certainly worry about it. Everyone in the world is worried about their financial future...it doesn’t matter if it’s motorsports, other sports, or regular businesses, as well as people at home trying to pay their bills.

“That crunch is out there.”

And that means cutbacks, even at Hendrick Motorsports.

“Everybody is looking at how you can do it for less, and more lean,” Johnson says.

“Trying to be lien and more efficient, that is the way any business operates.... but in today’s market you even have to consider people that you really like and need and wonder ‘Am I just doubled up in this area?’

“You have to be smart with money right now, because there is no telling when this thing is going to turn around.”

And the TV picture? ABC’s coverage of the Texas Dickies 500 earned a final national rating of 3.7, the same as last year. The network says that telecast averaged 5,889,504 viewers.

ABC says TV ratings for the first eight races in the championship chase “are basically even with last year—3.7.”

However the network says ratings for males 35-to-54 are up four percent.

NASCAR’s car-of-tomorrow has been in the spotlight all season, for better or worse, with drivers complaining that a race leader, in clean air, has a significant advantage over the rest of the field.

Johnson, who struggled with the new car on the mid-sized tracks earlier this year, says

“people first looked at the car and said ‘nobody knows much about it, so the gap is closer than it has ever been.’

“There may have been some truth to that...but this car has been really tough to figure out.

“I don’t think any of us really understood how big a challenge this car would be until it was here and we had it full time.”

Still Johnson has resolved most of his issues with the new car just in time to make a strong run for a third straight championship: “I am certainly more comfortable now than any other chase.

“But last weekend we gave some points away. We got caught behind and couldn’t recover.

“That side still sticks in my head.

“That is a problem --We can’t have those days.”

In his slow start, Johnson says “We had to find a direction (with the new car), and part of the testing was to find a direction to go it.

“With this car you can get confused.

“The clear-cut decision making we had in the past wasn’t there.

“It took us a long time to find the package that had the best potential. We were two-thirds of the way through the season before we knew what package to take to Atlanta, California, and Texas.

“Still last week at Texas there was a calmness because we had a big points lead.

“But we also knew if we melted down, or Chad pushed me too hard and I crashed, or we didn’t have the right energy in the pit and missed a lug nut...those things would create bigger problems.

“But our team is maturing, and we dealt with that a lot better.

“Last weekend shows you can’t just defend, you can’t be comfortable with any size point lead—You need to attack.

“So I’m still in attack mode.

“Certainly with a 106-point lead I don’t need to take as much risk...and there is a little different feel to it than I had chasing Jeff (Gordon) last year.

“Carl (Edwards) is going to be strong here....but if I can keep the points where they are and take the trophy home, we’re in great shape.”

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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That Toyota question: a big NASCAR championship collapse…or just early-season over-achieving?

Toyota’s Lee White, the boss of TRD, Toyota’s racing arm, insists that Toyota teams didn’t collapse in NASCAR’s championship playoffs:
—that instead Toyota’s new Gibbs’ guys actually performed above expectations the first seven months of the season, over-achieving for a brand-new team making not only the transition to a new manufacturer but to a new lead driver, Kyle Busch, and also dealing with the long-running Tony Stewart saga, and currently dealing with rookie Joey Logano’s less-than-impressive first few weeks on the Cup tour.
Stewart finally decided to leave Joe and J. D. Gibbs and Toyota at the end of the season to move back to Chevrolet. Stewart is trying to woo Bobby Hutchens – Richard Childress’ right-hand man for so many years, and for the past two months trying his darnedest to right Dale Earnhardt Inc.
Hutchens apparently is nearly ready to give up on the DEI project, after running out of options. Teresa Earnhardt has apparently declined to give up control of the operation her late husband created, and that’s caused problems. At the moment, with one week left in the season, DEI has four teams in the top-35 and three good drivers, including promising Aric Almirola and Regan Smith…but only one sponsor. If nothing changes, DEI would be at best a two-car team, assuming a merger of some sort can be pulled together – Chip Ganassi is the latest man reportedly at the table, with Target sponsorship to throw at it.
And there is a fierce scramble among the many NASCAR little team owners to hold on to anything for 2009. What happens next at Bill Davis’, for example, is just one question. Johnny Benson says he won’t be back as Davis’ lead Trucker.
Over at Petty Enterprises things are looking tough too. No major sponsorship yet for that two-car operation. And the Boston Ventures’ angle is being questioned. Boston Ventures, an investment firm, bought a “significant” stake in Petty Enterprises over the summer, but now the question is why. Investment firms want return-on-investment, eight to 10 percent typically; NASCAR team owners on the other hand usually plow much of their profit (if any) back into more equipment and testing. The two philosophies simply don’t jibe. That’s one reason Childress has been buying back that stake he once sold to an investment firm.
If the Pettys don’t get sponsorship, even though Bobby Labonte signed a new contract this summer with the team, Labonte might be free to move on. And speculation is he is the man that DEI is looking at – a former NASCAR champ, who might be a good fit with sponsor Target in a DEI Chevy….depending on what Ganassi might be able to work out.
And then there is Juan Pablo Montoya, Ganassi’s current lead driver. Where might he end up? At DEI too?
It is not a good time to be looking for a job in NASCAR….particularly if reports of possible massive layoffs of as many as 1,000 crewmen at the end of the season are true.
So what does Denny Hamlin think about all this?
Hamlin is the third man, or fourth depending on your math, at Gibbs. He made the chase, but like his teammates he hasn’t done much in the playoffs.
“We definitely didn’t run as well in Texas as what we were hoping to,” Hamlin says.
“We’ve got to try to make up for it this weekend.”
However simply making the 12-man playoffs seems good enough for most drivers and teams.
“We know as soon as we made the chase that makes our season successful,” Hamlin says.
“Normally it would be—but we expect a little bit more from ourselves now.
“It’s not just enough to make the chase any more.
“We need to be more of a contender.
“It will be different next year, for sure. The last couple years we’ve been in the bottom of the chase standings. It’s just been bad luck.
“I’m trying to finish races, we’re working on it, and next year we’ve got to work on the minor things that kept us either out of victory lane or off the track.”
Confidence? No problem, Hamlin insists.
“We’re not struggling to find out why are we not running good,” he points out.
“We’re running just as competitively. We’re more competitive than we were last year and the year before that. It’s just when bad luck strikes, it’s a little easier for the pill to go down when it’s things you can fix.
“I firmly believe the races in which I didn’t do well or finished badly was because a mistake was made by myself or just something bad going wrong.
“That’s easy for me to get over because everyone goes through it in the course of their career. Sometimes it just lasts longer than others.
“We’re just making up for all that good fortune we had in our rookie season.”

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

How to make NASCAR’s championship chase more exciting? Tony Stewart has a good idea

Tony Stewart, who’s won a few championships in his time, in NASCAR and in USAC, says when NASCAR execs start pondering how to tweak the championship chase rules for 2009 “the only thing I would do different is the 12 guys in the chase would get first through 12th-place points based on how we race with each other….because that’s who we’re racing for the championship.

“The other 31 guys in each race, we’re still racing those guys for the win but we’re not racing those guys for the championship. So why should those guys dictate how the championship turns out?”

Certainly if not for frantic Carl Edwards, who goes for his third straight Sprint Cup tour win here Sunday, Jimmie Johnson’s almost-perfection would have made this fall’s title run all-but a wipeout.

At least Johnson’s stumble at Texas leaves some drama to play out here and at Homestead in next weekend’s season finale.

Phoenix 1988: It was 20 years ago this week that Alan Kulwicki scored his first NASCAR tour victory, right here (Photo:RacingOne/Getty Images)

However Stewart’s suggestion doesn’t go far enough.
The basic problem with NASCAR’s point system – the new one as well as the one used for some 30 years – is that it doesn’t adequately reward winning races and that it disproportionately penalizes drivers who have a bad race.

That 10-point victory bonus NASCAR threw in the game this season? Kyle Busch won eight races and earned a grand total of 80 bonus points for that. Heck, a driver each Sunday stands to gain or lose as much as 160 points in a single race. What’s a 10-point bonus really mean?

A driver today has no chance of slamming a game winning home run….unless the man he’s chasing for the title has a bad day.

Consistency, that’s what the current system is built on. But it was created some 30 years ago when the NASCAR landscape was much different…when there were only three real championship-caliber teams, only five or six really solid teams.

However today it is sponsors who dictate, through complicated and expensive marketing campaigns, that teams don’t sit on the sidelines.

NASCAR needs to give drivers chasing the points lead a shot at hitting that home run to get back in the championship game.

Perhaps NASCAR could take a page from the Olympics: in the championship battle, gold-silver-bronze are all that count. Three-two-one.

Remember when: The late Bobby Hamilton, winning at Phoenix for Richard Petty, in 1996 (Photo: RacingOne/GettyImages)

The title chase this year could use a shot in the arm like that, to judge by TV ratings and crowds.

In fact, before Friday’s qualifying runs here Johnson will make a Thursday night appearance on NBC’s Tonight Show.

And NASCAR marketers, in another example of how well they can play the game, bought a full-page ad in Wednesday’s New York Times to promote the sport in what will surely be one of the mostly widely read issues of the year.

This championship race should be a four-man fight to the finish, Johnson versus Edwards versus Greg Biffle versus Jeff Burton.

Biffle, Edwards’ teammate, opened the chase with a pair of wins, but that crash at Texas, after that late-race bump-draft by Edwards, has taken him out of the game.

Crew chief Greg Erwin, like Biffle, seems almost depressed with the way things have turned out since those final miles at Talladega. “We weren’t able to capitalize last weekend in the points the way we could have, but we’ll go to Phoenix and Homestead with every intention to win and see how things work out.”

What can Biffle and Erwin do here? “I always look forward to Phoenix for a number of reasons,” Biffle says. “The track is very technical, and it’s almost like an oval/road course because of the different corners and dogleg on the backstretch.

Jack Roush’s brain trust: Carl Edwards (R) and crew chief Bob Osborne. Can they catch Jimmie Johnson? (Photo: Autostock)

Biffle has been running at this flat one mile in the desert just west of town since 1989: “Man, I love the track. I’ve always enjoyed the Phoenix area; I love that area of the country.”

The track itself is deceptive. “It’s a challenging place because the two turns are completely different,” Biffle says. “It’s a big challenge to brake hard into turn one, make the turn, and get back on the gas as soon as you can.

“You drive the car a little bit looser than you would at most places, and you play with the throttle a lot. That’s what I like about the place.”

It’s been such a long season, and to have the chase twist and turn as it has, well, how is Biffle handling it?

“There are two ways you can look at that: One, ‘Hey, it’s getting close to the end of the season, I’m going to have some time off coming up.’

“The other, the realization we’re falling short of that championship…which is not over yet but it’s getting tougher and tougher.

“Man, this season has been tough, it’s been a long year, and it’s going to be over soon. We’re certainly not giving up hope, but your mind starts to shift to ‘We’re just going to dig as hard as we can, but the season is over.’”

Jeff Gordon can relate. He, like Biffle, took a while to get clicking this season, but his run at Texas showed he’s finally starting to get it…..though the season is almost over.

The problem is, Gordon says, that Johnson, even on his bad days, is tough to deal with: “Even when the team has struggled, they’ve still been able to pull out a respectable finish.”

Gordon is still winless and he realizes he may well wind up in 11 days without a win for the first time since his 1993 rookie year.

Nevertheless he’s optimistic things are finally turning around: “I feel we are continuing to improve. We want that to continue, so we have some momentum heading into the off-season.”

“We have that one win; other times we been top-10 but didn’t have the car competitive enough to battle for the win.

“Sunday I expect the sun to be beating down on the track, so there will be less grip, and that puts a premium on handling.”

And he says he wants to put together “a complete weekend, from qualifying Friday, practices Saturday, through the end of the race Sunday.

“And if we put ourselves in a position to win, it might be worth gambling on fuel or pit strategy to get the victory.”

Jimmie Johnson crosses the finish line to win the Subway Fresh Fit 500 at Phoenix International Raceway. Johnson held off Clint Bowyer for his first victory of the season (Photo Credit: Robert Laberge/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Burton’s season all but ended at Charlotte a few weeks ago, and he’s not that optimistic about this weekend: “Although we have a bunch of top-10s, Phoenix-style tracks have been a weakness in our program, particularly for our team.

“We haven’t done as well at Phoenix, New Hampshire and Richmond as we needed to.

Burton has been the leader for the Richard Childress operation this season, especially this fall. But the entire Childress camp has seemed flat since the chase started two months ago.

“I’m not disappointed in the year…I am disappointed about some things that happened, but I’m not disappointed in what we’ve been able to do,” Burton insists.

“I know we’re all trying to finish out the year, but we still have a lot of work to do. There are two races left, and a lot of stuff can happen in two races.

When the NASCAR began, 10 months ago, one major storyline was Dale Earnhardt Jr. versus Kyle Busch, after Rick Hendrick’s decision to drop Busch to make room on his four-team roster for Earnhardt.

In the chase, they’re no-shows: Busch sits 10th in the standings, 428 points down to leader Jimmie Johnson, and just a single points ahead of Earnhardt.

And Busch’s Nationwide win last weekend at Texas Motor Speedway was his 21st national NASCAR win of the season: eight in Cup, 10 in Nationwide, three in Trucks. And Busch is entered in all three events here, and could stretch that amazing mark to 24. He’s won the last two Nationwide races here, and he won the Truck race at PIR last fall. If he were in the chase, this would be a ‘closer’ track for him.

Next, a few days after next week’s Homestead finale, Busch will fly to Japan to test a Formula One car. Probably just for fun, but you can’t never tell….and Busch is only 23.

Kyle Busch (L) and team manager J. D. Gibbs, back when they could smile about things (Photo: Getty Images/NASCAR)

On the other hand, Earnhardt has seemed flat this fall, and that gas-mileage-doomed 20th at Texas didn’t perk him up. He made the chase but hasn’t done much at all.

Just what’s going on inside Earnhardt’s head at the moment is unclear. He’s spent much of the year trying to become a Rick Hendrick company man, and he has changed his image….but that may also have changed his game plans on the track.

“It’s been a busy season, it’s been flattering and humbling,” Earnhardt reflects. “A lot of good things have happened, a lot of neat stuff happened to me. Being with Hendrick, that was flattering to me.

“There were a lot of little pats on the back, and compliments that were pretty cool.

“And you get help when you do bad. You get people trying to remedy why that happened, try to help keep that from happening again.

“When we do bad, people want to help us make it right, and that’s a really good feeling.

“When you are doing your job, you get rewarded for it, acknowledgement for it, which is good. That makes you want to go out and keep going, keep working.

“There’s a lot of times in the season when you’re getting drug down and worn out and don’t feel appreciated…and that never happened all year.”

Jimmie Johnson (L) and Kyle Busch: What goes up must eventually come back down (Photo: Getty Images/NASCAR)

Busch, on the other hand, was a headliner all season, until those two mechanical problems the first week of the chase took him down a notch.

“Our goals were to get a win, first, and then a couple wins, and then solidify ourselves as contenders and get into the chase and compete for the championship.

“We didn’t get a shot to compete for the championship, which is too bad. But there were plenty of highlights—sweeping the road courses, winning the first race at Atlanta, and winning all the races I’ve won this year.

“We were okay in the spring race here, but we weren’t running where we wanted to be. We’ve been working extremely hard on our flat-track program, because that’s something we’ll need to improve on next year to have a shot at the championship. We had trouble at both New Hampshire and Pocono.

“We’re not as good as we were in the beginning of the year. Our cars haven’t changed much, but we haven’t gotten any better. Everybody else has just caught up that much.

“The year’s not over yet. Once the checkered flag falls at Homestead, it’ll be time to reflect—like ‘Wow! That’s pretty cool.’

“It’s just phenomenal the way this year has gone. Pretty special times for us. Hopefully it will continue next year too.”

Time to clear the rattlesnakes from the hills and make room for the fans (Photo Credit: Jeff Gross/Getty Images)

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

DEI’s Teresa Earnhardt now talking with Ganassi about merging: Montoya in a Chevy in 2009? Could be.

Chevy’s next big star? Juan Pablo Montoya says he’s not sure what team owner Chip Ganassi is pondering (Photo: Getty Images/NASCAR)

PHOENIX
The latest gambit by DEI’s Teresa Earnhardt to keep her four-team operation up and running includes talks about a possible merger with fellow car owner Chip Ganassi, according to Detroit sources. But how Ganassi’s Dodge factory deal might mesh with Earnhardt’s Chevy factory deal is quite unclear.
Earnhardt’s four DEI teams are in the key top-35 in the Sprint Cup standings, but she has only one solid sponsor for 2009.
Hence the frantic action over the past several week, to find sponsorships wherever possible.
Two weeks ago Petty Enterprises was talking with DEI about a possible merger.
Now it’s Ganassi, who started the season with a three-car team but was forced to fire 70 crewmen and shut down one team over the summer when he was unable to find sponsorship. Then Reed Sorensen announced he would be leaving Ganassi at the end of the season. And then Texaco announced it too would be leaving.

Hey, Juan Pablo: What’s really cooking? Chef Mario Batali (L) and NASCAR’s Juan Pablo Montoya whip up a meal during the Asphalt Chef competition at Texas Motor Speedway (Photo Credit: Robert Laberge/Getty Images)

Ganassi has also talked with Petty Enterprises about a possible merger.
What this merger mania is all about is simple – a dramatic shortage of sponsorships. Running a top-flight NASCAR Sprint Cup operation costs $25 million to $30 million a year. In the current economic climate new money is hard to come by, and some old money is drying up.
Now it appears that Ganassi has only the $22 million Target sponsorship and a 12-to-15 race Wrigley’s sponsorship….and ex-Formula One star Juan Pablo Montoya.
Putting Montoya in a Chevrolet would seem a big-game move by General Motors. But GM is in the midst of potential merger talks of its own with Chrysler, and that has everything Dodge up in the air.

Montoya himself says he’s not sure what’s going on: “No, I don’t.
“I haven’t really talked to Chip the last few days. I haven’t even asked him.
“I haven’t even asked him who’s driving the other car (in 2009).
“Right now our focus is to try and run better.”
And Montoya has. He had a good run going Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway…until he tangled with David Gilliland.
“It was frustrating what he did,” Montoya griped. “Especially when we ran in the top-10 all day and he’s like four laps down.
“But it was his decision and his responsibility.
“Am I okay with that, am I happy with that?
“No. But it’s what he did, and we can’t change that.
“My mind now is on Phoenix—and to make sure we run well…and hopefully finish.
“The last few weeks we’ve been running top-10 every week—and something happens.”

Chip Ganassi (L) and Juan Pablo Montoya. Ganassi has been a NASCAR team owner for several years now, but with little success (Photo: Getty Images/NASCAR)

At Texas Montoya wound up 43rd. At Atlanta 40th. At Charlotte 34th. At Talladega 25th. At Dover 39th.
That’s five crashes in the past seven weeks.
And to think that after he nearly won Talladega in the spring he was sitting 12th in the standings and listening to questions about what he might be able to do if he made the championship chase.
Well, he missed by about 500 points.
Still, Montoya has become a solid fixture on the stock car tour, perhaps surprising in itself, considering how difficult this sport is.
And Montoya insists “mentally I’m really happy.
“I tell the guys ‘Yes, it’s frustrating we’re not able to get the results we deserve—but we’re there.
“I’m driving the car better than ever.
“I can push the car further than I ever have. I know what I can do with a car now. I’m comfortable in the car now. That goes a long ways.
“It’s exciting.
“I told my crew before the Atlanta race ‘We’re going to run in the front, or we’re going to wreck, because I’m going to go 110 percent.’”
Well, Montoya did…and Montoya did.

Chevy, Ford and Toyota are in a redhot battle for NASCAR’s manufacturer’s championship....but Dodge is bringing up the rear

“It’s been a difficult year, for results, but from the middle of the season to where we are running now, it’s incredible.
“If we were running in the middle of the season like we are now, we probably could have made the chase.”
Montoya, in his second season on the tour, has managed to hang in 25th in the standings, with an average finish of 24.3.
But he’s logged only three top-10s, that second at Talladega, a sixth at Sonoma (where he won in 2007), and a fourth at Watkins Glen.
“Last week it was incredible: I know Jimmie Johnson had a bad day, but lapping him, that felt pretty good,” Montoya says.
“We need to start getting some finishes, because we’ve been running better than we have all year…and the only thing we’ve done is lose points and places in the standings,” Montoya complained.
“We made a lot of changes in the geometry of the car—the suspension and the weight. The engine has improved, the entire package has improved.
“This car is a lot more stable getting into the corner, which allows you to be more comfortable driving it a little bit harder and still make the corner.
“And it comes through the corner a lot better. The drive off the corner is really good. I like running the top groove, and it really helps me run the top to get a good run off the corner.
“Our horsepower has been increasing a lot the last few weeks, and that makes life a lot easier too.”
And crew chief Brian Pattie? That’s his third crew chief of the season, as Ganassi tries to mix and match. “My relationship with Brian has grown a lot,” Montoya says.
Indeed, what Montoya has been able to do in NASCAR in such a short time contrasts sharply with the problems other open-wheel drivers have had. Montoya has made this look easy.
“It’s not easy,” Montoya points out. “What happened to Dario Franchitti (dropped by Ganassi mid-season) and Jacques Villeneuve (the 1997 world driving champion who never really got going in NASCAR this season) is going to make people wonder.
“But you have to remember Sam Hornish Jr. (another struggling open-wheel star) is only in his first year. I don’t know why people are thinking he’s going back to Indy-car. I’d be surprised if he did.”
However the big Montoya story at the moment is the possibility he may be in a Chevrolet in 2009. That, and what might Ganassi do. Ganassi’s operation has been clouded by rumors of possible mergers with rivals nearly all season.
“Merger, no merger, I don’t know,” Montoya insists. “I just drive the car.”

Juan Pablo Montoya: His equipment is getting better....but if he were driving for Rick Hendrick or Jack Roush, the F1 star would be winning races (Photo:Getty Images/NASCAR)

Monday, November 03, 2008

Jimmie Johnson is still on a championship road, but Carl Edwards is making him work for it

And for his next act, will Carl Edwards just shoot out Jimmie Johnson’s tires? Edwards is giving Johnson fits in the NASCAR title chase (Photo: Autostock)

FORT WORTH, Texas
Whoops, even Jimmie Johnson doesn’t hit home runs every time he steps to the plate.
And sometimes crew chief Chad Knaus doesn’t always make the right gambles on pit road.
So the NASCAR tour leader was hot when he crawled out of his car Sunday night after struggling home 15th in the Texas Dickies 500, far, far behind winner Carl Edwards.
“It’s like getting kicked over and over,” Johnson grumbled about the 3-1/2-hour race. “That stunk.”

Jimmie Johnson: Can Carl Edwards rattle his cage and pull off a championship surrprise? He’s got 12 days and 700 miles to make something happen (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

Edwards, stunned at Johnson’s late rally to second at Atlanta, was almost giddy in victory here: “I didn’t expect to be able to close that many points on Jimmie without him having some sort of catastrophic problem.
“That’s a good shot in the arm for all our guys—that we can go out and perform well enough to win this thing.”
The big thing in Edwards’ title bid this season, and perhaps it’s unnoticed unless you know crew chief Bob Osborne very well, is the quantum leap Osborne has made this year as commander of this team. Osborne has always been smart, and has long worked well with Edwards. But his commanding performance as the team’s boss has been striking, despite his seemingly his low-keyed demeanor.
Of course anyone standing, or working, next to wild man Edwards has to be in his shadow.
The fuel gamble? Osborne brushed it off as simply a decision backed by solid data: “When I’m at work and getting scolded by Jack, my usual answer to him is ‘I’ve got big shoulders; I can handle it.’
“So the decision was not blind. We had a lot of data to back the decision. It’s not like a whim that the decision was made.”
Maybe so, but nearly everyone else in the crowd of some 165,000 at Texas Motor Speedway, and on pit road, was second-guessing that call….and waiting for Edwards to run out of gas.
But Edwards crossed the finish line nearly 10 seconds ahead of runner-up, and fellow gambler, Jeff Gordon.

Carl Edwards ripped the field in the Texas 500 but then had to play a gas mileage game to beat gambling Jeff Gordon (Photo: Autostock)

Johnson was in trouble almost from the start: “There were so many green flag runs I knew we were in trouble. We could run in the top-five…but I was going to have to go up there and take my lap back, and I knew we couldn’t do that.”
So now there’s a real title chase again, Edwards just 106 points down with two to go?
“Man, there’s been a race the whole time,” Johnson insisted. “You never know what’s going to happen.
“Even at 183 points over Carl, I wasn’t comfortable – you can pick up161 points in a weekend. So if I stuffed it in the fence the first run, I finish 43rd, and they’re right there.
“Now that comfort margin’s even closed up more.”

Under pressure suddenly? Or just running through some potholes on his way to another NASCAR championship? (Photo by Robert Laberge/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Why Johnson and Knaus gambled on some chassis changes is questionable, since they ran a strong second to Edwards here in the spring.
“The first three runs we started really loose, and we made adjustment. We were running in the top-10, maybe top-seven. We were still pretty loose, so we made another big adjustment. At that point we got very tight, and once that happened, I was a sitting duck.
“We just got way behind. And without any cautions, we couldn’t count on that Lucky Dog to come through and get us back on the lead lap.
“With the points lead we had, there’s a level of comfort I don’t have to outrun Greg Biffle or Carl or Jeff Burton to be the champion.
“But to be competitive, that’s the pressure I’ve put on myself, and the first three runs of the race we weren’t competitive, especially that third run.
“We messed up; we just didn’t have it.
“That got us behind, and we could never recover.
“I’m more frustrated that we didn’t do the job than that I lost points. If I lose five or 10 or 20 points to those guys, because they win and I finish fourth or fifth, I can handle that.
“But to go out there and not perform….to get caught a lap down, and then stuck a lap down all day, that’s the part I’m frustrated with.”
Johnson nearly had a disastrous collision on pit road, which had Knaus screaming. “I saw it coming, and he was probably more excited about the whole thing than I was,” Johnson said. “I was leaving my pit box, and I could see Travis Kvapil pulling out in front of me.
“I did have to hit the brakes hard. But I had a front row seat for it all.”

It’s victory backflip number eight for Carl Edwards this season....and he’s not done yet. (Photo: Autostock)

Ironically teammate Gordon was the leader of the Rick Hendrick camp, using gas mileage to nearly pull off the upset.
“That’s usually the downside of having a great car,” Gordon said, referring to a gas-guzzling motor.
“But if you have a big enough lead, you can maybe conserve.
“Jack Roush has always been known for good fuel mileage, but Carl’s car was really, really strong, and my crew chief was really hoping he was going to run out of gas.
“But you’ve got to give him credit, to have that good a racecar and get good fuel mileage to take it to the end, and then taking a gamble.”

Jeff Gordon drove one of his best races ever at Texas, a track where he’s never won...and he almost stole the show at the end (Photo by Robert Laberge/Getty Images for NASCAR)

For Gordon it’s very late in the year and he still hasn’t won. “But we’re not going to give up,” he says.
“We’re not laying down. This run is an obvious sign we can still win….No matter how the car’s running, we can still win.
“We’ve improved since the start of the year, no doubt about it. One of the reasons why we haven’t had a win is because we really were off track at the beginning of the season. And unlike Jimmie and his team, it’s taken us a little longer to get it turned around.
“But we have definitely turned things around. We’ve been way more competitive, especially on tracks like this.”

If Chrysler/Dodge merges with GM, and if car owner Chip Ganassi sells/merges his Dodge team, what happens to Juan Pablo Montoya? Chevy execs ought to jump on this opportunity. Maybe JPM could provide enough sponsorship magic to even save DEI. Is Teresa Earnhardt listening? (Photo by Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Steve Letarte, Gordon’s crew chief, knew he didn’t have the best car on the track but figured he had the winning strategy:
“We just played the hand we were dealt. We didn’t have a good enough car to drive up to the front. Then we got behind on that one run, but we got the lucky dog (to get back on the lead lap).
“When our car was off, Jeff kept it in one piece.
“We knew we were close on fuel….but I didn’t think anybody else could make it. I thought we had it won, to be honest.
“But with about six to go Carl Edwards started backing up (to save his own fuel), and it was too late for us. We couldn’t catch him. There was no way we could push the issue.
“I knew we had everybody beat. But my concern was Carl, because he was so far ahead of us on the track.
“Then when Dale ran out, I knew Carl had it won.
“This would have been a big one.”

Is that a sly smile on Bob Osborne’s face (R)? Should be, after Carl Edwards crew chief snookered the Texas field Sunday (Photo: Autostock)

So Carl Edwards gambled on gas mileage and won the 500….and teammate Greg Biffle, who had to make an extra stop for fuel, was left scratching his head.
“Fuel mileage won this thing, and that was kind of unusual,” Biffle, fifth, said.
“I can’t quite figure out how my teammate can go eight laps more than I can. We’ll just have to go back and do our homework and see what he’s got that we don’t have under the hood.
“If they’re the same, you get the same mileage.
“But I’m not complaining. We got a top-five and gained points on Jimmie Johnson. Carl is gambling….and if he had run out, we would have gained on everybody.”

Has new team owner Rick Hendrick taken all the fire out of Dale Earnhardt Jr.? What has happened to the feisty devil-may-care guy? What does Junior Nation think about all this? (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

What the heck is going on over in the Dale Earnhardt Jr. camp?
Another day, another mediocre run. This time Earnhardt struggled home 20th , and he goes to Texas almost dead last in the chase standings, 429 points behind.
“We all tried to win the race….and we win as a team and lose as a team,” Earnhardt said. “We need to figure out the fuel mileage deal…. because Jeff Gordon stayed out as well (and Gordon stretched his fuel to the finish while Earnhardt had to make a late stop for a splash-and-go).

Kyle Busch, who may well have been an over-achiever over the first seven months of the season, and who hasn’t even been in the championship hunt, finally had a day where things didn’t go so bad for him.
After finishing sixth in Sunday’s 500, Busch was relatively pleased, or maybe just relieved.
“It was a good race car, it was decent, but clean air was so important here and we had to get upfront, and we never really got there,” Busch said.
“We got there once, but then it got demoralizing because of the late pit stops: Those guys took two tires and got track position on us.
“We’d battled all day to get up there, and then we got shuffled back.”

Clint Bowyer can commiserate. After a few rough weeks Bowyer was back in the hunt for a win, though fuel mileage doomed him.
“We had to run it the way we ran it,” crew chief Gil Martin said. “Running up front we were burning more fuel than those guys in the back. They had nothing to lose, Jeff Gordon especially back there. He hadn’t been running good all day, so they weren’t burning fuel, so they could sit back and gamble.
“Us having a shot to win, running that speed we were going to run out of fuel, so we had to pit. And then the only chance we had was for them to run out of fuel.”

Jeff Burton: three straight mediocre runs have taken him out of the title hunt (Photo by John Harrelson/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Teammate Jeff Burton, meanwhile, had nothing going his way, for a third straight week. Coming off that Charlotte win he was just 69 points behind Johnson, but weak runs at Martinsville, Atlanta and now Texas have left him 212 points down. “The car wasn’t good,” Burton said. “Luckily we were able to overcome our poor qualifying effort, but we weren’t able to find the right combination to help our car’s handling.
“It’s disappointing because Texas has been a pretty good track for us. We just weren’t able to master it this time.”

‘Bout time this sport had a couple of black hat dudes. Maybe Carl Edwards (L) and car owner Jack Roush can fill the bill (Photo: Autostock)