Mike Mulhern

Monday, September 01, 2008

Looks like it’s Ragan vs Bowyer vs Kahne in Richmond for that final NASCAR Sprint Cup playoff spot

David Ragan has been one of this season’s big surprises...and maybe sponsor AAA should have renewed its contract with this hot driver, instead of moving its money to the France family’s California Speedway (Photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)

By Mike Mulhern

FONTANA, Calif. 

David Ragan stumbled just a bit Sunday night in his underdog bid to become this year’s Cinderella playoff story.
So he goes to Richmond this week with a clear game plan: he’s 17 points behind 12th place Clint Bowyer, and Ragan has to finish four or five positions ahead of him in Saturday night’s 400 to make the title chase. 
“We dug ourselves a bigger hole,” the second-year Jack Roush driver said after finishing 13th and losing a few more points to Bowyer in the race for the last playoff spot.
“But we just didn’t have the speed all night, and battled poor track position. We got it decent there at the end. If it had been a 600-mile race, maybe we could have picked up a few more spots.
“We’re in the same position at Richmond – we’ve just got to outrun everybody else.
“They can tell me where Clint is, and where everybody is, but you’re driving as hard as you can, and certainly we didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks.
“We’ve just got to have more speed, and we’ve just got to beat them on the track.  We can’t count on their misfortune; we’ve got to make sure we’re in the top two or three at Richmond.
“We’ve got to have more speed.”

Sunday night’s surprise, in a sense, was Greg Biffle, Ragan’s teammate. Still winless, Biffle made the strongest bid any could to tackle winner Jimmie Johnson, and he clinched a spot in the playoffs, which begin at Loudon, N.H., next week.
“Jimmie was phenomenal,” Biffle said in amazement. “We see that happen every once in a while—a guy gets it set up right, gets running good…we saw it in the Nationwide race (Kyle Busch’s runaway Saturday night) too.
“My guys, what a phenomenal job. So I feel bad. I let them down.  They were the fastest guys on pit road, and I’ve never had that before in my life.  It feels pretty good to beat everybody off of pit road time and time again.
“Jimmie wasn’t beating me on engine, that’s for sure. He just beat me around the corners just a little bit.”
Biffle and Greg Erwin, his crew chief, may, like Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus, finally be turning things around. “This is the best night we’ve had all season, beside Darlington,” Biffle said.
“And the pit stops, man, I don’t even know what to say—We beat everybody out every time. I’ve never had that happen before. 
“They’ve been working on the pit crew, shifting guys around, and it was pretty spectacular.
“I’m just real happy to get myself a spot in the chase this year. Jimmie was just a little bit faster here.
“We’ve gotten way better, as an organization and as a team.  Thanks to Robbie Reiser (the former Matt Kenseth crew chief, now shop foreman). 
“They made a commitment at the beginning of the year to shift some guys around, to put together the best teams we could. And it’s made an unbelievable difference. 
“I drove as hard as I’ve driven in a long time. I was just on the edge and I was running him down. I got within probably 10 car-lengths of him and was catching him two-tenths a lap, but he would get better as the run went. 
“I thought if I got close enough maybe I could make him start thinking about what’s behind him. And he was.
“I could gain three here, then lose two, gain three and lose two…so I didn’t know I was going to be able to do anything when I got there.”

Matt Kenseth, still vying for a playoff spot, was not that happy with his fifth Sunday. “We ran pretty good, it’s just that these things are pretty frustrating,” he said of the new winged car. “You can’t ever really go anywhere.
“Those top bunch of cars start there and run there all day. It’s just hard to do anything with these cars, so it gets a little frustrating.
“But we had a great day on pit road, we were able to pass some cars, and we got a good finish.
“Jimmie and Chad were awesome.  They always are, but you see a lot of races these days like that, where a guy will start up front and if he’s got a really fast car, he’ll just stay there. 
“It’s hard to adjust these things better…and it’s hard to adjust them bad.  When you’re right-on like that, and you get out in front in that clean air, it seemed like he was gone. 
“Greg could run with him, but that was about it.”

Carl Edwards failed to make it three-in-a-row. “It’s great to be disappointed as hell with sixth place.  That’s wonderful…but we really wanted three in a row.
“I think when the track changed, we weren’t quite on top of how our car was going to handle in the dark.  Sometimes you hit it, and sometimes you miss it. We just missed it.”

Team owner Rick Hendrick may face more pressure in the coming weeks than his teams, because adding Dale Earnhardt Jr. to the already successful Jeff Gordon-Jimmie Johnson roster hasn’t been a panacea. In fact some wonder if it’s been too much, upsetting the delicately balanced chemistry at Hendrick Motorsports.
After all, Gordon is still winless, and Earnhardt’s only win was one of those gas-mileage gambles.
Gordon?  “We want to perform well, we want to win races, we want to be competitive—it doesn’t do any good to be in the chase if you’re not competitive enough to win races and battle for the championship.”
“We have got some really good tracks for Jeff coming up,” Hendrick says. “But we’ve definitely got to get better on the 1-1/2-miles. We’ve had unbelievable things happen—breaking suspension pieces….
“But we just haven’t been as good, nowhere near as good as last year. We’ve just struggled.”

Clint Bowyer won Richmond in the spring, but he’ll have to rally at Richmond this weekend to make the chase(Photo by Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Elsewhere in the Chevy camp:
—Kevin Harvick finished fourth, moving him to seventh in the standings.  He has only finish 42nd or better at Richmond to clinch. “This is supposed to be our worst place. To come away with a top-five speaks a lot for (crew chief) Todd Berrier and what the guys have done. I am looking forward to getting going in the last 11 weeks.”
—Teammate Clint Bowyer finished 10th and clings to 12th in the standings. He needs to finish in front of David Ragan and Kasey Kahne at Richmond to clinch a spot.
—Earnhardt, 11th Sunday in a so-so performance, clinched a spot here. But he concedes he needs to run better to be a title factor: “We really needed to get the car up off the corner better. We were looking at Jimmie’s set-up and my set-up, and we see some areas where his stuff could help ours. At least that’s what I think.”
—So does Gordon, whose performances this year have generally been, well, terrible, for a four-time champ. He wound up 15th in the 500 and will clinch a playoff spot if he finished 23rd or better.
—Jeff Burton, 17th, locked up a spot. He’s fifth in points.

Marcos Ambrose, a newcomer to this sport, has less lofty goals at the moment, as he tries to find a niche in NASCAR. He finished only 32nd for the Woods, but “I finished my first 500-mile race….
“And it was definitely a long race. We came a long way over the course of the three days here, and I think we’ve got a clear direction.
“There were some changes we made that really got it going.  I was out there passing guys like Jeff Gordon, Clint Bowyer, those chase drivers in the second half of the race.
“We were a lap down in the second half, but our speed really gave me confidence.”

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.
We want your reaction, so please comment on this story and offer your own opinions and insight, on this topic, on our NASCAR videos, and anything about NASCAR. Any questions, just ask Mike at . And bookmark this page for continually updated NASCAR reports: http://independenttribune.net/index.php/sports/mulhern/

Rick Hendrick says NASCAR’s new race car shouldn’t be this hard to get running well

California winner Rick Hendrick: NASCAR’s new car-of-tomorrow has been just one headache after another (Photo by Todd Warshaw/Getty Images for NASCAR)

By Mike Mulhern

FONTANA, Calif.
Rick Hendrick was NASCAR’s hot ticket car owner the last two seasons, winning championship back-to-back with Jimmie Johnson, Sunday night’s winner here in a duel with Greg Biffle.
But this season, well, Hendrick all but rolls his eyes.
“You remember when we did the media tour (in January), and we’d finished first and second, and had, what, 18 wins last year, and everybody thought ‘Can anybody stop us this year?’” Hendrick was saying late Sunday night.
“I had this feeling…..that we’d spent a lot of time in the old car in the chase, building those new cars, and we got behind. 
“I didn’t think we’d struggle as bad as we have this year. And we worked harder this year than we did last year, and more testing, just trying to figure it out. 
“And it’s been frustrating because other teams have run well.
“But you can look at those two teams, Carl Edwards’ and Kyle Busch’s—the other cars on those teams are not as dominant as those two.  So it’s just this (winged) car.
“I’ve never seen it since I’ve been racing—It is so temperamental, and you just have to figure out what the crew chief and driver like.
“We’ve worked harder this year….I can’t remember testing any more…more meetings…throwing more things at it to try to get better.
“Sometimes the harder you work on this car, the further backwards you get.”
So, yes, NASCAR’s new car-of-tomorrow still draws razzing from the men who have to deal with it, and the new machine has simply not provided any better racing or changed the balance of power in the sport or opened the door to new team owners (in fact owners are falling by the wayside, and the Tom Garfinkel-Jeff Moorad team may be the next to make a major change, just a year after they joined the tour).
Still, NASCAR officials steadfastly refuse to make any concessions to the teams to make the racing any better, in what some see as either arrogance or ignorance.
“NASCAR’s got a problem, but I don’t think they even realize it,” one of the sport’s most successful crew chiefs said, asking not to be named. “I was just talking with (another highly successful team owner) and he was saying the same thing.”
What does Johnson, now a three-time winner this season and maybe back in the hunt for a third straight championship, think about this new car:
“There’s nothing comfortable about driving this car.  This thing is never going to complete a lap and have everything work out right for you.  You’re going to have to compromise somewhere. 
“This car is not comfortable, and I don’t think it ever will be – with the lack of downforce, higher center-of-gravity, and all of the things NASCAR wanted. They wanted it to be to the driver’s hands…and they made it hard to drive, that’s for sure.
“We finished second here at the start of the season, and that was the highlight of the first quarter of the season for us. Outside of that, we were terrible on the big tracks.”
Hendrick points to extreme frustration among his teams in trying to get the new car to work: “This thing has made a lot of people pull their hair out.  It’s hard….I mean Jimmie left his vacation twice came back to test.
“It was supposed to have been easier than this.”

Hendrick of course isn’t the only man in the NASCAR garage still complaining vigorously about NASCAR’s new ‘car-of-tomorrow,’ which crew chief Greg Erwin, on Biffle’s team, says may in fact actually have made worse many of the issues it was supposed to solve – like the issue of ‘clean air.’
Chad Knaus, Johnson’s crew chief, says the driver-crew chief relationship has become critical to making this new car work. And that’s an ironic statement, considering Knaus and Johnson are two of the tightest buds in the garage, and they’ve struggled so much with it.
“It is extremely finicky, but you can fix it,” Knaus said, looking hopefully ahead at his team’s prospects in the upcoming chase.
“And if you’re going to try to count out Jeff Gordon or Tony Stewart or Matt Kenseth going into this chase, I think you are just fooling yourselves. 
“Now Carl, Kyle and us could walk in with our shoulders back thinking we’re going to whip everybody’s butt, but I think that’s pretty cocky to even think that.”
Johnson’s win was his 36th since joining the tour and his third here. Johnson, third in the Sprint Cup standings heading to Richmond this week, has been a key figure in the marketing of this east Los Angeles track, since he’s from nearby El Cajon.
Earnhardt has Hendrick’s only other tour win, a gas-mileage victory in June at Michigan.

Johnson started from the pole and, while he couldn’t escape Biffle, and then had to wait out a late run by Denny Hamlin, was in firm control all four hours, from heat of day through cool of night. “I think the track came to us, instead of us chasing the track,” Johnson said.
“Usually when you’re that good, you wait for something to happen,” Hendrick added. “And when you have a car that good, it’s hard to capitalize every race, especially a 500-mile race here.
“Hopefully we can take this momentum into the chase.”
But not likely, the way Johnson’s season has gone, hit-or-miss.
“Just before Chicago (mid-July) there were a couple of races where we were competitive—Michigan (June) was really the first sign we were working in the right direction,” Johnson said.  “We’ve been getting better…but this car is still so finicky. 
“The second Michigan (two weeks ago) we got a little more aggressive with the setup, thinking we could get away from it…and it turned away from us.”
And at Bristol, well, that’s not a great track for Johnson.
“To win this chase you’re going to have to fight for wins every week, and every pit stop is going to count, because you’re going to have at least Carl and Kyle to deal with,” Johnson said. “So this was a really good night for our guys to feel that pressure and go through that. 
“And for me inside the car, it’s been a while since I’ve been in a situation to blow it or throw away…and to really work on that mental toughness in those situations is important.
“We have been working on the other side of the line—finding speed, and dealing with those emotions of not being where we want.
“That speaks to how impressive Kyle and Carl have been. It’s tough to stay on top of this thing.
“At Indy (four weeks ago) we had a very, very good weekend.  But at the end Carl was putting a lot of pressure on us.”

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.
We want your reaction, so please comment on this story and offer your own opinions and insight, on this topic, on our NASCAR videos, and anything about NASCAR. Any questions, just ask Mike at . And bookmark this page for continually updated NASCAR reports: http://independenttribune.net/index.php/sports/mulhern/

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Jimmie Johnson finally shows the touch, beating Greg Biffle and Denny Hamlin to win California 500

Jimmie Johnson crosses the finish line 2-1/2 seconds ahead of Greg Biffle and Denny Hamlin to win the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Pepsi 500 at Auto Club Speedway on August 31, 2008 in Fontana, California. (Photo by Robert Laberge/Getty Images for NASCAR)

By Mike Mulhern

FONTANA, Calif.
Jimmie Johnson has endured a very ragged season, but he and crew chief Chad Knaus may finally be getting back in the swing of things – just as the NASCAR championship chase gets ready to begin.
Johnson dominated Sunday night’s four-hour Pepsi 500 at California’s Auto Club Speedway to win by 2-1/2 seconds, but he couldn’t shake playoff-bound but still winless Greg Biffle. And Denny Hamlin, also fighting for a playoff spot, during an erratic summer stretch, was also right up front, perhaps signally a change in his fortunes too.
Johnson led 227 of the 250 laps in winning for the third time this season.
“I’m just glad to be able to close the deal, because usually when you have a car this good, you end up doing something stupid,” Johnson cracked.
Nevertheless, with one race left till Richmond’s Saturday night championship playoff cut, the battle for NASCAR’s Sprint Cup championship still looks like Carl Edwards versus Kyle Busch, a Ford-versus-Toyota deal. The two didn’t headline Sunday night, but they did run top-10.
And Edwards concedes it’s a long, long way from here to the season finale at Homestead Thanksgiving week: “And Jimmie Johnson has proven that he can do it when it matters.  You’re going to have to beat Jimmie to be the champion.”
And neither Edwards, the spring winner here, nor Busch, the Saturday night winner here, had anything for Johnson, in Knaus’ Chevrolet. Edwards finished sixth, Busch seventh.
The 500-miler was relatively incident-free, with the only notable cautions being for caution lights falling on the track.
“But i don’t know how much to read into this, because the intermediate tracks, particularly the 1-1/2-miles, have been our weak spot this season,” Johnson said, “and the chase is chocked full of those tracks.”

Jimmie Johnson (48) leads teammate Jeff Gordon (24) during the Pepsi 500 at California’s Auto Club Speedway. Johnson dominated; Gordon struggled home 15th. (Photo by Jerry Markland/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Busch came into the race with a 212-point lead over Edwards. And the two go to Richmond with Busch leading by 208.  For the first race of the chase, at Loudon, N.H., next week, the 12 title contenders will all have their point totals essentially re-zeroed, evening the playing field for the final 10 events.
The rest of the top-12 after 25 races:
Dale Earnhardt Jr. (11th Sunday) clinched a playoff spot; he trails Busch by 369 points.
Johnson, clinched, is down 432.
Jeff Burton (17th), also clinched; he’s 521 down.
Tony Stewart (22nd), 596 down.
Biffle, 623.
Kevin Harvick (fourth), 645.
Jeff Gordon (15th), 674.
Matt Kenseth (fifth), 681.
Hamlin, 690.
Clint Bowyer (10th), 766.
The two men on the bubble:
David Ragan, the second-year driver trying to crack the playoffs, (13th), is 783 behind Busch—and needs to catch Bowyer at Richmond.
Kasey Kahne, also on the outside looking in to make the playoffs if he can, (eighth), is 814 behind Busch—and he needs to catch both Ragan and Bowyer.

An early Jimmie Johnson pit stop during Sunday’s California 500. The four-hour race started in the hot, sunny afternoon and ended in the desert cool of the evening. Johnson won in front of a crowd of about 75,000 at the 92,000-seat facility just east of Los Angeles (Photo by Jerry Markland/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Now the road to the championship next leads from here cross-country to Richmond, Va., Saturday night’s 26th tour event, and NASCAR’s big-rig truckers will be running right through the havoc expected from Hurricane Gustav…just like they had to do a few years ago when Katrina struck.
And teams are hoping the next hurricane coming up from the Caribbean doesn’t drench Richmond International Raceway.

Edwards and Busch appeared to have made their peace. Busch blew away the field in Saturday night’s Nationwide race, and after it was over Edwards charged up to give Busch a playful bump.
“It’s very cool to have our team running so well, to be on top of our game…and it’s really fun to have somebody like Kyle so fast,” Edwards says. “There have been a couple of races where it’s like either me or him, and I think that brings out the best in people.
“For us, it’s been a lot of fun. 
“If it comes down to just him and me for the championship, that would be fine. But I have a feeling some of these other guys are going to have something to say.”

Kahne, Dodge’s only hope to make the playoffs, insists he’s not sweating it, even though he was a disappointment here: “I can’t worry about what the other guys (Clint Bowyer and David Ragan, challenging him for a playoff spot) are doing.  We’ll just race our race.  If we race well, I think we’ll make the chase.  If the guys in front of us race well, then we won’t.”

Biffle, who dogged Johnson the entire night in one of his best runs lately, says he’s thinking championship. He came within 35 points of winning the title in 2005… but he failed to make the playoffs the last two seasons, and he says that’s because his cars simply weren’t fast enough.  Biffle and crew chief Greg Erwin may well have enough speed this time; they certainly had more than teammates Edwards and Matt Kenseth.
“I’m glad we’re on our way to getting in,” Biffle said. “And we could be a tremendous amount better right now than where we’re at— we could be third in points or fourth, if not for a handful of just dumb things.
“If we get in the chase, the thing we’re going to have to be tough on is not making any mistakes.
“We’ve got six races we finished 40th or back there a long ways, when we’d been running in the top-five. If we could just shift the clock back a little bit, that would have put us up third or fourth…with Darlington being one of them, possibly a win, and maybe a couple others being close to a win. 
“So I feel good about getting in the chase…and that we can do something when we get there. Yeah, this year feels a lot different.”
In the closing laps of the race Biffle’s crew asked Knaus if he could have Johnson back off a bit and help brush some paper off Biffle’s nose.
“I’d have done the same thing,” Knaus said with a laugh. “But I told them no. Jack Roush (Biffle’s car owner) throws zingers at us every now and then, and I just didn’t think we’d be interested in helping them right then.”

Gillian Zucker, track president, inducts Jimmie Johnson into the track’s Walk of Fame. Zucker has been counting on El Cajon’s Johnson to help her promote NASCAR racing in the Los Angeles market...and Sunday’s win certainly helps. (Photo Credit: Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR)

While those 14 men are battling for the right to play for the NASCAR championship, others are just battling for their rides.
Patrick Carpentier, for one, is fighting to stay on the tour, now that car owners Ray Evernham and George Gillett have hired Reed Sorenson. Evernham and Gillett say they’d like to put Carpentier in a new fourth team car next season, but Carpentier understands that might be unrealistic, in the current economic climate.
So Carpentier, who qualified a solid fifth, was disappointed when a broken transmission forced him to the rear of the 43-car field for the start.
“We needed it this week,” Carpentier, the transplanted open-wheel star, says. “I mean, with last week (Bristol) the whole week was bad. 
“For me it’s a sad situation, but I know these guys are putting a lot of money out of their pockets to do this, and they need to make it happen.
“They’re trying to find full funding for a fourth team for next year, and they’re trying to reorganize the team.  Hopefully I’ll still be there next year.  But it’s a tough situation.
“But I can understand it.
“Before, I was on the other side and the sponsor needed me and where I was from and all that.
“Gillett-Evernham has been amazing for me. Without them I wouldn’t have had a ride at all this year.  All this was a fairy tale—from no ride at all and working on a farm to being here with these guys like Jeff Gordon.
“So it’s pretty amazing. I’ve still got to pinch myself at times.
“But I enjoy every moment of it.  I love it.  I love to drive the cars in the series.
“Let’s say I don’t have a ride: I’m not mad at the team…but Canadian sponsors, I’m surprised they don’t come on board. NASCAR’s got so much visibility, and we’ve been working hard at it. We still are. 
“We brought a few of them to a couple of races, and they seem very interested, and they would benefit from it quite a bit. Just Montreal with the Nationwide race, the sponsor we had last year had more coverage from that than from something else that cost them more than 10 times.
“The Gillett family owns the Montreal Canadians, and they know a lot of sponsors, and, believe me, they’re trying hard, I know they are.”

Kyle Busch was in a world of his own in Saturday night’s Nationwide 300 at California’s Auto Club Speedway...but he had nothing for Jimmie Johnson in Sunday’s Sprint Cup 500 (Photo Credit: Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)

This is Toyota’s home track, and AJ Allmendinger (whose future is one of many in doubt) started from the front row and ran top-10. But he’s got Formula One driver Scott Speed standing in the wings waiting for a stumble that could open the door to a driver change.
And despite Busch’s amazing season, the rest of the Toyota drivers are still fighting against a so-so performance image.
Toyota’s Mike Skinner, in Michael McDowell’s Camry the past few weeks, to help car owner Michael Waltrip figure some things out, says he’s “in kind of a consulting position. We’ve learned a lot, and I’ve given them some areas to work…areas they already knew they needed to work but might have just needed somebody else to get in the car for two or three weeks to prove that.
“I think they’ll get better, as AJ Allmendinger did: His team changed some personnel, and now it’s a top 10 car. 
“We know the equipment’s good; it’s just a matter of getting the people to communicate with the equipment and the driver to make it go fast.”
The man expected to be Toyota’s leader this season, Stewart, was again never a factor. Stewart, who is expected to announced his 2009 crew chief later this week, Darian Grubb, from Hendrick Motorsports, may already be looking ahead to next season when he debuts as owner-driver….and he says 18-year-old Joey Logano is an excellent choice to replace him in Greg Zipadelli’s Toyotas. “I’m proud of Joey,” Stewart says of the kid who will make his Cup debut this week at Richmond in a team car. “I really like him. 
“His record the last couple of years speaks for itself.  I don’t think you could ask for a better guy to replace me…and I’m happy that’s the guy.
“He’s the perfect guy. He’s in the perfect situation: he’s a good kid, he’s got a great family, and he’s going to do things right.
“I’m behind him 100 percent.”
But that’s next season, and Stewart and Zipadelli still have a championship to battle for this fall. And they still recall that Loudon chase opener a few years back where Stewart got taken out in the opening miles, and he spent the last three months of the season out of the hunt and fuming.
Stewart and Zipadelli haven’t had a great season so far. Not a bad season, really. They could easily have opened by winning the Daytona 500. But this year has been their best. So Stewart says he doesn’t have great feelings for the upcoming chase: “Not yet.  I feel great about the effort that’s being put forth. I’m proud of my team, I’m proud of Zippy, I’m proud of our guys and how hard they are digging…but we just haven’t found that one thing or two things that we need right now.
“The great thing about this organization is these guys won’t quit.  It doesn’t matter if, with two races to go, we’re 12th in the points.  They are still going to keep working just as hard as we are right now. 
“You keep doing the same things that we’ve done for 10 years – that’s won us 33 races and two championships. 
“But right now we’re not where we need to be.”
Still, he’s optimistic: “It starts off as anybody’s game,” Stewart says of the 10-race chase. “You know the drill— Mathematically, as long as you have a shot, you’re still in the hunt.
“But every week somebody is, for the most part, going to take themselves out of contention.  It will be that way each week. 
“And you could be 500 points back starting the chase, but if you stumbled on something that’s going to be good for those last 10 weeks, you could be 12th in points and still have just as good a shot as the guys leading if things go your way. 
“No matter where you’re at when you start the chase, you have to be ready to seize that opportunity.”

Hamlin, teammate with Stewart and Busch, has struggled lately, and he’s been hit-or-miss much of the season. “This is the weekend that’s a question for us.  We feel we can run good at Richmond, but here it’s a toss-up.  We feel if we can run top-10 here, we should be fine for the rest of the race-to-the-chase.
“Obviously Kyle is doing a great job for our team. He’s going to force us to step up. If we do make this chase, we have a lot to go off of to catch him.
“The good part is we feel all of our strong tracks are in the chase.  If we can just get there, we should be fine.
“Our performance this year has not been as good as last year, when we were leading a lot more races and contender on a more regular basis.  But last year was not the best for us: We made the chase, but we didn’t make it to New York (because only the top 10 finishers make the trek to the banquet), and that was a real downer.
“We felt we were probably a third-place car last season behind Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson. They performed impeccable during the chase; we really ran good, competed for a lot of wins in the chase, but we wrecked at the end of them.
“If I make it this year, the one thing we’re going to change is to ease our way through the chase.  If we finish 15th the first week, don’t feel we’ve got to get it all back in Week Two – that’s the mistake I made last year.”

Jeff Burton, making his 500th career start, says he and crew chief Scott Miller are still ‘testing’ things for the playoffs. And it shows. They were never in Sunday’s hunt.
“Right now I hope we can get Richard Childress a championship – that one of the three of us can,” Burton said, referring to teammates Kevin Harvick and Bowyer. “It would it mean as much to me for one of these guys to win as it would be for me to win because we truly are doing it as a company.
“The pressure is on us to get it done. Richard is giving us the stuff; we just have to go get it done. 
“We have been, for the last six weeks or so, I won’t say ‘in experimental mode’ but we have been very open to ideas. We didn’t feel like we were locked in the chase by any means six weeks ago. We needed to improve.
“No matter how much we test, it is hard to simulate being in a race. We have been very much off of what we would consider our baseline stuff, trying to find something.
“We gambled a little bit and said we have to be willing to finish 30th running bad to go try and find a better way to run.
“I think we have found some better ways to run. Our results don’t show it, but we ran better at Bristol than when we won in the spring. We ran better at Pocono, at Michigan. We ran well at Indy. We have actually run better in the last month than we did the month prior.
“This is what I like, and my goal is to get about 800 starts. I think I can do that.”

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.
We want your reaction, so please comment on this story and offer your own opinions and insight, on this topic, on our NASCAR videos, and anything about NASCAR. Any questions, just ask Mike at . And bookmark this page for continually updated NASCAR reports: http://independenttribune.net/index.php/sports/mulhern/

Nope, that’s not snow on the mountains overlooking California’s Auto Club Speedway, butt Jimmie Johnson (48) and the NASCAR gang had relatively good weather for this 500, temps in the high 80s...unlike last year’s 114 degrees. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Robbie Loomis ponders the next steps in the Petty Enterprises comeback story

Kyle Petty waits to drive at Fontana (Photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)

By Mike Mulhern

FONTANA, Calif.

Kyle Petty, looking like he’s just in from Sturgis, strides through the crowd and bounces up onto the SPEED stage for his weekly Friday night ‘Tradin’ Paint’ debate with another piece of cannon fodder for his sometimes relentless verbal attacks.
It’s nearing the end of summer, and Petty has taken virtually the entire summer off from actually racing, rather working TV, while Robbie Loomis, the one-time Rick Hendrick man who now runs Petty Enterprises for Richard Petty and the legendary NASCAR company’s new financial investment partners, keeps the home fires burning.
Kyle Petty is a TV natural, and pairs particularly well with former racer Wally Dallenbach.
But out on the track, well, that’s been the great debate.
Petty’s 48. He ran his first Cup race in 1979. He’s won eight times since then, most recently Dover, 1995. And then Petty Enterprises’ last win was in 1999; the company, NASCAR’s winningest operation since its 1949 debut, has only three tour wins since 1984.
So after a mediocre start this season – 34th, 38th, 32nd, 41st, 28th, and a DNQ at Martinsville, the Pettys’ ‘hometown’ track – Petty decided, reluctantly, to sit out Texas and let someone else take a turn at the wheel. “I don’t think I’m the problem,” Petty said that weekend.

Robbie Loomis (C, smiling). As general manager for Richard Petty (cowboy hat), Loomis has been the game plan man for Bobby Labonte (L) and brother Terry Labonte (R) this summer (Photo by Geoff Burke/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Well, let’s check the scorecard since:
—Chad McCumbee, the 23-year-old Tarheel, from down on the coast, got the call but failed to make the field at Texas, and he got the call again a few weeks later and again failed to make the field, at Dover.
— Petty himself failed to qualify at Phoenix in April, and the rest of his spring was equally so-so: 32nd, 27th, 41st, and 36th at Charlotte.
— After McCumbee was shuffled out of the picture, the Pettys’ brought in warhorse Terry Labonte, older brother to Bobby, who has just signed on for another three-year stint in Richard’s own 43. But two-time champ Terry didn’t turn things around either: Kyle Petty was 38th in the points when he dropped off the tour in June; when he returned to the car last week at Bristol, the team was 39th in the points.
It would seem that—whether or not Kyle Petty is the solution—he certainly doesn’t appear to be the problem.
And if Bobby Labonte is the baseline: His best runs have been a 10th at Loudon, 11ths at Charlotte, Pocono and Daytona, and 12ths at Atlanta and Phoenix. He’s 22nd in the standings.

Dodge racing boss Mike Accavitti (R), with Juan Pablo Montoya. So does Dodge need better engines, more wind tunnel work, more engineering, more money, or better drivers and better teams? Why is Dodge in last place in NASCAR Cup, Nationwide and Truck? This is where the buck stops. (Photo by Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Cue Robbie Loomis, the man choreographing things for the Pettys.
What’s going on at Petty Enterprises? What’s the game plan now?
“Well, we’re certainly not saving money, just ask Richard,” Loomis says with a laugh. “We’ve been spending a lot of money on testing.
“We’re new with our new partners, Boston Ventures. David Zucker, our new CEO, is doing a great job. He’s peddling 900 mph trying to get hold of everything.
“It’s a new process. While we might not have a lot of presence yet with the cars or race shop part, I definitely feel a lot of presence on the business side, up in the front office. Things are really buttoned up, and the decisions being made are really business decisions…with racing at the center. David is doing a good job at that; it’s not always the most comfortable decisions, but the ones being made are probably in the best interests of the company.
“What we’ve been missing are a lot of the business decisions that need to be made, and a lot of the business connections we need.
“Our guys are being very strategic in how we do it; I have to make a good case for what I think we need to buy….and that makes me feel good, because I told them before this transaction went down that it’s not going to happen overnight.
“And if it does happen overnight it won’t last. Like Bobby Ginn last year.
“So we want to build it slowly and steadily.
“As far as driver lineup for next year, we are very aggressive on moving forward…but we are facing the fact that, based on where our cars are running right now, we won’t be able to get that A-level driver as a teammate with Bobby Labonte. So we have to create that player: like Brett Favre at Green Bay.
“We’re still working on those plans. Kyle will run some races next year. And Bobby will have a teammate that we hope can grow into that B-level or A-level player.”

After 50-plus years of this, you’d think the King would get a little tired of watching grown men running in circles (Photo:Todd Warshaw/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Here’s the big picture: In NASCAR’s manufacturers’ standings, Dodge is in last place on the Cup tour, last place on the Nationwide tour, and last place on the Truck tour.
So a key issue appears to be Chrysler’s Dodge division itself.
On top of that, Dodge has had a newly designed engine for Cup this year, but Dodge and its teams have yet to put it in a car in a tour race, for still unclear reasons.
But, yes, Kurt Busch did ‘win’ that NASCAR chassis dyno test at Michigan, with an amazing 839 horsepower peak in Roger Penske’s Dodge…though that edge didn’t show up when NASCAR took those motors for further detailed inspection at its Concord shop.
Mike Accavitti, the Dodge racing boss, has been a hard man to find for answers to all the questions.

Loomis agrees there are questions at the Dodge level, but he adds “If you look at Dodge teams as a whole….and I don’t feel comfortable saying this, but we are the weaker teams.
“I was on the other side when I was with Rick Hendrick, and I saw what Rick put into it, how committed he was, and how involved he was in making sure he got the right people in the right places.
“I could get going on a tirade about car owners….they like to sit in the big meetings and complain about how the manufacturers aren’t committed…but the real commitment starts here at the top.”

Times are tough throughout the Dodge camp: car owner Chip Ganassi (L) and Dario Franchitti. Ganassi had to shut down the Franchitti team in July for lack of sponsorship (Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images for NASCAR)

The Pettys aren’t the only struggling cost-conscious people in the garage.
Steve Hmiel, the former Jack Roush and DEI competition man now working with Dodge’s Chip Ganassi, says it’s not the ‘stuff’ in racing that’s so costly, it’s the people that it takes to make it all work: “People are the most expensive thing you pay for.”
And Hmiel broadly hints that a number of NASCAR teams may be laying crewmen off before next season. Ganassi himself released 71 men in July, and he’s expected to cut back on his in-house engine operation next and start getting customer engines from Evernham-Gillett.

Is there anything NASCAR can do to help teams cut costs?
“I don’t know how you would legislate frugality,” Hmiel says. “But we’ve got to use the money we’ve got wisely.
“Everyone is a little up in arms over these test dates for next year. We’ll get 24 (NASCAR-approved) testing days (at NASCAR tour tracks). But our team has already tested 30 times this year (at non-NASCAR Cup tracks like Kentucky, under the old rules).”
So will even more testing be in the cards for 2009?
“It’s hard to control costs from the NASCAR trailer,” Hmiel says. “They do a nice job of getting us on national television, so we can get big sponsors. So we just have to use our head-count as effectively as possible, and get the most out of your folks.”

But, as Hmiel and Loomis both well know, the more people on a team’s roster, the more stuff that can get done, and the faster the car goes. This sport may well be driven by the sheer volume of people a car owner can throw at his competition. And mega-owners Jack Roush and Rick Hendrick have rosters of some 500 men apiece, quite an army.
“And the question now has to be how long will Rick and Jack and those guys maintain those head-counts,” Hmiel says. “It’s getting expensive.
“I think there have probably been conversations among Rick and Jack and Chip and Felix Sabates and the others….
“People who haven’t been watching their head-counts will have to start watching their head-counts. Because the people are very expensive.”
Maybe that will help smaller operations like the Pettys.

Roger Penske (R), with veteran Penske racing boss Don Miller. Penske’s NASCAR operation began going downhill when Miller retired. Maybe the Captain needs to bring him back (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)

Still, what is going on at Dodge? And GM and Ford, for that matter, as far as motorsports is concerned? There is much gnashing of teeth in the media about possible Detroit cuts, though whatever does in fact happen likely won’t happen until the end of the season. And the heart of NASCAR racing isn’t expected to be affected much at all, though peripheral spending on things like ‘track rights’ for PR events and pace car programs are clearly on the chopping block. (If most of the changes talked about do go through, Toyota will likely have an even more visible presence in NASCAR in 2009, with pace cars everywhere and a monopoly on most at-track PR events, forcing corporate rivals to walk across the street for any press conferences.)
Will Dodge be around in NASCAR next year?
“Oh, yes,” Loomis says. “When you look at the manufacturers, their support is great, but when you look at a team’s budget, the manufacturer’s part is the smallest piece of the pie.
“From where we sit, Dodge has done everything they’d said they’d do. And they’re always offering to do more, whether it’s more seven-post (computer) time or more wind tunnel time.”
Of course Dodge teams may just have to take whatever they can get, because the other manufacturers probably aren’t flush with money or desire to add anyone to their current NASCAR rosters. Roger Penske’s team may be the only attractive option (and Penske is the country’s biggest Toyota dealer).
So teamwork, Loomis says, may be important. “For all manufacturers, the way this sport is today, the way the economy is globally, we have to look at ways to work together and work smarter, with Evernham-Gillett, with Penske, with Ganassi. And the manufacturers may have to do that too,” Loomis says.
“You’ve seen this little world over the years – some years this sport looks invincible, and other years we’ve got to tighten our belts.”

Time for answers from Dodge? Bob Nardelli, the Chrysler CEO, gives the command, “gentleman start your engines” at Dover (Photo by Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR)

But, hey, what about that new Dodge engine? It has to be a better engine than what Dodge has today. Why are teams dragging their feet? Why isn’t Dodge-corporate pushing that new motor?
Next season there may be only two Dodge engine programs in NASCAR, one run by Ray Evernham/George Gillett, the other run by Roger Penske. The Pettys get their motors from Evernham; and Ganassi is close to deciding to go that way too. Is it time for Accavitti, or whoever is running Chrysler’s Dodge racing operation, to make the call for a single NASCAR engine program, as Ford has done?
“That is one area we all feel we’ve been dragging our feet, on the development of that engine,” Loomis said.
“Bob Nardelli (the ex-Home Depot boss who now runs Chrysler) has been very supportive of us…but he can’t just come in here and save our program. We’ve got to look in the mirror. That goes for every Dodge team.”
The baseline Dodge operation should be Roger Penske’s. But that Penske angle is indeed strange. The man is a legend in racing, but his NASCAR operation has been going nowhere for several years now, and Ryan Newman, just months after winning the Daytona 500 (Penske’s first), has been so dissatisfied he’s jumped over to Chevrolet.
“From the financial side, you look at Roger Penske, and he is in a position to be every bit as strong as Joe Gibbs or Rick Hendrick,” Loomis says.
“And I know Roger cares, because he’s been to more stock car races than you can imagine.
“But at the same it starts at the top, and it’s about getting the people in the right place and letting the organization work.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen with Ryan’s team now (David Stremme, who has been on the sidelines for nearly a year now, will likely get that ride). And that could be another example of something’s missing.”
But what’s really going to be missing in the coming weeks is Dodge itself: Kasey Kahne, Dodge’s top driver at the moment, is a precarious 14th in the Sprint Cup standings and in danger of missing the 10-race championship chase. He has to crack the top-12 in runs here and next weekend at Richmond, or Dodge will be completely shut out of the playoffs.

Is Richard Petty really going to get things turned around with the family racing business? (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)

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.
We want your reaction, so please comment on this story and offer your own opinions and insight, on this topic, on our NASCAR videos, and anything about NASCAR. Any questions, just ask Mike at . And bookmark this page for continually updated NASCAR reports: http://independenttribune.net/index.php/sports/mulhern/

Giddy-up, Go: Kyle Petty (L) and Richard Petty (R), with (L-R) Vince DiMartino, Paul Teutul Jr. Paul Teutul Sr. and Mikey Teutul of Orange County Choppers (Photo by Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images for NASCAR)