And so the 51st annual Speedweeks has come and gone, and it offered some surprises and some items to watch as the season begins in earnest. The rain ruined a potential epic finish and is one of the items from which lessons can be learned, so as the NASCAR caravans proceed to southern California, some items we appear to have learned at the Daytona 500:
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ROUSH: FORD’S ONLY HOPE - Roush Fords won the Firecracker with Jeff Burton, Greg Biffle, and Jamie McMurray. Now they’ve won the 500 with Matt Kenseth, and he seems the 500 winner on the best overall footing since Jimmie Johnson won it the last time it ran under the clouds, in 2006. Ford has clearly put all its NASCAR hopes into Roush’s fleet, as they were the only Blue Ovals who had any moxie all week. Bill Elliott timed far beyond his talent level and it showed once the shooting started, while Doug Yates’ status as Roush customer team showed with dismal efforts all week, hampered further by the inclusion of Paul Menard, a driver high on sponsorship dollars and low on talent.
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START TIMES NEED TO BE PUSHED EARLIER - The nonsensical argument for the tardy start times of many pro sports is that nighttime offers the highest possible viewing audience on television. Never asked in such discussions, though, is whether any loss of ratings or viewers would be large enough to harm a sport if start times were pushed earlier. There seems to be no credible evidence that the World Series would lose any significant audience if games were played in daylight hours instead of night, and the same is true of the Superbowl. Certainly the Daytona 500 would have run to the finish had the flag been waved at 1 PM sharp instead of pushed to almost 3 PM, and audience and ratings would have been the same, and there seems no consideration that goodwill toward the fanbase would be improved with earlier start times, thus making it more convenient for the fanbase.
There was simply no reason not to start the 500 or future races as late as is presently the case. Push start times earlier to no later than 1 PM area time.
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RCR: STILL FOURTH IN THE BIG FOUR - Don’t be fooled by the strong finishes of RCR’s Chevys all week – more than once they either lost the draft at Daytona or were mired in the back unable to pass anyone. RCR had a productive result from Speedweeks but they needed numerous cautions all week to get their cars right and Childress’ guys were clearly weaker than the other Big Three teams.
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JOE GIBBS RACING : LARGE AND IN CHARGE - JGR is the new dominator of the sport, leading the most laps in the 500 and doing so with authority. Kyle Busch had the car to win the 500 and Denny Hamlin had the car to push him to the win; expect this pattern to continue at Fontana onward. As for the team’s highly touted rookie, Joey Logano impressed no one all week and looks as unready for prime time as any rookie this decade.
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TOYOTA: CAN ANYONE ELSE TAKE A WIN? - Dietrich Mateschitz’ two cars are the only other Toyotas with any kind of muscle, and their new rookie Scott Speed was as short of speed as Logano. Michael Waltrip’s bunch did better than expected but it’s impossible to take them seriously. If a non-JGR Toyota wins, it’s going to have to be Brian Vickers.
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HENDRICK: ANOTHER SLOW START - Jeff Gordon led for awhile but as the race went on nobody from the Hendrick fleet seemed able to get stronger for the finish. Tire trouble hurt Gordon more than a lot of others and between that and the big melee entering Three it added up to another slow start for the Hendrick fleet, this after poor beginnings in 2007 and 2008 – of course from slow starts came fast finishes, so worrying about Hendrick right now doesn’t make much sense. Dale Junior continued to prove a poor fit with the Hendrick effort – his pit miscues were downright embarassing – and he brought back ugly reminders of his dad by taking out nine cars, while Mark Martin stormed to lead lap 2 and then was largely unheard from again – not a good sign for the first push of the season.
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GILLETT-PETTY: BETTER THAN WE THOUGHT - Yes it’s just one race, but the muscle A.J. Allmendinger showed all week at Daytona was a very encouraging sign and comes on the heels of an encouraging final five races of 2008 – the most telling sign that A.J. is the real deal and the real fit with Gillett-Petty is that he kept the car racing hard when crossing up off Four during the 150s; the mythical “who can drive a loose racecar” debate got some visual evidence here. Teammate Reed Sorensen was somewhat inconsistent during the week and has not shown the same moxie on other tracks that he’s shown at the plate tracks, but his top ten was a decent start. Kasey Kahne had the worst of it in the 500 as he ran stout but wound up 25th at the end, while Elliott Sadler finished fifth thanks to a gutsy pit call. Kahne and Allmendinger appear to be the leaders of this group and look to make a lot of noise.
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COT: THE MORE THEY WORK ON IT…. - Daytona usually gets racier when the clouds come over, and it began showing as the 500 started with some outstanding sidedraft combat at various points of the first 100 laps. But as the race went on ability to pass seemed to get harder, which often happens on a slick track but with the clouds and colder temps the track wasn’t getting slicker to the same degree. Blistering tires and the worn-out nature of the surface certainly had a role, but it brings to mind a comment made in 2008 about the Car Of Tomorrow – the more they race it, the worse the racing gets.
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NEW TEAMS = FIELD FILLERS - We heard quite a bit of optimistic nonsense about how there is opportunity now for new teams to come into the sport and try to establish something; cited approvingly were the suprising efforts of Tommy Baldwin’s new team with Scott Riggs and the new Jeremy Mayfield team. But when the shooting started those new teams did what rational analysis would have predicted – they became field fillers. Riggs was never heard from after the first green flag and Mayfield had to pit and get lapped several times. John Andretti in a fourth Earnhardt-Ganassi Chevrolet was more relevent to the 500 than any of the “new teams” were. It is impossible right now to see any of these new teams making any difference in 2009.
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PENSKE: FORGET IT - David Stremme and Sam Hornish were glorified field fillers while Kurt Busch got swept into the big mess yet salvaged tenth. The entire organization appears to be a mess and not only not getting better, but engaged in a slow-motion implosion.
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STEWART-HAAS: NOW THE GRIND BEGINS - Tony Stewart led laps and ran stout throughout Speedweeks, but the real grind begins now. He lost several cars and teammate Ryan Newman looked worse than a field filler with crashes, lousy efforts, and a resultant 36th in the 500. More than one observor called the Stewart-Haas cars the fifth and sixth Hendrick cars – therein lay their biggest weakness, their status as Hendrick customer cars.
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IN NASCAR, EIRI STILL RULES - Dale Junior caused a wreck and raced below the yellow lines, but that wasn’t what he got penalized for. NASCAR still has not offered a credible argument what they think their yellow line rules are preventing.
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So going forward the same top teams appear to be where they were last year and the only realistic hope of an upset seems to be from the merged Gillett-Petty teams. Thus, welcome to the 2009 NASCAR season.
