Dawn of the superspeedwayFifty years ago a new kind of track changed NASCAR racing foreverBy RICK MINTER / Cox Newspapers
It hasn’t exactly been the most celebrated of Golden Anniversaries, but 2010 marks the 50th year since NASCAR’s original superspeedway boom.Back in 1960, three new superspeedways joined the group of tracks hosting races for the circuit now known as Sprint Cup, a list that was dominated at that time by dirt tracks, most of them a half-mile or less.Atlanta International Raceway, now known as Atlanta Motor Speedway, plus Charlotte Motor Speedway and Marchbanks Speedway in California, opened in 1960, joining the two existing superspeedways on the circuit – Darlington Raceway, which opened in 1950, and Daytona International Speedway, which opened in 1959.Two other attempts at superspeedways had failed in the 1950s. The one-mile paved oval in Raleigh, N.C., opened in 1953 and was gone by 1958. The 1.5-mile, high-banked dirt oval Memphis-Arkansas Speedway had just a three-year run – from 1954 to 1957.But during the 1950s, Darlington Raceway was wildly successful, and it was those Darlington races that led a group of Georgia businessmen to set about building a track in Atlanta.
The men went to a race at Darlington and came home with a dream to build a state-of-the-art speedway in Atlanta and to bring NASCAR racing to it.About the same time, promoter Bruton Smith and driver Curtis Turner were pursuing similar dreams at Charlotte, and in Hanford, Calif., businessman and farmer B.L. Marchbanks was busy building a 1.4-mile paved track that he named Marchbanks Speedway.Ed Clark, the current president of the Atlanta track, points out that those early track builders were true pioneers.“Superspeedways were just coming into being, and nobody knew what the future held,” Clark said. “Those people were pioneers to even think about undertaking a mile-and-a-half, high-banked race track. Now you look back, and not only has it grown in the Atlanta area but also nationwide, and NASCAR racing has become a mainstream sport.”Clark said it’s important to remember that AMS, like the track in Charlotte where he worked before coming to Atlanta, survived many a hurdle in the early days.“Nobody would lend you money,” he said. “Everything was under-funded. Everything was rough and not very polished, but that speaks to the core product and the appeal it had to people. That and a few people who just diligently worked and wouldn’t give up are what got the track and the sport to where it is now.”The tracks in Atlanta and Charlotte both were opened with much work remaining to be done. At Charlotte, paving went on right up until race week, and the uncured asphalt came apart during the inaugural World 600, forcing teams to put giant screens on the fronts of the cars to keep chunks of asphalt from breaking the radiators.Jack Smith of Atlanta was five laps ahead late in the race when a chunk of asphalt knocked a hole in his gas tank, putting him out of the race and opening the door for Joe Lee Johnson to take the win.When Atlanta opened a few weeks later, NASCAR officials, worried about a repeat of the track problems at Charlotte, limited the race to 300 miles.But the track held up just fine, and Fireball Roberts scored a popular win.The down-to-the-wire work at Atlanta mostly involved getting the grandstands ready. Concrete pouring went on right up until race time.Still, track officials and the people of Atlanta were happy to have a race track all their own.“It was a glorious, fun-filled day,” Jack Black, one of the original shareholders who later became track president, said in an interview several years ago. “It was a great race, and there were lots of cars still running at the end.” Black said somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000 people witnessed the first race, but that number was never for certain because all the fencing wasn’t in place and many fans walked in for free.Marchbanks was a different story. The Southern drivers, for the most part, didn’t make the long, expensive haul to California. The official crowd estimate for the first race was just 7,000, and the track hosted just one more NASCAR race before dropping off the schedule. But the tracks in Atlanta and Charlotte survived the tough early years and went on to play key roles in the growth of the sport.Races at Atlanta, Charlotte and Daytona brought national media attention and the first TV coverage to the then-fledgling sport of stock car racing. Clark, the Atlanta track president, said racers and race fans everywhere owe a debt to the pioneers who kept the Atlanta and Charlotte tracks in business through all the rough times, preventing them from being lost to time like Marchbanks, Raleigh and Memphis-Arkansas.“It could have very easily happened,” Clark said. “A lot of people put a lot of personal time into it that they weren’t compensated for because they believed in it and loved it.”
Saturday’s unambiguous win eclipses
debate over 2009 victory
By RICK MINTER / Cox Newspapers
Anyone who understands Sprint Cup racing knows how difficult it is to win a race, even when the victory comes as a result of a perfect pit strategy in a rain-shortened event. Last year, both David Reutimann and Joey Logano won Cup races from far back in the field by staying on the track, successfully gambling that rains would end the race before the faster cars could overtake them.
But the reality is that those kinds of wins aren’t looked upon the same as one in which a driver and crew overpower the competition. It’s like there’s an asterisk beside the winning statistic.
Reutimann lived under the asterisk for more than a year after he won the rain-shortened 2009 Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. But on Saturday night, in the LifeLock.com 400 at Chicagoland Speedway, he drove by Jeff Gordon then held off a fast-closing Carl Edwards to score an outright, no-question-about-it Sprint Cup victory. It was a popular one among his fellow drivers, who seem to appreciate his self-deprecating humor and the work ethic that saw him keep digging until he finally landed in the Cup series at age 35. And, more importantly, there was no asterisk this time.
“There was no rain tonight,” Reutimann said in Victory Lane. “We earned this one. Nobody gave it to us, and that feels really good …We took a lot of heat for how we won the first race. Tonight, we just had the car to beat.”
Ty Norris, the general manager at Reutimann’s Michael Waltrip Racing team, explained in the winner’s interview session just how much the latest win meant to Reutimann and the entire organization.
Norris said that in his many years in the sport, he’d never seen a driver have to answer as many questions about a Cup win as Reutimann did about his Coke 600 victory.
“I’ve probably not seen anyone have to walk around for a year and a half and apologize about winning a race,” Norris said. “Winning that Coca-Cola 600 because of rain, everyone sort of like had the asterisk next to that win. Tonight was a huge statement.”
Norris said part of the credit goes to Toyota Racing Development, which gave Reutimann an improved engine and car. And the Rodney Childers-led crew stepped up when it counted. But mostly Norris said he was proud that Reutimann was able to beat drivers like Gordon and Edwards without the benefit of a timely rain storm.
“I think, more than anything else, it’s redemption for David [Reutimann],” he said.
With the victory, Reutimann pulled to within 96 points of the top 12, and now he’s beginning to be looked upon as a legitimate contender for a berth in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, which begins after seven more races. That’s a dramatic turn-around from earlier this year, when he left the eighth race of the season, at Texas Motor Speedway, 30th in the points standings.
But he said he never doubted his team’s ability to bounce back and still has confidence he can join the elite 12 for the 10-race run for the title.
“I think we can,” Reutimann said. “I’ve always felt that way. Even when we were 30th, I felt like we could. It wasn’t looking like it was going to make it. Team-wise we were the caliber of team we felt like we could do it …
“We may fly under the radar. But the people that matter know we can contend.”
By RICK MINTER / Cox Newspapers
One of the traditional events as the NASCAR circuit returns to its home base in Daytona Beach, Fla., for the second trip to tracks across the country, is a state-of-the-sport press conference with the NASCAR chairman.
Brian France met with the media at Daytona International Speedway last week to talk about a variety of topics affecting the sport. He didn’t offer any major announcements, but here are some excerpts from his remarks.
On the economy and its effect on the NASCAR industry:
“I don’t want to have a big discussion about the economy and all that. The economy is what it is. It’s still difficult. It was difficult six months ago. It doesn’t appear to have improved much for our fan base, a lot of our corporate customers. That’s sort of the bad news.
“The good news is we’ve got 400 different sponsors within the sport. Most of them are renewing their sponsorships. It may look differently, but they’re renewing their sponsorships.
“The car manufacturers, despite a very difficult climate for them, have made a lot of improvements in their own business models and are more stable. They, as well, are reinvesting in NASCAR for the long-term. So that’s good.
“I think the other thing that’s happened to us, and it’s probably happened to a lot of industries, is when things are tough, and we all feel like we’re in a storm, it’s not as easy as it used to be. What happens is you get a chance to be more self-critical of yourself. …
“Even though there are difficulties with the economic climate that we’re in, it kind of forces you in a good way to look at yourself, to work together closer so you can get a better result in the long run.”
On any possible changes to the format of the Chase for the Sprint Cup:
“We like a playoff-style format for sure. It distinguishes us in motorsports, number one, distinguishes our national divisions number two. And, number three, the big design is to have playoff-type moments that only can be, in any sport, created when there’s a lot on the line at any one moment. That’s what the essence of Game 7s, eliminations and all that are.
“We’ve always had in motorsports a challenge with that because there’s a continuity issue because there are 43 teams. Nobody can win a winner-take-all scenario. And we have to balance the body of what you’ve done as a driver across the board. …
“What we’re talking about is enhancing it in a way that will bring out more of the winning moments, the big moments that happen in sports. And if there’s a way we can do that, and there are a couple of ways, we’re going to give that a lot of weight.”
On the decline in TV ratings despite lots of action on the track:
“We moved start times [for races] back out from where more viewers are back to an earlier start time. We knew that would have a short-term impact until our fan base could get a benefit from sort of a centralized start time for most of the events.
“In the short run, there are less people watching at 1:00 [p.m.] than there are at 3:00. You had the World Cup; still have the World Cup going on. You had a very, very popular Winter Olympics. … We had more competition than even a normal busy sports calendar. They’ve had big moments, big story lines. If you recall back in our Vegas race, I think that hockey game did a 21 share or something in the Winter Olympics directly against us. We didn’t have that the year before.
“Then the economy certainly plays a role, more so to us than anybody else because we ask our fans in the big event business to stay longer, drive further, buy hotel rooms and alike as part of what it takes to come to our events. That’s why the tracks and just about everybody in the industry has tried to help that situation out by lowering prices, working with hotels, restaurants, anywhere where they may spend money, to be reflective of that.”
On the displays of emotion, on and off the track, that have come as a result of the “have at it, boys” approach that officials have taken this year:
“I like it personally. I like the emotion. [I’m] a little less worried about what we’re going to do [to drivers]. They always have the sponsorship stuff. It’s not easy for them. They have to be accountable to a company that has a big investment in them.
“It wasn’t like we’re the guys that like to just put a cap on everything. Rather things evolve. … We’ll admit if we’ve overregulated in certain situations, and I think we did. …
“But we like where we’re at now. We like where we’re going.”
By RICK MINTER / Cox Newspapers
When NASCAR officials told the boys on the track to “have at it” back in the preseason, it appeared to be in response to complaints from TV viewers and those watching trackside that the racing had become boring.
Well the boys are having at it. They are wrecking each other a lot, especially during double-file restarts and more especially on the road course at Infineon Raceway, a wrecking exhibition that Jeff Burton described as “horrendous.”
Interestingly, fans don’t seem to be responding to the wreckfests like some thought they might. There have been lots of empty seats at tracks this year, and TV ratings continue to tumble.
TNT, which broadcast the Infineon Raceway event that was as rough-and-tumble as they come, even in today’s NASCAR world, reported that ratings were down 21 percent from last year. And TNT, which airs a summertime stretch of Cup racing, is down 12 percent in race ratings for the year.
Maybe fans would prefer a little law and order on the track, and some mutual respect between drivers. There are some drivers who would like to see that too.
Tony Stewart said what NASCAR is experiencing on the track these days is a lack of patience.
“There’s a phrase we use all the time: ‘Give and Take,’” he told reporters at New Hampshire Motor Speedway last week. “There is a lot more taking anymore than there is giving among the drivers.
“It is not due to respect … everybody respects each other out there. The equation is out of balance right now between give and take. …
“It is getting worse and it is probably going to get worse before it gets better, it looks like.”
Stewart said part of what fans are seeing is young drivers coming into the sport who aren’t accustomed to running 500-mile or 500-lap races.
Indeed, many young drivers today came up through the Legends ranks, where the “bump and run” is the most successful on-track maneuver.
And there’s not as much self-policing among the driver corps as there once was, Stewart pointed out. For NASCAR’s part, series officials said all along that what they really meant by “have at it” was for the drivers to police the sport rather than having officials step in too often.
But self-policing doesn’t seem to be happening too much these days.
“In this era, we have lost some great race car drivers, and nobody really wants to have to self-police on the race track like we used to,” Stewart said. “If you did something wrong to somebody, they waited. It may have been five, six, 10 weeks down the road, but somewhere along the line, you got paid back and you got wrecked and while you were sitting there wrecked and going, ‘Why did I get put here?’ it makes you think about … well, maybe it’s about something I did earlier.
“You just don’t see as much of that as you used to, and that was the way it used to fix itself, and in my opinion, that is what it needs to get back to again.”
By RICK MINTER / Cox Newspapers
Even in the midst of a wacky Sprint Cup season, Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway stood out. That race might best be described as a combination of things one wouldn’t expect to see in an ordinary Sprint Cup Series race, even in the era when the boys have been told by series officials to “have at it.”
A driver closing in on his first career Cup win, with a dominant car and seemingly plenty of fuel in the tank, stalls the car in an uphill portion of the track, apparently trying to alternately cut his engine on and off to save gasoline. That driver, Marcos Ambrose, the almost always upbeat Australian, seemed deflated and crushed afterward.
Many in the media, including the TV commentators, said his blunder was the biggest in NASCAR since Mark Martin pulled off the track on the white flag lap while leading under caution at Bristol Motor Speedway in a Nationwide Series race in 1994.
Then there was the dismal day for Joe Gibbs Racing, which for the past several weeks has been all but unbeatable in the Sprint Cup Series.
A variety of misfortunes saw the three-driver team fail to crack the top 30 in the finishing order. Joey Logano was best of the three with a 33rd-place run. Denny Hamlin, who had won five of the previous 10 Cup races, struggled to a 34th-place finish, and Kyle Busch was 39th.
In fairness, team owner Joe Gibbs has been saying for weeks that his team’s phenomenal run could end any day.
“This can all turn on a dime,” Gibbs said after Hamlin won at Pocono Raceway. “We know how pro sports are. I’m never confident, or I don’t think anybody on our team feels like we’ve arrived for sure.”
Jeff Gordon was uncharacteristically aggressive on the track, a fact pointed out more than once by the TNT broadcasters covering the race – and by Elliott Sadler and others afterward.
“We got taken out by [Jeff] Gordon,” Sadler said in his post-race interview. “He took out Martin Truex for no reason. The 33 [Clint Bowyer] and me were side-by-side and he got two-for-one there, so he was just kind of knocking everything out of his way.”
To his credit, Gordon didn’t entirely disagree. “Guys were making it three wide, and I’m as guilty of it as anybody,” he said. “After they started doing it to me, I had to do it to others. There are some things that I’m not proud of that I did today; certainly with Martin [Truex Jr.]. I mean, I completely messed that up and I will try to patch that up. Other things that happened out there were just really hard racing incidents.”
And then Jimmie Johnson won on a road course, a feat that was somewhat overshadowed by the other events of the day. It’s something the four-time Cup champion had never done before in his entire career, even though his formative years in the sport were spent racing motorcycle and off-road vehicles that should have prepared him for success on tracks where drivers turn both left and right and drive up and down hills.
But those who follow Johnson and his team shouldn’t have been too surprised. They’ve been testing regularly in an effort to allow him and the No. 48 team to cross another item off their “bucket list.” Earlier this year, Johnson ended a career-long drought at Bristol Motor Speedway.
But he said there still are a few entries on that shrinking list.
“It’s not complete,” he said. “I think we have four more tracks to work on to try and win at all of them. I’m just happy to get back to Victory Lane, especially at a track that has been so tough on me over the years.”
By RICK MINTER / Cox Newspapers
Father’s Day on the NASCAR circuit is an interesting time. Most drivers in today’s Sprint Cup Series got there in large part because their fathers supported their racing from the beginning and in many cases paid for the race cars they drove in attracting the attention of the big NASCAR teams.
But once a driver reaches the top levels of the sport, there’s really no place for dad.
Some, like Joey Logano’s father Tom Logano, are very visible at the track and remain a big part of their son’s racing. But that can be problematic, as illustrated by the controversy surrounding the elder Logano’s participation in a post-race incident at Pocono Raceway between his son and Kevin Harvick. Tom Logano appeared to be urging his son to confront Harvick, and some say he shoved a TV reporter. It’s not the first time Tom Logano has been involved in a post-race pit-road incident.
Other dads, like Tony Stewart’s father Nelson Stewart, are there at the track most weeks but go out of their way to stay in the shadows. Nelson Stewart can be as fiery as his son, but he’s come to realize that his place is now on the sidelines.
Other dads rarely even show up at the track.
Logano, in meeting with reporters at Michigan last week, defended his father’s role in the incident at Pocono the week before.
“My father, I love him to death, and he’s there for me,” he said. “So I think that’s something that’s really cool, and a lot of people don’t have that.
“He’s always been by my side my whole life and maybe it was a position that maybe he shouldn’t have been there, but he’s a father and I bet 99 percent of the fathers would’ve been there anyway.”
Harvick, not surprisingly, saw it differently.
“His father needs to stick back and act like all of the rest of the dads, and be happy that his kid’s here,” Harvick said. “This isn’t Little League baseball anymore. He just needs to stay away.”
Harvick went on to say that his own dad is supportive, but there are others who can offer him better advice on dealing with the challenges of being a Sprint Cup driver.
“That is where I think my family sits,” he said. “They’ve never experienced anything at this level, and it’s hard to take that advice from people who haven’t ever experienced anything like that …
“For me, I was fortunate to have Rusty Wallace, Dale Jarrett and those guys. They were always able to give me advice and do things. When I needed things, those were the guys.”
Eddie Wood, in addition to being a Sprint Cup team owner, has been a racing dad to his son Jon. But for the most part he’s stayed in the bacground there.
“When Jon was playing ball and my daughter Jordan was playing volleyball and soccer, I wouldn’t even sit with my wife because she was always yelling,” Wood said. “I tried to use the same [hands-off] approach in racing.”
Wood did serve as a spotter for his son in some Nationwide races, but that didn’t work out too well.
“I got him spun out at Atlanta,” he said. “I cleared him and he wasn’t clear.
“I retired after that.”
Wood said that when his son is racing, he generally sits in the grandstands, and listens in on the team radio but doesn’t hit the “talk” button.
“I still have the same emotions,” he said. “But you wouldn’t ever know it.”
Fork in the roadAs Sprint, Nationwide schedules diverge, choices must be made By RICK MINTER / Cox Newspapers
About this time of the NASCAR season, when the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series schedules find the two circuits running in different venues across the country, the debate resumes about the wisdom of Cup drivers flying back and forth to run Nationwide races.
Some feel it distracts from a driver’s Cup efforts, and that’s one of the reasons Kyle Busch dropped off the Nationwide tour even though he was leading the series in wins with five and just one point out of the championship lead heading into last weekend’s Nationwide race at Nashville Superspeedway.History has shown that cross-country trips tend to produce a lot of wins for drivers, in both Cup and Nationwide, but they don’t seem to help one’s chances of winning a Cup title.In 2008, Carl Edwards led the Cup series in wins with nine and had seven Nationwide victories while running both circuits full-time. He was second in the standings in both series.Kyle Busch had eight Cup wins and 10 Nationwide victories in ’08, but was 10th in Cup points and sixth in Nationwide.In 2009, Busch had four Cup wins and nine in Nationwide. He won the Nationwide championship but didn’t even make the cut for the Chase on the Cup side.Edwards told reporters at Pocono last week that cross-country double-dipping suits him. In fact, in 24 cross-country trips leading up to this past weekend, he won three Cup races and six Nationwide, a better performance percentage-wise than when the races were held at the same race track.“When we get to these races where we go back and forth I do feel better about it,” he said. “Maybe subconsciously I know we have done well.”
Edwards skipped the trip to Nashville on Friday, saying he didn’t think the practice session would be worth the effort.“Sometimes I believe that showing up with no expectation makes it simpler,” he said. “Maybe there is something to that, maybe not. I like the summer stretch with the hot weather and slippery race tracks, so maybe that is what it is.”
Edwards might want to reconsider after this weekend. Brad Keselowski, making his first cross-country double weekend, did go from Pocono to Nashville for practice, and that appeared to help propel him to victory on Saturday night. He now leads the series standings by 196 points. Busch maintained second place, while Edwards is third, 277 behind Keselowski.Both Keselowski and his crew chief Paul Wolfe said in their winner’s interviews that the trip to Nashville on Friday for practice was key to their victory.
“This team works in the shop on days when I’m sleeping in,” Keselowski said. “They work, and they work, and I get all the glory. It’s my responsibility to know when it’s time for me to get to work.“Sometimes, it’s not always the funnest thing to do or the easiest thing to do. There was a lot of travel (Friday), but it makes it worth it to be sitting here right now.”Wolfe seconded those comments. “It’s down to fine-tuning to win these races, and you’ve got to be close to perfect,” he said. “That’s where having Brad here to tune into what he thought he was going to need was part of it.“That’s the kind of effort it’s going to take, going back and forth. Obviously, that shows Brad’s dedication to the series and winning this championship.”At Nashville, the top three finishing positions went to double-dippers with Edwards finishing second and Paul Menard third.
Edwards said that because of the way drivers commute between race tracks in fast airplanes, the trips aren’t as grueling as one might think. He said his team owner Jack Roush flies the planes, allowing Edwards and Menard to relax on both legs of the journey.“When Jack is flying it is great because I can just sit back and relax,” Edwards said. “In some ways it is an easier weekend …“When Jack is flying … it is like a vacation.”
Hamlin & BuschSparks still flyin’Smoldering rancor over All-Star Race flares up at Coca-Cola 600By RICK MINTER / Cox Newspapers
The dust-up between Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch in NASCAR’s All-Star Race continued to generate buzz well into the Coca-Cola 600 race weekend, with both drivers obviously far from putting the incident completely behind them. They did manage to avoid each other on the track during the 600, but they had plenty to say beforehand.During his regular meeting with the media on Thursday at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Busch fielded question after question about the incident late in the All-Star Race when Busch tried to pass Hamlin.To Busch’s credit, he maintained his cool, never really losing his temper.“I think my frustration right now is just continually having to talk about the same thing over and over again,” Busch said in response to the 11th straight question about the Hamlin incident. “You’re trying to hit something, and I feel like I’m answering what you’re asking. “For me, I’m over the Denny Hamlin issue. It’s done. We’re moving forward, and we look forward to the rest of the year and the 600 this weekend. We’re going to work together.”He added that he didn’t regret threatening Hamlin over his radio during the All-Star Race, but added that he didn’t really mean he wanted to kill him.“Do I regret saying what I said over the radio? Absolutely not,” Busch said. “It was the heat of the moment, that’s who I am, that’s my expression and I’m not going to be sorry for what I say …“It wasn’t joking, but it wasn’t going to happen, it wasn’t meant.”Hamlin, who appeared before the same media contingent later in the day, defended his driving in the All-Star Race, saying Busch should have slowed down instead of running into the wall when the gap on the outside of Hamlin shrank to less than a car’s width.“He has a gas pedal and a brake just like I do,” Hamlin said. “He could choose to check up and pass me in the next corner or put his car in the fence like what happened. That’s just part of it, and I think he expected me to do that there and I just wasn’t willing to do it at that point.”But as Hamlin’s session wore on, he took a few verbal shots at Busch, saying his teammate needs to calm down some before he can contend for a title.“Kyle [Busch] brings this stuff up himself, and he gets mad at the media for asking him questions about his blowups and stuff, but he does it to himself,” Hamlin said. “I don’t want to be part of it. Any drama that he wants to create or anything is on him. Anything he says on the radio is on him. All I’m going to say – and I’m going to be done with it – is each year I think Kyle’s going to grow out of it, and he just doesn’t. “Until he puts it all together, that’s when he’ll become a champion. Right now he just doesn’t have himself all together.”When asked about his own maturing process, Hamlin apparently couldn’t resist slinging one last barb at Busch.He said his growing-up moment occurred when veteran Tony Stewart left Gibbs, leaving Hamlin the senior driver on the team.“I didn’t say that I was going to take over this team or be the leader of this team, but somebody’s got to be the leader,” he said. “It ain’t going to be Kyle.”
By RICK MINTER / Cox Newspapers
When Dodge started the 2010 NASCAR season with just one team owner, Roger Penske, in the camp, many in the sport figured that the prospects for success were small.
After all, the conventional wisdom is the more the merrier. The thinking is that with more teams and drivers, there’s more technical information that can be gained and shared.
In the Chevrolet camp, Hendrick Motorsports provides engines and chassis for its own four teams as well as the two at Stewart-Haas Racing and some others as well. Richard Childress Racing and Earnhardt Ganassi Racing have a common engine shop. Roush Fenway Racing provides Ford equipment and engines for Richard Petty Motorsports.
But Penske goes it alone for Dodge. And so far, the results are surprisingly good.
It was a Penske Dodge Charger that Kurt Busch drove to victory in Saturday’s Sprint All-Star Challenge at Charlotte Motor Speedway. In doing so, Busch and Dodge outran some powerful cars and drivers, like Jimmie Johnson’s Chevrolet and the Toyotas of Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch.
And Kurt Busch is holding his own in points-paying Sprint Cup races as well. He won at Atlanta earlier this year and is ninth in the standings on the strength of third-place finishes at Bristol and Darlington and a fourth at Texas.
The car he drove to victory in the All-Star Race, PRS-702, is the one he won with at Texas last fall and drove to the pole at Las Vegas this year, only to be taken out in a crash. It’ll likely be patched up from two scrapes with the wall on Saturday and brought back for this week’s Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
On the Nationwide Series side, Penske’s Dodges are doing even better. Brad Keselowski has two wins, at Talladega and Richmond, and just one finish worse than seventh – a 13th at Daytona, and he’s leading the points standings.
His teammate Justin Allgaier has a win at Bristol and is fifth in the standings.
The only disappointments in the Penske camp so far this year have been the struggles in Cup of Sam Hornish Jr., who is 30th in the standings and of Keselowski, who is 24th in his first full-time Cup season.
But Busch, in his winner’s interview after the All-Star Race, said he’s still facing somewhat of an uphill battle.
“It’s a tough series right now,” he said. “Last year we finished fourth overall. I knew that the [Richard Childress Racing] cars were going to be stronger. I knew that the Roush cars were going to be stronger.
“Right now we have five cars ahead of us that weren’t that strong last year. That moves us from fourth to ninth. We’re going to have to continue to fight harder and get ourselves up in the mix with the Gibbs and Hendrick guys week in and week out.”
Busch said one of his challenges this year is dealing with inconsistent results.
“What I’ve struggled with a little bit is just the hot and coldness of it,” he said. “The cold times I can’t quite define just yet. Continued from page 28
We’ll run third at Darlington one week and then we’ll back it up with blowing out right front tires at Dover the next week. Goodyear changes the tires quite often with the Car of Tomorrow. Some race tracks it comes into our favor, others it doesn’t. Tracks we’ve expected to do well on this year, we’ve struggled. Race tracks we’ve struggled on in years past, perfect example, Charlotte tonight, we run well on. I can’t quite figure that out.”
But he doesn’t expect a switch back to cold when he returns to Charlotte this week for the Coca-Cola 600.
“Momentum is at an all-time high here to win at Charlotte, with a completely different setup that we had in the race car,” he said. “That’s the most refreshing thing about it.”
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