By RICK MINTER / Cox Newspapers
It’s been nearly 20 years since Richard Petty drove in his final race, at Atlanta Motor Speedway in the 1992 season finale, but he’s still out there spending his golden years as an ambassador for NASCAR. And that’s in addition to the duties he’s taken on as the head of Richard Petty Motorsports.
But that’s nothing new for NASCAR’s longtime King. Lately, he’s been making the media rounds as part of his induction this weekend into the inaugural class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame. He also was the Grand Marshal for Sunday’s Autism Speaks 400 at Dover International Speedway.
In between all that, he took time to reflect on racing matters with members of the press at Dover.
Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the circuit’s all-time win leader with 200 Cup victories and seven championships said there are plenty of others in NASCAR’s past who could have been alongside him in the Hall’s first class of five.
“I am sure there were a lot of people that were more important to the overall deal with putting up money and taking gambles to make NASCAR what it is today,” he said, adding that the sacrifices and struggles of the pioneers aren’t fully appreciated by those who are reaping the benefits today.
“A lot of these drivers that are doing pretty well today don’t realize what some of the guys went through to get it to this point,” Petty said. “Bill France took a huge gamble and got people to follow along behind him. You had guys like Junior Johnson, Curtis Turner and Lee Petty that sacrificed a lot way back. To be chosen out of that crowd is just a heck of an honor.”
Another place that Petty stands ahead of his peers is in his dealings with fans. Throughout the years, he always seems to find time to sign autographs and visit with fans.
The late NASCAR journalist Bill Robinson often told a tale about the last race of the season in the early 70s, at a short track in Byron, Ga.
The race was long over. It was dark and beginning to rain. Still, Petty was there in the pits signing autographs. Robinson, then with The Atlanta Journal, finally asked Petty: “How much longer are you going to stay here?”
Petty’s reply: “Until they’re all taken care of.”
It’s a concept that many drivers today don’t grasp, and something that Petty often finds himself explaining.
“The deal is that for the first 15 or 20 years of NASCAR there were no sponsors,” he said. “The fans were the ones sponsoring because they bought the tickets, and when the race was over you would go pick up what money you had coming to you depending where you finished.
“Back then the fans were who you had to play to because they were the ones that were supporting it. It was a no-brainer to say we had to keep them on our side. We had to keep them buying tickets.
“I came through with the Allisons and the Pearsons and that crowd, who did the same thing. They realized that without the fans there wouldn’t be any racing. Without the fans there wouldn’t be a Richard Petty from the stock car part of it.”
And Petty pointed out that NASCAR wouldn’t be where it is today without mechanics like his brother Maurice, or his cousin Dale Inman or others like Smokey Yunick and Herb Nab. He hopes future Hall of Fame induction ceremonies will recognize men from the other side of the pit wall.
“I hope they look at people that sacrificed for the drivers,” he said. “We are different than football or baseball. You have your first baseman or quarterback and they stand alone. No driver stands alone. It is a team effort, so when you see Richard Petty in the Hall of Fame, Richard Petty just happened to be the one out front.”
By RICK MINTER / Cox Newspapers
The sport of NASCAR racing has been represented at two halls of fame over the years, the original one at Darlington Raceway and another at Talladega Superspeedway. But this week, the official NASCAR Hall of Fame opens in Charlotte, N.C.
Back in 2006, Charlotte beat out several cities, including Atlanta, for the rights to be the home of the Hall. The $200-million, 150,000-square-foot facility is set to open this week and the inaugural “Mount Rushmore” class will be enshrined on May 23.
In the initial class are NASCAR founder Bill France Sr., his son who led the organization, Bill France Jr., along with Richard Petty, Junior Johnson and the late Dale Earnhardt, all of whom were both outstanding drivers and team owners.
But there’s much more to the attraction than just tributes to the inductees.
The high-tech exhibit tells the story of NASCAR from its beginnings on the dirt tracks of the South to today, when a new Car of Tomorrow is the exclusive vehicle of NASCAR’s premier Sprint Cup Series. There’s a way for visitors to walk inside a team transporter, a theater where the story of NASCAR is told.
There’s even a section on racing safety, and included in it is a copy of the accident report on the crash that killed Dale Earnhardt.
Among the things to see on the Glory Road part of the attraction are some famous race cars, including a 1939 Ford Coupe fielded by Atlanta’s Raymond Parks. Also on display is the 1971 Mercury Cyclone fielded by the Wood Brothers race team. It’s the car that dominated the superspeedways in the early ’70s, with drivers David Pearson, A.J. Foyt and Donnie Allison all taking it to Victory Lane.
Team founder Glen Wood said he’s proud to have his car, which except for some cleaning and maintenance, is just as it was when it rolled off the race track for the last time, displayed in the new hall.
“What better place could it be?” he said. “I was happy to oblige them when they asked if we would put it down there.”
Wood, now 84, also loaned the Hall the only helmet he has left from his days as a driver, a trophy he won as a driver in a race at Soldier Field in Chicago, a pit board from the days before radios were used to facilitate communication between driver and crews. And a jack once used by his brother Delano is there too. The Woods are known as the first team to focus on speedy pit stops.
Wood, who got a sneak preview of the Hall during a “soft opening” a few weeks back, said he was taken aback by what he saw.
“It’s sort of unbelievable,” he said. “It’s really an impressive showcase.”
Wood said he especially liked the way the trophies were laid out. “You can see my name on mine,” he said. “Most of them you can’t.”
Jimmie Johnson, the four-time and defending Cup champion, also loaned four of his championship trophies. The Hall initially asked for just the latest one, but Johnson offered up the other three.
By RICK MINTER / Cox Newspapers
What could have been a very interesting NASCAR rivalry has been nipped in the bud, at least for now.
After his two four-time Sprint Cup champions Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson had run-ins on the track and pointed comments afterward at both Texas and Talladega, team owner Rick Hendrick called the two together in an effort to keep the building feud from tearing his race team apart.
“It’s amazing what happens when you get Mr. H. [Rick Hendrick, team owner] involved,” Gordon said. “The three of us had a good conversation. I think we all recognize what contributes to everything that happened at Texas as well as Talladega.
“We laughed about a lot of stuff, and I feel like the most important thing is that all the communication that we have during the week and at the race track, what that contributes to our success as a group, is too important to let a rivalry escalate out of control.
“It’s OK to have rivalries, we understand that, to be competitive, we’re very competitive. All that is good and healthy. That is what we talked about.”
Johnson has a similar description of the three-way conference call.
“We just all hopped on a phone call and talked about what had gone on, and I think when Jeff jumped out of the car [at the conclusion of the Talladega race] he didn’t realize that it was just a bad decision on my part to come down and try to get in front in that lane,” he said. “So our conversation was pretty good to be honest with you.
In a lot of ways from Rick’s standpoint, my standpoint, and Jeff’s it was just a mistake that I made. And unfortunately coming off the heels of Texas and the fact that Jeff crashed after that and the emotions were high and he got out of the car and said some things that he probably didn’t want to.”
Interestingly, Gordon had a little different take on his post-race comments.
“I said what I said, and I wouldn’t take it back,” he said. “But I understand why we had our conversation with Rick and Jimmie and myself this week to make sure it doesn’t go any further.”
Even though many in the sport agree that NASCAR could use a good rivalry, Gordon and Johnson aren’t really the best two candidates, or at least that’s what Gordon said in an interview several weeks back.
He said that for a real rivalry, one that fans could get really excited about, the two combatants need to be very different from each other.
“You have to have the black and white,” he said, holding his hands outstretched to illustrate. “One is over here and represents something more conservative or younger, whatever it may be. Then this one over there represents the core fan, the good ol’ boys and people who have been following the sport for years.”
And he said back then that he and Johnson won’t make much of a rivalry.
“Never,” he said. “We won’t. Jimmie will have a rival — whoever beats him on a consistent basis and keeps him from winning the championship.
“How did the new spoiler and NASCAR’s instructions to the boys to ‘have at it’ work out at Talladega Superspeedway?”
A: NASCAR seemed to get it right on this one. Last fall at Talladega, drivers were told in the drivers meeting that there would be punishment for aggressive driving, and long stretches of the race were considered by many to be boring compared to previous Talladega events.
On Sunday at Talladega, there were no threats of punishment in the drivers meeting, leaving the drivers to police matters themselves. By most accounts they did a commendable job.
And the spoiler seemed to allow trailing drivers to close the gap on those ahead of them, and it even seemed to play a role in Kevin Harvick’s last-lap pass of Jamie McMurray for the win in the Aaron’s 499.
And it kept spinning cars from flying through the air, as they tended to do with the wing on the back.
“I think it was very typical Talladega,” Harvick said. “I think there was a lot of pushing and shoving, two- and three-wide.
“The spoiler made it so you could pull back up on somebody if you made a mistake. You just didn’t want to be the very last car. It was a very interesting day and it played out perfect for us.’’
Even in defeat, McMurray seemed to like the way the race played out.
“It was actually a lot of fun out there,” he said. “We had such a good rules package with the wing here, you didn’t know how this was going to work. They did a really good job of picking the blade and the right [spoiler] and made the cars racy.’’
Still, McMurray said both he and Harvick played it safe for the majority of the race.
“Well, we raced really smart,” he said. “We rode around toward the rear. Kevin and I actually rode together all day back there. I think everybody in the back of their heads thought that with the wing and the plate and everything that there were a lot of unknowns and that we were going to suck up too quick, because the cars did, they sucked up really well.
“We saw Ryan Newman get wrecked in practice, and that was practice. I really thought in the first 40 laps we would have a wreck like that but everybody did a really good job.”
Sixth-finishing David Ragan agreed that the racing was good, at least from the driver’s seat. “Certainly, the cars drive really well. I think NASCAR made the right decision on allowing guys to push a little bit more and be a little more aggressive.
“I think it was a pretty clean race, except for maybe the last 10-15 laps, and that’s just from everybody losing a little bit of patience.”
Got a question about NASCAR? Ask Rick! E-mail your question to rminter@racintoday.com
By RICK MINTER / Cox Newspapers
The full details of Kasey Kahne’s move to Hendrick Motorsports have yet to be revealed, but there’s a consensus in NASCAR circles about how things will work out in the end.
Dale Earnhardt Jr., one of the four drivers now running for Hendrick in the Cup Series, summed up the feelings of many in his comments to reporters at Texas Motor Speedway last week.
“I’m sure whatever Rick [Hendrick] chooses to do will be a smart way to take care of it,” Earnhardt said.
The complications come because Hendrick hired Kahne, now driving the No. 9 Ford at Richard Petty Motorsports, to take over his No. 5 car beginning with the 2012 season. But Mark Martin, who is under contract to drive the car through next season, is doing a very good job behind the wheel. That puts Martin in an awkward spot as, the way the situation looks now, he’ll be a lame duck in the No. 5 next year, while Kahne likely will be farmed out to a Hendrick-affiliated team, as many have speculated.
Hendrick said on a teleconference last week that it’s his responsibility to field a car for Kahne next year.
The scenario, on the surface, looks much like the situation back in 2003-04, when Kahne first came on the Cup scene to take over the No. 9, driven at that time by another veteran, Bill Elliott. Looking back, it seems that the driver swap was made a little too soon as far as Elliott was concerned.
In his last seven races in the 9 car, Elliott, who was 47 at the time, had an average finish of 4.56, including a win at Rockingham. And in his final run in the No. 9, he was less than a lap away from winning at Homestead in the 2003 season finale when a tire went flat.
Like Elliott back then, Martin today, at 51, is still plenty capable of delivering wins and competing for championships, so the idea of him retiring after next season is far-fetched.
He said so himself in his weekly interview with reporters at Texas.
“I’m not going to retire,” he said. “I’m going to race in 2012. And so don’t even talk about it. I’m racing in 2012.”
But he didn’t say where, and he may not know where.
“There will be an opportunity for me I’m sure, that will be exciting and fun and that I can help people,” he said. “I feel like I’ve done that. I feel like I did that in the No. 01 at DEI [after he left Roush Racing and before he joined Hendrick], and I feel like I’ve helped the No. 5 team realize that they can win races and contend for a championship.
“And so I’ll find another opportunity that’s exciting to me, and I don’t want to commit to that now. I want to make sure that Hendrick is set, and they are set. It’s such an incredibly perfect scenario.”
One possibility might be that he would own his own team, possibly with an affiliation with Hendrick, as his fellow driver Tony Stewart did last year.
“For the first time ever, I would consider an opportunity like Tony Stewart had,” Martin said. “I don’t want to be an owner, but if I can be an owner like Tony Stewart maybe I want it.”
Often in NASCAR, as was the case when Kurt Busch went from Roush to Penske Racing, the swap was made sooner than expected thanks to some behind-the-scenes dealing. But Martin’s comments indicate he’ll still be with his current team next year.
“I feel so fortunate to have a whole year and a half yet in front of me to work with [crew chief] Alan [Gustafson] and this team,” he said. “I’m so grateful for the opportunity. It’s been the gift of my career to realize this and to be able to do this and be successful.
“It’s also exciting to do new things, and I love and embrace the excitement of 2012 and whatever that may bring.”
By RICK MINTER / Cox Newspapers
Children are often taught that “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
To back up that point, kids could be told the story of NASCAR driver A.J. Allmendinger. He came into the sport from the open-wheel ranks, a move that often doesn’t pay many dividends.
Allmendinger had a typical transition from open-wheel racing to NASCAR. In his first season with Red Bull Racing, then a new team, it was one struggle after another. After failing to qualify for 19 races including four of the first five, he kept right on trying. Then the next season, after a slow start, he was replaced by Mike Skinner for a stretch of races from Las Vegas to Talladega. But he kept coming to the tracks, learning by observation, and he eventually regained his old ride, only to lose it at the end of the 2008 season.
But his perseverance made an impression on the folks at Richard Petty Motorsports, and he eventually wound up behind the wheel of the company’s flagship No. 43, the one once driven by Richard Petty himself.
On Friday at Phoenix International Raceway, Allmendinger put his car on the pole, which was a surprise in most anyone’s book. Even Allmendinger had to admit that.
“Heck, it is my first one, so I would probably say yes to that,” he told reporters at Phoenix during his pole-winner’s interview. But he said he and his team have been getting better, even if their efforts haven’t drawn a whole lot of attention.
“I feel like we have been showing that we are getting quicker, unfortunately the results aren’t showing that,” he said. “We have been caught up in a lot of other people’s mistakes.”
He said the upcoming portion of the schedule is a make-or-break time for teams like his that want to move up in the standings and secure a berth in the season-ending, championship-deciding Chase. He’s now 23rd in the standings, 173 points out of 12th place.
“I told the team this is a key six-week stretch before the All-Star break,” he said. “If we can go out there and get into the top 15 in points and have good runs every weekend, then I think we can go into the All-Star break knowing we have a chance at the Chase.
“That is our goal.”
To make Allmendinger’s first Cup pole a little sweeter, he got it by beating his old Red Bull team – and its driver Scott Speed.
“Anybody that has been let go, however, you know what it is like to go out there and beat your old team,” he said.
But no matter who he beat, the important thing to him and his team was the boost it gave them.
“It is a small victory, but it means so much to this race team and me,” he said. “In this sport, it is all about confidence …so to go out there and get the job done is a big deal.”
In the race at Phoenix, Allmendinger led 17 laps and finished 15th, his second-best effort this season after a sixth at Atlanta.
By RICK MINTER / Cox Newspapers
Reed Sorenson appears to be doing exactly what he said he would do when he stepped back to a partial Nationwide Series schedule after losing his Sprint Cup ride at Richard Petty Motorsports. He said in the preseason that he looked at his 23-race deal with Braun Racing as taking a career step back as part of a plan to eventually make a bigger step forward.
He figured that he could use his time in the No. 32 Toyota to recapture the feeling of being a contender every time out, of racing for wins instead of being mired in mid-pack. In the process he’d make himself more attractive to a Cup team owner, and he expects the job market to offer more opportunities in 2011 than it did this year.
On Saturday at Nashville Superspeedway, where in 2005 he got his first major NASCAR win, Sorenson almost got back to Victory Lane in just his second time out this season. He finished second to race winner Kevin Harvick and appeared to be gaining on the leader when the laps ran out.
“Even when there were 10 laps to go, I thought we could get [Harvick], and with five laps to go, I still thought we could,” Sorenson told reporters after the race. “I could taste it. That was a feeling that I felt in this car a few times last year, and the second time this year we’ve already felt it again.
“These guys do a great job, and I can’t wait till next weekend.”
The one-time Legends racing star was back to talking about winning, and it’s realistic, unlike many of his days on the Cup side of the garage, where his odds of winning often were slim. In four full seasons in Cup, he went winless with five top-five and 14 top-10 finishes and an average finish of 25.3. On the other hand, in his four career starts in Braun’s No. 32 Toyota, his average finish is 3.5.
“When we ran this car last year, we had a second and a third the two times I ran it,” he said. “Now I have another second. Every time I get in this car, we’re fast. These guys do a good job, and we’re going back to Phoenix next week and I’m in the car again. I look forward to that.”
The Nashville success comes at a good time for him, heading into Phoenix where he finished third last year.
“Today proved that we could do it, so we just have to keep working hard so we can get a little bit better so we can win,” he said.
And he said he’ll be in better shape when he returns to Nashville in June for the track’s second Nationwide race of the season.
“We just have to go back and look at where our problems were because we kind of fought the same problems in the race that we did in practice, so that’s a good thing,” he said. “It stayed pretty consistent …
“If we can fix those two little things that we have a problem with then we can apply it to the June race.”
Veteran drivers recall the tough lessons every rookie must learn
By RICK MINTER / Cox Newspapers
The week off that followed the Carl Edwards-Brad Keselowski incident at Atlanta Motor Speedway meant that when the drivers arrived at Bristol Motor Speedway last Friday, it was the first chance for the media to quiz them about the incident and its aftermath.
Not surprisingly, a lot of the questioning centered on how young drivers learn the unwritten rules of the sport, especially when it comes to aggressive driving. Call it Racing Etiquette 101.
It didn’t take Jeff Gordon but a second to recall his introduction to class.
“Phoenix,1993. Dale Earnhardt Sr. and me backing into the wall,” Gordon said. “Yeah, I remember it well.
“At the time I was pretty mad, and didn’t think I was deserving of it. About six years later I was like, ‘Now I get it.’
“I was racing way too hard for 10th place, too early in the race, and I had it coming to me. It was the perfect time to teach me a lesson from the best guy to do it. I never forgot it, obviously, but I did learn from it.”
Kasey Kahne said he learned his first big lesson from Gordon, and apparently all Gordon had to do was point his finger out the window during a race.
“I’m not sure which finger I was pointing out the window at Kasey that day, but it worked,” Gordon said. “I think every rookie goes through that, and that’s what makes being a rookie so tough. You feel the pressure. You feel out of your element. You’re not sure if you belong there or if you have what it takes.
“You’re going though these lessons that you don’t want to go through, you don’t like going through them, but it’s necessary. It makes you a better driver, and it’s what everybody has to go through. If there’s a rookie that comes in and doesn’t go through that will you let me know so we can make sure he doesn’t get through the season clean?”
Denny Hamlin said Mark Martin schooled him at Martinsville.
“It was my only DNF [Did Not Finish] of my rookie season,” he said. “I was racing Mark Martin I think pretty hard, probably midway through the race, and he just ran right up into me and cut my left rear tire on purpose.
“I spun out, I tried to cause a caution and I ended up backing into the fence and ended our day.”
Hamlin said he was really mad at the time and talked to Martin the next day.
“He was like, ‘Why were you even running me that hard?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know to be honest with you.’ But I feel like all the mistakes I’ve made, I’ve at least made a conscious effort to try to correct them or learn from them.”
Sometimes class was even a little funny, or at least the stories are now.
Jimmie Johnson learned some lessons from both Burton brothers, Jeff and Ward.
It was Ward and his thick Virginia accent that Johnson remembers most.
It started with a crash at New Hampshire.
“We were coming from the back and coming up through there and we got together going into Turn 1, and I got into him and turned him around and he hit the fence,” Johnson said. “He got back on track and spent like four or five laps trying to crash me. So then I was pretty nervous about what went on and started tracking him down.
“I called his office but that didn’t work and somehow I got his home phone number. And I don’t know what made him more mad actually, whether it was me calling him on the phone or calling him at home. I think he was cussing at me because it was a little tough to understand him, but he went on for 30 seconds in just four-letter words and he finally calmed down and we talked it out from there.
“That’s just a part of it.”
By RICK MINTER / Cox Newspapers
NASCAR’s new “Have at it, boys” approach to racing played a major role in the finish of Sunday’s Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. But none of the late-race wrecking seemed to slow Kurt Busch, who got his third career Sprint Cup victory at AMS and his second straight in the spring race.
Busch was cruising at the front, finally having dispatched his chief challenger, Kasey Kahne, when Carl Edwards, running 156 laps in arrears, appeared to use his front bumper to retaliate against Brad Keselowski for a Lap 41 incident between the two of them.
Keselowski’s Dodge flew upside down and into the wall, but he escaped unhurt. Edwards was parked for the remainder of the race and summoned to NASCAR’s mobile office afterward.
The wreck was eerily similar to the one between the two of them at Talladega last year, where it was Edwards who flew into the fence after contact with Keselowski, who won that race.
“It was a wild ride, uncalled for,” Keselowski said of his AMS crash. “It could’ve killed somebody in the grandstand or on the track. We will hurt someone either in a car or in the grandstand.”
NASCAR vice president Robin Pemberton told reporters Sunday night that the Edwards-Keselowski crash looked like payback on Edwards’ part. He said officials will meet at the NASCAR facility in Concord, N.C., early this week to contemplate further penalties.
“It’s always a concern when you see retaliation and there are different levels of it,” he said. “We don’t rush to judgment on Sunday nights and make penalties. That’s why we take our time and go back and talk it about it some more.”
Edwards all but said he wrecked Keselowski intentionally. He was way behind at that point, having wrecked on the start after contact with Keselowski, contact he at first indicated was not his foe’s fault.
Afterward, he wasn’t so gracious.
“Brad knows the deal between him and I,” he said. “The car went airborne, which wasn’t what I expected. I wish it wouldn’t have gone like it did.”
The wreck bunched the field, sent the race into overtime and allowed the top running drivers to hit pit road for fresh rubber. Clint Bowyer, Paul Menard and Jamie McMurray took just right-side tires and lined up in the first three spots, with Busch fourth, leading a string of drivers who took four. When the green flag dropped, Busch bolted in between Bowyer and Menard and sprinted away.
Busch said he knew Menard would be protecting the bottom and Bowyer would be looking out for his territory on the outside.
“We were on offense and shot through there like a slingshot,” Busch said.
Matt Kenseth finished second, followed by Juan Pablo Montoya and Kahne.
A wreck that same lap set up a second try at a green-white-checkered finish – a new wrinkle in the rules this year allows up to three tries – and Busch prevailed over the final two laps to get the victory in a race that wound up being 525 miles long. It was the third straight win at AMS for Dodge, and the 22nd of Busch’s career. He pushed his streak of winning at least one race a year nine consecutive seasons, and he also got his first victory with his new crew chief Steve Addington. The crew boss worked with the other Busch brother, Kyle, before being released late last season. Kurt Busch gave Addington much of the credit for his team’s latest success, and Addington seemed to appreciate the unwavering support of his new driver.
“It’s a good feeling to know your driver wants you to go to work for him,” said Addington, who got his first Cup win at AMS with the other Busch in the spring of 2008.
By RICK MINTER / Cox Newspapers
If there’s any group that has emerged as a leader two races into the 2010 Sprint Cup season, it’s the engine builders at Earnhardt-Childress Racing.
That engine shop is the product of a merger of the old engine crew at Dale Earnhardt Inc. and the engine shop at Richard Childress Racing. They dominated at Daytona, winning the Budweiser Shootout with Kevin Harvick, the DRIVE4COPD Nationwide Series race with Tony Stewart and the Daytona 500 with Jamie McMurray, who drives for Earnhardt Ganassi Racing, which itself is a result of a merger between Teresa Earnhardt and Chip Ganassi.
At Auto Club Speedway, the ECR engine folks showed they’re just as good with engines that run without restrictor plates.
McMurray won the pole, and Jeff Burton and Kevin Harvick appeared to have the fastest cars even as Jimmie Johnson took the win thanks in large part to perfect timing on a late-race pit stop.
Heading to the third Sprint Cup race of the season, at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday, drivers using ECR engines hold four of the top five positions in the points standings, as Harvick leads with Clint Bowyer second, McMurray fourth and Burton fifth.
But the powerful engines aren’t really anything new, according to Harvick and Burton.
“We probably have, I would argue, what would be the best engine package in the garage for the last couple of years – last year and a half I would say,” Harvick told reporters at Auto Club Speedway. “We don’t talk about motors anymore. Motors are the best thing that we have going for us.
“They’re real reliable, they make a lot of power, and they’re constantly pushing forward, and that’s one of the things that we’ve struggled with in the past is getting to a point and not continuing forward, and the engine department doesn’t do that. They push forward every week.
“In our competition meetings we honestly don’t even talk about engines anymore because they’re just such a non-factor for us. They just keep clicking along and do a really good job.”
Burton echoed those comments, saying one of the disappointing aspects of having no Richard Childress Racing drivers in the Chase last year was that some great horsepower went to waste.
“They were some of the best engines that I’ve ever been a part of in my racing career – great power, great reliability,” he said. “They really got things figured out, but the cars weren’t very good so we couldn’t take advantage of it.”
But that doesn’t mean that there weren’t times when the drivers wondered whether a joint engine venture was the best move from a competitive standpoint.
“Anytime there’s a merger like that or when you first talked about Earnhardt and Childress joining together to do the engine thing, everybody got really nervous because it’s something different,” Burton said. “But it has certainly worked, and they’ve found a way to make it work very well.”
What a difference a year makes for 2010 Daytona champion
By Rick Minter/ Cox Newspapers
In a heart-warming turn of events, last year’s odd man out at Roush Fenway Racing has become the hottest property of the early 2010 NASCAR season.
Jamie McMurray, who was left without a ride when Roush Fenway was forced to drop from five to four teams to meet NASCAR’s maximum number of teams per owner, languished in limbo for a time before securing a job driving the No.1 Chevrolet for Earnhardt Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates, the team he left when he moved to Roush.
And on Sunday he gave the Ganassi team its biggest moment ever in NASCAR by surging to the front and scoring a win in the Great American Race, the 52nd annual Daytona 500.
McMurray used a drafting boost from his old Roush teammate Greg Biffle, then held off a fast-closing Dale Earnhardt Jr. to get his second straight win in a restrictor-plate race. He also won last fall at Talladega in a Roush Ford, and he won another plate race, in July 2007, at Daytona.
In winning at Daytona, McMurray set a record for the least laps led by a winner, two. It was also one of the race’s longest events, running eight laps past the scheduled distance to accommodate two green-white-checkered-flag attempts. And the race was delayed two times for a total of two hours and 25 minutes so track workers could repair holes in the track. But when the cars were running, it was good racing, with 53 lead changes, the third most at Daytona, among a record 21 drivers.
When McMurray climbed from his Chevrolet in Victory Lane, he was overcome by emotion, pausing to collect himself and wiping away tears as he spoke to a national audience about his triumph.
“Coming off of Turn Four, seeing the checkered flag, knowing there’s not going to be another ‘green white checkered’, you’re going to be the Daytona 500 champion, I can’t explain to you,” McMurray said. “It’s very emotional. I don’t know that I’ve cried like that. I kept trying to compose myself. I couldn’t get it back.”
McMurray’s father, Jim McMurray, who has been a familiar face around the NASCAR garages since his son became a racer, missed the celebration by leaving the track early.
But McMurray mentioned him often in his post-race interview.
“My dad, that’s who I grew up racing with,” he said. “We still race together. He’s literally my best friend probably. That’s just who I hang out with….
“I’m really fortunate that my dad’s cool and I like hanging out with him. He drives me crazy sometimes. I won’t lie to you. We go at each other. But I love him.”
McMurray said it’s no big deal to him that his father missed the Victory Lane celebration.
“I almost kind of laugh at it because I know he’s fired up that he left,” he said. “I got something to yell at him about now. So it’s good stuff.”
Another person who put on a stirring performance but wasn’t smiling at the end was Dale Earnhardt Jr., who was as low as 22nd in the running order when the green-white-checkered-flag finishes started but soared to second place at the end.
“I don’t really remember much about it. It was all a blur,” Earnhardt said. “I was just going wherever they weren’t. I really don’t enjoy being that aggressive, but if there was enough room for the radiator to fit, you just kind of held the gas down and prayed for the best.”
Earnhardt and McMurray both said they didn’t think the lengthy delays for repairs to the track would have a lasting effect on fans, even though many left the track before the end of the race.
“Track surfaces are going to have problems from time to time,” Earnhardt said. “This wasn’t a fault of NASCAR. It wasn’t a fault of Daytona’s. It was probably more or less everybody’s cars beating on the race track with trailing arm mounts and tail pipes.
“That’s going to knock a hole in some asphalt, I don’t care where you are.”
New enforcement policy suits Keselowski just fine
By RICK MINTER / Cox Newspapers
NASCAR’s new policy of loosening the reins on drivers, letting them be a little more aggressive on the track without incurring penalties, shouldn’t have too much effect on young Brad Keselowski. He already races that way.
That fact was evidenced by his stunning win over Carl Edwards in last year’s Spring race at Talladega Superspeedway, a race that ended with Edwards sailing into the catchfence after contact with Keselowski, who slipped by to take his and his car owner James Finch’s first Sprint Cup wins.
“I actually did those things already last year,” Keselowski said with a smile during last week’s media session at Daytona International Speedway. “I’m not sure how much that I can change. I’m already right there for the most part.”
The question for Keselowski and a lot of others on both sides of the catchfence is how other drivers in NASCAR will react to the shift in enforcement policy.
“When I met with NASCAR [officials] in Phoenix last year, they pretty much told me that’s the way the sport was pretty much going to go, and they were going to be OK with it,” he said. “So I didn’t see it as much of a surprise. I’m more interested in seeing the actions of other drivers versus myself.”
But Keselowski, who comes from one of the sport’s old-time families, isn’t about to label himself just as an aggressive driver.
“My attitude towards racing is to do what it takes to win,” he said. “I’d prefer to win honorably. I can’t always say that I’ve done that. Hopefully we can put together strong enough cars this year to where we can win without drama.
“A goal of mine is to win a race and look back and nobody say, ‘He screwed me over to do it.’ That’s the way race car drivers are…we never get beat fairly, just ask us. That’s part of the sport. The approach is to go out there and win and do the best that we can every week. We’ll see where that takes us.”
Among those not complaining about Keselowski is his new teammate, Sam Hornish Jr. Keselowski has moved from Hendrick Motorsports to Penske Racing, where he’ll run full Nationwide and Sprint schedules.
“I think that Brad’s very fast,” Hornish said. “I think he’s definitely got an understanding of the car. He’s spent a lot of time over there at Hendrick trying to make himself better and to learn from the guys he’s around. All in all, there are some things that I can learn from him and I think that it’s a good addition to the team.”
Although he probably needs to become friends with Hornish and with Kurt Busch, his other teammate at Penske, he’s not worried about making other friends, at least on the track.
“Anytime your competitors are happy with you is when they’re beating you…” he said. “A lot of the established drivers don’t like young drivers coming into the sport because there is an upset to that balance. Before, that ride wasn’t a ride that they had to worry about and now it is. Realistically, it’s that they don’t want to race that guy.”
Even though Keselowski has acquired a reputation as being aggressive, he said that perception isn’t the same as reality.
“I feel like that, objectively, if you step back and watch my in-car camera tapes and stuff, I feel like I give when it’s the right time to give and I take when it’s the right time to take,” he said. “For the most part I always do that.
There have been a few races during the season where I step back and say, ‘Whoa, I did a terrible job of not giving right there.’
“There have been a few (races) where I’ve given too much. But at the end of the day, when I look my team in the eyes, I want to be able to look at them and say that I took more than I gave. I want to be able to look at them and for them to know that when I got out of that race car, I left nothing on the table. I never gave up a spot that I shouldn’t have…
“If you have to make a few competitors mad along the way, that’s just part of it.”
A bold move by a rookie crew chief pays off for
reigning Daytona 500 champion Matt Kenseth
By RICK MINTER / Cox Newspapers
During the recent Preseason Thunder media event at Daytona International Speedway, Matt Kenseth was introduced as the reigning champion of the Daytona 500. With his dry Midwestern sense of humor, he acted as if the host had welcomed the “raining champion,” a reference to the fact that Kenseth got his, and his Roush Fenway Racing team’s first Daytona 500 victory by taking the lead just as rain halted the race 112 miles shy of the advertised 500.
To the casual observer, Kenseth’s win was largely a fluke, a giant reward for being in the right place at the right time when a Sprint Cup race suddenly turned into a game of musical chairs at 200 miles per hour.
But in a recent interview, his then-rookie crew chief Drew Blickensderfer told the tale from his side, and it sounds more like a traditional racing victory than a stroke of luck.
The scenario that put Kenseth in position to win started during the Budweiser Shootout the week before.
“We were actually running second with one [lap] to go, got booted out of the way and kind of shuffled back and ended up wrecking our race car, so that was wreck number one,” Blickensderfer said.
Then it was on to Thursday’s 150-mile qualifying race, where another good race car was collected in a crash.
That was when Blickensderfer, in his first race as a Cup crew chief, had his first real test.
Kenseth wanted to run the repaired Bud Shootout car in the 500, but Blickensderfer vetoed the veteran driver and chose the back-up car sitting up top in the team’s transporter.
“That was the point when I knew I was the leader,” Blickensderfer said.
But it was a tough call, as Kenseth implored him to run the Shootout car.
“[Kenseth] said, ‘That’s a terrible decision. That car hasn’t been on the race track. Our Shootout car was just fine. Get it fixed and bring it back up here,’” he said.
Blickensderfer held his ground, knowing the team’s data showed the backup to be as good as any car they could run.
“I made that decision,” he said. “But I remember going home that evening saying, ‘Oh no, I just made Matt mad. He’s a superstar in the sport and a champion, and I’m this rookie crew chief that just put his foot down the first week of the year. This might be a long year.’”
On the Sunday afternoon of the 500, Kenseth had to start in the rear because of the car switch, but the team overcame that by pit strategy and soon had Kenseth among the top 10.
The way Blickensderfer saw it, there were only three or four cars that were faster than Kenseth, and all of them wound up getting wiped out in a wreck that Kenseth barely missed.
“So late in the race when we were running in the top three, the cars around us weren’t as fast as we were and I knew it,” he said. “I knew it was just a matter of time before we could take off.”
But with rain imminent, they still had to time it just right, and not get caught making a pit stop just before the rain started.
The rookie crew chief handled the situation like a veteran.
“We came and got tires towards the end of the race because we knew the rain was coming,” he said. “The last two or three cautions we stayed out knowing it was coming. They were quick cautions.”
At that point, all Kenseth really had to do was pass the leader, Elliott Sadler. And third-running Kevin Harvick, knowing Kenseth had the faster car, agreed to stick with him in the draft.
“So with a single-file restart it was just up to Matt to make the right move on Sadler,” Blickensderfer said.
Kenseth did, and the race was over.
Blickensderfer’s only regret was that he didn’t take time to soak in the win a little more.
“Six months later I kept thinking to myself, ‘I wish I could have Daytona back again,’” he said. “You want to grasp Victory Lane and winning the biggest race of your life over again.”
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