Category: Hot 20

Earlier today, I happened to read an article by John Dick outlining what he thinks is a cause for NASCAR’s lower attendance and dropping television audiences. Primarily, the article pointed out that the problem might have something to do with a fan base consisting of predominately gun loving white older Republican rural males of faith from the south or Midwest. Basically, it was pointing out that the demographics that make up the heart and soul of the sport no longer represents a majority of what is America. In short, you can build it but most really could not care less. Talk about having it hail on one’s field of dreams.

It is hard to deny that some folks are not well represented among the most successful in NASCAR. Add up all the wins by Latinos, blacks, and women in 65 years of Cup competition and you have fewer victories than Matt Kenseth alone has claimed this season. However, how important is it to have role models or favorites who have similarities to those you might find at a family reunion?

As a kid I followed Cale Yarborough and as an adult the man I watched was Dale Earnhardt. As the damn chilly winds of today reminds me, it is some distance from the Carolinas to Alberta, Canada. These boys loved working on cars but, as my father can attest, my mechanical ability isn’t worth spit. A lot of good ole boys love to hunt, but I do not. I doubt I would have ever had a chance to hang with these guys even if I lived just down the road from them.

The reason I came to love NASCAR had nothing to due with a shared heritage and everything to do with the spectacle that I saw at Daytona, at Talladega, at Charlotte, and even at Bristol. I tune in Australian Football for the same reason. It is just fun to watch, and if you watch such things long enough you actually come to know enough to become a fan. Economics might be keeping some away from the tracks, but for them to not watch from their living rooms can only be blamed on the action no longer being fun to watch.

It does not matter what your cultural background is, your race, your gender, or who you blame for shutting down the U.S. government, the action at Talladega is something anyone who has ever been behind the wheel of a car can truly appreciate and wonder at. I can not say the same about Kansas. It takes more than just aiming a camera toward the track. Without a skilled broadcast team that can weave a narrative, to keep viewers hooked, who can turn a pig’s ear into a silk purse, the bleeding will continue.

The reason those of us who care will be watching on Sunday will be to discover if Matt Kenseth can continue his hot hand, if Jimmie Johnson can be hotter over his final ten than he was coming into the Chase, and to see if Kyle Busch can avoid the pitfalls Kansas usually tosses his way. With all the focus on that trio, I wonder if anyone has noticed how warm Ryan Newman, Joey Logano, Kurt Busch, and Jeff Gordon have been as of late? I didn’t think so.

Here are our hottest 20 drivers over the past 10 races…

They are the top two in the Chase, the top two in the standings, and they are the two hottest drivers over the past ten events. Sweet timing. Matt Kenseth, the 2003 champion, is truly having a career year. His seven victories  sets a new season mark for him, the last two being needed just to keep Joe Gibbs Racing team mate Kyle Busch at bay. Both have won at Dover, which comes as good news considering that Jimmie Johnson has seven there.  Two Top 5’s in the Chase keeps the former five-time king in contention, but he might need a bit more this Sunday to keep close.

When it comes to winning Chase races, there is nobody better than Johnson. Of the 92 he has run since 2004, Jimmie has won 22 of them. That is double the count of the man closest to him in that category, Tony Stewart. His average finish over those Chase events is 9.8. Nobody is even close. In just Chase events alone, the fall runs, he has five at Martinsville, three each at Dover, Charlotte, and Phoenix and two at both Kansas and Texas.  Of the tracks still coming up, he has not won at Talladega or Homestead.

Dover should give us an indication if Johnson will make a challenge, as it has for the previous nine years. In nine Chase races there, Jimmie has 3 wins, 6 Top Fives, 7 Top 10’s, and has never finished worse than 14^th. He might be far down on our list of the hot hands, but that will probably change over the course of the next eight weeks.  Game on, boys.
 
Here is a look at our hottest 20 drivers over the past 10 events…

It is a good thing for many that the Chase is decided over the first 26 races of the season, not just what they have done lately. Not so good if you are Kurt Busch or Jeff Gordon. Both could use a win at Richmond, both seemed destined on making the Chase only if one beats the other for a Top Ten spot. Both have run very well over the past ten events. Busch has been the best out there, averaging 33.5 points per race, with Gordon sixth best at 31.5. Both have done enough lately to earn a place, but it is doubtful both will make it.

Ryan Newman needs to either win or be the best one win guy in points. Possibly bound for Childress Racing next year to replace Jeff Burton, Newman has been picking up an average of 31 points per weekend. Jamie McMurray needs to win, period, to have even a shot. His 30.5 point average is good, but may be too late to be of use. If nothing else, it explains why he got an extension to his contract.

While Jimmie Johnson, Carl Edwards, and Greg Biffle have not exactly set the world on fire in recent weeks, they still remain strong. Biffle sits 15th on this list, and a perilous ninth in the standings, yet even he has averaged better than a 16th place finish over the past ten. Do that over the course of the season and one would have 700 points and 14th place in the standings. There are a lot of boys and a girl who only wish they had it as good as Biffle has it bad right now.

If you check their career finishes at Richmond, give Junior, Logano, and Biffle a berth, with Kurt and Gordon going down to the wire to see who gets the ninth invite. The final wild card should be no contest. Newman is nearly a dozen spots better, on average, than Martin Truex Jr on the Virginia mile. Of course, we have to wait and see if this will wind up an average Saturday night in Richmond.

It would appear that Tony Stewart is not the only dog who can bark in the SHR dog pound. Gene Haas not only has a share of the team, but his own money to spend on sponsorship, and he was not going to spend it on Ryan Newman. Kurt Busch was his man, and he got him. It might not have been what Stewart wanted, but without a sugar daddy of his own, Newman got shown the door and Kurt found himself a new team for 2014.

Ironically, Newman is the only one from the current roster with a Chase place, as he holds the second wild card spot going into Atlanta. Stewart is gone with his broken leg, while Danica Patrick has not been seen near the front much since February. Harvick remains hot as his swan song for RCR should be as a Chaser, while Busch needs to jump six track positions ahead of Joey Logano to move in himself for Furniture Row. If he does, that could very well mean Newman would be out of the mix, just to add insult to injury. The way things are going, with the Earnhardt Ganassi opening going to Kyle Larson, maybe Ryan could at least replace Kurt at Furniture Row. If nothing else, maybe Gene Haas could use a smart guy behind the counter. You know neither he nor Juan Pablo Montoya are going to end up as start and parkers.

Clint Bowyer takes over point this week, and while he has not been setting a blazing pace he has avoided any big disappointments since March at Fontana. The big mover this past week was Matt Kenseth, as his Bristol win powers him nine positions to the good, as runner-up Kasey Kahne jumps eight. Jimmie Johnson may still be the season leader, but his performance as of late has been ice cold. Picking up 13 big points in total over the past two races does not exactly equate into momentum.

Here are our hottest drivers over the past ten races.

Some watch soap operas, but I once watched wrestling. I understood a rewritten biblical verse because Stone Cold said so, I smelled what the Rock was cooking, and Mick Foley had multiple personalities while making a star out of a sock puppet. While I loved the comedy of their sports entertainment, I loved the behind the scenes stories even more. Who got pushed to be a star, who got screwed, who was doing what to whom? I gave it all up for NASCAR and now I have come full circle.

Instead of talking about Junior’s great run that went for not, or Jimmie’s car that would not go, or Joey’s big win, we got ourselves a full blown soap opera brewing. Coming out of the 2008 season, Tony Stewart got part-ownership of Gene Haas’ race team. He hired his buddy Ryan Newman to join him, and placed Darian Grubb on top of his pit box and a front line operation was born. Both teams made the Chase in 2009, with Stewart picking up four wins that season. In 2010, Newman won once but missed the post-season, while Stewart won two and made the Chase again. Both were in the hunt in 2011, with Newman adding yet another win before Tony claimed a pair to begin the Chase. Then, with six races to go, the soap opera began.

Stewart likes his buddies, but only those buddies know how much they like Smoke in return. Grubb had guided his boss to three Chase appearances and eight wins in 102 starts. Yet, sitting seventh in the Chase, 19 points out, Grubb got notice that he would be gone at the end of the season, to be replaced by Steve Addington. Grubb responded by aiding his soon to be former boss to six straight Top Tens, including three victories in the final four contests, and the 2011 Sprint Cup title.

According to Stewart, the decision had actually been made before the Chase had began, when the team limped into the hunt ninth overall. It was decided at that time that “we needed to go in a different direction.” In fact, even with the five Chase wins, the eight Top Tens, and the great calls from the pit box in the season finale were not going to change things.  “When we decided to make the change, we stuck with what our decision was,” said Stewart. In short, thanks for all you have done to make me a champion, now goodbye and good luck.

Move ahead two years. Danica Patrick comes in with her looks, her gender, her single F-1 victory, and her sponsorship. She claims the Daytona 500 pole, she finishes in the top ten that race, and has done precious little since. Kevin Harvick becomes available, he gets the 2014 ride in the car Newman had been driving. Too bad, as even winning the Brickyard 400 the next race after getting his notice, there was no room at the inn. If only there had been available sponsorship for a fourth car, Newman would have been in it, we were told. He was told.

Unless Kurt Busch wants to join, then word is that Stewart’s partner Gene Haas would magically be able to come up with the sponsorship himself. In house sponsorship for Busch, jack squat for Newman. Maybe Tony likes Ryan, but Gene sees Kurt as the guy he would prefer to spend his own money on. Maybe Tony was being honest with Newman, but more room at the inn comes available only if Gene builds a new wing for Busch. Maybe.

Maybe Steve Austin was the original, but maybe it is Tony Stewart who has gone stone cold, if you smell what ole Smoke is cooking. Maybe, to paraphrase a quote from the Godfather, “Tell Darian and Ryan it was only business, I always liked them.”

Ironically, Newman remains among our hottest drivers but so are Logano and Martin Truex Jr as the trio battle for the final wild card Chase berth. Newman is ten behind Logano, with Truex in command by 17.  None have won at Bristol before, but both Kyle and Kurt Busch have won there five times, along with Jeff Gordon. One doesn’t need the win, but one could come in handy for the other two and Gordon needs to turn up the heat.

Juan Pablo Montoya, winner of the 2000 Indianapolis 500 among eight CART victories, winner of the 2003 Monaco Grand Prix among seven Formula One triumphs, but a winner of a single Cup race at Sonoma and another at the Glen in 239 starts. That, in a nutshell, is why Montoya was hired and why he will soon be fired as the driver of the #42 Target team of Chip Ganassi.

Montoya already had a heady resume to his credit when he arrived in NASCAR’s top division at the end of 2006 as a 31-year old.  I mean, his Monaco win marked the start of eight straight podium finishes and twice he finished third in the season F-1 points standings. Like Tony Stewart before him, he has a CART season title to his credit, but unlike Stewart it is Montoya who owns the biggest Indianapolis victory.

You might get the idea that Juan Pablo Montoya is a damn good driver. He finished fifth last weekend at the Glen. Sadly, his average career finish is 20th and it seems evident that without a few rights on the track, he is left struggling even in this, his seventh full campaign.

So, is it Montoya or is it Earnhardt Ganassi Racing that has the bigger problem? Well, since 2001 Chip Ganassi has been able to celebrate a dozen times in Victory Lane. Sterling Marlin gave him two in 2001 and two more in 2002. Jamie McMurray had his first the same year, while he and Montoya each had one in 2007. Jamie added one more in 2009, then three more in 2010, including the Daytona 500 and the Brickyard 400, while Juan Pablo took Watkins Glen the same season.

There are teams who would be happy with that record, but not if they are owned by folks named Hendrick, Roush, Childress, Gibbs or Penske. I don’t think Stewart or Waltrip would be terribly satisfied, either. So, I guess a winner of four Indianapolis 500 races, 89 CART/IndyCar events, and nine CART/IndyCar season crowns might seek to be better, You might also get the idea that Chip Ganassi is a damn good owner of racing teams.

I expected more from Montoya. I expect more from McMurray. I expect more from Chip Ganassi. I do not know what to expect from any of them in 2014.

Michigan is next on the dance card for this Sunday. It was the track that essentially ended Ganassi’s own driving career in a 1984 wreck. As an owner, he has won there three times, with the last coming in the 2000 Michigan 500 CART race. His driver? Juan Pablo Montoya.

With his win at the Glen, Kyle Busch moves into a close second to Jimmie Johnson among those who have been hot as of late. Brad Keselowski’s runner-up run jumps him six spots on this chart, while Tony Stewart begins his fade to black. Four drivers seeking a Chase place, Kurt Busch, Joey Logano, Ryan Newman, and Jeff Gordon, are all heating up at the right time. Greg Biffle has won the past two races at the venue and he will seek the fifth of his career on the weekend.

Where there is Smoke, there is an ambulance. Three Sprint races, three wrecks. A 19-year old driver got carted away with a back injury after Stewart caused a July 16th crash in New York. He flipped five times in a race July 29th in Ontario. Now we have this one where the flashing lights were for Smoke himself in Iowa. The three-time former champ will be back, but it will not be Sunday at the Glen, it will not be at Michigan or Bristol or probably anytime earlier than October at best.

Bad news for Tony, good news for Ryan Newman. As Stewart sinks in the standings and out of the Top Twenty, Newman sits next in line for his wild card berth in the Chase, as things stand now. Of course, there are five more races to run before the Chase begins, races that could be won by Jeff Gordon, Brad Keselowski, Kurt Busch, Jamie McMurray, or Joey Logano.

Oh, Logano has been making some noise lately. Over the past ten events, he has seven Top Tens, and only Kevin Harvick has done better. The trouble is, Logano has yet to lead a single lap at the Glen, with a fifth place finish sandwiched between a couple beyond 30th. Newman was second in 2002, but has just a couple of Top Tens since. Maybe the one to watch on Sunday, the one to take advantage of Stewart’s misfortune might be the guy who finished second to Marcos Ambrose each of these past two years at Watkins Glen. That would be one Brad Keselowski.

The defending champ has not done much of anything lately, but he remains poised to get back into contention on Sunday. He has a lapped car on a Sprint track in Iowa to thank for the opportunity.