The Worlds first daily e-newspaper devoted to the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series
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Vol. III,No.VIXII OFFSEASON EDITION
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The Worlds first daily e-newspaper devoted to the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series Welcome to the Cup Scene Daily for Vol. III,No.VIXII OFFSEASON EDITION |
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TODAYS FRONT PAGE<
OFFSEASON...DONE
A couple trends to look for at Daytona
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Quote Of The Day: "I'm a rookie again." -Nextel Cup Champion Kurt Busch after his first laps in a Daytona Prototype in preperation for the Rolex 24 hour race Happy Birthday: Harry Gant, Larry McReynolds, Dennis Lacroix, John Mulloy 7 DAY ARCHIVE SundayMonday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday INSIDE TODAY'S ISSUE: Arkansas track promoter to honor Martin Roush Racing to Make No. 99 Cup Sponsorship Announcement Mears' team leads NASCAR runners in Grand Am test Johnson makes first appearance at Daytona Rolex Series test Roush losses are Hendrick, JGR gains Speed Reading Johnson and Kahne to Test New Goodyear Tires at Atlanta this Week Ferrari and NASCAR manufacturer to join forces Good ol' boy still proud Crew chief to be Rusty's ace card? The agony and the ecstasy of 2004
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By Tom Jensen That all changed the moment the gates opened in February 1959 for practice for the first Daytona 500. Drivers accustomed to banging fenders at 60 miles per hour on half-mile dirt tracks were shocked by the 36-degree banking in the corners and speeds in excess of 150 mph down the long backstretch. It was an experience few will ever forget.
Truer words were never spoken. Since then, Daytona has provided many of the best moments in stock-car racing and a couple of the worst. Lee Petty won the first race in 1959, in a photo finish with Johnny Beauchamp that wasn’t decided until the Wednesday after the race. There was the 1979 race, when the entire eastern half of the United States was snowed in, and a last-lap battle for the victory ended in a crash and subsequent fistfight between Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison. Darrell Waltrip danced and cried in victory lane when he finally won in 1989, and virtually every crewman in the garage lined up on pit road in a stirring salute to Dale Earnhardt after he finally won the 500 on his 20th try in 1998. And then there was 2001, when underdogs everywhere cheered Michael Waltrip as he at long last won his first-ever NASCAR Cup point race, only to learn moments later that Earnhardt, his boss and best friend, had died in a crash in the last turn of the last lap. There were other moments of high drama, too, such as father-and-son duo Bobby and Davey Allison finishing 1-2 in 1988, or David Pearson limping across the finish line in ‘76 after colliding with Richard Petty on the last lap. Derrike Cope came out of nowhere to win in 1990 after Earnhardt ran over a piece of debris from Ricky Rudd’s car heading into turn three on the final lap. Jeff Gordon dove under the yellow line, making high-risk passes on the frontstretch to win in 1997 and ‘99. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. took his first Daytona 500 win in fine style last year, while Dale Jarrett has three 500 triumphs to his credit, the first coming in a memorable duel with Earnhardt, Sr. in ‘93, as Jarrett‘s father, two-time NASCAR champion Ned Jarrett urged him on from the announcers’ booth. Almost as notable as the list of Daytona 500 winners is the list of drivers who have never won stock-car racing’s biggest event. Terry and Bobby Labonte have three NASCAR Cup championships between them, but neither has ever won the Daytona 500. Neither has Rusty Wallace, the 1989 series champ, nor Tony Stewart, the 2002 Cup title winner. Mark Martin scored more points than any other Cup driver in the 1990s, but has never claimed victory in the Daytona 500. Martin’s car owner, Jack Roush, has produced back-to-back Cup titles with drivers Matt Kenseth in 2003 and Kurt Busch last year. Despite campaigning a five-car fleet of Fords in recent years, no Roush-owned car has ever won this race.
And don’t look for clues to who will win the championship based on the Daytona 500. Since 1990, the only driver to win the 500 and the Cup title in the same year was Jeff Gordon in 1997. So what does it all mean? If you use history as your guide - and there really isn’t any other way to do it - there are a couple of trends to look for at Daytona. First, how well or how poorly a driver finishes in the Daytona 500 has little effect on how his year will go. For one thing, this is one of only four restrictor-plate races in a 36-race schedule. DEI shines at plate tracks, which historically have been Roush’s Achilles heel. It’s that way for individual drivers as well as teams. Stewart was 43rd in 2002 and went on to a series championship. Likewise, Martin recovered from being last in the ‘04 race to make it into the NASCAR Nextel Chase for the Championship and contend for a title. For all its importance to a driver’s resume - and make no mistake, winning the 500 is huge - in the points race, it’s no more or no less than any one of the 26 races that set the final 10-car field for the Chase. The Daytona 500 will not make or break a team’s season. Of the 10 drivers who made it into the Chase last year, only six - Junior, Stewart, Jimmie Johnson, Elliott Sadler, Gordon and Kenseth - finished in the top 10 in last year’s 500. Second, all of that said, keep an eye out for the No. 8 Budweiser-sponsored Chevrolet of defending race winner Earnhardt, Jr. Junior, of course, remains the prohibitive favorite, but he will be racing for the first time with new crew chief Pete Rondeau, and his teammate, Michael Waltrip, has been told he has to finish in the top 10 in points to keep his job. And the third and final point to pay attention to as the teams head to Daytona to begin testing this week: Don’t read too much into the test results. Yes, race fans are starved for news this time of year and yes, everyone wants to know who’s fast in testing. But if you want a quick reality check, consider that the three fastest cars in 2004 pre-season Daytona testing were Ricky Rudd, John Andretti and Ken Schrader, while the fastest in ‘03 were Mike Wallace, Mike Skinner and Kyle Petty. In January, every racer is an optimist. But the speeds don’t count for squat until the checkered flag falls Feb. 20 and the Daytona 500 winner is crowned. That’s when we’ll know who’s fast and who isn’t.
Don't put too much stake in the preseason tests
A gentle bit of advice: One should take the results of NASCAR’s upcoming Daytona test sessions with a grain of salt. Actually, one should take everything related to NASCAR with a grain of salt, but that’s much too large an issue to be discussed in the offseason.
The results will probably be relatively legitimate for the secure teams who genuinely go to Daytona hoping to unearth the little truths of chassis and engine development that might help them win the Daytona 500. Not everyone, though, has the luxury to worry just yet about winning the race. Not everyone has a snowball’s chance in hell. For the have-nots, first things first. Walk a mile in their shoes. They have to pay the bills, don’t they? So don’t get too excited when someone you’ve never heard of, driving a car owned by someone you’ve never heard of, rises up to or near the top of the speed charts. Beware those headlines in the “briefs” columns of the newspaper. Later on, when we all get to Daytona and other results are circulated, we will dutifully wander into the garage area to pose a few questions to drivers whose teams seem suddenly unable to duplicate the promising results of January. They’ll say the earlier results were absolutely legitimate, we’ll all nod our heads gravely while exchanging knowing winks on the side, and the same guy, driving the same car, will, magically and suddenly, be seven miles an hour slower than he was when his sleek, if unadorned, Taurus rolled off the truck in January. “Danged if I can figure it out,” he’ll say. “Something’s missing, all of a sudden. We’re using the same notes we had a few months ago. We’ll figure it out. I can’t explain it.” Preseason testing is like recruiting. Everyone shines. Twenty-five colleges will sign a quarterback “reputed to be” the best in the nation. Some of those strapping, rifle-armed signal-callers will never be heard from again. There’s no such thing as a bad recruit, but there are plenty of crummy players. Coaches will sound just like the stock-car drivers of Daytona: “I don’t know what happened. He just wasn’t able to ‘elevate his game’ to the college level. He’s a great kid with all the talent in the world.” Right. He “loves to get after it.” He “always gives 110 on every play.” He just can’t play. Just like the January flashes in the NASCAR (oil) pan. Come February, some of the good-time Charlies are going to get the blues. It happens every year.
Two testing strategies for tackling new qualifying format
By Larry McReynolds I'm anxiously awaiting the next two weeks of Nextel Cup tests, starting at Daytona this Tuesday, because the top 35 teams are locked into the Daytona 500 field so they will get together and draft. Meanwhile new teams like Jason Leffler and the 11 team and John Andretti and the 14 team plus the 4 team and others who have to make the 500 on speed will probably make a fair amount of practice qualifying runs to make sure their car is fast. If you are not locked into the field, putting up a solid speed on qualifying day and backing it up with a good run in the Duel at Daytona are sure-fire ways of getting a Daytona 500 start. When we get to Fontana, Las Vegas, Atlanta and Bristol — the second through fifth races of the season — it's just a matter of making sure you're one of the eight quickest cars not in the top 35 in points. But Daytona is a different deal. For the most part, the format is not changing. We will have qualifying on the Sunday before the 500, and everybody will log a speed. The only positions that are locked in at that point are the drivers on the front row. The rest of qualifying on Sunday determines the starting positions in the Duel at Daytona on Thursday of that week. In the past, the Twin 125 results dictated how the field started in the Daytona 500. The top 15 finishers from the Twin 125's — excluding the front row — made up positions two through 30. Then the eight fastest speeds that did not make it through the Twins made up positions 31 through 38. The final five positions were filled by provisionals. With the top 35 drivers in 2004 owner points locked into the field this year, NASCAR has not determined how many drivers they advance from the Duel races into the Daytona 500. Following the same procedure they used to come up with the Chase for the Championship format, NASCAR is looking at the last 10 or 15 years to make sure they don't paint themselves in a box with the Duel qualifying races (Feb. 17 on FX). At the end of the day, Daytona is a handling race track. Just because your car is fast doesn't mean you're going to have a good race car for the race. It's one of the reasons only nine Daytona 500 pole-sitters have won the 46 runnings of the Great American Race. When your car is fast, it means you've got a lot of horsepower, but it also may mean you've got a very low drag car that's slippery through the air. When your drag is down, your downforce is down. There are no free lunches. Low drag means less downforce. More downforce means more drag. At Talladega, you work very hard just to reduce the drag because it isn't a handling track like Daytona. But if you get your car faster in qualifying trim, it's going to be faster in race trim. In addition to driving fast, you've just got to make sure that the car drives well under race conditions. |
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