The Daytona 500 ushers in the start of a new NASCAR Sprint Cup season on Sunday (Noon ET, Fox). With the strong presence of Joe Gibbs Racing, named for and run by the former legendary head coach of the Washington Redskins, the Sprint Cup circuit can be fairly described as where Redskins fans go to experience winning on Sunday. There are four drivers for Joe Gibbs Racing, all prominent contenders. Here’s a look at each one:
Perhaps no one has ever breathed a bigger sigh of relief after a win than Carl Edwards did last week in the Phoenix. Edwards, who only lost the 2011 championship of the NASCAR Sprint Cup series on a tiebreaker, went 0-for-2012 and missed the playoffs. It took an exciting finish, but Edwards held off Jimmie Johnson last week, got off the schneid and can be feeling good as the drivers converge on Las Vegas for Sunday’s Kobalt Tools 400 (3 PM ET, Fox).
It’s been a couple weeks since the NASCAR Sprint Cup season ended with Brad Keselowski winning the championship. We spent the year chronicling the doings on the NASCAR circuit with TheSportsNotebook’s consultant on this sport, my brother Bill. So I thought we’d bring in our resident expert one more time to offer closing thoughts on the season and early peek at next February in Daytona.
“The biggest news—besides Bad Brad winning the championship—was Matt Kenseth leaving Roush Fenway,” Bill said, regarding the surprising midseason news that Kenseth was changing teams. Kenseth won last year’s Daytona, finished seventh overall and earned over $7.5 million in purses, the second-highest money total on the circuit. That’s a lot of dough to be changing hands and losing Kenseth marked two sports that the ownership group that also owns the Boston Red Sox floundered at handling this year.
Another key development came early, when Jimmie Johnson was suspended for cheating—essentially juicing his car and putting it on steroids and penalized 25 points in the standings. An arbitration hearing resulted in Johnson getting his points restored and when he held the lead in the standings with two weeks to go it looked like that might swing the championship.
Bill was sharply critical of the arbitrator’s ruling and called the integrity of the process into question. “(Johnson)drives a Chevy and the arbitrator was a former Chevy engineer,” he said. “Just like a judge has to recuse himself when there’s a conflict of interest, this arbitrator should have too.” Bill went on to say though, that what we might politely call the uniqueness of Johnson’s relationship with the arbitrator make it unlikely the ruling will invite widespread cheating—not all drivers could count on that kind of leniency in a hearing.
Another maneuver on the business side of NASCAR means that Dodge will not have any cars in the field next year. Penske Racing ended its relationship with Dodge, leaving the well-known automaker out in the cold, at least for now. There are no credible rumors of any other teams looking to do a deal with Dodge, meaning we’re likely at least a couple years out from this circumstance changing. If it was Dodge’s last hurrah, it was a grand exit—Keselowski drove a Dodge en route to his title, a fact that may hasten their return to the action.
Keselowski’s victory was certainly the most pleasant surprise of the season, as he won it all in just his third year on the circuit. But it had been a longer wait for his owner, Roger Penske. One of the biggest names in racing, with Indy 500 wins to his credit, Penske had gone three decades without having one of his drivers climb to the top of the NASCAR standings and this year ended that wait. The veteran owner and the young driver each brought home their first Cup.
When we look ahead to 2013, the team that’s getting some positive publicity is Richard Petty Motorsports. They have two drivers, Marcus Ambrose and Aric Almirola. Neither one made the 12-driver playoff field this year, but both drove well down the stretch and got better as the season progressed. If you’re looking for a surprise new contender in ’13, these are two good drivers to start with.
NASCAR comes back again in February with the annual running of the Daytona 500. TheSportsNotebook will be back, Bill will be giving his us his junkie-level analysis of the drivers and the uniqueness of each track. For now, we head into the offseason with a salute to Keselowski and Penske, who brought it home in 2012.
The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series marks its arrival at the halfway point of the season by returning to where it all began. The Daytona International Speedway is host to tonight’s Coke Zero 400, the 18th race on the 36-race schedule and once again Matt Kenseth is the top story.
Kenseth, who won the Daytona 500 back in February, hasn’t won a race since, but he’s put together a remarkably consistent season that includes a dozen Top 10 finishes, eight of those in the top five and he’s atop the standings. He’s made one of the year’s biggest splashes off the track with his plans to leave Roush Fenway Racing at the end of the season and now he’s grabbed the pole for tonight’s race—something of a surprise, given the leader’s usually shaky performance in the qualifying runs.
The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series is back to where it started after the Daytona 500. After a spring and early summer of seeing Greg Biffle atop the standings, his recent struggles have finally caught up to him and Matt Kenseth is back on top for the first time since winning the Daytona. Its Kenseth’s only win of the year but a strong consistency kept him on Biffle’s heels the last several weeks and have now resulted in a 10-point lead in the wake of a standings shakeup following Joey Logano’s surprise win last week.
NASCAR hits the end of the first quarter of the Sprint Cup season on Saturday night in Richmond with Greg Biffle still holding his lead and surprising Martin Truex moving up to second place, 15 points back. Truex is still looking for his first win of the young season, but a strong second-place finish to Denny Hamlin in Kansas last week moved him up to second.
The Daytona 500 means the Sprint Cup Series is starting for another long run. The NASCAR season runs from now until mid-November and TheSportsNotebook will be on the scene. Now as the editor, I’m going to admit I’m not remotely qualified to talk NASCAR (well, critics would say I’m not qualified to talk baseball, basketball, football or hockey either, but at least I can fake it there). But my brother Bill is, and he was gracious enough to spend some time with me this week going over the Top 20 drivers from last year’s Sprint Cup standings, offering insights, opinions and generally showing a lot of us that NASCAR drivers really need to do more than just turn left. Here’s a summation of the Top 20, with Bill’s insights mixed in.