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Denny Hamlin took his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota to victory lane at the Virginia short track.

Hamlin held off a late race charge by Jeff Gordon and Jeff Burton to log his first win of the 2008 Sprint Cup season. This was a race that was dominated, for the most part, by Hendrick Motorsports drivers, who led 371 laps on NASCAR’s shortest track. Hamlin felt like this weeks win was vindication for not winning earlier in the year at Atlanta. A power steering failure derailed his bid for a win on that occasion:

“It’s just been so close so many times and to finally break through here, it definitely means a lot. It feels like maybe the monkey is off our back.”

While Hamlin obviously was happy with his win, Hendricks four drivers had to be scratching their collective heads about not being able to close the deal on a win after dominating the race early on. Dale Earnhardt Jr. looked like the car to beat early on as he led the most laps and looked unbeatable at times.

Meanwhile; on track stories took a back seat to the off track bickering of team owners over misplaced parts.

Which sets up this week’s BUZZ ON PIT ROW:

A week after it all started where are we on the Swaybar-Gate issue?

Let us know how you feel about the parties involved. Whether you feel this is a real story or not, we want your opinions on the whole affair.

photo credit: Icon Sports Media, Inc.

It was a swift turn around of fortunes for the #49 team over the Easter break.

From not making races in Gillett Evernham Motorsports engined Dodges to qualifying on the fourth row at Martinsville in a Bill Davis Racing engined Toyota, Ken Schrader must believe his Sprint Cup fortunes may have made a turn for the better. Schrader must be considered the oddity in the top ten at the paper clip known as Martinsville. He joins pole sitter Jeff Gordon, Denny Hamlin, Aric Almirola, David Ragan, Jamie McMurray and Kasey Kahne in the top seven. Gordon is no kid at 36, but not really considered a gray beard either.

Dismissing Gordon; at 52 years of age Schrader is over twice as old as the rest of the top 8, who’s average ages are just over 25. Kyle Busch rounds out the top eight qualifiers and must make Schrader feel like a chaperone on a third grade field trip to the zoo.

“The car was good all day and we were good here last year too. I’m just excited about the Toyota deal and working with Bill Davis some. I’ve always been a big fan of Bill Davis and Dave Blaney. New name on the car with Microsoft Small Business and a new manufacturer — we’re still one of those hooligans who doesn’t have their truck in here (infield), but we’ll pull it in tonight.”

Bill Davis Racing has to be happy to have a second car in the field as well. It’s well documented that the car they counted on to be thatr second car; to be driven by Jacques Villenuve, never materialized. This working agreement (don’t call it a merger–yet) with BAM could be just what the doctor ordered for two struggling teams. Rarely does the coming together of two down and out entities make for a full and rapid recovery to dominance. Just look to the corporate world and the merger of Kmart Corp and Sears. Putting those two together has not really set the world afire. The other good news is that there is finally sponsorship dollars to go into the Toyotas. BAM has signed Microsoft Small Business to foot the bill for the remainder of 2008.

In this instance though, at least for one week, BAM and Kenny Schrader can hold their heads high as they have cracked the kiddy corp and will start the Goody’s Cool Orange 500 up front with the fast guys. Where he will finish is another story. Many times these feel good stories have very short chapters. They’re easy to read, but end quickly.

I hope not. Kenny is one of the greatest guys in the sport.

photo credit: from Microsoft SMB Community Blog

Jamie McMurray started the day only four points short of the thirty fifth spot in Sprint Cup owners’ points. So close that climbing back into the warm and fuzzy side of NASCAR’s goofy qualifying bed was in easy reach, if only he could make this race on his own speed.  He did.

If he had not, the best case result for him would have been going into qualifying next week, 37 points out of 35th place.  It could have been a bunch worse.

Four drivers failed to make the field for the 2008 Goody’s Cool Orange 500.  John Andretti, Joe Nemechek, Tony Raines and Kyle Petty are out.  Petty, the highest placed of the go-homers, will be at least 93 points out of the top thirty five when he gets to Texas.

Kyle the Good wasn’t whining - Scene Daily story:

“We missed this race at Daytona when we had fuel-pressure problems. We missed this race at California when we had brake issues. We missed this race at Atlanta and Las Vegas when we don’t understand bump stops and they kicked our butts six ways to Sunday and we had two of them fail.

“And that was our fault. You don’t just show up at a race and miss it. You put yourself in a position months ahead of time to be in this
position and this is where you’re at.”

There has been speculation that Petty Enterprises would swap the points of Bobby Labonte’s #43 with Kyle in a move that would put the #45 solidly back in the top 35.  But today NASCAR denied a request by Michael Waltrip Racing  to swap the owner’s points of it’s #44 and #00 teams - a move that would have eased the pressure on the UPS sponsorship by taking that team from 34th to 30th.  NASCAR has ruled that point swaps may only happen during the off season and must be due to fundamental changes in a team.

So Kyle and the #45 will face a year of fighting to make races and then struggling to make up a big points deficit to the top thirty fivers.  Too bad.

When you watch Sunday’s race ask yourself why four or five more cars on that track would be a bad thing.

Picture credit: Icon Sports Media, Inc.

How much should a couple of five race streaks - of less than stellar results - in the most recent events affect your picks in the races that follow? Jimmy Johnson and Jeff Gordon, 2007’s most dominant drivers in Cup competition, sit 13th and 14th respectively in the point standings for 2008. That’s not terrible for anyone else, but for JJ and Jeffy, it’s almost shocking.

Defending Cup champ Johnson’s team is really struggling. Other than a solid second place finish at California, where he led a bunch of laps on day one before the rains came, this season has been very un-Johnson-like and un-Chad Knauss-like as well, for the two-time Cup winning crew chief. The #48 team recently tested for seven straight days - an indication of both their determination to turn the season around before it gets away and an acknowledgment of real problems with the team.

Jeff Gordon trails Johnson by seven points but the #24 team has looked better getting to this point than their garage-mates in the #48. Gordon finished third to Johnson’s second at Cali but Jeff has been in position to win other races this year. The problem has been finishing races at all. Two DNF’s have hurt. The big wreck at Las Vegas hurt alot.

If you look at any statistical measure in evaluating drivers for the upcoming Goody’s Cool Orange 500 this week at Martinsville Speedway, Jeff Gordon and Jimmy Johnson jump out once again as the stats-on favorite picks to win. Those stats are based upon results from past years though. In the case on NASCAR’s Loop Data, which is mostly what we use in this column, the numbers are compiled for the last six races, covering the three years that the scoring loops have been measured. But how much do you discount that old data based on the performance of the first five races this year? Is momentum, or the lack of it, for real?

Jeff Gordon leads all active drivers with six poles and seven wins at the VA paper clip. He has 24 top tens, 18 top fives and series highs of 342 Fastest Laps Run and Drivers Rating of 124.5. He has an incredible Ave. Finish of 2.3 in the last six races.

Gordon’s teammate is pretty close. Four wins - including the last three races there - eight top fives and eleven top tens wrapped around a Driver Rating of 120.8 and 296 Fastest Laps Run. Johnson’s Ave. Finish in the Loop era is 2.8.

So, who else can win at Martinsville?

There is one competitor who can challenge the stats of the Hendricks duo and Tony Stewart is the guy. Stewart has two Martinsville wins, six top fives and ten top tens. His third best Driver Rating of 119.3 is close to Johnson’s and Tony has a series high Ave. Running Position of 5.9. Stewart has run 89.8% of his laps during the Loop era (2700 total) in the top fifteen. The #20 hasn’t won a race yet in 2008 but Stewart is in 7th place in the points with two top fives and one DNF.

Tony Stewart’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammates have the next highest Martinsville Driver Ratings with Kyle Busch edging Denny Hamlin 98.0 to 96.5. Hamlin has had two top five and four top ten finishes in five Martinsville appearances. Sprint Cup Series leader Busch has three top fives and four top tens out of six starts. Hamlin has a better Ave. Finish and more Fastest Laps Run - 11.2 and 98 - than Kyle.

But Kyle is having the better 2008. Not only is he leading the points, he has Toyota’s only win and has been a factor at every Cup race and, just about, every NASCAR sanctioned event period. You gotta like Kyle at least a little for Martinsville.

Dale Earnhardt Jr has a Driver Rating of 95.8 and seven career top fives at Martinsville. His series leading 166 Quality Passes may or may not mean much, but the fact that he is driving Hendrick Motorsports’ most successful 2008 car certainly does. Junior sits fifth in Series points after five races but he is winless at the Virginia short track.

The Driver Rating drop-off is pretty sharp after Earnhardt. Ryan Newman, Kevin Harvick and Kurt Busch’ DR’s range from 89.1 to 88.5. Of the three, only Busch has won here, but Kurt’s Ave Finish of 20.3 indicates some DNF’s go with his two top fives and four top tens. I want to pick Harvick but the Ave Finish of 19.3 stops me. He does have five top tens though.

Newman might be the guy to pick from the “B” pool. Five top fives, two poles go with two DNF’s to make an Ave Finish of 14.0. Ryan is due, unless you believe that Daytona was a fluke. I don’t.

The other driver with buzz right now is Bristol winner, Mr. Solid, Jeff Burton. He’s fourth in points and has nine top fives and thirteen top tens in twenty seven Martinsville starts. His Loop Driver Rating of 81.0 doesn’t inspire, but he’s the only guy out there that can win two in a row.

Want a sleeper? Take Jamie McMurray. Driver Rating of 83.5 is tenth best with respectable Ave Finish of 16.8. He’s motivated and has good equipment. The problem is he’s thirty sixth in owner’s points and he has to qualify on speed, so he won’t have much practice time in race set-up. On second thought, take Jeremy Mayfield.

Picture credit: Icon Sports Media, Inc.

I feel so used.  Sucked in by the implied respectability of network television coverage of our beloved sport and the desperation of one of the biggest players in NASCAR media to invent stories when they are tough to find.  Nice job ESPN.

I admit it.  I bit.  Shortly before leaving to get to our ON PIT ROW broadcast location Tuesday, I saw a blurb about MRN stalwart and Sirius Satellite radio host  Dave Moody checking on a report that ESPN the Magazine was breaking a story about some Toyota team being caught red-handed with a top-secret Jack Roush Racing part.  

Now we broadcast the show from our winter home,  a sports bar called Frickers, just outside the right field wall at Fifith Third Field - the home of the Toledo Mud Hen’s and like all respectable sports bars, it’s full of TV’s - and one radio show that’s full of….itself.  Just before our scheduled air time,  ESPN’s NASCAR Now was on the tube, with a “special breaking news” report from Terry Blount.  My suspicion level  began to tick upward. 

The Daly Planet actually watched the whole thing and JD seems disappointed that the show, formerly hosted by Eric “the Awful” has slipped from some recently reached level of credibility.  Despite  Alan Bestwick’s  arrival, NASCAR Now is still a hype-laden shill-show and using a jaded, J-school ……. using Terry Blount for their investigative reporter says it all.  If Jerry wasn’t laid up with a bad back, he’d say it better, but when I saw Blount was behind it, I should have let the story go.

So I apologize to ON PIT ROW listeners for wasting the time that Steve and I spent talking about this non-story last night.  I wonder if ESPN will do the same?

After the off week for the Sprint Cup, the battle for the Nationwide Series championship becomes clearer.

This week at Nashville SuperSpeedway only a handful of Sprint Cup drivers decided to cut their Easter Break short and run the race on the mile and a third high banked track in the middle of Tennessee. Scott Wimmer got his first victory in 57 attempts by barely beating out his team mate, and Cup regular, Clint Bowyer.

Everything becomes clearer after a stand alone event as the Cup guys who will run the entire Nationwide Series schedule step forward.

As we look forward to the paper clip at Martinsville here is this week’s

BUZZ ON PIT ROW:

Was the race at Nashville entertaining enough to want to see more Nationwide Series races without the “claim jumpers”?

photo credit: Icon Sports Media, Inc.

Just because its the off week for most of the Sprint Cup drivers, doesn’t mean there isn’t stuff to complain about.
There are a couple of things about NASCAR and the way some people cover the sport that annoy me. So bare with me as I get one of those nagging things off my chest.

I tuned into today’s coverage of the Nationwide Series race, won by Scott Wimmer, just in time to hear one, maybe more, of the three booth announcers talk about this driver and that driver and how successful they have been in past years in the Nationwide Series. That absolutely toasted my bread. After all nobody has ever had any kind of championship results, good bad or indifferent in the Nationwide Series. Quite simply, the Nationwide Series didn’t exist until after the last Busch Series race was run in 2007.

Carl Edwards has not won a Nationwide Series Championship. Neither has Kevin Harvick or Sam Ard or anyone else. They, and everyone from 1984 until 2007 have been Busch Series Champs.

This hasn’t just been a Nationwide Series phenomenon either. I’ve heard many a reporter refer to past champions as Sprint Cup champs. Why do we feel the need to wrench the past sponsors name from the series? Winston brands helped made NASCAR what it is today. Without their people, support and, of course, money there is no telling where NASCAR and stock car racing would be today. So lets not be so quick to forget who got this ball rolling.

Can we please refer to Darrell Waltrip and Bill Elliott and Alan Kulwicki and Benny Parsons as exactly what they are–Winston Cup Champions. And remember that there have been Nextel Cup champs as well and there will be Sprint Cup champs and probably a whole host of other sponsored Cup champs to come as well. At least in this series champions can be referred to as “Cup” champions.

NASCAR should have revived the old Grand National name and attached it to the Nationwide brand and then the “Grand National” champions could be thrown into the same stew.

If NASCAR or the media wants to be so quick to forget the past and lump everyone into the same generic series names, Craftsman may as well start attaching their names on the trophies with hook and loop fasteners, for a quick change come 2009.

Photo credit - Icon Sports Media, Inc.

Budding Joe Gibbs Racing star Joey Logano is fastest so far in afternoon ARCA testing at the resurrected North Carolina Speedway at Rockingham.  You can follow the live timing and scoring at ARCA’s website.  Here’s a shot of the top fifteen so far today.

Logano was fast this morning too.  In fact he was the quickest in his Venturini Motorsports #25 Chevy as he continues his development, pointing towards that fourth Cup seat at Gibbs.  Logano will make his first ever ARCA Re/Max Series start in the Carolina 500 at the Rock on May 4.

Check out ARCA Nation, the new community for ARCA teams, fans, tracks and sponsors.  It’s a cool site full of race folks alot like you.

Photo credit: BethAnne Heisler - ON PIT ROW

The pressure is off for NASCAR fantasy players this week.  If you participate in a Sprint Cup Series fantasy game, you get an extra week to figure out your best picks to win your NASCAR fantasy league since the Cup Series is on Easter break. 

Perhaps now is the time to plot your ultimate winning strategy.  Or line up your latest wild ass guesses, which is what I’m planning to do.  For me, putting too much thought into this whole thing hurts my head.  But that doesn’t stop me.  In fact it got me to thinking about why certain drivers - having all of the requisite tools and pedigree - just can’t close the deal.  At least not as often as it seems they should.

Of the current crop of Cup competitors, Casey Mears and Jamie McMurray are the two that jump out at me.  Both drivers are approaching 200 starts in Cup rides ranging from pretty good to top-shelf.

McMurray won in his second start ever after taking over for an injured Sterling Marlin- who could very well make this list too  - and then went win-less, through the rest of his Ganassi career and high profile drives for Roush Racing, until 2007’s summer Daytona race. 

Mears broke the ice last year with his first win, but had nothing to show for his Ganassi seat time and, I’m betting, not enough to keep the Hendrick franchise happy much longer.

Those are winning percentages along the lines of .5 to 1%.  If that criteria is followed, I hate it but I have to put Kyle Petty in here too.  Eight wins in 819 starts makes winning a rare enough occurrence for someone who, at times has been in top equipment.  Sorry Kyle, it just seems like you should have been first more than this.

Picking four was tougher that I thought it would be.  I keep wanting to go back to New Zealander and 60’s-70’s F1 driver Chris Amon.  Amon drove for the best teams and was acknowledged by peers and journalist’s alike as  one of the best for more than a decade.  But he never won a race.   If I pick him, I’ll never hear the end of it from Steve - who thinks I live totally in the past - or Marc, who actually does.

No, unfortunately I’ll have to call recent ON PIT ROW guest and genuine good guy, Jeremy Mayfield out as my fourth enigma.  Big contracts with top teams (allegedly at least) Penske Racing and Evernham Motorsports produced just 5 wins in 425 Cup starts.  Mayfield did qualify for the Chase a couple times though, which ought to count for something.

Luke has an interesting take at the Thunder Lounge on the current crop of Rookie of the Year candidates, and how NASCAR’s goofy qualifying rules can screw with that race.  I just wonder if any of the four ROY favorites will make a list like mine in five or ten years.

Photo credit: Icon Sports Media, Inc.

One of the questions I asked of the six guests we had ON PIT ROW last night was:

“Who is your pick to win at the re-paved Darlington Raceway in May?

Now, with the race more than six weeks away, and six of the most opinionated folks you’d ever want to assemble being asked, I thought I’d get a big variety of answers.

What I got was Greg Biffle.  Last night was all Biffle - all the time, at least for Darlington.

All Cup drivers are fast.  But Biffle is one of the ones that I think of when we come up to a particularly fast track.  The fact that Greg was one of the Goodyear tire testers at this weeks Darlingon tests - and one of the first to hit 200 mph on the backstretch there - may have contributed to the prominent position he held in the frontal lobes of the brains of my guests last night.  I don’t know.

Somebody may have picked a driver other than the “Biff”, but I don’t recall if they did.  I stopped making notes after like three in a row.  The funny thing is, I didn’t give my pick, which I had prepared prior to the show.  It was Biffle.  Mass hypnosis, blogging style.

Who would be your pick to win the spring race on the Lady in Black?

Photo credit: Icon Sports Media, Inc.

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