Matt Kenseth came into the sport under the mentorship of Mark Martin and the two seem more and more similar every year. Kenseth is now a 10-year veteran and one of the most-respected drivers in the garage. He’s had disagreements with drivers in his younger days but those rough edges have long been polished. Kenseth is still competing and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see his son, Ross Kenseth, join the Roush stable when he turns 18 to bring us the latest father-son pairing in NASCAR.

What Kenseth lacks in flash he makes up for in tenacity. Before Kevin Harvick took the label Kenseth was often NASCAR’s best closer. How many people remember Kenseth finished 5th in the final points standings last year? Exactly. We haven’t seen the last of the fast Crown Royal #17 in victory lane this year.

Fantasy Pick’Em: 2011 Samsung Mobile 500

by Chris Leone, Special To NASCAR commentary and driver pictures, 2012 NASCAR schedule, video, Bench Racing With Steve and Charlie

I do weekly Fantasy Pick'Em columns here at OPR, as well as the occasional opinion and analysis piece. I also provide the IZOD IndyCar Series coverage. For more on that, head to my site, OpenWheelAmerica.com. My Twitter handle is @christopherlion.

April 6, 2011 11:56 am UTC 1 Comment

Another week, another Pick’Em. This time we’re headed to Texas Motor Speedway for the Samsung Mobile 500. Now, I’m a bit torn on how I feel about this pairing – I love Texas (my April Fool’s prank this year was to go around dressed as a cowboy), but I hate Samsung (the Impression is the worst phone in the history of phones, and causes me to lose faith in humanity and technology alike on a daily basis).

I mean, it’s not the worst pairing in the world – Kimi Raikkonen announced a sponsor partnership with caffeinated beef jerky today – but I digress. We should probably talk about racing instead of badmouthing the companies that keep it going, huh?

OK, same gig as always – I’m going to lead off with my main pick, give you an alternate if you don’t like that, and follow up with my dark horse. Since Texas is the same track (basically) as Atlanta and Charlotte, and the mile-and-a-half cookie-cutters make up most of the schedule, these picks should be relatively straightforward and, well, predictable. Let’s get to it.

Kevin Harvick – Harvick’s got all the momentum in the world right now after winning the past two races. That actually makes it seem more likely that he won’t take a third consecutive win, but hey, if Jimmie Johnson can win five TITLES in a row, Harvick can win another race, right? It helps that he’s also pretty good at Texas – he’s tied with Mark Martin for the fourth-best average finish (a 12.4 despite no wins) and has only one run worse than 11th in his past seven Texas starts.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. – Junior’s been picking it up this year with Steve Letarte on top of the pit box. Martinsville showed that the No. 88 is at least a dark horse once again; a few more races like that, and they’ll be true contenders. Junior hasn’t won at Texas since his first start there way back in 2000, and has been decidedly mediocre there since he left the family team, but this could be the weekend to turn that around. Remember, this is the team that took the victory with Jeff Gordon in this race two years ago (thus explaining an otherwise completely unrelated photo).

Jamie McMurray – Does last week’s pole winner count as a dark horse? Well, judging by his recent Texas track record, yes. Since finishing third in the fall of 2008, Jamie Mac hasn’t had much luck in the Lone Star State – only one lead-lap run and an average finish of 26.0 (to reflect his old car number, perhaps).

Texas Sized NASCAR Sharkfin Soup

by Charlie Turner

Thanks for stopping by OnPitRow.com and the Bench Racing with Steve and Charlie blog. The best NASCAR and IndyCar news and opinion, exclusive pictures and video. I'm Charlie Turner. Follow me on Twitter @onpitrow

November 12, 2010 8:02 pm UTC No Comments

The heat from NASCAR’s Battle of the Longhorn State has cooled. I guess. I mean, it wasn’t all that hot anyway. Was it?

It’s not like Jeff Gordon broke a knuckle or something, throwing a punch at Jeff Burton. Maybe a nail.

Rick Hendrick – perhaps feeling empathy for his other 4-time  Sprint Cup champ, even gave Jeff the hottest pit crew in the sport over the last four years – the guys from the Lowes’ #48. That should calm the savage breast, n’est-ces pas?

Whatta ya mean, that’s not why they swapped tire-changers?

Are you trying to tell me that Mr. H and The Chad are panicky enough to think they actually NEED the Crew Formerly Known As The Rainbow Warriors? I’m sorry. Texas ain’t OZ. Or the Twilight Zone. Monkeys don’t really have wings.

Enough nonsense.

Denny Hamlin won the race. Nice job. He said all would be well if he was in second place after Kansas, and so far, he’s good as his prediction.

Kevin Harvick continues to hang in there. And continues his need to win a freakin’ race.

Brad Keselowski is the 2010 NASCAR Nationwide Series Champ.

Kyle Busch is pissed. At Carl Edwards. And NASCAR. And life itself.

Jimmie Johnson has a new pit crew.

And the Danica Patrick vs Milka Dunno dust-up at Indy a couple years back, was a better fight.

On to Phoenix.

Photo credit: Round girl Jen by BethAnne Heisler – OnPitRow.com

Fantasy Pick’Em: 2010 AAA Texas 500

by Chris Leone, Special To NASCAR commentary and driver pictures, 2012 NASCAR schedule, video, Bench Racing With Steve and Charlie

I do weekly Fantasy Pick'Em columns here at OPR, as well as the occasional opinion and analysis piece. I also provide the IZOD IndyCar Series coverage. For more on that, head to my site, OpenWheelAmerica.com. My Twitter handle is @christopherlion.

November 4, 2010 4:16 pm UTC No Comments

Tony Stewart practicing at Pocono

After everybody with a legitimate title shot managed to survive Talladega, the top three in points are now separated by under 40 points. Jimmie Johnson maintains the lead over second-place Denny Hamlin and third-place Kevin Harvick, but the margins are slim enough that anything can happen. Any of the three could come into the final two races of the year with the points lead.

Of course, they’re, by extension, the best three fantasy bets this weekend. But where’s the fun in that? Let’s make some interesting picks. I’m going to cut down from five to three this week, seeing as I just eliminated the three best available choices anyway.

My personal pick for the weekend is Tony Stewart, who somehow I have managed to avoid thus far during the Chase. Perhaps that’s been a good call – he’s had terrible luck in the Chase ever since the final two laps of the Loudon event. He has little momentum to build off of from the past few races as he lingers in the bottom half of Chase points.

But Smoke’s Texas results tell a decidedly different story. Though his peak years at the track came in 2005 and 2006, as he led double-digit laps in every event and won the fall 2006 race, he showed some muscle this spring by leading 74 laps from the pole before a late race crash eliminated any hopes of victory.

If Smoke’s bad luck is a turn-off, though, don’t forget about Mark Martin, whose 12.8 average Texas finish is fourth best of active drivers. That’s especially remarkable considering that in two of the first three Texas events ever held, Martin finished 34th or worse; however, he did win the other one, the 1998 event.

One of four drivers to run in all 19 Texas events held thus far, Martin has 10 other top-10 runs to back up that 1998 victory. Five of them have come in the past seven Texas events. And while Martin has only led three laps at the track since the spring of 2006, he’s shown the ability to keep the car out of trouble and close enough to the front to score plenty of points.

Finally, if you’re looking for a potential surprise pick, consider Martin Truex Jr. and his solid 13.9 average finish at Texas. Only two times in 10 starts has he failed to finish in the top 15, and in one of those events he led laps before his engine gave out. No, it’s not the most orthodox pick, but with only three races left in the season, who expects anything to play out predictably?

IndyCar Race Review: Firestone 550k

by Chris Leone, Special To NASCAR commentary and driver pictures, 2012 NASCAR schedule, video, Bench Racing With Steve and Charlie

I do weekly Fantasy Pick'Em columns here at OPR, as well as the occasional opinion and analysis piece. I also provide the IZOD IndyCar Series coverage. For more on that, head to my site, OpenWheelAmerica.com. My Twitter handle is @christopherlion.

June 6, 2010 1:02 pm UTC No Comments

In Ryan Briscoe‘s first Texas race for Team Penske, in 2008, he started and finished third. In his second, last year, he started and finished second.

Briscoe continued his positive Texas trend in last night’s Firestone 550k, leading 102 laps and opening up a big gap on a hard-charging Danica Patrick in the later stages for his first win of the 2010 IZOD IndyCar Series season. His victory helped make up for Penske’s disappointing Indianapolis 500 last weekend, when Briscoe crashed and finished 24th, and teammates Will Power and Helio Castroneves barely cracked the top ten.

But that’s not to say that the night was a complete success for Penske; Castroneves was taken out of the race just past halfway when Mario Moraes squeezed him into the wall. Power, who had been running third in the late stages of the race, had to give up his position to pit for fuel with four laps to go, falling to 14th, one lap down.

Instead, the top team overall in the Texas tilt was Andretti Autosport. Besides Patrick’s second-place finish, Marco Andretti placed third for the second week in a row, and Tony Kanaan wound up sixth. Ryan Hunter-Reay, in his first race since having thumb surgery and potentially his last race for Andretti due to sponsorship reasons, placed seventh.

In between the Andretti cars were the two Chip Ganassi Racing teams of Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti, respectively. Franchitti managed to lead 86 laps of the 228-lap race, but after losing his clean air was never quite the same.

Alex Tagliani and the FAZZT Race Team continued to show promise, but were once again bitten by bad luck. Tagliani led 33 laps, third most in the field, but a lap 167 pit stop in which fueler Phil McRobert did not remove the fuel hose before Tagliani put the car in gear altered the entire course of his race. Adding insult to injury, the team fell seven laps short on fuel and had to pit before the end of the race, falling three laps down and finishing 18th.

Texas was not generally kind to the series’ six rookies. While Alex Lloyd and Dale Coyne Racing carried on their momentum from a fourth-place finish at Indy, crossing the line eighth, Lloyd was the only rookie driver to finish on the lead lap. Meanwhile, Mario Romancini was the only other rookie driver to finish, two laps down in 17th.

Three rookies – Bertrand Baguette, Simona de Silvestro, and Takuma Sato – were involved in crashes that prematurely ended their nights. De Silvestro had a particularly fiery crash in which safety crews struggled to remove her from her burning car. The last rookie, Jay Howard, experienced mechanical failure after 37 laps to finish last.

The next IZOD IndyCar Series race will be the Iowa Corn Indy 250 at Iowa Speedway in two weeks. Franchitti won last year.

Read more on the IZOD IndyCar Series from Chris Leone at OpenWheelAmerica.com.