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Kurt Busch Out Runs the Competition with Help from a Gasman

by Steve Wronkowicz

I am co-host of the syndicated radio show: ON PIT ROW. Over ten years on the air and three on the net; see what can happen when I don't let the facts get in the way of my opinions.

March 10, 2009 7:04 am UTC 3 Comments

The complexion of the race in Atlanta on Sunday changed faster than a teenager with a Hershey bar.

Jimmy Watts, gasman for Marcos Ambrose, took off after an errant tire that was headed for the racing surface. NASCAR saw Watts sprinting after the Goodyear and threw a caution flag during the round of green flag pit stops. The caution threw a monkey wrench into many teams strategies as some very good race cars went a lap down to the leaders.

Only nine cars remained on the lead lap after the Watts inspired caution. Thanks to the “lucky dog rule” those nine swelled back to fourteen later in the race, but Kurt Busch help off late race challenges from Jeff Gordon and Carl Edwards to gain the win. Busch dominated the activities on Sunday leading on six different occasions for more laps than anyone.

Busch’s crew chief Pat Tryson had Kurt still on the race track when the Watts caution was thrown by NASCAR–good luck. Luck plays a part in all of racing. Just ask Bill Elliott who was caught up in an accident that was not of his doing–bad luck. But, that is part of racing and how teams deal with adversity is what will separate winners from also rans.

Did luck need to play into this race however; as we look at this week’s BUZZ ON PIT ROW:

Did NASCAR over react with its yellow flag for the loose tire chased down by Marcos Ambrose’s gasman Jimmy Watts?

Let us know what you think and we could use your thoughts on this weeks ON PIT ROW. Listen live from 5-7pm ET every Tuesday at www.onpitrow.com.

photo credit: Icon Sports Media

Filed under: Atlanta Motor Speedway, Carl Edwards, It's Only Cheating if You Get Caught, Kurt Busch, NASCAR, NASCAR Bidness, NASCAR officials, On Pit Row The Fastest Two Hours on Radio, Penske Racing

Tagged with: Carl Edwards, Jeff Gordon, Jimmy Watts, Kurt Busch, Marcos Ambrose, Pat Tryson

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NASCAR’s Bread and Nutter

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

February 6, 2009 1:42 pm UTC 2 Comments

As the Daytona 500 opener creeps closer and closer more and more sponsors are emulating groundhogs – checking to see if the economy is still too chilly to back an available Cup team. Mindy Monday found a couple that disagreed with the Pennsylvania woodchuck, and joined the party.

She also labeled a pair of Sprint Cup rookie contenders with new nicknames. I like it.

So watch the Monday Morning Crew Chief here. And then go register to play the simplest fantasy NASCAR game around. It’s NASCAR for dummies – to accomidate a certain radio co-host – One and Done NASCAR fantasy racing from OnPitRow.com. Click here for the 30 second sign up.

Filed under: Bench Racing TV, Bill Davis Racing, Germain Racing, Joey Logano, Max Papis, Monday Morning Crew Chief, NASCAR, NASCAR Fantasy Gaming, NASCAR video, One and Done NASCAR Fantasy Racing, Penske Racing, Red Bull Racing, Sam Hornish Jr, Scott Speed, Sprint Cup Series, Yates Racing

Tagged with: All Sport, Fantasy NASCAR, Mad Max, Max Papis, Mindy Monday, NASCAR fantasy racing, NASCAR video, One and Done, Rookie of the Year, Sliced Bread, Tommy Kendal, Trans Am Racing

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Bump Linkin’ on an All Star Showdown Friday

by Charlie Turner

January 23, 2009 5:05 pm UTC 5 Comments

I just read something disturbing from my friend the Diecast Dude. It’s raining in California.

Well make it stop! There’s a race out there tonight in at Irwindale Speedway and I need it to run as scheduled. I’m not sure my rather shaky well being can take a weather delay in THE FIRST RACE OF THE YEAR! Let it rain in Florida tomorrow – or all weekend. Those sporty car guys will drive in anything and I kind of like watching road racing in the rain.

But that’s just me.

The best thing I’ve read this week about the state of the Kingdom of France was Fox Sports’ Lee Spencer’s piece about the five questions that NASCAR fans deserve to have answered by the sports’ royalty. Here’s a favorite part…

“with chairman Brian France up top, the person steering the ship should have every bit as much passion for running the sport as the people who spend their hard-earned money to sit in the stands every weekend.

Unlike his father and grandfather, Brian France just doesn’t fit that bill. No time was it more evident than when he stated last December that he “will not have a 30-year run like my father for a variety of reasons.”

“Somebody has got to stand up and take charge, somebody who can rally the troops and infuse enthusiasm to fans. That person is currently not in charge of NASCAR.”

The Catfish Show has a piece on the driver he thinks will be Nationwide Series Rookie of the Year. I like Matt’s choice, but I’ll take Justin Allgaier, who just got full season sponsorship for his Penske ride.

Steve has been talking - or is it squawking - a lot about the potential for a resurgence of the start-and-parkers of some years back. The NASCAR Insiders have a great article on that too…

And the high priestess of Church of the Great Oval has begun her annual astrological projections of NASCAR’s best, starting with Jeff Gordon and Jimmy Johnson.

Now stop the rain. I wanna watch a real race tonight.

Photo credit: Getty Images for NASCAR Media

Filed under: Brad Coleman, Brian France, Irwindale Speedway, Justin Allgaier, NASCAR, NASCAR officials, Nationwide Series, Penske Racing

Tagged with: Brian France, Irwindale Speedway, Justin Allgaier, Michael Annett, NASCAR astrology, Nationwide Series, start and parkers, Toyota All Star Challenge

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How To Fix NASCAR: 3. Three-Car Limit by the End of 2010

by Chris Leone, Special To NASCAR commentary and driver pictures, 2011 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.

December 31, 2008 10:57 pm UTC 2 Comments

Happy New Year folks, and it’s time for another installment of How To Fix NASCAR. Having already trimmed schedules and fixed NASCAR’s top tier development series, it’s time to ensure that the top levels of American motorsport move away from the elitism of Formula One, by ironically implementing something that that series has had in place for years: a hard cap of three cars per team (per series, seeing as NASCAR has multiple levels and F1 has… well… one).

The issue with a team cap lies in owners’ willingness to undo some of the expansion they have done over the past few years, expansion that many of them (like Jack Roush) can surely sustain. However, the sport is heading more and more in an elitist direction, where the top four or five teams are lightyears ahead of everybody else (like McLaren and Ferrari in F1). That only hurts the sport in the end, by stealing sponsors away from the have-nots: either they’ll sign for fewer races and less money with the haves, or put their money elsewhere.

Roush is already dealing with the elimination of his fifth car, probably Jamie McMurray‘s No. 26, by the end of 2009. However, almost all of the other major players in the sport (Hendrick, Childress, Gillett after the merger with Petty, EGR) will still have four cars as well. Joe Gibbs has three, Roger Penske has three, and even Doug Yates is planning on three cars for next season. That’s a total of 30 cars among eight teams. That gives the newcomer a snowball’s chance in hell at signing a good driver, crew, or sponsor.

To limit teams to two cars would be a disaster, and probably turn out just like F1, with Hendrick like the Ferrari team and Roush akin to McLaren. The superteams would be able to shift five cars’ worth of resources and money to the remaining two teams, and we’d see races where only four cars had a reasonable shot at winning. But to limit teams to three cars would provide a fair balance: sure, the rich would shift their incredible resources to make their few teams stronger, but the drivers and crewmembers they released would go to smaller teams and, in turn, make them more competitive.

Let’s use Roush as an example, and assume that they would keep David Ragan, Greg Biffle, and Carl Edwards. McMurray has been rumored to go to Yates in 2010 for a while anyway, but assumedly they would also send over Matt Kenseth in this situation. A Yates team with Kenseth, McMurray, and the steadily improving Paul Menard would have a much better shot at reclaiming the team’s past glory than Menard, Travis Kvapil, and David Gilliland. And with three fully sponsored cars, Roush could concentrate on building up the other struggling Ford team, the Wood Brothers‘ No. 21.

How about the other superpower of the sport, Hendrick Motorsports? Sure, you could say they wouldn’t suffer much, if only Mark Martin ended up leaving the team after 2009. But some other team could certainly use his leadership and skill, and you know he wouldn’t be unemployed for long. Neither would crew chief Alan Gustafson. I’m thinking they’d end up at Stewart Haas, personally – it’s already going to become Hendrick 2.

At RCR, I suppose getting rid of Casey Mears wouldn’t provide too much help to a smaller team, but at least it’d potentially reunite Clint Bowyer with Jack Daniel’s. (I’m sorry, General Mills, but I don’t think anyone sees Clint as a cereal guy.) The only question is, would Mears be any more than damaged goods? Assuming this were to happen, it would be his sixth team in seven years (Ganassi’s No. 41 in ’05, the No. 42 in ’06, Hendrick’s No. 25 in ’07, the No. 5 in ’08, RCR’s No. 07 in ’09 and ’10…). I suppose that at least it proves he’s a commodity, but the guy already has more firesuits in his closet than some teams have won races.

While this wouldn’t have much of an effect on the Camping World Truck Series, it would limit Nationwide Series owners to only running one car for the owners’ championship (see the last installment). Because running a car for the owners’ title would require a minimum of one unshared car to go alongside it, and no less, the three-car teams would have to run two cars for the drivers’ championship, opening up even more spots for development drivers to hone their skills.

So on and so forth down the line, very good (but not spectacular) drivers would be cut from the sport’s most prominent teams, landing on their feet with second-tier teams with much less talent behind the wheel. Those guys would then get bumped down to the third-tier teams, and so on and so forth. Not only would the guys who really don’t deserve their rides disappear, the driving talent, skilled crewmen, and the sponsors would disperse to level out the playing field.

Before anyone says anything: We all know that the only reason the sponsors all flock to the superteams is because current NASCAR rules don’t really limit where they can go. Roush can just create another team in Nationwide or CWTS if a new sponsor wants to join his operation, or sign them for a handful of races with Edwards or Kenseth. Under this system, those spots would vanish pretty quickly. Since many of the companies who want to get involved in racing do so because they feel that NASCAR fans are an important target market, those sponsors will stay in the sport. They’ll just find other teams to work with.

Of course, some of you are still probably asking, “How does this change anything if the top drivers would just go to their old teams’ satellite operations?” By adding a truckload of extra talent and sponsorship dollars to these satellite teams, they find themselves in a situation where they may no longer be so far behind their providers. With a little luck and some decent results, these teams will have the resources to break off and race on their own again.

That’s all for this installment. I’m going to go watch the New Year’s Eve TV specials. See you in two weeks!

Filed under: Earnhardt Ganassi Racing, Gillett Evernham Motorsports, Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing, NASCAR, Penske Racing, Richard Childress Racing, Robert Yates Racing, Roush Racing, Sprint Cup Series, Stewart Haas Racing

Tagged with: How to fix NASCAR

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Quick Hits: Phoenix International Raceway

by Chris Leone, Special To NASCAR commentary and driver pictures, 2011 NASCAR schedule, video, Bench Racing With Steve and Charlie

November 5, 2008 10:39 pm UTC 1 Comment

NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series enters the second-to-last race of the season at Phoenix with many teams still unsure about their 2009 plans. In recent years, most teams have already set their lineups for the following season by this point. However, plenty of drivers are still searching for employment, and plenty of teams are still attempting to put together the right packages to allow them to go racing next year.

A good amount of the field still lacks sponsorship for 2009 and beyond, and even top-tier teams are feeling the crunch. Longtime stalwarts such as Dale Earnhardt Inc. and Chip Ganassi Racing are having problems inking long-term deals in a crumbling economy. Four cars between them next season is a possibility, despite the teams running seven this year. Even Hendrick Motorsports recently had a modest round of layoffs that sent Stevie Reeves, Jimmie Johnson’s spotter, packing.

At last count, 35 full-time Sprint Cup seats have been filled by drivers for next season (not including Max Papis’ limited schedule with Germain Racing). Of those 35, cars for David Reutimann, Aric Almirola, Reed Sorenson, Ryan Newman, Juan Montoya, Bobby Labonte, and Chad McCumbee have either partial sponsorship or none altogether. Assuming that two open seats with full sponsorship (the No. 21 at Wood Brothers Racing and the No. 41 at Chip Ganassi Racing) are filled, and assuming the worst in regards to all other unsettled teams, we could only see 36 full-time cars attempting the race at Daytona.

This week’s Quick Hits is, in effect, a premature analysis of cause of death for some cars that may not be around come February. Be prepared to say farewell to any of the following next year:

5. No. 28 or 38 Yates Racing Fords: Yates has full-time sponsorship for Paul Menard from his family’s hardware store chain for one car next season. While team owners Doug Yates and Max Jones have suggested that they will add a third car for Menard, rather than replace either Travis Kvapil or David Gilliland, the team cannot afford to patch together limited sponsorships as they have this year.

The two current drivers have combined to run eight races with blank cars, and the majority of the rest with very limited sponsorship. Had Ford not filled in some holes earlier this year, the team would have run 15 of 72 races unsponsored. With many of those companies probably not returning in 2009, the team may only have enough sponsorship for one of its current drivers next year.

4. No. 22 Bill Davis Racing Toyota: With rumors of a buyout by Gillett Evernham Motorsports at a standstill, not much is known of the fate of this team. Bill Davis has entered this car in NASCAR competition since 1993, and whether Maxwell House, MBNA, or Caterpillar was on the car, it has never been unsponsored. Davis has had these issues with other cars before, but never with its mainstay Cup team.

Right now, the team’s best hope is that Toyota decides to move up its sponsorship from the Truck Series to this car, but that’s iffy at best. If the team puts Michael Annett in the car, they may attract sponsors based on his raw talent and potential, but the deals might be similar in nature to what Yates has been doing this year. Those life-support deals won’t be enough to sustain a team for too long.

3. No. 96 Hall of Fame Racing Toyota: This is a team in disarray under a relatively new owner partnership. The team has no alliance with Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota past this season, no bona fide driver (with Brad Coleman getting the shaft in most of the team’s recent deals), and less than a full season’s sponsorship from DLP HDTV.

Recent reports have had the team switching to Ford and partnering up with the Wood Brothers for 2009, reuniting the Woods with Ken Schrader, who currently drives the No. 96. The Woods claim that their sponsorship for 2009 is all set, meaning the two could collaborate on finding deals for the No. 96. Regardless, rest assured that without some sort of alliance, this team will not be around in 2009.

2. No. 77 Penske Racing Dodge: Rumors keep swirling that Sam Hornish Jr. is going to return to the IndyCar Series with Penske for 2009, possibly to replace Helio Castroneves, who is currently facing tax issues. Regardless of Penske’s potential need for its IRL team, however, the results haven’t been there. The best American open-wheel driver of this decade hasn’t been able to translate his skills to the heavier stock cars.

If Hornish stays, look for Mobil 1 to stay with him. Mobil has been a longtime Penske sponsor and had been looking to expand to a full-time primary for a couple years before Hornish’s arrival. If Hornish departs, however, they may replace Kodak on David Stremme’s No. 12 Dodge.

1. No. 01 and 15 Dale Earnhardt Inc. Chevrolets: No one can say they didn’t see this coming. The No. 01 has had minor partners at best all year, and the No. 15 has neither driver nor sponsor for 2009 with Menard’s departure. Regan Smith’s win (cough) at Talladega has drawn some interest, but most agree that Aric Almirola has more promise than Smith, and any sponsorship attracted would probably go there.

The team may be merging with Chip Ganassi Racing, which would afford Smith a shot at the No. 41, Almirola’s needs permitting. J.J. Yeley has also stated that $12 million in sponsorship would land him in one of those cars for next season, but given his underwhelming performance this year, it might be a longshot.

On a more positive note, however, congratulations to last week’s winners at Texas: Ron Hornaday, Kyle Busch, and Carl Edwards in the Truck, Nationwide, and Sprint Cup races, respectively.

Filed under: Bobby Labonte, Brad Coleman, Chip Ganassi Racing, Dale Earnhardt, Inc., Dave Blaney, Germain Racing, Gillett Evernham Motorsports, Hendrick Motorsports, J J Yeley, Jimmy Johnson, Joe Gibbs Racing, Kenny Shrader, Max Papis, NASCAR, NASCAR Rumors, Penske Racing, Reed Sorenson, Regan Smith, Robert Yates Racing, Ryan Newman, Sam Hornish Jr, Sprint Cup Series, The Wood Brothers

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Right Rears are the Early Talladega Story

by Charlie Turner

October 3, 2008 8:39 pm UTC 1 Comment

I watched highlights of the Talladega Superspeedway Sprint Cup Friday practice while I waited for the start of ARCA’s 250 mile race today. The highlight of that practice was Dale Earnhardt Jr’s big practice wreck. It looked like, on the replays, the right rear tire had blown. Junior’s wreck took out Tony Stewart and a couple other cars. It doesn’t help their chances, no matter what they say.

“I feel like we’ll definitely mentally be stronger for Sunday because of what happened today,” Earnhardt said.

Uh huh. I’m buyin’ it, are you?

Then the ARCA RE/MAX Series race started. ARCA runs Hoosier Tires. NASCAR, Goodyears. ARCA blew a BUNCH of right rear tires in the race. They cost several contending cars shots at winning the race and screwed with the championship points in a big way. Nearly all of the top teams – Red Bull, Roush-Fenway and Kevin Harvick Racing included – were affected. It’s something to watch Sunday.

Justin Allgaier passed Joey Logano with a lap to go in a stirring finish that had Steve and I jumping up and down. That just might be a rivalry to watch down the road. Good stuff.

Photo credit: Icon Sports Media, Inc.

Filed under: ARCA Remax Series, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Joey Logano, Justin Allgaier, Penske Racing, Talladega Superspeedway

Tagged with: ARCA, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Goodyear Tires, Joey Logano, Justin Allgaier, Talladega

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