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Welcome the newest member of the Pit Crew - Mindy Monday - to OnPitRow.com and the Bench Racing with Steve and Charlie blog.  Mindy’s video posts will be a regular feature of our new Bench Racing TV section.  Let us hear your comments and remember - Stay classy NASCAR!

Download Monday Morning Crew Chief #1

  How good would a team of Smoke and the Rocket be?  Will Tony Stewartfans have to endure the trauma of - Oh no, not again - changing numbers, as Junior fans did this year?   Tony Stewart driving the #66 Office Depot Chevrolet?  According to those closest to the silly season contenders, those are some of the questions we may just get to answers to in the coming days. 

Semi-regular, ON PIT ROW contributor Lee Spencer of Fox Sports has a few of sponsor names to mix in with the driver speculation….

Stewart is currently 11th in the point standings — 500 points behind teammate and leader Kyle Busch and closer to the bubble than he and crew chief Greg Zipadelli care to be. J.D. Gibbs insisted last Sunday that nothing has changed with Stewart’s status at Joe Gibbs Racing although there are reports that Office Depot and Old Spice will join the driver in his next venture — and rumors that Burger King and Jack Daniels could also be coming aboard.

Tom Jensen at Speed has this …. 

One way or another, it is likely Stewart will be out at JGR, either next year or in 2010, and almost certainly with a Chevy team. If he goes to Haas-CNC, he’ll likely take another front-line driver with him, either Martin Truex Jr. or Ryan Newman.

I have a feeling that Tony’s next big press conference will be a good one.

Photo credit: BethAnne Heisler - ON PIT ROW

From the hills of California wine country to the highlands of New Hampshire is a bit over 3000 Mapquest miles.  NASCAR must own a travel agency or something.  How much sense does that make with diesel selling for $5 a gallon?

I wonder if there is any truth to the rumor that Brian France will announce a brand new program designed to save all of his minion’s teams even more money than the Car of Tomorrow - or CoT (or Cash outlay’s Till-we-get-it-right) has saved them?

The next rumored innovation is the - are you ready? - Hauler of Tomorrow!  That’s right - the HoT!

No details were available at posting time, but we can surmise some things from past experience.

1. Spoilers and splitters will be involved
2. Most everybody will think the HoT’s are ugly
3. Cash savings will be disguised as additional investment in R&D
4. They won’t handle worth spit
5. Only the big teams with the big sponsors will be able to afford them, but that won’t matter to NASCAR. Everybody saves!
6. Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards will be fast in them
7. Next year’s All Star week will feature a “jack-knifing” contest
8. NASCAR will buy Mapquest and doctor the figures

Photo credit: Icon Sports Media, Inc.

 

New Hampshire International Speedway always makes me nervous.   This year, maybe more so than ever.  The track has seen more than its share of carnage through its history.  Loudon may have been the track that most needed the soft-wall technology of the Safer barriers.   With long straights and sharp, relatively flat corners, the New Hampshire miler will be especially tough on drivers for teams that don’t have the New Car’s special handling requirements figured out.  Missing the set-up could hurt.

The Loose in Turn Three experiment continues this week with Do You NASCAR, Bruce’s NASCAR Bits and Bench Racing with Steve and Charlie each fielding a topic to chew on.  Here’s the Bench Racing hor dourve of the week….

After what we saw at Infineon Raceway, is there still a place for “road-course ringers” in the Cup Series?

Charlie:  If you run a top tier Cup team, your drivers better be able to at least hold their own on the road courses. Your best teams need drivers that can do it all. The ability of most of the regular Sprint Cup drivers to handle the road courses has improved so much that it would take the perfect storm of circumstances to have a non-regular win ANY Cup race.  Only if you have a team that is on the edge of top thirty five contention - or is out of the top thirty five all together - would trying to catch a specialist’s lightning in a bottle be worth disrupting your group’s chemistry.

Bruce:  No.  Only if you’re a 30th and worse team with driver proven to be inefficient on road courses would you even think about it.  Any time a team brings a ringer in, it’s a slap in the face to the regular driver, even if he appears on board, you’re killing his opportunity to accrue valuable driver points.  Everyone either has the talent, or can be taught the skills, if the team really wants to invest in their driver.
 
TZ: Of course any team that’s on the bubble for the top-35 in owner points should consider using specialists at courses like Infineon or Watkins Glen. But, to throw a wrench in your guys’ theory that it’s reserved ONLY for those teams, what about teams like the no. 8 DEI car? You’re already limiting his Cup experience to a measley 8 races this year, so there’s no real logic in making sure that he gets in there at the road courses. Then, there’s also occassions when that teams are well within the top-35, yet have no real loyalty in a multi-year sense to their driver … guys like a Dave Blaney. In this instance, lingering After what we saw at Infineon Raceway, is there still a place for “road
course ringers” in the Cup Series?

That’s what we think.  How ’bout you?  Leave your feedback in the comments section.  After doing that, head over to DoYouNASCAR.com for TZ’s topic for the week…..

After a lackluster 2007 season, can the no. 16 team keep it together long enough through the next 10 races to keep Greg Biffle in Chase contention?

Then check out Bruce’s Bits for this one…
 
Should NASCAR and Sunoco make a concerted effort to convert the sport over to a less fossil fuel centric sport?

Photo credit:  BethAnne Heisler - ON PIT ROW

Kyle Busch won the Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway and with his first Cup Series road course win has answered perhaps every question but one.

Rowdy….I really hate that nickname. Rowdy was Clint Eastwood’s character on the old Rawhide TV show. Kyle Busch is no Clint Eastwood. But, as my friend the Dude would say, I digress. Rowdy is now, in my opinion, a five tool racer.

The “five tool player” moniker is a baseball term. Five tool ballplayers are said to have it all. Wikipedia says this about them…

In baseball, a five-tool player is one who excels at hitting for average, hitting for power, baserunning skills and speed, throwing ability, and fielding abilities.

The road course win was the missing “tool” for the Shrub. In my version the five tools are really five track types that make up the Sprint Cup schedule. Kyle had already won on NASCAR’s prolific intermediate tracks. He has a short track victory at Bristol. This year brought a plate race triumph at Talladega. On one mile tracks, of every sort - flat Phoenix, concrete Dover and tough Loudon - he’s Jack the Bear.

Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Kevin Harvick are five toolers. So is Mark Martin. Earnhardt Sr was one, but Junior isn’t. The list is short.

You can win a championship in the Cup Series and not be a five tool driver. Jimmy Johnson has won two straight Cups and he’s a good enough road racer that a win at the Glen or Infineon will probably come, but hasn’t yet. The un-answered question for Kyle Busch is - can he close the whole deal and win a Cup championship?

The evidence for Busch - 9 Cup wins, 15 Nationwide and 8 Truck Series victories - points to a yes answer to the question. Mark Martin fans would tell you not to count your chickens too soon.

Photo credit: BethAnne Heisler - OnPitRow.com

An item came across NASCAR.com and it made me shake my head. Mark Martin one of my 3 favorite drivers in NASCAR history, seems to have made another guarantee. In the story last week at Pocono, he said that he plans on winning at the Brickyard in July. I have no doubt Mark can win the race. I remember 10 years ago at Indy when he had a better car than Jeff Gordon throughout the day, yet couldn’t get around him at the end. I remember when Mark left the 6 for the 01 last year, he said he would have his best chance ever to win the Daytona 500 – and he did, but came up inches short. It saddens me to see someone that’s a traditional pessimist, like Mark, get exciting for something just to be heartbroken again. I felt the heartbreak of the 2002 season because he was so close. Two years later, in the inaugural Chase, Mark arguably had the best team but accidents and bad luck struck again. At that Daytona race 16 months ago, I watched him lead those last several laps as I had a kung-fu grip on a pillow in my room, thinking that maybe, just maybe, this could be the race of his life. It was the race of his life… he finished second again, and I fell to the floor with the air knocked out of my lungs. To be a Mark Martin fan, it’s similar to what being a Red Sox fan must have been like until the 2004 playoffs. In the back of your mind, you know something will happen. I don’t know how many fans understand how much Mark means to his fans, and the heartbreak his fans have gone through with him. Many times, it takes the man himself to keep us fans from going crazy.

Fast forward to this season’s race at Phoenix, which saw Mark lead a bunch of laps and appeared to be on his way to victory. What did Mark have to lose by staying out and gambling? He pitted from the lead, had the best car, so fuel mileage should have been on Tony Gibson’s mind. Yet, it didn’t happen, and surprise, Mark lost. The guarantee at Indianapolis is interesting. He qualified well at Pocono, yet seemed to fall back more and more during the race. DEI seems to be focusing on Truex and Menard at the moment, which is perfectly understandable. The prospect of Truex leaving would put one foot in the ground, I don’t see anyone tearing down the door to get into DEI the way guys would at Gibbs right now. In a certain sense, I think Mark may have to win at Indy to keep DEI relevant. Rumors swirl about the future of the Army sponsorship, given that the 01 has had limited sponsorship, and Bass Pro Shops could be leaving for Tony Stewart’s revamped Haas Racing.

I didn’t like the movie Groundhog Day. I hate recurring dreams. Most of all, I know deep down that Mark Martin won’t win the Brickyard this year. He’ll have a flat tire with 3 to go, he’ll get crashed out by a car 9 laps down, he’ll blow his engine on the white flag lap. The worst part? I’ll still be making him my pick to win. Some habits won’t go away.

Photo credit: BethAnne Heisler - ON PIT ROW 

Mike Helton’s much talked about meeting last Friday at MIS should go a long way toward keeping the weekend in wine country from turning into a Sunday of whine country.  Maybe. 

These Cup drivers just don’t like the new car at all.  No amount of muzzling is likely to change that any time soon.  I can’t decide if the underlying displeasure will be worse at Infineon or not.  Somebody probably needs to wreck someone, just as a diversion.

Or maybe NASCAR could just ask the drivers a question, like this one.

Dale Earnhardt Jr broke a NASCAR rule at the end of Sunday’s race at MIS, went unpunished and won the race. Do you have a problem with that?

Charlie:  Nope. I’ve been waiting for the NASCAR of the ’90s and early 2000’s to re-appear. That was the “charmed” NASCAR. The NASCAR that had Steve Park in a DEI car win the next race after Earnhardt Sr’s death. The same NASCAR that saw Dale Earnhardt Jr win in his return trip to the Daytona track that took his dad’s life. The NASCAR that had Richard Pettywin his 200 race at Daytona. It’s been a while since serendipity reined in the Cup Series. It was a feel good win, no doubt. I’m just surprised that it took so long.

Bruce:  Nah, I don’t have a problem with Jr. not getting tagged for the infraction, but now NASCAR has set a precedence by this lack of action and to the best of their ability and their image, they now need to adhere to similar deeds and actions in future races, with any driver. Stick with the “charmed” approach as you put it Charlie. That’s all I ask.

 TZ:  I don’t know, really. I mean, my take on pretty much anything involving the NASCAR rulebook is that it’s open for interpretation, because that’s how they’ve set it up. What does the rulebook actually state that the rule is, and what are the consequences? To me, it’s maybe no more than the whole issue with aggressive driving. They tend to issue a warning, and then if the driver doesn’t adhere, then
we get to see what happens. Now, in terms of this whole “charmed” deal, I’ve gotta be honest - I could care less. If the only reason that NASCAR let it slide was because Dale Junior was the benefactor, then yes, I have a problem with it.

That’s what we think, but I want to hear from you.  Let us know your thoughts by leaving feedback in the comment section.  Then head over to TZ’s Do You NASCAR? to see what we said about this topic…

Joe Gibbs Racing has stated that we may see Joey Logano in a Cup car by the end of ‘08. Logano’s proven himself to be a rare talent, but is 2008 too early?

Then check out Bruce’s NASCAR Bits for our take on this…

NASCAR has asked teams and drivers to tone down their complaints about the COT. Do you think NASCAR has a valid point?

I have been looking through the entry list for the Toyota Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway. I had plans to write something about road course ringers or some such.  Fact is, there aren’t that many ringers any more.  But there are an awful lot of experienced road racers driving Dodges this weekend in wine country.

Start with the Ganassi Racing trio of defending race winner Juan Pablo Montoya and teammates Dario Franchitti and Scott Pruett - strongest driver line-up in the race. Gillette- Everham has red hot Kasey Kahne with Patrick Carpentier - who will be good - and Elliott Sadler.  Penske’s Kurt Busch is strong here as is Ryan Newman and Sam Hornish Jr is experienced turning both ways.  The Labonte brothers will make Petty Enterprises a factor. Robby Gordon might be a favorite to win this thing.

No manufacturer has a stronger driver roster for Sonoma this year than Dodge.

Photo credit: Photo Credit: Mike Doran

There are, according to Google, twenty permanent casinos in the state of Michigan. For dice rollin’, all-in plays, they had nothing on Michigan International Speedway on Fathers Day.

The #88 team of Dale Earnhardt Jr and Tony Eury Jr did their seniors proud, parlaying a gutsy fuel strategy into Junior’s first win for Rick Hendrick and the National Guard car. It was - needless to say - a very popular win with the majority of the MIS crowd.

Rock star Bob Seger - another of Michigan’s favorite sons - has a song that seems to fit Dale Jr this morning.

Got to keep movin’, never gonna slow down
You can have your funky world, see you ’round
Cause I got to ramble (Ramblin’ man)
I got to gamble (gamblin’ man)
I got to ramble (ramblin’ man)
Lord I’m a ramblin’, gamblin’ man

Photo credit: Icon Sports Media, Inc.

Weather set the starting grid for the Fathers Day Lifelock 400 at Michigan International Speedway but it won’t have much to do with the finishing order.

Sunday is looking like a perfect Michigan summer day.  Happy Fathers Day to all you dads out there.  If you are reading this, chances are you plan to take in today’s Sprint Cup race from the Irish Hills.  Whether you’re watching on the tube, listening to the radio as you get the honey-do’s done or are at the track, enjoy the race.

Jamie McMurray’s  #26 will sport a special Fathers Day paint scheme - pictured here -  thanks to sponsor Crown Royal.  Here’s what Jamie had to say about what Fathers Day means to him.

“My dad has always played a huge part in my life and racing career, so to be able to say thanks to him on Father’s Day with Crown Royal is really special,” said McMurray. “Now if we can get the No. 26 to Victory Lane this weekend, I will be able to give both my dad and Crown Royal the perfect Father’s Day present.”

My own dad has been gone a long time but I think about him all the time.  I never know what will trigger those thoughts, but that #26 car will today, for sure.

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