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Fantasy Pick’Em: 2011 Goody’s Fast Relief 500

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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.

March 30, 2011 1:46 pm UTC No Comments

That’s right – Fantasy Pick’Em is back.

After getting my butt thoroughly kicked by school for the past six weeks – you know, to perfectly coincide with racing season – I’m feeling a bit like Rocky at the end of every Rocky movie – brains turned to mush, black eyes, bruises everywhere, generally in pain. But I like to think I’ve fought through the worst, and after making some savvy picks early in the season (and yes, I did call Trevor Bayne to win the Daytona 500), I’m back to ruin my reputation and good luck for the rest of the year.

So, three picks at Martinsville – but who?

Jeff Gordon: I saw Bob Pockrass make this pick on Twitter earlier today, saying he liked the combination of Gordon and Alan Gustafson at Martinsville. I can’t say I disagree. You only need look at the statistics to realize that Gordon was ripping off wins at Martinsville before Jimmie Johnson and Denny Hamlin started taking over at the track. Martinsville is a track where both driver and crew chief need to effectively manage the car, and I think Gustafson is as trustworthy as any crew chief in that department.

Denny Hamlin: After the engine woes at Joe Gibbs Racing over the past few weeks, you’d think this would be a counter-intuitive pick. I mean, the problem hasn’t been solved yet, and it won’t be considered as much until we stop seeing engine failures across the board. But Hamlin is a Virginia native and a Martinsville standout, and the folks at JGR are too good to stay down for long. This could very easily be the weekend where they begin to solve the problem.

Joey Logano: Wait, two Gibbs cars? Am I crazy? Maybe a little. (Remember. College. No sleep. Bad dieting. So on and so forth.) But consider the following – of active drivers at Martinsville, Logano has the fourth-best average finish, a 13.0, and a driver rating of 81.0, better than the ratings of four of the current top 12 drivers in points. And at 31st in owners points, the No. 20 team can’t afford to spend much more time in the back of the pack.

Filed under: Denny Hamlin, Jeff Gordon, Joey Logano, Martinsville Speedway, NASCAR Fantasy Gaming 

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New Points System Needs Qualifying Bonus Points

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

I'm the former blogger of The Catfish Show NASCAR Blog and a contributor to On Pit Row. Follow me on Twitter: @mattmercer

February 9, 2011 3:02 pm UTC 1 Comment

I watched NASCAR Now yesterday and they had an interview with Denny Hamlin.

Over the course of the interview, Denny was asked what he thought he needed to do in order to defeat Jimmie Johnson and win a Championship. His first response was to be a little more aggressive during the early part of the Chase, since he did leave some points on the table. It’s his second response that screams to making this new points system better – Denny said he wanted to qualify better.

Now, I’ve been a proponent for years of awarding qualifying points, even if its just 1 point. Other racing leagues do it and it makes the weekend better. I’m sure most longtime fans of the sport remember when qualifying was fun, when it was important, when you wanted to go to the track Friday, when the drivers wanted to qualify well. For several years now, qualifying is treated more like a glorified practice run than a chance to start near the front of the field and get some publicity for his team and sponsors going into the race.

I really don’t see a downside to awarding 1 point for winning the pole. Guys will work harder to get that spot, and imagine Chase race weekends – all 12 guys going for it because every point counts. Starting on the pole means you’ve got a great shot at leading a lap early on and set the tone for the rest of the race. Come on, how can you not want that if you’re NASCAR? Let’s make the Gatorade Duels more fun and award the Daytona 500 polesitter 2 points, outside the front row 1 point, and each Duel winner 1 point. The Super Bowl of NASCAR just got a lot more fun.

These are the kind of changes that would earn some fans back and make new ones. The best of the best proving it on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Let’s make it happen.

Photo credit: Icon Sports Media, Inc

Filed under: Daytona 500, Denny Hamlin, NASCAR 

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Fantasy Pick’Em: 2010 Ford 400

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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.

November 18, 2010 4:26 pm UTC No Comments

This is it, folks. The last race of the 2010 Sprint Cup Series season. The Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. The race for all the marbles in the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

Three drivers have a shot at the title. Denny Hamlin holds a 15-point lead over four-time defending champion Jimmie Johnson. Meanwhile, Kevin Harvick, who would have clinched the title under the old points format last week at Phoenix, sits in third, a mere 46 back.

Any of them could win the championship. In effect, it comes down to a win. Hamlin can clinch outright by winning the race. Johnson can do so by winning the race and leading the most laps. Harvick, on the other hand, needs a little more help – and although Johnson and Hamlin can still be beaten with top-10 finishes, the math gets tricky.

It’s the closest Chase title race since its inaugural season in 2004. So let’s forget the normal fantasy stuff this week, and switch it up a bit. We care about three drivers and three drivers only right now. And one of them will be your Sprint Cup champion come Sunday. But who?

Hamlin, of course, controls his own destiny. As we’ve said, if he wins the race, the title is his, no matter what. And Hamlin has won at this track before – last year, in fact, making him the only title contender with a Homestead win. At the beginning of the Chase, he talked about simply making it to the end, because the last few races are when the No. 11 team heats up, and it’s shown in their performance. They’re the best team at the track right now.

But being good and being lucky are two different things, and Hamlin was not lucky last week at Phoenix. Having to pit for fuel very late in the race bounced him back to 12th. While it didn’t slaughter his points lead entirely, it did weaken it severely, and the pressure is on him.

Meanwhile, Johnson must be somewhat refreshed by his new position as the pressuring driver. With Hamlin thrown off by last week’s setback, he and Chad Knaus can try to mess with their key championship rivals on track. After all, they’ve done this before. Four times, to be precise. In a row. What’s a fifth?

Well, none of those previous four were come-from-behind wins. In fact, nobody’s ever come from behind in the Chase to win without holding the points lead with two races to go. It hasn’t been done in Cup since 1992, when Alan Kulwicki did it. And Johnson, with his 12.7 average finish, is actually the worst of the three title contenders at Homestead. While he usually finishes solidly at the track, he’s never capped off any of his title runs there with a win.

So, given all that, I’m going to take the road less traveled and pick Harvick to win the title.

Yup.

If you’ve followed my column all Chase, you’d know that I pick a “lead” driver every week, and I’ve been saving Harvick for this very weekend anyway. With four top-fives in nine starts, he has the best average finish of the title contenders at the track, an 8.4. He’s finished second and third the past two years at Homestead, so he knows what he’s doing.

And I’m going to put my faith in karma – that the driver who dominated the regular season, who should have a 200-plus points lead and his first Cup championship right now, will find a way to get it done – and get a little lucky this weekend.

Game on, gentlemen. It should be a fun show.

Filed under: Homestead-Miami Speedway, One and Done NASCAR Fantasy Racing 

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Fantasy Pick’Em: 2010 Kobalt Tools 500

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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.

November 11, 2010 12:09 pm UTC No Comments

The penultimate round of this year’s Sprint Cup Series season comes at Phoenix International Raceway. The Kobalt Tools 500 comes after a wild race at Texas that saw one Chaser flip off an official, two mild-mannered Chasers get into a fight, and Jimmie Johnson somehow lose the points lead to a determined Denny Hamlin.

Lucky for Johnson that Phoenix is up next. While Hamlin has a top five finish in half of his career Phoenix starts, Johnson has an eye-popping 4.9 average finish at the track. It’s augmented by 12 top-10s, and four wins (including the win in this race last year), in 14 starts. It’s one of the best records ever for any given driver at any particular track.

The statistics seem to say that Phoenix is a Hendrick Motorsports track, as the top three active drivers are Johnson, Mark Martin, and Jeff Gordon. So, for once in the Chase, I’m going to go on a limb and pick a non-Chase driver as my lead pick, seeing as I’ve already picked Johnson and Gordon in the past eight weeks, and both may be negatively affected by their crew swap this weekend.

That’s right – Martin’s my fantasy pick for the weekend. It’s really not hard to bet against a guy who hasn’t finished outside the top 20 at a track since his debut there, and that’s the case with Martin. In particular, he hasn’t finished worse than fourth at the track with Hendrick, winning in the spring race last year.

Martin has also picked it up in the Chase, finishing no worse than 14th since Dover and scoring a runner-up finish at Martinsville. Last week’s race at Texas yielded a third-place finish. The team has momentum on its side.

My second pick of the weekend is Jeff Burton, another ex-Jack Roush driver whose stock has been pretty high at Phoenix even after leaving the flagship Ford stable. He had a 25th place finish at the track in the spring, but before that, you would have had to go all the way back to 1996 to find a Burton finish outside the top 15.

Of course, Burton’s been in the news recently for a different reason – putting Gordon in the catchfence while under caution last week and then getting fought afterwards. It made for great TV, but it’s not exactly the kind of thing that gives a guy momentum heading into the final two races of the season.

My third and final pick of the week – the dark horse selection – is, after much deliberation, Juan Pablo Montoya. Montoya’s Phoenix debut ended in an auspicious 33rd place run, and he struggled at the track early in his career, contributing to a middling 17.1 average finish in seven starts.

But in his past two runs, Montoya’s made great strides. This time last year, he placed eighth. In the spring of this year, he led 104 laps, including most of the middle of the race, to finish a solid fifth. No, he doesn’t dominate the track like Johnson, but would he really be a dark horse then?

Filed under: One and Done NASCAR Fantasy Racing, Phoenix International Raceway 

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Fantasy Pick’Em: 2010 AAA Texas 500

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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.

November 4, 2010 4:16 pm UTC No Comments

Tony Stewart practicing at Pocono

Tony Stewart practicing at Pocono

The Sprint Cup Series comes down to the final three races of the 2010 season with this weekend’s visit to Texas Motor Speedway. The AAA Texas 500 will mark the final race on a cookie-cutter 1.5-mile tri-oval this year, as the final two races take place at Phoenix and Homestead, respectively.

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?

Filed under: One and Done NASCAR Fantasy Racing, Texas Motor Speedway 

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Fantasy Pick’Em: 2010 Tums Fast Relief 500

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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.

October 21, 2010 12:34 pm UTC No Comments

Martinsville Speedway is the site of this weekend’s Sprint Cup Series battle. The Tums Fast Relief 500 will open the second half of the Chase for the Sprint Cup, as three drivers – Jimmie Johnson, Denny Hamlin, and Kevin Harvick – remain the only viable candidates for the championship right now.

We’re due for a great battle this weekend, as Johnson and Hamlin are the two best active drivers at Martinsville. They’ve split the last eight races at the track among them, with Johnson holding a five to three advantage but Hamlin taking the last two.

But of course, if you’ve been reading, I’m not allowed to make either of them my lead pick this weekend. I took Hamlin at Loudon (second place finish) and Johnson last week at Charlotte (a third place run). So who else can I rely on this weekend?

Thank heaven there’s a third pick that’s just as viable. Jeff Gordon was the original Martinsville superstar, with seven wins and 29 top-10s in 35 career starts there thus far. His average finish is an impeccable 6.7. He’s led at least 36 laps in his past eight Martinsville starts, and has led at least one circuit in 27 of those events. That’s about as reliable as it gets.

As for a dark horse, I’m looking at Ryan Newman. Newman was never that strong a Martinsville driver during his years at Penske Racing, but he’s never finished worse than seventh at the track with Stewart-Haas Racing. Last year, he led 23 laps in this race from the pole. Earlier this year, he ran a respectable fourth.

Three more, even though two are obvious:

Johnson is basically an improved version of his mentor. He’s got 16 top-10s in 17 starts to go along with those five wins. In eight of the last nine races at the track, he’s led 42 laps or more, the lone exception coming this spring.

Hamlin’s a Virginia native that always has the motivation to do well in his home state. In 10 races, he has three wins, seven top five runs, and nine top-10s. In each of the past three Martinsville events, he’s led at least 172 laps. This is Hamlin’s best chance to reclaim the Chase points lead – even though it’s also his rival’s best track, Hamlin outscored Johnson by 57 points last time at Martinsville. The same occurrence this time would give him the lead into next week’s unpredictable race at Talladega.

Finally, think about picking up Kasey Kahne for this weekend. No, he’s not exactly a Martinsville superstar, and never has been. But now that he’s free from Richard Petty Motorsports, don’t be surprised if Red Bull’s newest driver pulls something out to try and stick it to his former team.

Filed under: Martinsville Speedway, One and Done NASCAR Fantasy Racing 

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