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Fantasy Pick’Em: 2010 Shelby American

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

If OnPitRow.com was a NASCAR team, I’d be the development driver of the bunch. In the same way that young hotshots like Joey Logano have been driving since they were in grade school, I’ve been following and writing about all forms of motorsports since I was barely old enough to talk.

February 25, 2010 1:55 am CST 2 Comments

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Two races down, 34 to go as the Sprint Cup Series heads to Las Vegas Motor Speedway for this year’s Shelby American. Kyle Busch will attempt to defend his 2009 race win after two consecutive 14th place finishes to start the year.

Jimmie Johnson won three consecutive Vegas races from 2005-07, and won last week in California. He was the best of my five suggestions last week. My lead pick, Matt Kenseth, had a seventh-place run, while my dark horse, David Ragan, was 23rd. Of my other picks, Busch was 14th, and polesitter Jamie McMurray wound up 17th. All in all, it was a much better day than Daytona, and everybody was in the top 25, so the day wasn’t a disaster.

I know it’s an easy pick, but can you fault me for taking Johnson this weekend? It somehow feels okay to me because of his off and on nature at Vegas. In eight starts at the track, he has three wins, but only one other top-10. The past two years he hasn’t finished in the top 20, although he led the most laps in last year’s event before a pit road mistake took him off the lead lap.

It’s hard to come up with a true dark horse for Vegas. The top drivers in the series usually do well, and the lesser teams don’t, according to the record books. But Bobby Labonte may be as close as it gets. He was fifth last year for the Hall of Fame Racing team that no longer runs, and he may be able to pull some similar magic for TRG Motorsports this weekend. He’s got a decent Vegas record, with an average finish of 15.7 in 12 starts, two poles, and five top-10s, with four of those finishes fifth or better.

The other three drivers I’m picking, as per tradition:

Jeff Burton has the best average finish of anybody at Vegas, and even the fact that he’s started every race at the track hasn’t weighed that down. He’s the only driver with an average finish in the single digits (9.8), and he won this race in 1999 and 2000. Save a disaster in 2001, he’s never finished worse than 17th.

Kyle Busch runs at a torrid pace at his home track. His average start of 7.7 is only second to brother Kurt, at least for drivers with multiple Vegas starts, but Rowdy is significantly better than his big brother in average finish, by more than nine places. As I’ve already mentioned, he won this race last year. Since joining Sprint Cup full-time, his worst Vegas finish is 11th. Talk about stepping up for the home crowd.

Finally, Denny Hamlin completes my horrible cop-out of picking the drivers with the top four average finishes at Vegas. I know, I know. But Hamlin is outside the top 20 in points – I feel like I should get some leeway there. He also hasn’t led any laps at Vegas in his career, which would make a victory somewhat of an upset, right? He qualifies mid-pack (average start 23.5), but has an average finish of 11.0, the biggest positive difference for any active driver, meaning if he wins, he’ll have earned it by passing a lot of cars and maintaining the lead.

Filed under: Bobby Labonte, Denny Hamlin, Jeff Burton, Kyle Busch, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, jimmie johnson

Tagged with: Bobby Labonte, Denny Hamlin, Jeff Burton, jimmie johnson, Kyle Busch, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Shelby American

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Fantasy Pick’Em: 2010 Auto Club 500

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

February 18, 2010 12:27 am CST No Comments

One race down, 35 to go, as the Sprint Cup Series heads to Auto Club Speedway for the Auto Club 500. Jamie McMurray will look to repeat Matt Kenseth’s 2009 feat of sweeping the first two races of the season, at a track where he has an average finish of 16.4. California is McMurray’s fifth best track of those on the current schedule.

My pick for Daytona, Tony Stewart, finished 22nd, leaving me with 97 points on the weekend. My dark horse, John Andretti, slapped the wall and ended up 38th. As for my other three suggestions, only Dale Earnhardt Jr. had a strong run, finishing second; Mark Martin faltered to finish 12th and Marcos Ambrose blew a motor after 79 laps to wind up 41st. Not a great start to my year, but that’s Daytona.

If you’re looking for a sure bet at California, don’t just go by who won the 500; since Fontana assumed the second race of the season in 2005, only Kenseth has done the double. Jimmie Johnson finished second at the track in 2006, but in none of the other cases has the Daytona winner finished better than double digits. Daytona winners’ average finish at California over the past five years is an even 12, mostly brought up by those two.

The winners at California usually come from the middle of the pack at Daytona. Ignoring Kenseth’s win last year, the average finish of California winners at Daytona between 2005 and 2008 was 21.5.

Regardless of all that, my pick for California is Matt Kenseth. This one seems like an easy call. Roush Fenway Racing Fords have won the past five spring races at California, as well as 10 of 19 races at the track overall. Kenseth won this race in 2006, 2007, and last year. His average finish of 9.2 is third best among active drivers. A victory could propel Kenseth into the points lead.

As for a dark horse, I’m picking David Ragan. We can call him a dark horse, right? He still hasn’t won a Sprint Cup race, and he had a generally horrible season in 2009. But his seventh place in the fall California race was his second best finish of 2009. He’s also never failed to finish below 17th at the track, which is either a really good omen for Sunday or a hint that he’s overdue for a bad finish.

Per tradition, three other suggestions:

Jimmie Johnson’s an easy pick. You don’t just stumble into a 5.8 average finish in the Sprint Cup Series at any given track – you’ve gotta be good. Johnson’s obviously good, as his four Sprint Cups attest to. He’s even better at California, with no finishes worse than 16th, no DNFs, zero finishes off of the lead lap, and at least 31 laps led in the past six races at his home track. I only pick against him because none of his four wins at the track came in February.

Kyle Busch is a solid, yet interesting, choice if you’re looking to spice things up. He’s not as easy of a pick as the Roush or Hendrick drivers, but he did have a streak of eight California top-10s before last fall’s 24th-place finish, and not even Jimmie Johnson (six and counting) can say that.

I’m going to give Jamie McMurray the benefit of the doubt and my final pick. The past four years have been pretty abysmal for the Daytona 500 winner, especially at California, where a sixth place finish in his second race with Roush was the lone high point; since then, he’s never been better than 16th at the track. But McMurray was never worse than 15th when he drove for Chip Ganassi, his current owner, with an average finish of 7.2 in five starts between 2003 and 2005.

Filed under: Auto Club Speedway, David Ragan, Jamie McMurray, Kyle Busch, Matt Kenseth, One and Done NASCAR Fantasy Racing, jimmie johnson

Tagged with: Auto Club 500, Auto Club Speedway, David Ragan, Fantasy Pick'Em, Jamie McMurray, jimmie johnson, Kyle Busch, Matt Kenseth

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Kyle Busch Motorsports: Huge Risk, Huge Reward?

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

December 13, 2009 11:16 am CST No Comments

On Friday, Kyle Busch finally announced what those of us in the know had been expecting for the past few weeks – that he would purchase the Camping World Truck Series equipment of Xpress Motorsports to form his own team, Kyle Busch Motorsports.

We weren’t shocked when he announced that Miccosukee Gaming, his sponsor at Billy Ballew Motorsports for the past couple of years, would make the transition with him, or that Brian Ickler, his protégé, would run his truck in non-companion events. We already knew that Rick Ren had left 2009 champion Ron Hornaday’s team to manage Rowdy’s operation in the Mooresville shop.

What we didn’t know, however, was that Tayler Malsam, last of Randy Moss Motorsports, would join the new team in a No. 56 truck sponsored by ActivWater. We also didn’t know that the presumptive deal for Johnny Benson, the series’ 2008 champion, had not yet been signed.

But whether Benson gets a deal or not – and seeing as he’s been the only constant name in the rumor mill for KBM, and he’s guaranteed to make races based on his champion’s provisional, he probably will – Kyle Busch has already assembled a team capable of winning races and championships. The question is, however, whether or not the team will be able to realize that potential.

The only other driver to attempt to run his own team this early in his career was Kevin Harvick, and that operation started in earnest compared to Busch’s plans for three trucks. Harvick started his team with a limited schedule in 2002, where he and Rick Carelli combined for one win and five top-10s in six starts. He utilized a similar plan in 2003, with four drivers sharing the limited-schedule truck.

It wasn’t until 2004 that Harvick began running a full-time truck, as Matt Crafton took the reins of the No. 6 Goodwrench Chevrolet. Despite finishing fifth in points, he was not retained for the following year. Harvick also entered Tony Stewart in two Busch Series races that year, in preparation for a full-time car for Stewart and Tony Raines in 2005.

Slowly but surely, Harvick built his team, adding Hornaday in 2005 after he was dropped from the Busch car of Richard Childress Racing, Harvick’s Cup team. Hornaday has never finished worse than seventh in Truck points in a KHI vehicle, winning championships in 2007 and 2009. In 2006, KHI ran two full-time Busch cars as its owner won the series title, although he mostly drove RCR cars that year. Harvick has run more Nationwide races in his own cars every year, winning in his own equipment for the first time in 2009 and potentially running for the championship in 2010.

Of course, that’s not to say that KHI hasn’t had its stumbles. The Burney Lamar experiment did not work well in 2006, as he only had three top-10s in 29 Busch starts. Cale Gale did little to distinguish himself in KHI cars in 2007 and 2008, and no longer drives for the team. Expanding to two trucks in 2008 was unsuccessful too, as former champion Jack Sprague failed to win a race and only had nine top-10s in 20 starts, lagging far behind Hornaday’s six wins and 18 top-10s that year.

For the most part, however, Harvick’s team has been a success, and a big part of it is because he started off slowly, rarely going in over his head with his team. They raced when they had the proper funding and infrastructure to do so, and it paid off by turning KHI into the premier non-Cup team in the Nationwide and Truck series. Busch, however, is taking the opposite philosophy, hitting hard and early with a multi-truck team.

An example of which Busch should be wary is Michael Waltrip Racing, which went into Cup way beyond its capabilities in 2007. The team entered three cars that year as the flagship team in Toyota’s entry into Cup racing. Waltrip himself spent the first third of the season 27 points behind the continent of Africa, having accrued 73 points in Daytona, a 100-point penalty for loading his Toyota with jet fuel, and a streak of a dozen DNQs afterwards. Young gun David Reutimann and former champion Dale Jarrett weren’t much better. Busch, Malsam, and Benson could easily correspond to Waltrip, Reutimann, and Jarrett if things start going wrong early.

What Busch does have going for him, however, is that Toyota has never been as abysmal in the Truck series as it was in its first year of Cup racing. Unlike Waltrip, who used Harvick’s philosophy of building everything from scratch (albeit on a much grander scale), Busch is inheriting an existing team and infrastructure, one which has won races and a championship in the past, and is entering a much less competitive series. Also unlike Waltrip, Busch has been no slouch in the series he’s entering, having won plenty of Truck races over the past few years.

Regardless of how the 2010 season actually plays out for Kyle Busch Motorsports, the Camping World Truck Series will be far more interesting for its inception. We could see one of the most successful debut years in motorsports history, on par with Brawn GP in F1 in 2009, with the new team doing everything right and finding great success. Of course, we could also see a catastrophic beginning akin to Waltrip’s first year as a Cup series owner, with the team suffering a handful of setbacks, missing numerous races, and generally disappointing all year.

I’m predicting something close to the former, but unlike the Cup series, it’s a little harder to predict what happens in trucks.

Filed under: Kyle Busch

Tagged with: Kyle Busch, Kyle Busch Motorsports

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Kyle Busch a Gallon Short at Texas

by Steve Wronkowicz

I am co-host of the syndicated radio show: ON PIT ROW. Charlie likes to call me an "idiot". I'm not an "idiot"; I just prefer not to let the facts get in the way of my opinions.

November 8, 2009 10:59 pm CST 2 Comments

In a season that started so promising for Kyle Busch; the thought of saving some face, after not making The Chase was a real possibility if he could pull off the triple at Texas.

Rowdy won the first two races this weekend at The Great American Speedway; dominating both the Camping World Truck race on Friday and the Nationwide race on Saturday. He set himself up to do something that has never been done before in NASCAR. It seems almost impossible to think that the feat has never been done, but Kyle had the fans believing that it would happen on this warm November day.

Leading 232 of the 334 laps at times it looked the the days before; Busch would have his way with the rest of the field. He was toying with the other competitors at times and it seemed that victory was imminent until The Dickies 500 turned into a fuel mileage race and Rowdy wasn’t going to have enough. “Three laps short” was the call to Rowdy over the radio and for the want of about a gallon of racing fuel went his trip to the record books.

The driver who was there to pick up the win was the other Busch; Kurt who took his Miller Lite Dodge to the win by running the last 120 laps on only two stops for fuel. He has this to say about racing his brother for the win:

It’s bittersweet to beat Kyle. He was going for the sweep. We took it away from him. I don’t think he could have picked a better driver to lose to tonight. So it’s fun. It’s really fun. We race each other to the bone, but we pat each other on the back at the end of the day.

So Kyle will have to wait to have a shot to take the triple again. That, and only that could be what turns a season of high hopes and disappointment into something to remember.

Photo credit: BethAnne Heisler/ON PIT ROW

Filed under: Kurt Busch, Kyle Busch, Texas Motor Speedway

Tagged with: Add new tag, Kurt Busch, Kyle Busch, Texas Motor Speedway

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Will a New Crew Chief Bring Kyle Busch to the Promised Land?

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

October 27, 2009 6:44 pm CDT No Comments

Joe Gibbs Racing announced today that Dave Rogers, a championship-winning crew chief in the Nationwide Series, will be paired with Kyle Busch for the final four races of this year’s Sprint Cup Series schedule.

The move, which has been rumored for a couple of days now, is designed to make the No. 18 team stronger for the rest of this season and beyond.

Rogers replaces Steve Addington, who has been the crew chief of the 18 car since 2005. In 67 races together, Busch and Addington have 12 wins and 32 top-10s, but have failed to impress down the stretch both this year and in 2008, faltering in the Chase last year and failing to make it altogether this year.

Rogers, on the other hand, crew chiefed the No. 20 in the Nationwide Series to an owners’ points championship last year, as Busch, Denny Hamlin, Tony Stewart, and Joey Logano combined for nine wins in 2008. The team has five wins this season as well, with Logano, Hamlin, and Brad Coleman, among others, behind the wheel.

It’s unclear whether this move is more about Rogers or Addington. Sure, the Nationwide equipment at Gibbs is probably the best in the series, and to that end, by winning all of those races, Rogers is just doing his job. But to have such an assortment of drivers sharing the car, talented as they all are, is difficult for a crew chief. No two drivers are ever going to be exactly alike, and the fact that his team can run so well with every single one of them is a testament to Rogers’ skill atop the pit box as well.

Addington, on the other hand, never did anything to elevate Busch; neither, for that matter, did he help any of the other drivers to run the 18 car while he was leading it. He took over the car in 2005; that year, Bobby Labonte had his worst-ever season (up to that point) in the Cup series, and left the team for Petty Enterprises at the end of the year. J.J. Yeley did nothing to impress in 2006 or 2007, save a second-place finish in the 2007 Coca-Cola 600.

Busch joined JGR in 2008 with a chip on his shoulder, having been ousted from Hendrick Motorsports in favor of Dale Earnhardt Jr., and the team was entering its first year as the de facto lead Toyota team. The fact that they performed so well in the first 26 races of last year was more of a testament to the right combination of driver and horsepower at the right time than anything else; the car was leading laps and contending for wins week in and week out.

But to sustain that success through the Chase, especially with a driver as terse as Busch, the crew chief has to keep his driver calm when the team encounters problems. Whatever it was that Addington was doing during last year’s playoff collapse and this year’s free-fall out of the playoffs, it wasn’t working. It seems apparent at this point that Steve Addington needed Kyle Busch more than Kyle Busch needed Steve Addington; the fact that all 12 of Addington’s Sprint Cup wins came with Busch behind the wheel is a telling statistic.

Rogers’ strong Nationwide record and past experience working with Busch bode well for improvement in 2010. He’s certainly earned his promotion. But keeping the 18 team from falling victim to the same challenges that it succumbed to under the leadership of Addington will be his strongest challenge yet.

Filed under: Joe Gibbs Racing, Kyle Busch, NASCAR

Tagged with: crew chief changes, Dave Rogers, Joe Gibbs Racing, Kyle Busch, Steve Addington

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Brian Vickers Cuts Down The Shrub

by Steve Wronkowicz

I am co-host of the syndicated radio show: ON PIT ROW. Charlie likes to call me an "idiot". I'm not an "idiot"; I just prefer not to let the facts get in the way of my opinions.

September 14, 2009 7:27 pm CDT 1 Comment

The Chase to the Sprint Cup field has been set.

Kyle Busch didn’t make it and his 2009 rival Brian Vickers did. The race at Richmond was a microcosm of the 2009 season for Busch. He ran well early in the season; seeing him win four races. While four wins was enough to get veteran Mark Martin into The Chase, Busch struggled through the middle stretches of the season.

Busch ran well at Richmond; even better than Vickers, but when all was said and done the fifth place finish wasn’t a large enough margin of victory over Vickers to beat him for the final Chase spot. Vickers needed only a seventh place finish to knock Matt Kenseth from the Chase and keep Busch at bay.

Busch has won races this year–four of them–and while he cannot win a championship in 2009 don’t count him out to win more races. Typically drivers in the chase have won more often than those not in the chase. If Kyle keeps his head into the final ten races of the season, he should have no problem racking up a few more victories. Winning races hasn’t been a problem this season; it has been the poor finishes other than wins that sealed the fate for the m&m’s team.

This leads us to this week’s BUZZ ON PIT ROW:

What happened to the adage that winning races will take care of winning championships?

Vickers and the Red Bull Team were able to make the most of every opportunity to rack up points. Sometimes getting extra points when needed after adversity struck. That is what making the Chase is all about. No matter how NASCAR adjusts the process of making the Chase, it is still a points battle. Just ask the Shrub.

Let us know what you think and we could award you a Kevin Harvick bobblehead, if you are the “Shell–Fuel My Passion Call of the Day.“ Listen live to ON PIT ROW from 5-7pm ET every Tuesday.

photo credit: Icon Sports Media

Filed under: Chase for the Cup, Juan Pablo Montoya, Kyle Busch, NASCAR, NASCAR & the Media, On Pit Row The Fastest Two Hours on Radio

Tagged with: Kyle Busch, Mark Martin, Matt Kenseth

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