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: 2010 Pepsi Max 400

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.

October 7, 2010 10:20 am UTC No Comments

Jimmie Johnson Chad Knause victory lane Dover

The Chase for the Sprint Cup continues this weekend at the Auto Club Speedway, as Sprint Cup Series teams prepare for the Pepsi Max 400.

It’s the fourth race of the Chase, and by this the point the championship contenders are beginning to separate themselves from the pretenders.

Most of the Chasers are still within 100 points of new leader Jimmie Johnson, but most will surely find it hard to top the four-time defending champion. Clint Bowyer, after losing his appeal on a car that failed to meet specifications after New Hampshire, has conceded the title fight, but the other 10 are still looking to do the impossible.

California thus marks a pivotal race in the Chase, as Cup drivers now look to stay close to Johnson now that he may have taken the points lead for good. Johnson aside, who looks good at California?

Kyle Busch isn’t the best active driver at California, with an average finish of 10.8. But eight top-10s in 12 starts and a victory show that he can get the job done. After battles with David Reutimann sabotaged his Kansas finish by knocking the car out of whack, he’ll have no choice but to do just that. That extra motivation is why he’s my pick this week.

As for a dark horse, look to Richard Petty Motorsports’ soon-to-be-departing lead driver Kasey Kahne. In 13 California starts, Kahne’s got a win and seven top-10s at the track. It’s only been bad luck at the track as of late that keeps him from having a better record.

Three more – again, staying away from Johnson, if only for a week:

Matt Kenseth began to inject a little life into his Chase hopes with a top-10 finish at Kansas. Even though he would be 12th in the Chase if not for the Bowyer penalty, Kenseth should be a threat at California – he’s finished in the top 10 there in 12 of 17 attempts. It’s a Roush Fenway thing – the team employs (or has employed) five of the 10 best active drivers at the track.

Kurt Busch has seen a little less success at California than his brother, with only eight top-10s in 16 starts at the track. But he, too, has visited victory lane at the track, albeit back in 2003. Still, his past six California starts have resulted in five finishes of 13th or better.

As for a left-field pick, consider Jamie McMurray and his 16.4 average finish at the track. McMurray was my dark horse pick at the track earlier this season. He struggled at the track with Roush, ironically, but has been considerably better at the track while driving for Chip Ganassi. In his first go-round with the team, between 2003 and 2005, his average finish was 7.2; earlier this year, he qualified on pole.

Let’s admit something, though, before we wrap up: Johnson is the ultimate pick here, as he is at about half the Chase tracks. From his 5.5 average finish and five wins, including four in his past six starts, you would think that his home track would also be his best. It’s actually not – it’s only his third best. Talk about a testament to how good this guy is.

Photo credit: Glenn Bure, OnPitRow.com

Fantasy Pick’Em: 2010 Heluva Good! Sour Cream Dips 400

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 10, 2010 12:55 pm UTC No Comments

Carl Edwards Pocono Raceway

For the third weekend in a row, the Cup cars face a grueling endurance event. First came the Coca-Cola 600, the longest event of the year. Last week gave us 500 long miles at Pocono. Now, drivers head to one of the fastest tracks on the circuit, where pole speeds frequently flirt with 190 miles per hour.

So who looks good for this weekend’s tilt?

My personal pick is going to be Jeff Gordon. Last week I took Denny Hamlin as my lead driver, and he rewarded me with a victory, so I’m looking for Gordon to continue my streak. He has two wins and 22 top-10s in 34 career Michigan starts, and is one of only two active drivers with an average Michigan start in the single digits. Last year he finished second in both Michigan races.

My dark horse for the weekend will be Bill Elliott. The Wood Brothers only run a limited schedule nowadays with factory Ford backing, but you can bet that they’ll be looking to impress at the home track of the American manufacturers. Elliott’s Michigan record isn’t too shabby, either – seven wins and 29 top-10s in 59 starts. Both are tops among active drivers.

Who else looks good at Michigan?

I hesitate offering up a Carl Edwards pick, because he’s burned me every time I’ve suggested him all year. He’s done very little to suggest that he’s still the same driver who won nine races in 2008. But Edwards has two wins and 10 top-10s in only 11 Michigan starts. His 6.1 average finish at the track is by far the best of any active driver, nearly four spots better than second-best Matt Kenseth.

Of course, this also makes Kenseth a viable Michigan pick, his last win coming at the track in 2006. Michigan is owner Jack Roush’s home track, and he always does his best to take a win at the track each year. Last year was the first since 2001 in which a Roush car didn’t take the checkers in a Michigan Cup event, and you can bet that the Cat in the Hat will do everything he can to change that.

Finally, it’s time for Junior Nation to get on its feet, because Dale Jr. is my final pick of the weekend. Sure, his one win at the track (and only win in the No. 88) came on fuel mileage, but he has led at least one lap in eight of the last nine Michigan events. In that span, he has all four of his career top fives at the track, and has completed 1734 of a possible 1735 laps. Clearly he can take a car to the front and keep it in the hunt.

Fantasy Pick’Em: 2010 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 15, 2010 3:13 pm UTC No Comments

This weekend’s Samsung Mobile 500 at Texas Motor Speedway will be the eighth race of this year’s Sprint Cup Series season. Last year, Jeff Gordon scored his lone win of the season in this race, leading a race-high 105 laps, including the last 28.

Before anything else, though, I’d like to comment on what a whirlwind of a week this has been as far as the silly season goes. Kasey Kahne to Hendrick in 2012, in a Jamie McMurray-esque situation? Two of the lower-tier teams changing drivers? Kelly Bires and John Wes Townley out of rides? Silly season keeps happening earlier and earlier every year, and I think NASCAR needs to look into implementing some restrictions on signings like Kahne’s. I understand that the drivers and teams are independent contractors, but how would Colts fans feel if Peyton Manning signed with the Titans for the 2012 season before even completing this year or the next?

Without further ado, and before I start ranting uncontrollably about the Kahne signing, let’s just go to the fantasy picks and call it a day.

My headlining pick for the weekend is Tony Stewart. Of active drivers, Smoke is the fourth-best at Texas, with one win and 10 top-10s in 16 starts. The win came in the fall of 2006, when he led 278 of the race’s 339 laps. Smoke also has to be buoyed by teammate Ryan Newman’s win last weekend at Phoenix, a great step towards asserting that Stewart-Haas Racing won’t fall victim to a sophomore slump in 2010.

As for a dark horse, I’m going to pick Kahne. Yes, he has been very mediocre at Texas, with only one win and two top-10s in 11 starts, but something tells me that his Richard Petty Motorsports team is going to go all out this weekend and in the next few weeks to try and prove that they can run up front, not only for Kahne’s potential replacements, but maybe even to keep him in the seat for 2011.

Okay, we’ve got three more picks to go. Is it fair enough for me to invoke Texas hold ‘em and call this the fantasy “flop”? (Heaven knows a lot of my picks tend to do so on raceday.)

The top active driver statistically at Texas is Matt Kenseth, with an average finish of 9.3. No other driver has a single-digit average finish at Texas, not even the great Jimmie Johnson. Kenseth has not won at Texas since 2002, but has led at least one lap in eight of the last ten Texas races. Over that span, his worst finish is 18th, with six top fives (including three runner-up finishes) and lead-lap finishes in all ten starts.

Kurt Busch is somewhat of a risky pick, but he did win the last time the Cup cars went to Texas. Granted, he only has one Texas DNF, but he hasn’t been as consistently up front at the track throughout his career as guys like Kenseth and Johnson. In fact, his only other top five finish came in his Texas debut, in the spring of 2001, when he finished fourth.

Finally, Jeff Burton has only recently asserted himself as a Texas contender, but he’s almost always been towards the front since joining Richard Childress Racing. He only led one lap in the one Texas race he won, but since 2006 he’s finished in the top 10 six out of eight times.

Fantasy Pick’Em: 2010 Auto Club 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.

February 18, 2010 12:27 am UTC 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.