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Fantasy Pick’Em: Toyota/Save Mart 350

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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 25, 2011 11:08 am UTC 1 Comment

#7 Robby Gordon in garage Michigan International Speedway heisler 10

#7 Robby Gordon in garage Michigan International Speedway heisler 10

Sorry about missing last week’s column, folks. Let’s just say that when your team (GO BRUINS!!!) wins its first Stanley Cup in 39 years, you may or may not take a little license to enjoy yourself in the aftermath. No, it wasn’t quite the $156,679.74 bar tab that they allegedly piled on at Foxwoods, but it sure was a fun time.

And now, like Bradley Cooper in The Hangover: Part 2, I wake up in an unfamiliar land with my head throbbing, surrounded by people I don’t know. Wait, that happens twice a year anyway, whenever we go to the two road courses on the schedule – Infineon Raceway and Watkins Glen International, respectively. But we’re in Infineon this week.

So, in the spirit of making wholly uninteresting picks as usual, let’s go with the top three road course drivers in Sprint Cup and call it a day, shall we? I need to go get an ice pack for this headache.

Robby Gordon: Look, this dude is due in the NAS-karma department. They penalize him every year, he runs into horrendous luck on the road courses despite owning everybody on the speed charts, and doesn’t even really have sponsorship anymore besides his own energy drink. You don’t think the little guy is due for another big win? It happened to Trevor Bayne and Regan Smith this year, there’s no reason it couldn’t happen to Robby.

Marcos Ambrose: Another guy who could use some good mojo after last year’s embarrassment while in the lead. Whoever thought it would be a good idea to shut the engine off while the car was going uphill probably took a long walk of shame that time around, but not this year. Marcos has a new team and a $1 million charity initiative – he’s going to want to win this race as bad as anyone.

Juan Pablo Montoya: If you don’t know Montoya’s career accomplishments by now, I can’t help you, because I’m sure they’ve been dispensed at least 100 times by now this weekend. Let’s just put it this way. This was the first Sprint Cup race that Montoya ever won, back in his 2007 rookie season, when he was still adjusting to stock cars. There’s no reason he can’t win it again.

Filed under: Infineon Raceway, Juan Pablo Montoya, Marcos Ambrose, NASCAR, NASCAR Fantasy Gaming, road course ringers, Robby Gordon 

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Kevin Conway Needs Help from His Sponsor

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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 8, 2011 8:01 am UTC No Comments

The first three weeks of the NASCAR season couldn’t have gotten off to a better start.

The stories that have come from this early season have been all that NASCAR could have hoped for.  From twenty-year-old Trevor Bayne winning the “Super Bowl of Stock Car Racing” to a resurgence by veteran Jeff Gordon the first two weeks were storybookesque.

As week three headed to Sin City and all that Las Vegas has to offer it became apparant that NASCAR may just have pulled out of the malaise that it had been stuck in for the past three years.  TV ratings are up for the race broadcasts and more importantly; non-main stream media has again found NASCAR’s personalities interesting.

To add even more excitement to the mix; Robby Gordon and Kevin Conway have a dust-up in the garage over monies owed from each party to the other, resulting in Conway filing a police report against Gordon.  Kevin Conway’s sponsor Extenze supposedly owes Gordon money while Gordon supposedly owes Conway money.  This is never a good situation unless you are the type that love reality TV.  The Conway -Gordon tift is the kind of publicity you can’t buy.

All the jokes about Conway standing up to Gordon aside; Conway never should have let this difference of opinion make it to a police report.  Conway’s handling of the altercation says as much about him, his sponsor and his place in the NASCAR community as is inability to drive a race car.

Sorry Kevin–take a couple of your sponsor’s products and man-up.

Photo credit: BethAnne Heisler/ON PIT ROW

Filed under: Jeff Gordon, Kevin Conway, NASCAR, NASCAR & the Media, NASCAR Bidness, NASCAR officials, Robby Gordon, Trevor Bayne 

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Some Folks Just Aren’t Cut Out To Drive Racecars

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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.

March 7, 2011 1:48 pm UTC 3 Comments

Kevin Conway Friday NHMS Loudon

Kevin Conway Friday NHMS Loudon

Kevin Conway seemed to have the right luck, if nothing else. A protege of Ernie Irvan, Conway had made a career out of turning average-to-decent finishes into something more, moving up the stock car racing chain relatively quickly. Eventually the luck ran out, if only briefly. He spent two years in the Busch Series, even getting a seven-race deal to drive for Joe Gibbs, but couldn’t do anything with it, leaving him on the sidelines for 2008.

But in 2009, Conway exploded back on the scene by pitching Extenze, a natural male enhancement pill that plastered his face all over TV stations everywhere. He ran for various teams looking for an extra buck that year, before Front Row Motorsports brought him on for the 2010 season.

FRM knew that the 2010 Raybestos Rookie of the Year class was going to be thin in Sprint Cup, and as their sponsorship deals with Taco Bell and Long John Silver’s are mostly tied to team owner Bob Jenkins’ many fast-food franchises with Yum! Brands, they certainly knew they could use the cash and exposure that a brand like Extenze, and by extension a driver like Conway, could generate.

The experiment was, by almost all accounts, a spectacular failure; while Conway’s 14th-place run in the Coke Zero 400 was the team’s best ever at that time, he was out of there by August, his sponsor failing to pony up the cash (Big Daddy’s BBQ Sauce, anyone?). FRM had been switching Conway and teammates David Gilliland and Travis Kvapil between cars all season, ensuring the faltering Conway would remain in the top 35 in owners’ points and thus in the race while forcing the more qualified drivers to either go or go home. The partnership ended in lawsuits, with FRM suing Extenze for those missed sponsorship payments and Conway suing FRM for his salary.

Refuge came in the shops of Robby Gordon Motorsports. Robby Gordon, one of the purest racers the sport has ever seen, had fallen on tough times, his one-car, owner-driver operation continually struggling for results and sponsorship dollars. So Conway got a seven-race gig to finish out his award-winning (cough) season, and Gordon got a cool $690K.

Except, as we all know by now, he didn’t.

The same story played out once again with RGM, although this weekend’s events at Vegas have exacerbated things. While nobody in NASCAR witnessed the incident, Conway, who was driving in the Nationwide Series for NEMCO Motorsports last weekend, apparently stormed into the Sprint Cup garage looking for Gordon and demanding the $27,000 he felt he was owed for winning Rookie of the Year in Gordon’s cars. Gordon took the logical “I’ll pay you when your sponsor pays me” approach to the verbal altercation, which ended with Conway filing a police report.

Wait up. A police report? Isn’t this the sport where Yarborough vs. Allison, Spencer vs. Busch, Gordon vs. Burton have been celebrated by the fan base, never mind handled independently by the men involved? All of those fights were divisive, leaving a fan base to make a difficult choice between the two warring viewpoints. Not so this time.

Robby Gordon may be frequently vilified by NASCAR, accruing at least one penalty every year it seems and being the only driver involved in this altercation to end up on probation, but it’s pretty clear to most of us who’s in the wrong here. This is the second team that Conway’s jobbed with the Extenze backing. It’d be one thing if this was a one-time thing, but there’s a history that’s been established here. If you remember the 360OTC debacle of 2007, it’s clear that pharmaceutical companies have a bad history with lawsuits and NASCAR teams anyway. If he wants to get paid, he should go call up the folks at Biolab Nutraceuticals, Extenze’s manufacturer, and ask them.

Not only that, Conway overstepped his boundaries by walking into a garage he had no right to be in (by lack of employment, this weekend, and by poor results, any weekend) and demanding money he has no right to until his sponsor pays the bills. It was an immature thing to do, and one that’s probably going to put off any of the few remaining folks who were willing to hire him. Worse, the fact that he felt the need to file a police report after an altercation that he initiated, if you believe what Gordon told Mike Mulhern, suggests he doesn’t have the head to handle the pressure of racing’s highest level anyway.

I’ve always wanted to like Conway. I recall seeing him while on assignment for On Pit Row at New Hampshire Motor Speedway last year, and he seemed like a nice enough guy, the kind of driver who could pitch a product, run decently, and stir up some underdog sentiment with race fans. But after this latest incident, what I would consider a repeat offense given his history with FRM, I can’t. Get the sponsor that you’ve been towing around to pay the bills first. I’m not surprised that somebody edited Conway’s Wikipedia page to add the nickname “Rat.” (Go look it up.)

It’s a stupid situation, one that brings the already-suffering Robby Gordon Motorsports another step closer to extinction, while Conway manages to keep racing with little to no repercussions. It’s not fair and it’s not right, and everybody knows it. Say what you want about Robby Gordon, but if you hired somebody who should have brought your business almost $700,000, defaulted on it, and then stormed up to you looking for any money at all, you’d have a right to be as angry as he is.

And a word of advice to Joe Nemechek: Watch your back, dude. Get those checks up front. I don’t think you’re gonna get paid.

Filed under: Kevin Conway, Robby Gordon 

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Fantasy Pick’Em: 2010 Heluva Good! Sour Cream Dips at The Glen

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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.

August 5, 2010 7:29 am UTC No Comments

NASCAR Sprint Cup Series at Watkins Glen, August 2007This week the Sprint Cup Series ends its 2010 road course sojourn with a trip to western New York and Watkins Glen International. Home of fine wines and fast cars, the track hosts this weekend’s Heluva Good! Sour Cream Dips at the Glen.

I attended the IZOD IndyCar Series race at the Glen earlier this year, and let me say that any traveling race fan that hasn’t experienced a weekend at the track doesn’t know what they’re missing. Watkins Glen is a quaint little town with all the amenities and brand names one could ask for, and the track provides fans with many prime spots from which to watch a race. And if you were impressed by the show that IndyCar put on, just imagine multiplying the crowds and fanfare by a significant number, and you have an American race fan’s dream.

So who’s going to take the checkers this weekend?

History (and a 5.3 average finish) suggest that Tony Stewart is the man to beat this weekend. Stewart has an incredible five wins in 11 Glen starts, and nine top-10s. Of his two worse finishes, one was an 11th place. He’s never failed to complete a lap there, much less accrue a DNF, making him the undisputed king of the track.

I’m not sure if you can call Marcos Ambrose a total dark horse at the Glen, seeing as his average finish is 2.5, but he’s never sealed the deal in a Cup race, and a killer mistake at Infineon robbed him of what should have been much closer to a victory, suggesting that he and his team still have a little way to go to pull it off. Ambrose has taken the checkers in Nationwide races at the Glen, though, and it will be interesting to see if his apparent mastery of the track will offset any doldrums that come with being a lame-duck driver at a midpack team with bad luck thus far.

Three more, because tradition says so:

Mark Martin‘s got three Glen wins in 20 starts and hasn’t failed to complete a lap there since 1986 (excluding the 2007 and 2008 races, which he skipped). The wins came during an incredible three-year stretch from 1993 to 1995, where he won the pole and led 183 of a possible 270 laps. There are just as many knocks on him, though. First of all, this has been a tough year for the team; second, he hasn’t led a lap at the Glen in his past seven starts; finally, his last two Glen finishes have been 20th and 23rd, respectively. Pick carefully.

Robby Gordon is always a threat at the Glen, having scored seven top five finishes in 11 starts and a win in 2003. Normally the only knock against Gordon is failed alternate pit strategy that doesn’t work out in the end. Fans can always count on the independent to put on a good show, especially with the added data from a second, P.J. Jones-piloted car each time the series turns both ways.

Finally, A.J. Allmendinger is a decent pick that can be expected to exceed his previous finishes at the Glen – 11th and 13th in two career starts. The ex-Champ Car star’s future is now set at Richard Petty Motorsports, with a multi-year contract extension in place, and the confidence that comes with being the team’s new number one driver should allow him to open up a little this weekend and show off the road course talent that convinced Red Bull to bring him to stock cars in the first place a few years ago.

Filed under: One and Done NASCAR Fantasy Racing, Watkins Glen 

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Bench Racing TV’s Monday Morning Chaser

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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

September 11, 2008 5:30 pm UTC 1 Comment

Did Matt Kenseth get screwed by Roush-Fenway and Robby Reiser?  Speaking of Robbys, was Robby Gordon done dirty by George Gillette and Gillette-Evernham Motorsports?  It seems that Mindy thinks so.

Ms Monday has thoughts on the Craftsman Truck Series too, in the all new Monday Morning Crew Chief.  Watch it right here.

And don’t forget to take your shot at winning a Kevin Harvick bobblehead, compliments of Shell Gasolines.  Enter the contest here.

Filed under: Bench Racing TV, Chase for the Cup, Craftsman Truck Series, David Ragan, Gillett Evernham Motorsports, Matt Kenseth, Monday Morning Crew Chief, NASCAR video, Roush Racing, Sprint Cup Series 

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5 Drivers to Watch in Montreal

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by Matt Mercer, Special To NASCAR commentary and driver pictures, 2012 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

July 31, 2008 2:12 pm UTC 4 Comments

5 Drivers to Watch in MontrealWhen the Nationwide Series makes its second stop to Montreal this Saturday, the star power from last year’s race will be missing. Defending winner Robby Gordon won’t be there, and neither will the driver that got the trophy and the points, Kevin Harvick. Still, the second visit promises to have no shortages of contenders and storylines. In particular I’m focusing on three Canadians, an Australian, and a Kansas boy I profiled last week.

Patrick Carpentier – PC, my favorite Sprint Cup rookie this season, is skipping the race in Pocono this weekend in order to try and win the race in Montreal. Carpentier is from Quebec, and was thisclose last year in his first NASCAR race at any level. I think he has a great shot to win, and would love to see him do so. In his first run with the #9 team in Mexico City this year he finished 5th.

Ron Fellows – Fellows is the ageless wonder of NASCAR road racing but his game appears as good as ever. He owns multiple wins at Watkins Glen, where the series will be next week, and has a strong car under him this week as he wheels the #5 JR Motorsports Chevy. Fellows ran competitively last year driving for KHI, and will most likely do so again Saturday.

Jacques Villeneuve – Villeneuve is one of the wildcards in the field this weekend. He didn’t compete last year as he was focused on Sprint Cup. Villeneuve’s car this weekend – the #32 Braun Toyota – is no slouch, as it currently sits 15th in the owners standings and has been driven by Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin, among others. Even more personal, the Montreal track is named after his father, the late Gilles Villeneuve. Jacques didn’t win here in F1, but would no doubt love to do so this weekend.

Marcos Ambrose – “Kangaroo Meat” has received the bulk of attention with the series returning to Montreal. Ambrose dominated the race last year and most likely would have won, if he hadn’t spun Robby Gordon out under caution and received his payback on the restart. Ambrose hasn’t run as well as he did last year, but this race could very well turn that around. Yes, I’m faulting Ambrose for his own actions in regards to Gordon last year.

Clint Bowyer – A year ago, it was his RCR teammates Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton making the journey to Montreal to compete in this race while Bowyer staying in Pocono. This season the roles are reversed and it could present an interesting challenge to the Emporia, Kansas native in his quest to win the Nationwide Series championship. He will be a rookie at this track and perhaps even more risky, will turn his first laps on the track when he receives the green flag. If he escapes with a top 15, he should feel very, very lucky.

Photo credit: Icon Sports Media

Filed under: Busch Series, Clint Boyer, Formula One, Jacques Villeneuve, Marcos Ambrose, NASCAR, Nationwide Series, Pocono Raceway, Robby Gordon 

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