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Love it or hate it, restrictor plate racing has created some ridiculously close finishes over the years. This last weekend at Talladega was just another example. Why? Because choking off the engines levels the playing field. Squeezing a restrictor plate in between the carburetor and intake has certainly slowed the cars down, but in the process it has also spawned a level of parity that we don’t see at any other race track. Underdogs and back markers are suddenly not so. And guys like Trevor Bayne and Dave Blaney become stories.
To this point in 2011, we’ve run two of the four plate races for the season. And through those two races, only three drivers have finished in the top ten in both: Carl Edwards, Mark Martin… and David Gilliland. Wha?! Yep, that’s not a typo. David frickin’ Gilliland. Driving the under supported, we can’t afford sticker tires, #34 Ford for Front Row Motorsports, Gilliland is suddenly a contender at plate tracks. In both events he qualified in the 39th position, but was able to stay out of trouble and draft his way to the front. And the restrictor plate on his engine made it possible.
One of the more interesting story lines from Sunday’s Aaron’s 499 was that of Dave Blaney. Blaney drives the #36 for Tommy Baldwin Racing, where usually he has to pull off the track early in races with perfectly good race cars. With very few sponsors, TBR and Blaney are forced to start and park so they can afford to race full events here and there. At ‘Dega, they brought Golden Corral on board and had one of their best days to date. While the possibility of a good finish was ruined by a spin off the nose of Kurt Busch’s car late in the race, Blaney ran up front and was even able to lead 21 laps. There are no moral victories, but what happened to Blaney and TBR would be the closest thing to one. Hopefully it helps them secure more funding for future races.
The opportunities that plate racing provides are not just limited to the Cup Series. Joe Nemechek was able to work with another underdog, Mike Wallace, and fight his way back from being a lap down to finish third in the NNS race at Talladega. Wallace was also on his way to having a season making day, but was the main victim of the last lap crash that resulted in his car taking a tumble down the backstretch.
When we head to Daytona in July, you can be sure that you’ll hear the usual from the media about tandem drafts, deal making, and spotters. But by the end of the weekend, there is a good chance that the story of an underdog driver will be part of the headlines. And it will all be because of a thin piece of aluminum.
As we get set to make our lone trip to California this season, we’ve got quite a battle going on at the top of the standings. Currently Kurt Busch owns the driver points lead, but by only a single point over Carl Edwards. But there is another battle raging in the points, and the stakes are just as high, only it’s a little farther down the standings. Near the bottom of the owners points standings are the drivers and teams working to stay in that top 35, and thus hang on to a guaranteed starting spot. California is the final race where the guaranteed spots are based on 2010′s points, and it’s the final chance to make a move to either get or keep a guaranteed spot.
Following Bristol, the 35th spot is held down by Casey Mears and the #13 Geico/Germain team. Their 52 points are just one better than Tommy Baldwin’s #36 team. Those who are currently inside that magic number who could conceivably fall out are Brian Vickers, Frank Stoddard’s #32 team, Robby Gordon, and Casey Mears. On the other side, those who are on the outside looking in that have a realistic chance of jumping up are Dave Blaney with the #36, Tony Raines, Andy Lally, and Travis Kvapil. Kvapil and Mears are currently separated by only six points.
Many of the teams at this end of the garage are severely underfunded, but a guaranteed spot in upcoming races could go a long ways toward securing their futures. The teams from Front Row, TRG, Tommy Baldwin, and Germain all have intentions to run full races, and would benefit greatly from a 35th or above position. With as competitive as the sport has become, it only takes one or two DNQ’s by a team to dig an insurmountable points hole.
There are only 43 cars entered for Sunday’s Auto Club 400, so that will be a bit of a boost for those involved in the fight. But we’ve seen as many as 48 cars entered for races this season and there are no guarantees that other teams won’t pop up. A guaranteed starting position would go a long way towards helping these teams not only monetarily, but also psychologically. Whatever happens though, you can be sure that the results at California will affect these teams for the rest of the season.
Did you notice the short field in the Nationwide Series this weekend? Certainly not a great indicator of health of the sport. But then did you notice the fields in the Cup and especially the Truck Series? Those should make us all feel a little better.
Consider this: there were 40 cars on the Nationwide entry list, the first short field since 2008, 44 on the Cup Series entry list and 41 on the Truck Series entry list. In the Truck Series that’s five more cars than make up a full field.
Unfortunately that meant some great young talent like James Buescher and, for the second week in a row, Tayler Malsam didn’t make the race. Still there wasn’t a single team that start-and-parked. That in itself is quite an achievement.
With the lesser cost of entry and the investment by teams like RCR, KHI and KBM, the Truck Series this season is a whole new place. Competition is improved (or perhaps expanded) and the fields are full. To see reduced and or eliminated start-and-park teams is wonderful.
This season is shaping up to be really interesting. Let’s hope these full fields continue.
Tommy Baldwin Racing Announces Their Start-And-Park Run
File this under the strange moment of the weekend, Tommy Baldwin Racing actually announced they would be start-and-parking. The team had planned to run the full race, but a wreck in practice meant they would have to go to a backup – which turned out to be their Las Vegas primary.
Apparently they decided they’d have better luck in Las Vegas and they wanted to tell everyone – from a PR perspective, I’m not sure I see what the benefit of this was though. And NASCAR didn’t either. NASCAR’s VP of Competition Robin Pemberton said before the race Sunday:
“I can’t speak for Tommy and why he did it, but I just thought that it totally took us by surprise… We know that if anybody tries to run all the races it’s Tommy Baldwin. When he can he does. Quite honestly, just taken back by it, and I thought it was just poor timing on his part and that’s all I’ve got to say about it.”
Telling everyone you’re about to take part in a frowned upon practice is not advisable – though it’s admirable they apparently felt bad enough about doing it that they decided they would tell everyone. With the response they got, I doubt they do this again.
An interesting tidbit none the less. What do you think? Would you prefer for a team to announce their intention, or would you rather they just did it?
UPDATED: Link to TBR’s full statement here.
For those of you who follow us on Twitter, you know every Monday we do a ‘best and worst’ of the weekend tweet. With the 2009 season now in the bag, we thought it might be fun to bring it over to the blog and ask you to do your best and worst of the 2009 season.
2009 certainly wasn’t short of any interesting, and compelling story lines. Toward the end of 2008 and through the entire 2009 season the economy was on everyone’s mind. The troubled state of GM and Chrysler forced the manufacturers to make cuts in their NASCAR spending; several sponsors announced their intention to leave the sport; and perhaps most noticeably the stands at many tracks were far from capacity.
Despite the bad economy, 2009 saw the start-up of several teams. After being laid-off by Bill Davis Racing in the off season, Tommy Baldwin started his own team. Jeremy Mayfield, who had been out of a full time ride since 2005 also started a team. TRG Motorsports also began running a car full-time in the Cup Series.
From Carl Long to Jeremy Mayfield, NASCAR also had its fair share of controversy in 2009. Long was suspended and fined following the All-Star race after an inspection of his expired engine revealed it was too large. Jeremy Mayfield was indefinitely suspended May 9 after NASCAR said he failed a drug test. Mayfield contends the failed test was caused by a combination of Adderall and Claritin D. He sued NASCAR.
It wasn’t all bad though. Juan Pablo Montoya had a breakthrough season scoring seven top-fives, 18 top-10s, two poles and his first Chase berth. After running two part-time seasons in 2007 and 2008 Mark Martin joined Hendrick Motorsports full time and came back with a vengeance this season, winning five races and finishing second in the points.
We even had some promising prospects show what they were made of. In just his second full season, David Reutimann won his first race and came just short of making the chase. Marcos Ambrose also started to show his potential in just his first full time season. He scored four top-fives and seven top-tens finishing 18th in the points. No doubt they’ll both be teams to watch in 2010.
We also had a slew of first time winners with David Reutimann, Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski all taking the checkered flag.
And how about Hendrick Motorsports? They had thirteen wins on the season and Jimmie Johnson did the unheard of, winning his fourth straight championship after seven wins, 16 top-fives, 24 top-tens and four poles. As a team they went 1-2-3 in the standings, the first time that has happened.
So now it’s your turn. What was your best and worst of 2009? Please remember to keep it clean (I know where you’re going to go with this) and treat others the way you want to be treated (if I see anything over the line it will be deleted).
I think I should probably just start a problem series. I have been writing about it a lot lately. But I digress…
At the beginning of the season many in the media would have had you believing the world was crashing in on us. They were predicting empty race tracks, fleeing sponsors and failing teams.
Well six months into the year and four months into the season, things aren’t quite as bad as many predicted. Sure a couple teams have folded (the No. 8 car and No. 28 car), the independents are starting to struggle, and sponsors aren’t quite clamoring to spend tens of millions of dollars in the sport, but are things really that bad?
For the last several months everyone has been screaming about television ratings. Yeah they’re down, but if you look at them compared to other sporting events and programming, the sport really isn’t doing too bad. I unfortunately don’t have easy access to the Nielsen ratings, so I am working with what I can find online, but consider this: an average NASCAR race (not the 500 or another big race) does just as well as the NBA Finals did last year. They averaged about 9 million viewers.
That number is also big enough to beat a lot of primetime programming on major networks (not including Greys Anatomy or CSI of course). It also beats the hell out of the top rated cable programming.
Take a look at some older Nielson ratings and compare it to NASCAR this year. They’re down, but they’re no means bad.
The Chicken Littles are also pointing to the down attendance at the tracks. Now if you take the track estimations and subtract 30 to 40,000 (which is probably closer to the truth at some of these places) they are still nothing to scoff at. Any sport would give anything to have 100,000+ fans at their events every week. NASCAR is crying about it.
Sure it’s not the sell-out crowds we got just a few years ago, but still it is very good. The Super Bowl this year had just over 71,000 in attendance. With the exception of some of the smaller tracks, NASCAR easily beats that week in and week out.
Now I know what you’re saying, if there was a football stadium big enough (the new Cowboys stadium perhaps) they would have NASCAR-like attendance for the Super Bowl and that’s probably true (NASCAR couldn’t hope to have the TV viewing audience though), but the fact that NASCAR does that good every week is a very good thing.
So now that we’ve established things really aren’t that bad, I ask you, what is different between this sport and others?
The answer is the negative media attention on the sport.
Baseball attendance has been down and NHL and IndyCar TV ratings have been mediocre on Versus, but you don’t hear their respective press corps bashing the sport. In fact it’s quite the opposite. I have read several stories about how positive everyone is about the Versus ratings despite the fact the ratings have been cut in half for some events and how MLB is looking forward to a jump in attendance once the summer hits.
I feel like this sky is falling mentality has created a very negative perception of the sport by not only the general public but by the fans. I think much of the anxiety fans are feeling and another reason why they aren’t tuning in is the fabricated negativity. When you are reading every other day about how bad things are, or how bad things are going to be you’re going to start to believe it. I know NASCAR is attempting to combat this, but they can only do so much.
Things aren’t quite as great as they have been in previous seasons, there is no denying that, but are things really that bad?