NASCAR's Road Atlanta Site of New Chase Race?

Watkins Glen provide the best race of the year so far.
Could a Chase race at Road Atlanta also be in the cards?

Mostly overlooked in last week’s reports that GrandAm was buying the American Le Mans Series (ALMS) and merging the two in 2014 for a united American road racing series (critical for the future of road racing, by the way), was the news GrandAm also took ownership of the Road Atlanta and Sebring race tracks.

Both tracks were previously controlled by Dan Panoz, the driving force behind ALMS, who sold out for a reported $20 million.  Pretty cheap if you ask me.  Anyway, GrandAm, of course, is owned by NASCAR. 

And that’s the other big news.  NASCAR, reportedly considering adding a road race to The Chase, suddenly owns one of the nation’s premier natural road courses, right in the heart of it fans base. 

By most accounts, the best Sprint Cup race so far this season took place at Watkins Glen.  Some (including me) would say the best Cup races of the past couple of years have been on road courses.  As a result, there's been talk of adding a road race to The Chase.  Up until now, Wisconsin’s Road America, site of a Nationwide race, has been considered the prime candidate should a third road course be added to the Cup schedule and The Chase.  The GrandAm/NASCAR purchase of ALMS/Road Atlanta might change that.  Why let Road America host the race, if you can do it yourself?  

NASCAR teams have long used Road Atlanta for some of its road course testing.  Brad Keselowski broke his ankle there last year.  It’s a track not unlike Road America, with significant elevation changes, fast straights and fast, sweeping turns.  It would require some safety updates before a Cup race could be staged there, but that’s easily accomplished.  There’s not much in the way of grandstands, nothing like Watkins Glen or Sonoma, but on a par with Road America.  

It’s only a couple of hundred miles from downtown Charlotte, less than a four hour drive.  Less than three hours from Talladega, two hours from Atlanta International Raceway.  There’s bound to be concerns about another Chase race being so close to events at Martinsville, Charlotte and Talladega and coming fairly soon after the Labor Day race at Atlanta.

But think of the possibilities.  It could be quite a weekend for race fans, the Petite Le Mans finale to the GrandAm season on Saturday, a Cup Chase race on Sunday.  And what the heck, run a Nationwide race at the ¾ mile Lanier Speedway across the street on Saturday night.

Just too bad Lanier's not a dirt track.

Busch Quit, Gordon Never Did

Gordon never gave up

“Never quit!” Jeff Gordon screamed to his crew, acknowledging their efforts following his second place finish at Richmond Saturday night.  “Never quit.”

Gordon didn’t.  Neither did his crew.  But Kyle Busch did.  As a result, it will be Gordon spending the final 10 races of the NASCAR Sprint Cup season chasing after a championship while Busch, as he puts it, will be “driving around in circles.”

After leading the first lap at Richmond Saturday night, Gordon saw his car turn to junk.  He dropped back through the field, all the way to 26th place and a lap down to the leaders before a red flag for rain brought the cars onto pit road.  Busch was running easily in the top 10.

“We are completely out of it,” Gordon said during a rain delay.  But the team used the red flag period to discuss what they were going to do to his car to make it competitive.  And then they did it.  Gordon, for his part, drove the race of his life, fighting back from his one lap deficit.

Busch, meanwhile, was the victim of some faulty pit strategy.  His team wasn’t the only one to stay out when rain starting falling again, thinking perhaps the race might not restart.  Then they missed an opportunity to pit with one lap until the green flag.  Bigger mistake.  But rather than put it behind him and try and fight back – Busch quit.  Asked what the team could do to make his car better, Busch said “I don’t even F…ing care.”

Still, after all the pit stops played out, Busch had a lead over Gordon.  It was up to the drivers.  Gordon responded again.  His car was near perfect and he raced it aggressively to the front.  Busch, his car far from perfect, pouted.

Gordon had to overcome his own doubts before staging his comeback.

“For me, as a racecar driver, when you have that kind of start to the race, you don't have a lot of hope you're going to get it turned around,” Gordon said.  “I went to Alan (Gustafson). He never wavered. He was confident. They were looking at the data from what we had, to our teammates, even Tony. We had just done the rear bar. They were pretty confident that was going to get us close to our teammates. He was right. I still had a little doubt in him, though.

It could be a season changing event for the team and Gordon is already talking about a championship.

“I felt like I won the race tonight,” he said. “When that was over, they told me I was in the Chase, we made it, I mean, I was ecstatic. I was going nuts. To me, after you have that kind of effort, fall back, then come up there and finish second, almost win the race, make it in by one point, man, I don't see any reason why we can't go over these next 10 races and be a real threat for the championship.”

Busch, under a media microscope because of his previous transgressions, barely acknowledged car owner Joe Gibbs before climbing out and storming away.

He returned long enough to answer two questions.

“We missed. That’s it. Plain and simple,” he said when asked what happened.  What did Gibbs say to him?  “Handle it the right way.”  Busch couldn’t stop there.  “But there’s no right way to handle it.”

Yes there was.  And it was up to Crew Chief Dave Rogers to show him what “handle it the right way” means.  Or maybe Gibbs told Rogers to “handle it with class.”

“The Chase is more than one race, but we certainly were in a position to capitalize and make it, but yeah, that call, I blew it,” Rogers said.  “There’s no two ways to look at it.  I’m pretty honest.  I evaluate myself as hard as I evaluate my guys and I gave one up today.”

That was the right way to handle it.

Truex Ready to Join NASCAR's Elite



Martin Truex, Jr., is ready to join NASCAR's elite along with MWR, NAPA

There’s a reason Martin Truex, Jr., was signed last week to a new three-year contract by Michael Waltrip Racing and sponsor NAPA.

He’s on the verge of a breakthrough.  It may not happen this year, but the No. 56 NAPA Toyota is about the join the ranks of the NASCAR elite.

Truex should have won at Atlanta Sunday night.  After starting 28th, he raced to the front and had it well in hand until a late race caution sent it into a green-white-checkers finish.  A slightly quicker pit stop for Denny Hamlin gave him the perferred line on the restart.  Truex started second, spun his tires and ended up fourth. 

Currently fifth in points, Truex is one of only two drivers headed for The Chase without a win this year, Kevin Harvick being the other.  But Truex knows the team is due for a breakthrough. 

"We're right there,” he said after renewing his deal with Michael Waltrip Racing (MWR).  “We've been close; we've been capable of winning races all year long. We just haven't finished the deal. We've run second a bunch of times and we've had the car to beat two or three races and we didn't do everything right. It takes a lot of things to go your way to win a race. On the days where we've had the fastest car out there, we didn't have the cautions go our way or maybe pit strategy or the way the cycles went, but we've had the speed and we've got the team that's capable of doing it for sure. For now, it's just a matter of getting that first one out of the way and quit worrying about it and go after a bunch of them.”

 Hamlin knew he was fortunate to beat Truex.

“Circumstances just fell our way at the end,” Hamlin said.  “When you start to falter and fade, you’ve got to have another aspect of the team that picks you up, and today it was the pit crew. They won us this race today. We’re very blessed for that. I’m 70 percent happy for me and 30 percent sad for Michael Waltrip and Martin because I know they’ve come so close.”

Truex traces his team’s turnaround back to early in the 2011 season when not much seemed to be going right.  But Waltrip made commitments to Toyota and its sponsors to improve in 2012.  It entered into an association with Joe Gibbs Racing to share technology and added Clint Boyer, Mark Martin and Brian Vickers to boost its driver ranks.

“Ever since, we've been on an awesome road to improvement,” Truex said.  “With those guys integrating me into the team and giving me some say and making me feel like I'm part of something, has probably been one of the coolest and proudest moments of my life."

Slipping and sliding:  Atlanta saw the continuation of a theme covered here last week, Hamlin moving forward while Tony Stewart continues to slide backward.  Although Stewart qualified on the pole, he slipped back during the race and eventually finished four laps behind in 22nd.  He’s now in danger of falling out of the Top 10 in points, although his three wins will keep him in The Chase. 

Even worse for Stewart, sponsor Office Depot announced before the race it won’t be back next year, the second major Stewart Haas Racing sponsor to quit the sport, the U.S. Army having already announced its withdrawal.  Office Depot was the team’s primary sponsor for 22 of 38 races this year and that leaves a big hole for the team.  Combined with the Army pullout, SHR basically needs to find a full season sponsorship for one car, a major task in today’s economic climate. 

Contrast that with NAPA, which is one of the few sponsors that will be the primary sponsor in every race next year.  NAPA obviously doesn't want to miss an part of the breakout year.

Hamlin, Stewart Headed in Opposite Directions

Grubb has Hamlin peaking at the right time

Denny Hamlin and Tony Stewart are headed in opposite directions. 

It was never more apparent than early in the Bristol race when Stewart was being lapped while Hamlin was fighting for the lead.  Stewart eventually fought his back and was competitive before being knocked out by Matt Kenseth, but he was never really a threat to win the race.  His two-handed helmet toss at Kenseth probably had as much to do with the frustration he was feeling about his car, as it did with his frustration with Kenseth.

A year ago Stewart was openly complaining about his race car and soon announced that crew chief Darian Grubb wouldn’t be returning in 2012.  Of course Stewart and Grubb went on to win the NASCAR championship, Grubb then moving on to Joe Gibbs Racing, taking over as crew chief of Hamlin’s car.

Stewart started this year strong, winning two of the year’s first five races.  But he’s won only once since, dropping to 10th in the point standings after Bristol.  He last three finishes are 27, 32 and 19.  He’s in no danger of missing The Chase thanks to his three wins, but he’s certainly headed in the wrong direction.

Just the opposite is true for Hamlin and Grubb.  It’s been an up-and-down season for Hamlin, winning early at Phoenix, again near mid-season at Kansas and posting 12 top fives.  It’s also been a steep learning curve at times for Grubb, but he’s confident the team is peaking for The Chase.

“Every week we felt like we had a good car, but circumstances took us out of that, or engine failure, mechanical failure or something like that going on in the background,” Grubb said.  “We had fast race cars and we are doing the work that it takes to stay up front each week and once you do that, you had the possibility to win. Guys have been doing really a great job behind us in the background with TRD and Joe Gibbs engineering support and doing a great job making sure we don't have those issues again. Hopefully we can keep staying up front.”

A confident Hamlin called Bristol the biggest of his 20 Cup victories.  He seems fully recovered from the late-season meltdown in 2010, when the team gave the NASCAR title back to Jimmie Johnson.

“As long as we don't have a failure or we don't get in a wreck, we can win anywhere we go,” Hamlin said.  “And that's something that we have not had since 2010, you know, being able to win at every different track at any type of course. 

"So, you know, it's a good feeling to know that you can go to a racetrack and win any given week and that gives you a lot of confidence. For me, even though it shows three wins, I feel like we've got five or six.”

As for Grubb, he believes the team is poised for a run at the Sprint Cup title.

“I really think so. You don't want to count your eggs before you put them in the basket type thing, but it's a lot of hard work.  All the way since December, when I came in, I've been learning every day.  The engineering staff and the mechanics, they teach me lessons and I teach them lessons; and you can see the light at the end of the tunnel on the things we have been working on and you know we are getting stronger as we do it.

“And since then we have been making things better and making the cars better and his feedback has been getting better and better about what we are doing, so hopefully we can take all those things and just keep getting better and not slow down.”

Michigan Moaning

Legit complaint or gamesmanship

There seemed to be more moaning going on after Sunday’s Pure Michigan 400 than there was celebrating.

Winner Greg Biffle was about the only one celebrating.  His second victory of the year moved him into first place in the Sprint Cup standings.   But even Biffle wasn’t entirely happy.  His team isn’t getting the respect he thinks it deserves.

“I know that a lot of people don't expect us to win the championship, don't expect us to compete for the title,” Biffle said.  “I don’t care what they say or who they want to talk about or what they talk about. We will be a factor when it comes down to Homestead, I promise you that. 

Second place finisher Brad Keselowski wasn’t happy with his runner-up finish at his home track, even though it was better than he deserved.  Or perhaps because it was better than he deserved. He was embarrassed by the way Jimmie Johnson dusted him near the end of the race.  

“I didn't know how much Jimmie had been holding back,” he said.  “When he pushed the trigger, when he passed me, it was clear he had been holding back a lot.  It's hard to know those things. You never know how hard a driver is pushing. Obviously he wasn't going a hundred percent. When he did, he was clearly the class of the field." 

Then Keselowski upped the ante.  He pointed a finger at the Hendrick team, especially the No. 48 car, for pushing the technology envelope into a gray area, something the team has been penalized for in the past.  

“I just think there's big discrepancies in the cars now. There's certain parts and pieces on the cars that are making them quite a bit different to where we're seeing different paces throughout the field. I think there's probably half a dozen to a dozen cars that are drastically faster than the rest of the field. That's disrupted the parity, created a lot of side-by-side action that is maybe good, maybe bad, depends on who you are.

"But I think right now in the sport the cars are probably the most separated we've ever seen. You've seen qualifying, the pace difference between 20th and pole was over a second. We haven't seen that in over 10 years in this sport. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but it's an observation to your note. It creates more side-by-side racing which opens up the possibility for issues like you described.

"There's parts and pieces on the car that are moving after inspection that make the car more competitive. Some guys have it, some don't. There's a question to the interpretation of the rule. Penske Racing errs on the safe side because we don't want to be the guys that get the big penalty.

"Obviously there's a question to the interpretation that as of right now it's legal. But I'm sure that Roger doesn't want to be the one caught red-handed. As a group at Penske Racing, we have not felt comfortable enough to risk that name and reputation that Roger has over those parts and pieces. Others have, which is their prerogative. I'm not going to slam them for it.

"But it's living in a gray area. Roger doesn't do that. There's certainly some performance there that we've lost. I shouldn't say lost, but haven't gained, because we choose not to do that. That's something that we have to continue to evaluate every week that goes by, that those components are permitted to be run. We have to make a reevaluation of that internally to decide if that's the right way to go."

Gamesmanship in advance of the The Chase or a legitimate complaint? 

Surprisingly, Jack Roush came to the Chevy team’s defense.  He acknowledged his team was aware of the Hendrick moves and, after checking with NASCAR, was instituting some changes of its own.

“We've been working at it, got assurance from NASCAR that it's okay, it's within the rules,” Roush said.  “It's not the reason we were able to win today, but it certainly is hard to win if you don't have a competitive aero package and chassis, mechanical grip package.”

So if the Hendrick moves are okay with NASCAR and apparently okay with Roush, what is Bad Brad complaining about?  His real target is Roger Penske.  With The Chase approaching, he’s trying to push Penske to keep pace with Hendrick and Roush.  With all the commotion surrounding the team’s switch to Ford next year, the pullout by Dodge, the suspension and subsequent release of A. J. Allmendinger and search for a replacement, Keselowski may be concerned the team has lost its focus.  

It’s another brilliant move on his part to re-focus those efforts.  Now we’ll see if it works. 

 

The Danger Behind Dodge’s Decision

Roush (top), Hendrick and 

TRD dominate NASCAR

engine suppliers

It’s now pretty clear why Dodge pulled out of NASCAR.

It simply couldn’t find a team capable of taking on its program.  After five months of searching, Dodge couldn’t find a team with the ability to build its own engines and chassis.

That’s a startling turn of events that should be putting a real scare into the world of NASCAR.  The best options for Dodge came down to a one-car team from Denver – or importing a team from IndyCar racing.

Roger Penske, who had been building the Dodge engines before announcing he was taking his race team and going to Ford in 2013, had hoped to continue building Dodge engines and selling them to the company.  But when presented with the option, top Fiat-Chrysler management, neutral to negative on NASCAR to begin with, wondered why the company would want to buy engines from someone who just jumped to a competitor.  Good question.  And Dodge had no interest in taking on the role of engine builder supplier.

What happens now to the Penske engine program?  Well we know it won’t be building Sprint Cup engines.  Jack Roush announced before Pocono that Penske would be getting his Ford engines from Yates/Roush.  The demise of Penske Racing engines marks the second major Cup engine program to go belly-up in the past year, Joe Gibbs Racing having stopped building Cup engines at the end of last year in favor of Toyota Racing Development (TRD) power plants.

That’s not a good thing.  Sprint Cup engine production is now dominated by three groups, Hendrick Motorsports for Chevrolet, Yates/Roush for Ford and TRD for Toyota.  Oh yeah, Earnhardt-Childress Racing Engines supplies those teams along with Chip Ganassi, but they really haven’t been competitive all year.  And Triad Racing builds some start-and-park Toyota motors, but that’s about it. 

In announcing the decision to pull out, Ralph Gilles, head of Dodge’s SRT (Street and Racing Technology) group that oversees the company’s racing activities, pointed a finger squarely at Ford for contributing to the problem. 

“Ford has been very aggressive again trying to get critical mass in the sport with some new launches coming up,” Gilles said.  “That's their strategy. We are not in a position to do the same thing. There's really no one to do it with. It's really a game of musical chairs in NASCAR. They are really shrinking capacity in Carolina.

“What's available in North Carolina now is not what was available five, 10 years ago. It's not as easy as you would think to configure a team at the level that we are accustomed to racing and at the level that we want to perform.

“So unfortunately, the house of cards kind of fell apart. We really apologize to our fans and love our fans. We hope they remain loyal to us as we really make some of the coolest cars on the planet.”

NASCAR: Things Are Getting A Little Dodge-y

Will this Chevy become a Charger?

So what’s going on with Dodge?

Although NASCAR’s first official test of the approved 2013 race cars is taking place this week, the Dodge Charger won’t be present; the company still looking for a team to replace Penske Racing next year. 

Missing the Martinsville test this week isn’t a big deal, it’s little more than a shakedown run for the new cars, considered critical to reversing the trend of fan apathy.  But when the next round of tests begin in early October and visit high speed tracks such as Talladega, Texas and Kansas in short succession, the Chrysler boys better have a team in place, ready to test its car.

Penske announced the move to Ford early in the year with the idea it would allow Chrysler plenty of time to find a replacement.  But while Dodge’s STR Motorsports group has taken over development of the new race car, it has yet to find a team to run it next year. 

For a while it looked as if IndyCar's Andretti Autosport was going to field a team in NASCAR for Dodge, but in the end the available sponsorship dollars and company support didn’t pencil out.  Richard Petty Motorsport also has been mentioned, along with Chip Ganassi Racing.  But Dodge is looking for something more capable than RPM and something less than the big bucks Ganassi commands.    

Openly campaigning for the Dodge role at Pocono was Furniture Row Racing.  Team general manager Joe Garone told ESPN the team has talked with Dodge and stressed “we're a full-service team.  We would be able to hit the ground running if we switched to another manufacturer."  Well they build everything except chassis, which they currently get from Richard Childress Racing, or engines, which they get from Earnhardt Childress Racing.  Other than that, full service.

The one car FRR team is making a lot of promises, such as a willingness to buy and run the Penske engine operation, moving the team from Denver to Charlotte and adding a second driver to pair with Regan Smith.  Kurt Busch is the name most often mentioned and for some reason he hasn’t worn out his welcome at Dodge.  They even seem to prefer him.      

But all that takes money – Dodge’s money – and that’s just what Chrysler was hoping to avoid.  So the company is taking its time making a decision.  Sure they’ve already invested a lot, but it’s nothing compared to the investment required to make the commitment to stay in the sport for years to come. 

It’s not too late.  Dodge could still pull the plug, which would be a major blow to NASCAR.

Speaking of Penske, I’m sure he didn’t appreciate Jack Roush announcing prior to Pocono that the Penske team would be using Roush-Yates engines in 2013.  The official announcement was made today by Doug Yates.  And while Penske had shown some interest in buying into Ford’s engine operations, Roush made it clear that wasn’t gonna happen.  How does it feel being a satellite team Roger?   

And finally on the Penske front, shortly after Brad Keselowski said he’d like to have some input on who takes over the No. 22 car now that A. J. Allmendinger has been released and if Sam Hornish doesn’t cut it, he was captured in the background of an interview on ESPN talking with Joey Logano, one of those mentioned most often for the seat.   Probably just a coincidence.