View from the Couch: Atlanta

Atlanta was just what NASCAR needed: An exciting race with few cautions and even less controversy. After the cheating at Daytona, lots of cautions (including disputed debris) at California, the tire complaints and wrecks at Las Vegas an uneventful weekend suited all parties well. A tight finish made things even better. Unfortunately, the racing will take a weekend or two off while the focus returns to the Car of Tomorrow. Expect widespread panic this week as several teams complain about the new car, while the few teams that did their winter homework laugh all the way to Victory Lane.

I had to tape the race and watched it last night. As a result I was more concerned with finishing the race than analyzing the various coverage elements. Many will say that’s a good thing. The one thing that stuck out to me was green flag runs give the Fox crew less time to goof around. That means they are talking about racing instead of showing needless fluff or allowing DW to go off on tangents. I though the coverage was pretty good on Sunday.

A few thoughts:
Ignore DW because Mark Martin will not make the Chase. He plans to miss the next two races and will certainly skip more during the summer. Say he misses two races that he normally scores top 20’s. Considering how he has run so far this year, that’s a safe estimate. That’s at least 206 points Martin leaves on the table. It would be tough to make that difference up. That’s also not accounting for any bad runs Martin has. Martin doesn’t seem to care, so why does everyone else want to make a big deal out of it?

-Props to Mike Bliss and BAM racing. They failed to qualify in the first three races, but Bliss was 9^th fastest at Atlanta and finished 21^st.

-Juan Pablo Montoya had a great run at Atlanta. Ganassi’s equipment is really improved and Montoya is learning quickly. After his first Cup top 5 his reward is 1000 laps of short track racing over the next two weeks. People can complain about Montoya saturation, but he is pretty exciting to watch. One of the most impressive things about Montoya’s run was the tire management. Teams were reporting minor tire issues and other cars struggled on long runs. Montoya drove aggressively but consistently. Consider that in Formula 1, the cars run one set of tires for two entire races.

-Setting aside the engine woes at California, DEI might have graduated from being an overgrown one-car team. There are early signs that they finally have two teams that can run well every week. Martin Truex Jr scored a top ten Sunday and ran well at Daytona and Las Vegas too. Dale Earnhardt Jr has spent the majority of the last two weeks in the top five, but hasn’t finished well. The finishes will come at the speedways. It’s a significant improvement over previous years where Earnhardt Jr was the only car capable of running up front every week. Now we’ll see if DEI paid attention to the Car of Tomorrow.

Who Would Have Predicted…
…That Evernham cars would have two top ten’s and none on the intermediate tracks where they usually run so well.

…That David Ragan would have more top fives (1) than Greg Biffle (0).

…The most consistent Dodge to date would be David Stremme.

…That Toyota would have this much trouble. Only one car (#44 Dale Jarrett) currently sits inside the top 35. David Reutimann can’t seem to avoid trouble. He now has 3 crashes in 3 races and sits 43^rd in points.

…That James Hylton would have as many points as Jeremy Mayfield and AJ Allmendinger and more than Michael Waltrip.

…That after four races, there is no sign of a feud between any two drivers. That should change next weekend in a small Tennessee town called Bristol.

NASCAR Driver Preview: Martin Truex Jr

Martin Truex Jr Age: 26
0 wins, 2 top 5's, 5 top 10's, 11 top 15's
Avg start: 21.2 Avg finish: 20.8
Points standing: 19 Driver Rating: 71.3
#1 Bass Pro Shops Chevy Crew Chief: Kevin Manion

A year ago Martin Truex Jr was the favorite for Rookie of the Year. Some writers went as far as predicting he'd make the Chase. After two straight Busch championships, the predictions made sense. After running seven Cup races in 2005, Truex was more than ready for full time Cup action. A funny thing happened, Truex had a typical rookie season filled with mistakes, run-ins with veterans, and crashes mixed in with some good runs.

Truex spent the first half of the season running between 15^th and 20^th. He had one top ten in the first 18 races. He had several nice runs, some with deserving finishes (8^th at Texas) and some not (finished 22^nd at Phoenix after running out of fuel). One of his toughest days came at the spring Bristol race. Fighting to get a lap back, he was spun by Jeff Gordon. After some minor repairs, he returned to the track in search of Gordon. After trading paint with Gordon, Tony Stewart dumpedTruex for holding up the lead-lap cars. His day was done and a lesson was painfully learned.

One of the highlights of his season came in the Busch series. In April he won the Busch race at Talladega in a Dale Earnhardt Sr. paint scheme. It was also his third straight Busch win at Talladega. Unfortunately he was caught in an early crash in the Cup race, proving again that momentum doesn't really exist race to race. The following week he lost an engine, his thirdDNF in five races.

Aside from bad luck and crashes, one of the biggest challenges for the #1 team was a lack of experience. Crew Chief Kevin "Bono" Manion was with Truex for the last two years in Busch, but had never been a crew chief at the Cup level. It took the team almost the entire first half of the season to accumulate enough notes to figure out fast setups.DEI has one of the top Busch programs, but is middle of the pack at the Cup level. This also makes for a tougher transition when the equipment is not elite. While they waited for the cars to get more speed,Truex still managed to finish races. From Darlington to the second California race, Truex completed 99% of the laps.

The second half of was a big improvement. The overall results didn't show immediately, but Truex and Manion started figuring out some tracks the second time around. The speed finally improved during the Chase. Truex scored a sixth at Dover, an 11th at Kansas and a 5th at Talladega. He ran inside the top 10 the whole day at Atlanta before a crash with 19 laps to go. The following week Truex was running fifth with two laps to go when Scott Riggs crashed and Truex was caught in it. He wound up 11th. Truex's finest race was the finale at Homestead. He finished second, led 27 laps and had a driver rating of 111.4.

The final ten races showed what everyone expected from Truex. With his late season success, he finished 19th in the standings. Overall it was a solid debut while also showing a glimpse of what Truex can do with good cars. Good cars will be the key in 2007. Truex and Manion have good chemistry and now have experience to build on when adjusting the car. It's up to DEI to continue to produce, and improve their engines and chassis. Paul Menard will drive a third full time car. That could pull personnel and resources away from the #1 team. Menard will have to qualify for at least the first five races, meaning extra attention will be given to his cars and engines. There is also the issue ofDEI's foggy management picture.

One of Truex's strengths is taking care of equipment. Although he had 5 DNF's, he was second among rookies with 21 lead lap finishes. One thing Truex must control is his emotions. The Bristol incident illustrated how aggressive Truex can get. He had a similar run-in at a Richmond Busch race in 2005. Every driver has days of struggle and frustration, but losing control is an easy way to turn a 21st finish into a 41st.

DEI's strength in 2006 was their intermediate program, although Truex is capable of running well at almost any track. He is strong at plate tracks and should get more help this season in the draft. He is also strong at Dover, where he won twice in the Busch series and scored a 6th in Cup. He won the Mexico City Busch road race in 2005, and has also run well at short tracks like Bristol and Richmond. Although his driving style is similar to teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr, he is a superior qualifier. A pole win is a real possibility next season.

As long as Truex gets the proper support he has the talent to run up front. Making the Chase is a long shot this season, but Truex should improve his finishes in year 2. A top 15 points finish along with 5 top fives and 10-15 top tens is the likely forecast forTruex. A win is not likely, but not out of the question either. Maybe the best news is that expectations for Truex are returning to previous heights.

Who has the best Engine Programs?

Engines are the biggest single expense on a car. They are also essential for finishing a race. It sounds simple, but think about it. Teams can recover from almost any problem during a race: a flat tire, a crash, a dead battery, even a bad transmission is still not the end of the race. If your engine is done, so is your day.

Horsepower is a big requirement for a good engine, but reliability is even more important. The teams that figure out the formula to maximize both parts have a huge advantage. Certain teams have reputations for stronger engine programs than others, but which ones are truly the best? Since I don’t have a dynometer, or access to the NASCAR garage, I thought the best way to gauge the engine programs was engine failures.

I took the number of DNF’s due to engine failures as noted by Racing Reference. This means that if an engine was headed south, but didn’t expire before the end of the race it wasn’t counted, because it’s impossible to judge that. The quick and dirty answer is counting the number of failures divided by the number of total races. This includes full and part-time teams plus teams that purchase engines from other teams (Ginn, Haas, Petty, etc).

Penske/Jasper engines did not have a failure in 2007, although they only ran 72 total races. Although Penske only won one race, they did score eight poles, which does testify to the horsepower available. Penske’s lack of wins is related to other issues with the cars, but at least the engines appear in good shape. Joe Gibbs Racing supplied engines for four full-time teams and had two failures all year. Two failures in 144 races works out to a 1.4% failure rate. That’s pretty impressive over that many races. Gibbs is one of the premier organizations, and the engine program proves that.

Five other teams (Hendrick, Ganassi/Elliott, Bill Davis, Childress and Yates/Roush) all had a failure rate between 2.6 and 3.0%. For Hendrick and Yates/Roush that is pretty impressive considering the number of teams they each support. Each organization supplied engines for over 300 races in 2006 and both had less than 10 failures. The two other companies with their own engine programs are Evernham (5.6%) and DEI (6.1%). Evernham won six races and eight poles, all on speedways, in 2006. The power is evident, but they have less reliability. At first glance, these two organizations are lacking compared to others.

Digging deeper reveals some interesting numbers. Several organizations lease out engines to smaller teams. Theoretically any team that purchases engines will get the same specs and product as the in-house teams. It’s hard to know for sure what differences there are, but the failure rates almost always increase for teams buying their engines at retail.

The largest engine supplier is Hendrick Motorsports, who support three other full-time teams at Ginn Racing and Haas CNC. They also supplied engines for Michael Waltrip Racing’s five test races. In total, teams ran 115 races with Hendrick retail engines. There were only three failures or a 2.6% rate. That falls directly in line with their overall rate and the in-house failure rate (5 failures in 190 races). Evernham and DEI take much better car of their in-house teams. Evernham’s in-house failure rate was 4.6%, but it jumps to 6.9% for third-party teams. Iin 36 fewer races Petty Enterprises suffered the same number of failures as Evernham’s three full-time teams. DEI’s gap is even larger. They had three failures from their in-house teams, including one from part-time Paul Menard, good for a 3.8% failure rate. Robby Gordon leased DEI power and had three failures himself. That’s an unacceptable 8.3%. Again, it’s difficult to know the exact reasons for failures. It’s still no surprise that Gordon will switch to Ford in 2007, and the engine factor certainly weighed in his decision.

There are so many parts and variables in play for any engine’s performance. It’s a constant struggle to balance maximum horsepower with reliability. Evernham produces great horsepower at the cost of some reliability. Bill Davis and Ganassi showed great reliability, but not necessarily the same strength of other teams. Next year might be totally different. Bill Davis Racing switches to Toyota. It’s very possible they experience greater horsepower with flakier results. All three Toyota outfits are likely to have inconsistent engine programs in year one. Other teams fluctuate from year to year. Look at Childress Racing. Their entire program improved in 2006 while other teams declined. It’s no different for engine departments.

The top 35 will affect everything in 2007. This is especially true for team's engine programs. A blown engine in the first five races will put a driver in a big points hole. All the time spent in the offseason at the wind tunnel, pit crew practice or preseason testing can go down the drain if an engine fails. For a team hovering around the 35th place, this could prove fatal.

NASCAR Driver Preview: Robby Gordon

Robby Gordon Age: 38
0 Wins, 1 top 5’s, 3 to 10’s, 10 top 15’s
9 DNF’s
Avg Start: 27.5 Avg Finish: 25.3
#7 Menard's/Jim Beam Ford Crew Chief: Greg Erwin

Mention Robby Gordon and you’ll get an array of reactions. Some think he has no talent, others think he’s one of the finest drivers in the garage. Still other people consider him reckless and a cheater. With most things, the accurate picture is somewhere in the middle. Gordon will probably always be a lightning rod for fans.

Whatever your personal opinion of Gordon, the progress his one-car team has made in two seasons is impressive. Prior to 2005 Gordon announced bold plans to run his own Cup team. After failing to qualify for races, having fickle equipment and poor finishes in 2005, the critics appeared right. Gordon built upon that rough beginning and made significant progress in 2006.

The biggest immediate obstacle was making races. Gordon successfully qualified for the Daytona 500 and the next four races to secure a top 35 starting spot. Once safely inside, Gordon went about improving his finishes. His 30th place finish didn’t fully represent how he ran in many races. His 64.9 driver rating was 26th. Several races were spoiled by DNF’s. He had a Cup worst nine. He also completed a very low 86% of the possible laps. Some of these issues were out of his control, while others were self-inflicted wounds. He had 10 top fifteen finishes and 14 finishes worse than 30th. Consistency was not present in the #7 car.

In the early part of the season Gordon had several good runs ruined by late problems. At both Atlanta and Texas he ran inside the top ten only to get trapped under caution. His first top ten came at Talladega in the spring. He added a fourth at Watkins Glen and a 10th at the fall Atlanta race to his season.

The Atlanta finish also created controversy for Gordon. Late in the race Gordon was caught throwing a piece of debris in hopes of a caution. The caution did drop, allowing him to stay on the lead lap and ultimately close out a top ten. NASCAR’s hammer also dropped, costing Gordon 50 points and $15,000. That’s still an improvement compared to thrown helmets and cursing on national TV.

Robby Gordon Motorsports is primed for more improvement next year too. He is switching from Chevy to Ford. Joining Ford will lend better manufacturer support. Instead of fighting for scraps with Chevrolet, Gordon is now one of nine cars getting support from Ford. The Yates/Roush engine package will provide better reliability. Gordon used DEI engines in 2006. This was an improvement over Menard’s engines and was a large factor in Gordon qualifying for races in 2006, but Gordon still had 3 engine blowups.

Crew Chief Greg Erwin found a speedy setup for the intermediate tracks. Now Gordon needs some luck to get his deserved finishes. He is always a favorite to win at the two road courses, and obliges when his equipment cooperates. He should also continue his strong runs at plate tracks (avg finish 13.25 in ’06). He has three career Cup wins at Sonoma, Watkins Glen and Loudon. His achilles heel is short tracks. In 13 races at Martinsville his average finish is 32.9 and has not scored a top ten. Excluding Loudon, all the 1-mile and shorter tracks (Martinsville, Phoenix, Richmond, Bristol, Dover) all give Gordon problems. That's over a quarter of the schedule to struggle at.

The key is smoothing out the erratic finishes. More reliable engines will help, but Gordon must also avoid crashes and not lose control of his emotions. When he runs well, ensuring a good finish is a must. If it's not a strong track, don't try too hard and end up in a wreck. In his three full seasons with Richard Childress Racing he scored finishes of 20th, 16th, and 23rd. In his third season of ownership, his equipment should gain consistency. Geting more even results should bring him closer to this type of points finish. He is not a Chase contender, but 20-25 in points is respectable and realistic. Considering where he started two years ago that would be quite impressive.

NASCAR Driver Preview: Michael Waltrip

Michael Waltrip			Age: 43
#55 NAPA Toyota			Crew Chief: David Hyder
Nextel Cup Stats
Starts	Wins	Top 5's	Top 10's	Top 15's
33	0	0	0	1
Poles	Avg Start	Avg Finish	Points	Driver Rating
0	31.9	30.9	36th	42.3

For the first time since 1986 Michael Waltrip did not score a top ten finish. 1986 was also the last time
Waltrip did not start a Cup race. In fact, he missed three plus a fourth race where he purchased his entry. On the track 2006 was a disaster for Waltrip.

How bad was it? He had one finish (14th at Talladega) inside the top fifteen. He had a mere 5 lead lap finishes compared to 7 DNF's. It's never a good sign when you have more DNF's than lead lap finishes. Beyond his the DNF's he had 15 "bottom 10's". To ensure he made the first five races, he purchased owners points from Doug Bawel and the defunct #77 Penske team. This luxury was quickly squandered by poor finishes. By the ninth race, Waltrip was outside the top 35 for good. Things only swirled further down the drain from there. Waltrip did not qualify
for the Coca Cola 600, but purchased Derrick Cope’s ride to satisfy his sponsor, Napa. It’s unclear whether Napa
was satisfied with Waltrip’s 41st place finish at Charlotte. Waltrip also missed the second largest race, the Brickyard 400 plus Richmond and Homestead.

After several great runs in 2005 while showing some serious skill, 2006 seemed like a wasted year on track. After an 18th at the Daytona 500, the year took an immediate dive. Blown engines, faulty brakes and crashes explained some of the problems. Sometimes Waltrip made problems for himself. At the spring Bristol race, he misunderstood his spotter and plowed into two crashed cars, half a lap after the original wreck. Mechanical failures or plain bad luck is one thing; every driver endures both. Adding poor judgment to the problems really compounds matters. The one relatively bright spot was his Busch Series efforts. A second place at the fall Charlotte race highlighted 3 top tens in 21 starts.

Sure his on-track record was dreadful, but his off track activities were very successful. Toyota appointed him to be the flagship team for their 2007 entry to Cup. He secured enough sponsorship for three cars and hired Dale Jarrett and David Reutimann to drive. He also hired a lot of organizational talent: Ty Norris, Matt Borland, Larry Carter and David Hyder among others. Don’t let his goofy, sponsor-pitching personality fool you; he has a definite plan for his company. Sponsors obviously love him and that is a big part of any organization. When he announced he was leaving DEI for Bill Davis Racing, it was a puzzling move. Of course that was before he was granted the task of starting a new organization from scratch. While it essentially cost him his 2006 season, his long range plans remain on course.


Waltrip probably won’t see great improvement in 2007. Plate tracks will again be his strength. Even in an under-supported Charger, Waltrip had his strongest races at Daytona and Talladega. His experience in the draft is a huge asset, especially when the strength of his cars is unknown. Making the Daytona 500 shouldn’t be a problem and would get his team off to a solid start.

It might be surprising that based on average finish, Waltrip’s best track is Sonoma (avg finish 15.9, 7 top tens in 15 races). Aside from plate tracks, he has also been historically solid at Charlotte and Bristol. Waltrip has 675 career starts, fourth most among drivers with a 2007 ride. Waltrip must rely on his vast experience to regain his pre-2006 form.

Qualifying isn’t a great strength, although he did capture the pole at Pocono in 2005. It was his first pole since George H Bush was in office. His best effort last year was 19th and his average start was 31.9.

While Waltrip is capable of putting together strong runs at any track, he has never finished in the top ten in points. Even in his best years at DEI, Waltrip struggled with weekly consistency. He can’t afford to start the year erratically. David Hyder will be the crew chief in 2007. He worked with Ken Schrader for the last two years as crew chief first at BAM racing and last year at Wood Brothers. Creating immediate chemistry between the two will be vital for the season.

Overall, the Toyota cars will struggle initially. Many people have predicted dominance from Toyota, but that will not be in 2007. The biggest challenge will be the intermediate tracks. These tracks are the most aerodynamically intense and require the most R&D help. Perhaps the one program where MWR and Toyota are on an even playing is the Car of Tomorrow. Other established teams already have an inventory of 2006 cars and the associated technology, but everyone is starting at the ground floor with the new CoT.

Returning to the top 35 is definitely attainable. He is capable of collecting a few top tens, although improving on his 2 top 15 finishes is a more immediate goal. Like the other Toyota teams, simply making races to lay the groundwork for future seasons is priority one. After having his feet in two camps last year, Waltrip can finally focus all of his efforts in one place in 2007. That doesn’t mean he will be less busy, but probably more focused in one place.