Bleacher Report - Articles by Christopher Leone

Done with Danicamania: At Least Dale Jr. Won Races

Christopher Leone — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:10:06 -0500

It seems like wherever I go these days, I cannot escape Danica Patrick.

This morning, while attending class at Boston University, I listened to a presentation on sexuality in the media by Dr. Patrice Oppliger, one of our assistant professors of communication. She noted that many female celebrities, as they grow out of young adulthood, use sex as a way to keep the public's attention on them, citing Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Miley Cyrus as three prominent examples.

All was well until one of my classmates asked a question about wanting "to be taken just as seriously in the office in a miniskirt as in pants." In response to this question, Danica came up as an example of a prominent celebrity who wants to be taken seriously, but still has no problem doing Sports Illustrated swimsuit photo shoots.

Right then, right there, I decided that I had had it with Danicamania.

Danica Patrick has been more celebrity than race car driver ever since she first signed with the newly-rechristened Andretti Autosport, back in 2007. Blame it on the GoDaddy ads, blame it on the IndyCar Series using her as their only real marketing tool, blame it on whatever else you'd like, but she is no longer a race car driver first.

She is a celebrity and a brand first, and a race car driver second, and that's a problem.

I'm sick of the fact that everybody is making a big deal about her supposed jump to the Nationwide Series with JR Motorsports, after a graphic of her in a JR firesuit appeared briefly on the web yesterday. Since when have we cared this much about the Nationwide Series? Have we ever?

Even more troubling, since when have we cared this much about a driver who has never shown the ability to consistently win?

That's the one difference between Danica and her closest parallel in NASCAR, Dale Earnhardt Jr., her potential Nationwide owner. We all know that they're both highly overrated by an adoring public. But Junior has won races - plural. Danica hasn't.

Both have had segments of their careers where they have been in top-flight equipment, albeit not quite as good as some of the other cars out there. Junior has 40 wins in NASCAR's top two series, now known as Sprint Cup and the Nationwide Series, although he has struggled recently.

With the sheer amount of Cup drivers moonlighting in Nationwide, and their general dominance of the series, with at least 15 Cup drivers entered in the majority of the races, I am calling those wins just as legitimate for the sake of argument. Bear with me.

To put Junior's statistics in those two series in perspective, note that Jimmie Johnson has 48 combined wins, Kevin Harvick has 46, Kyle Busch and Tony Stewart have 45 apiece, and Carl Edwards has 41. All of these drivers, except for Busch and Edwards, entered NASCAR at around the same time. Overrated as he may be, Junior isn't that far off NASCAR's best when looking at his career statistics.

He's performed on the track while also establishing himself off of it, running one of the better teams in the Nationwide Series and launching the career of "next big thing" Brad Keselowski.

As for Danica? Well, she has one win, which came on an IndyCar-Champ Car split weekend, and it was cemented by fuel mileage. She's improved in the points every year, and was the best non-Penske or Ganassi driver in the IndyCar standings last year, but that's about it for her accomplishments on the track. I don't think I need to describe her "brand."

Patrick's one win in 81 big-league starts yields a winning percentage of 1.23. In 476 combined Sprint Cup and Nationwide starts, Junior has a winning percentage of 8.4. And let's not forget the two championships Junior won in 1998 and 1999 driving in NASCAR's No. 2 series. Patrick never won any races in the Toyota Atlantic Series, neve rmind championships.

The fact of the matter is, at least Juniormania has some stats to back it up.

I know that Danica Patrick isn't Milka Duno, running ten miles an hour off the pace in every race she enters. I know that she's more than just eye candy, that she's led laps at Indianapolis and whatnot.

I also know that stereotypes about racing exist, including that it takes no talent, the fans are a bunch of idiots who choose favorite drivers based on long-standing loyalties, the only drivers that matter are the marketable ones, and so on and so forth.

But I'm a racing fan, not a marketing fan. I don't think I'm the only one. I grew up before the racing series put more into marketing the products off the track than the racing product on the track, and I know when a driver deserves the publicity that they are receiving.

Sorry, Danica, you're not a winner.

I want to see a commitment to the race car first and a commitment to the celebrity second. I think the real reason why Junior has been suffering recently is because his celebrity began to outrun his on-track performance, and thus he lags behind the rest of his Hendrick Motorsports teammates. Before the plethora of marketing deals he inked over the past few seasons, Junior was one of the best drivers in NASCAR.

If Danica refocuses on driving the IndyCar and forgets about her celebrity for a while, she'll be a much better race car driver. She'll win races. She'll earn a NASCAR contract if she wants it by bringing more to the table than just her sponsorship dollars.

And when all is said and done, we'll be able to look back on her career and say "Wow, there's a driver who really accomplished a lot."

Until then, have fun with your hype, everybody. I'm done with Danicamania.

An Open Letter to President Jimmie Johnson

Christopher Leone — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 00:19:53 -0500

Dear "President" Jimmie Johnson,

First of all, is it all right to call you "Mr. President?" I mean, you have been the defending Sprint Cup champion of four years now—the length of one United States presidential term, something that nobody else has ever done, including your teammate Jeff Gordon, Richard Petty, and Dale Earnhardt.

You and your "cabinet"—Secretary of State Rick Hendrick, Secretary of Defense Earl Barban, and most importantly, your right-hand man, Vice President Chad Knaus—are one of the most successful administrations in NASCAR history.

Over the past four years, you have won 29 races, almost a full season, and have not scored fewer than 22 top-10 finishes in any given year. That's a remarkable performance.

But, Mr. President, the State of the Union is not as strong as it once was. Attendance at the events has gone down, as is to be expected in a recession, but television ratings have gone down too. That signifies a lack of interest.

It's not like people can't watch—at least 99 percent of American homes have televisions, and 56-plus pay for cable TV. 24 of the 36 points-paying races are on broadcast—the first third of the season with FOX, and the final 11 with ABC.

And, Mr. President, one of the reasons why they're not watching is you.

Now, don't get me wrong, people love an administration that can turn down all challengers. Adversity sticks to you like teflon; challengers come and go, but when all is said and done, we all know that you're going to come through and remain on top.

You got there by being just a little better than Matt Kenseth in 2006. In 2007, you took down Jeff Gordon, whose season was statistically better, by virtue of a couple more wins and a stronger performance at the end of the season.

Last year, the Chase format gave you the win when Carl Edwards was marginally better.

This year, you took advantage of the fact that Mark Martin flip-flopped too often between good and bad finishes, and even an incident at Texas couldn't drag you down too far.

Under the Chase format, Mr. President, you can't be beat. But take away this safety net, and you're more vulnerable.

History wouldn't have been made this Sunday, because you wouldn't have won in 2007, or 2008; even your 2006 championship would have been far less certain. I mean, come on, the margin of victory under the old format would have been four points.

Perhaps, Mr. President, you're human after all.

Perhaps your administration is just the most adept at adapting to a new style of racing, under a format that, despite all of NASCAR's claims, actually robs the fans of better (or at least fairer) championship battles. Look it up.

But there's a way for you to prove your invincibility once and for all. Let me explain.

But first, I must say that I was slightly disappointed in hearing about your recent contract extension through 2015. Six more years is a long time. At this rate, you'll be approaching Franklin Delano Roosevelt status before you even hit 40.

I think it's time for another challenge, don't you? And I have perhaps the greatest conceivable challenge in all of motorsports for you.

Mr. President, Americans—or American-trained drivers—are suffering in international motorsport affairs. Our last Formula One driver, Scott Speed, was a failure. (Perhaps you recognize him; you lap him every week in the stock cars now.) Champ Car's four-time champion, Sebastien Bourdais, made for a terrible F1 driver as well.

Our best IndyCar driver, Danica Patrick, is by far the most overrated race car driver of this decade in any discipline, and the other American drivers in that series—Marco Andretti, Graham Rahal, et al—seem more concerned with the fanfare and their own stardom than actually winning races.

So, Mr. President, the only person I could think of to approach in hope of solving the problem is you.

Starting next year, there will be an Formula One team headquartered in Charlotte, run by former Speed Channel reporter Peter Windsor and backed by YouTube founder Chad Hurley. They already have one driver signed, a Spanish mid-pack GP2 racer who brings some sponsorship on board.

That's not what you want the United States' only F1 team to be, is it? A pay-driver team? They need a champion, a driver who can win races, has dominated those in his home country, a consummate professional such as yourself who isn't going to alienate the media.

My point is, we need you in F1, Mr. President.

We need you to prove to the rest of the world that America is still a relevant motorsports country.

We need you to prove that these drivers in NASCAR and IndyCar are just as talented as the F1 boys, that we, too, can turn right and left, that even though F1's rejects have populated the open-wheel ranks for years and the bulky stock cars generally turn left, our drivers can hold their own in the pinnacle of motorsport.

Think of it. How many drivers can say that they've won races at Daytona, Indianapolis, and Monaco?

Plenty of drivers can lay claim to two of the three: Mario Andretti, Juan Pablo Montoya, Michael Schumacher, and Graham Hill (who also won Le Mans) are among them. You could be the first to win all three. That's a class all your own in the history of motorsport, Mr. President.

Sometimes, you need to know when to move on to the next challenge. I would say that "when" is now.

There is very little left for you to accomplish in American stock car racing, except for maybe Nationwide and Camping World titles, and what fun is stepping backwards?

I hope you'll consider what I've suggested to you, Mr. President. Take a long, hard look at F1. Then talk to Secretary of State Hendrick and Mr. Windsor, and let's make it happen.

Some other drivers would like to win championships before they retire too, anyway.

BAM Racing Closes in on Return to the Track

Christopher Leone — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:40:29 -0500

This weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway, BAM Racing and owner Beth Ann Morgenthau formally announced their return to the Sprint Cup Series for the 2010 season with the No. 49 Warner Music Nashville Toyota.

The partnership will feature a revolving roster of Warner artists on both the hood and side panels of the car, with Larry the Cable Guy the first to be featured. He will appear on the car for Daytona Speedweeks as the team attempts to race their way into the Daytona 500.

BAM Racing has not fielded a car since 2008 at the spring Martinsville race, their first under the Toyota banner after switching from Dodge. Microsoft Small Business was the sponsor, and while the partnership was supposed to last longer than one race, funding fizzled.

The team announced a brief hiatus with intentions of regrouping in the fall, but had no such luck. Crew chief David Hyder and other key employees were lent to the Wood Brothers, where they remained through 2009, as BAM did not attempt to run any races. Hyder will return to the No. 49 team this season.

The driver has not yet been formally announced, but the keywords on BAM Racing's homepage contain the name Mike Bliss, suggesting that he'll get the call. Bliss finished fifth in the Nationwide Series standings this year, bouncing between half a dozen teams after getting the pink slip from Phoenix Racing, despite winning the spring Lowe's race with them. He spent most of the end of the year with CJM Racing, with whom he never finished worse than 10th.

Bliss also ran 13 Cup races this year, 11 with Phoenix and two with TRG Motorsports, with a best finish of 24th in the fall Lowe's race. He had 11 DNFs, mostly due to starting and parking.

One and Done: Ford 400

Christopher Leone — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:27:33 -0500

Well, the Sprint Cup Series ends this week at Homestead, and I'm pretty sure that we're all glad to see the end of yet another season of Jimmie Johnson taking advantage of the Chase format like a fat man at the Golden Corral.

It's just not fun to watch anymore. Worse, it's not fun to do these fantasy picks when the obvious choice is the same guy every weekend. It makes everything...easy. Too easy.

So you know what? We're going to try something different this week. Instead of picking Chase drivers for this week's Homestead race, seeing as most of you have exhausted your supply of Chasers that are worth picking, I am going to make it a point of recommending non-Chase drivers this week.

If you have them available, you know who to pick, but for the rest of us, let's make things interesting.

Kevin Harvick (avg. fn. 9.1): Despite clinching the Camping World Truck championship with Ron Hornaday last week at Phoenix, Happy's had little to smile about on the Cup side of things this year. Luckily for him, he has an opportunity to finish the year on a high note, as Homestead is one of his better tracks.

Despite never winning the season finale, he's never finished worse than 20th and has completed 2140 of 2141 possible laps.

A.J. Allmendinger (avg. fn. 11.0): I know, he's only made one start at Homestead, last year. But he passed 32 cars after starting dead last. That says a lot.

Martin Truex Jr. (avg. fn. 12.5): His average finish would be higher had he not run this race in 2004 as a reward for his Busch Series title. In the past three years, he's finished second, sixth, and 10th, respectively, for an average finish of 6.0.

It's his last race with Earnhardt Ganassi Racing, and I'm sure Truex would like to go out with a good finish, especially considering how bad this year has been for him.

Jamie McMurray (avg. fn. 15.4): Truex's replacement in the No. 1 car doesn't have quite as stellar a record at Homestead as his predecessor does, but he's not a pushover, either.

Since he became a full-time Sprint Cup driver in 2003, his average finish at Homestead is 14.3, and that's dragged down by an engine failure in 2006. Look for McMurray, relieved at finally signing a contract for 2010, to perform well this weekend.

Bobby Labonte (avg. fn. 18.7): The only former Homestead winner in this bunch, having scored the victory in 2003, Labonte had top 10 finishes in four of his first five starts at the track. Since then, his record has declined, but that's more of a testament to his Petty Enterprises cars being weak.

Maybe Kevin Buckler's cars aren't much better, but Labonte has gotten things out of those cars that David Gilliland could not (when he wasn't starting and parking, that is). One can't lose sight of the fact that Labonte led 174 laps the first time that the Cup cars came to Homestead.

High Marks For Mercedes' New Formula One Lineup

Christopher Leone — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:13:05 -0500

While Mercedes Grand Prix may have failed to retain reigning world champion Jenson Button, the engine supplier can still call the Brit a part of its team.

As most of the motorsport world already knows, Button has signed a multi-year deal with McLaren, to partner with 2008 world champion Lewis Hamilton in its lineup.

For years, McLaren has been the flagship Mercedes team; following two years with Sauber in 1993 and 1994, they began supplying engines to the Woking-based outfit in 1995. McLaren-Mercedes has won three drivers' championships and one constructors' championship since the beginning of the partnership.

Despite its purchase of the former Brawn GP and conversion to a works team, however, Mercedes will maintain the partnership with McLaren through at least 2015. This means that the engine company will also continue its relationships with Button and Hamilton for as long as they remain with McLaren; Button has a multi-year deal, while Hamilton has been affiliated with McLaren for over ten years, with no end in sight.

Losing Button from its works team is certainly a disappointment, but the move actually creates a more ideal situation for Mercedes. With Button and Hamilton under contract to McLaren, they can still lay claim to the two most recent world champions, but don't have to pay the exorbitant salaries that come with drivers of that caliber.

It also means that Mercedes will not directly have to deal with Button and Hamilton if their combination blows up, a la Hamilton and Fernando Alonso in 2007.

Finally, it frees up the works team to hire two German drivers - widely speculated to be Nico Rosberg, formerly of Williams, and Nick Heidfeld, last of the Sauber team whose 2010 status is currently up in the air.

Rosberg placed seventh in points in 2009, and has commented that he would like to move to a winning team; with most key personnel retained from its brief life as Brawn GP, it seems a fair guess that the Mercedes will be capable of winning. Heidfeld is a career journeyman who has seen better days, and, like Rosberg, has never won a Formula One race, but is by no means a bad driver.

This all-German team gives Mercedes claim to two of the best German open-wheel racers in the world, something they never had with McLaren, which has generally employed Finnish or British drivers over the past few years (with some notable exceptions). The only German-speaking driver to race for McLaren since 1995 is Alexander Wurz, who hails from Austria.

If all goes well, it also provides Mercedes with a means to attract Sebastien Vettel and Nico Hulkenberg to their team in the future. Vettel's contract with Red Bull is up after 2011, and Hulkenberg has been Williams' test driver since 2008, meaning that only strong showings over the next couple of years will lure the country's two best young talents to the German manufacturer.

2010 will be an interesting year (to say the least) for Mercedes, with the potential for both Cinderella-esque success and miserable failure on both teams. But regardless of their actual performance come next season, these four drivers give Mercedes the best lineup of any engine manufacturer in the sport.

Season Review/Preview: Will Power

Christopher Leone — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:49:18 -0500

The 2009 season was one of great opportunity for Will Power, the affable Australian who came over to the IndyCar Series after its merger with Champ Car.

Winner of the final Champ Car race, held at Long Beach in the spring of 2008, he lost his Team Australia sponsorship at the end of that season, leaving him without a ride despite a 12th-place finish in points.

Luckily for Power, Roger Penske recognized his talent and picked him over Justin Wilson to replace Helio Castroneves in Penske Racing's No. 3 car while Castroneves faced federal tax evasion charges.

While the ride was only guaranteed as long as the trial lasted, it provided Power with a great opportunity to either cement himself as the next great Penske driver or make himself attractive to other teams and sponsors when the gig was up.

Unfortunately for him, the gig only lasted one race (in which Power finished sixth) before Castroneves was acquitted. In keeping with an earlier promise, Penske provided Power with rides at Long Beach and the Indianapolis 500, driving the No. 12 Verizon Wireless car.

Power rose to the occasion by winning the pole at Long Beach, leading 16 laps, and finishing second to Dario Franchitti in the race. At Indianapolis, Power ran near the front all day, and while he did not lead any laps, he finished fifth as teammate Castroneves won.

His impressive performances, a far cry from his inconsistency in Champ Car in 2007 and IndyCar in 2008, convinced Penske to funnel in sponsorship dollars from his truck rental company, allowing Power to run five more races.

The first took place in Toronto, which had been off the 2008 calendar; when it was on the Champ Car schedule in 2007, he took his second career victory. Unfortunately, Franchitti again bested Power, who finished third.

Power's next race was at Edmonton, a track where he had never had much luck; in 2007, his steering rack broke, causing his retirement, and despite setting the fastest lap in 2008, he finished 22nd.

But Power bounced back in 2009, winning the pole and leading 90 of the race's 95 laps as Penske cars finished first, second, and fourth. It was Power's first win in the Dallara-Honda and second win to count for IndyCar Series points.

He finished ninth at Kentucky and skipped Mid-Ohio before heading to Sonoma. Unfortunately, Power's season ended there, as a practice crash with Nelson Philippe left him with two fractured vertebrae and a concussion.

Power finished 19th in the championship standings. Because of the quality of his finishes in those six races, he was the highest-ranked driver not to run the full schedule, beating out Tomas Scheckter (who ran five more races than Power) by 20 points.

To his credit, Power did not once complain to the media about missing races and thus becoming a non-factor in last year's championship, and his patience has paid off with a full-time ride. Penske is shuttering its Grand-Am team to make room at the inn for Power, and that team's old crew will work for him, as they did during his limited run last year.

Obviously, Penske equipment is top-notch, and Power has proven that he can win in the IndyCars. However, three major questions remain to be answered before we can know the true caliber of the third Penske team.

First, how will Power rebound from his injuries? The Sonoma incident was a terrifying crash, the kind that drivers will always remember. Some say that once a driver takes a hard enough lick, he's never quite as aggressive again.

Second, will Power show consistency over an entire season? He's beginning to learn the ovals, but he even struggled on road courses in the 2008 season, his last full year in the car. Even 2007, his best open-wheel season to date, was spotted with too many retirements and poor finishes to be a true title contender.

Third, will a third full-time Penske car be on par with the first two or bring the whole organization down? When Chip Ganassi expanded to a three-car team in 2005, the results were horrible—2003 champion Scott Dixon could only manage 13th in points, and the other two cars were non-factors all year.

Granted, the engine and chassis situation was much different, but having too many teams under one roof can hurt both the established and the expansion rides. (Just ask Richard Childress in Sprint Cup or Michael Andretti in IndyCar.)

Will Power has proven himself a tremendous talent in the past, and Penske Racing is one of the elite teams in the IndyCar Series, so all of these questions may mean nothing come race day. There is plenty of reason for all parties to set their expectations high in 2010, but until Power gets comfortable with the car again, it may take a while for the No. 12 team to run up front.

A Passionate Lack of Passion for Jimmie Johnson and the Chase

Christopher Leone — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:10:02 -0500

So this is it—the Sprint Cup title is pretty much locked up, and for the fourth consecutive year, the hardware goes home to Jimmie Johnson. That's right, Jimmie Johnson has been the active champion of Sprint Cup for the length of one presidential term.

During their reign as the acting president and vice president of the Chase for the Sprint Cup, Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus have done everything right—suppressing any and all challenges from their opposition, making up for their mistakes, playing the game (so to speak) calmly.

They are tacticians in every sense. If we were an equivalent to the No. 48 team in the White House, we'd be hailing them as the best presidential administration ever.

But all that the Johnson regime inspires in NASCAR fans seems to be a lack of passion—a growing disinterest in the sport. Like the Edmonton Oilers of the 1980s, the Dallas Cowboys of the 1990s, and the New York Yankees of many different and disparate eras, their eventual triumph is a foregone conclusion.

And in a sport where every race is a playoff, so to speak, that's not a good thing.

Truthfully, this is all The Chase's fault. NASCAR never needed playoffs; when you have everybody competing against one another every week, it's already a best-of-30 series between every team in the sport. Towards the end, somebody gets "eliminated" every week, even though they're still present on the track.

Johnson's domination of the Chase format is impressive, yes. But wouldn't it be far more impressive to see him making incredible comebacks every year? Right now, Johnson has a 103-point advantage over Mark Martin for the title, going into the final race of the season at Homestead.

Under the old format, that would only be an eight-point advantage over Tony Stewart.

And NASCAR claims that the Chase makes things more competitive.

Things went the same way in 2008, when the Chase spread Johnson and Carl Edwards out by an extra 85 points going into Homestead. Instead of a 141-point advantage, Johnson would have only had 56 over Cousin Carl.

And you know what? One of NASCAR's most affable drivers would have backflipped his way to becoming the first driver to win championships in NASCAR's top two series in the same year. The 16-point advantage would have fallen just short of the 1992 duel between Alan Kulwicki and Bill Elliott in terms of excitement. That year, the margin of victory was a mere 10 points.

With no Chase, Johnson would have maintained his 2006 championship, the most impressive of the bunch, but only by four points over Matt Kenseth. But 2007 would have gone to the rightful champion, Jeff Gordon, whose dominance (and 7.3 average finish) easily trumped his teammate.

And right now, we'd be asking if Gordon, who would be only 51 points back, could win a record-tying seventh championship. (He also would have won in 2004.)

The problem with Johnson is his lack of charisma, and everyone—from the higher-ups in NASCAR to my mother, who pin-pointed the problem while I was talking to her today—knows it.

If Jimmie Johnson was as polarizing as Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt, or even Kyle Busch, the fans would be a lot more interested. But Johnson doesn't do anything statistically that Gordon never accomplished (or nearly accomplished—had he been a little better in 1996, he'd have four titles in a row), wreck people in the name of victory like Earnhardt, or piss people off like Shrub.

Fans watch the races hoping, more often than not in vain, that Johnson will make a mistake and fall out of the race. It doesn't happen, and that's the end of it. The championship is decided, we collectively sigh, and we move on to football.

The sport needs solutions to this problem, and regardless of what anybody says, it is a huge problem. What we have with Johnson is a driver who may be the greatest of all-time in taking advantage of fortuitous situations.

You know, in his entire Busch/Nationwide career, he only won one race? In that year, 2001, he was beaten in the points by Tony Raines. Think we'd be talking the same way about Tony Raines right now had Rick Hendrick picked him and not Johnson?

One answer is to "Jimmie-proof" the Chase, which the writers on NASCAR.com have discussed. While it would allow the sport to maintain its Chase format, it's unfair to mess with the entire schedule based on the strengths of one driver. Many of Johnson's best tracks just so happen to fall at the end of the year. Again, fortuitous situation.

The better solution, however, is to shoot the Chase to hell. Obviously, NASCAR won't do that, because it brings in more money in the short term—but when the fans stop watching because the championship is a foregone conclusion, they'll seriously reconsider. The past four years would have been a lot more interesting without it, and everyone who has looked at the statistics knows it.

Obviously, neither of those things are going to happen. So I venture one last suggestion out to the motorsports world, an idea which is so far-fetched, so desperate to give NASCAR a new champion, that it makes far more sense than anybody would ever be willing to admit. The side effects would be nothing but positives for not only NASCAR, but also motorsports around the world.

Go race for US F1, Jimmie.

Peter Windsor, are you listening?

One and Done: Checker O'Reilly Auto Parts 500 Presented by Pennzoil

Christopher Leone — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:15:30 -0500

The Chase for the Sprint Cup is heating up with only two races left on the schedule.

This weekend's race takes place at Phoenix, and the length of the official title—the Checker O'Reilly Auto Parts 500 presented by Pennzoil—perhaps justifies NASCAR's TV partners being allowed to sell sponsorship of their broadcasts.

Last weekend at Texas, Jimmie Johnson did something for us all to make the Chase more interesting: He wrecked. He finished 38th, allowing Mark Martin to become a factor in the Chase again.

Martin erased 111 points of Johnson's lead by finishing fourth but still has 73 more to make up.

But don't expect Johnson to be shaken. The No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team has been through a lot more adversity than this. They didn't even lose the points lead, after all. Johnson isn't going to let last week rattle his cage any; those sorts of things happen. (Just ask Martin about Talladega.)

Anyway, it's obvious who's going to be at the top of this week's list of picks—not only are they the two top drivers in points, they're the two top active drivers at Phoenix, with a combined five wins and 27 top-10s in 36 starts. (If their combined Phoenix stats were spread across one full Sprint Cup season, they'd be a strong championship contender, if not the champion.)

But to be fair, other drivers do exist...

Jimmie Johnson (avg. fn. 5.4)

5.4? A worst finish of 15th? Do I even need to justify or explain this?

Mark Martin (avg. fn. 9.0)

It has been 20 years since Martin finished outside of the top 20 at Phoenix. That race, all the way back in 1988, was his debut at the track, and he finished 36th only because his race ended early with a crash.

Johnson holds a slight edge over Martin in every statistical category, but keep in mind that the more starts a driver makes, the lower an average finish usually tends to be. The fact that "The Kid" has more starts at Phoenix than anybody else who's still driving, and still has the best average finish, is a testament to how good he really is in the desert. Oh, and he won the race in the spring.

Tony Stewart (avg. fn. 10.1)

Smoke won in his Phoenix debut back in 1999. He hasn't won at the track since, but he hasn't failed to finish any races either, and he's only failed to complete all 312 laps in a Phoenix race three times (although two of those were both races last year). He also finished second in the spring.

Kurt Busch (avg. fn. 12.5)

Last week's win at Texas and two straight podium finishes at Phoenix put him on this list. Mediocrity in 2006 and 2007 blemishes his record, but his recent performance, both in the Chase and in the desert, currently gives him the seventh best record of active drivers at Phoenix. He led 60 laps in this race last year and 63 in the spring, finishing second and third, respectively, in those two races.

Kyle Busch (avg. fn. 14.8)

I know, he's not a Chase driver. I like to break my own rules a lot. But he was so strong last week, and he's got six top-10s in nine starts at Phoenix, so he deserves a mention.

Martin Realistic After Johnson's Debacle at Texas

Christopher Leone — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:37:56 -0500

Despite gaining 111 points on defending champion Jimmie Johnson in Sprint Cup points after the Dickies 500 at Texas, Mark Martin isn't expecting his Hendrick Motorsports teammate to gift-wrap the title based on one poor performance.

Rather, the one they call "The Kid" is expecting a fight in the final two races just to stay a bridesmaid.

"I still have got my hands full for the top-six positions with all those guys—two guys that knocked me out of championships are breathing down my neck, so the race is still on," Martin, 50, told the media after the race, in which he finished fourth. "I don't know why everybody tries to cap this thing out and doesn't just wait and watch. There are still two races to go and still things that can happen."

One of those things happened to Johnson early in the race after Sam Hornish Jr. sent him into the wall before the race was five minutes old. Losing dozens of laps while in the garage for repairs, Johnson returned to the track to finish 38th.

What had been a gimme championship, considering Johnson's track record over the past few years, is now slightly more interesting.

True, Martin left 35 points on the table by failing to win and/or lead the most laps at Texas; the No. 5 car didn't see the lead all day. A 38-point difference is much easier to overcome than one of 73 points—in the former scenario, were Martin to win at Phoenix, Johnson would lose the lead by finishing outside of the top five. In reality, Johnson only needs to crack the top 15, something that he has never failed to do at Phoenix.

That's right: Johnson's worst Phoenix finish is 15th, which occurred both in the fall of 2002 and the spring of 2005.

When a driver accrues as many strong finishes as Johnson has over the past few Chases, it's easy and realistic for a driver to concede the title a few weeks early. But if any driver can challenge Johnson, it's going to have to be Martin, who is the only driver within two figures of the three-time champ heading into the final two races of the season.

But while anything can happen (or has happened) to knock challengers out of title contention, even the almighty Jimmie Johnson is not immune to misfortune.

So, while Mark Martin can talk about Johnson's track record all he wants, there's nothing to say that the same exact thing won't happen next weekend at Phoenix. Being realistic is a positive, but resigning oneself to a bridesmaid?

Considering the way that 1990, 1994, 1998, and 2002 worked for him, it seems that second-place finishes are being realistic for NASCAR's elder statesman.

Season Review/Preview: Helio Castroneves

Christopher Leone — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:51:36 -0500

It's never too early to start writing "season preview" articles in the IZOD IndyCar Series when your subject drives for one of the best teams in motorsports and has never finished worse than sixth in the points.

So it goes for Helio Castroneves, the affable Brazilian who will enter his 11th season with Penske Racing in 2010.

In each of his first 10 seasons, Castroneves won at least one race, including three Indianapolis 500s (2001, 2002, 2009). With Penske cars a class above most of the field in the past few years, that streak appears safe for 2010 as well.

Castroneves had a rough 2009 season off the track; his legal issues are well documented. But his off-track problems only caused him to miss one race, allowing him to make his season debut at the first IndyCar Series race at Long Beach. In his first time driving the car in months, he finished a respectable seventh.

Castroneves then backed that up with a second-place finish at Kansas, showing that even with the disadvantage of having missed a race, he could be a championship contender.

If skeptics wondered how missing a race would affect Castroneves in the points, his performance at Indianapolis removed all doubt about his status as a championship contender. He qualified on the pole, nearly .8 miles per hour faster than Ryan Briscoe, his teammate, won the pit stop competition on Carb Day, and led 66 laps on the way to his third Indianapolis 500 victory.

After a win the next month at Texas, however, Castroneves' season began to spiral downward. He had finishes of 12th or worse in three of the next seven races, retiring at Richmond and Toronto and finishing 12th at Mid-Ohio. His second place at Edmonton during that span was his best finish for the remainder of the season.

His failure to finish both the Infineon and Chicagoland races eliminated him from title contention, and he had to settle for fourth place in points, scoring 433 for the season. Champion Dario Franchitti, second-place Scott Dixon, and third-place Briscoe each had over 600 points, which emphasizes the extent to which Castroneves' performance fell off at the end of the season.

Obviously, 2009 was a trying and pressure-filled year for Castroneves, and his finishes at the end of the season showed the effects of mental fatigue. As cathartic as the win at Indianapolis was, the stress of the beginning of the season took its toll on the driver; he wasn't the same driver as in 2008, when he took 11 podium finishes.

But with his legal troubles in the distant past, all Castroneves has to worry about is the fact that he's never won a championship. With his focus completely on trying to bring Roger Penske his 13th open-wheel championship, Castroneves will be a much better driver in 2010 than he was in 2009.

Expect strong performances at tracks like St. Petersburg (two wins and a second in his last three starts there), Texas (two wins and a second in the past four years), Edmonton (second-place finishes in each of the past two years), and, of course, Indianapolis. Castroneves' weakest track is Iowa, where he has a best finish of seventh in his career.

Ryan Hunter-Reay Heir Apparent To Fourth Andretti Car

Christopher Leone — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:14:04 -0500

Over the past few years, apparel company Izod has taken a strong interest in the IndyCar Series, elevating itself from a partnership with driver Ryan Hunter-Reay, to official apparel partner of the Indy Racing League, to the IndyCar Series' title sponsor, beginning next year.

For the second year in a row, it looks like this strong interest will keep Hunter-Reay on the circuit.

The focus of Izod's advertising campaigns for the past two years, Hunter-Reay looks to join the soon-to-be-rechristened Andretti Green Racing next season in their No. 27 Dallara-Honda, replacing Hideki Mutoh, who is rumored to join the new De Ferran Motorsports team.

For years, owner Michael Andretti, one of the best American-born drivers in open wheel history, has coveted Hunter-Reay, a Dallas native with three wins in Champ Car and the IRL. The addition of Hunter-Reay gives his team three American drivers, with Danica Patrick and Marco Andretti being the others. Andretti's four-car squad is the largest in the IndyCar Series, with no other team fielding more than two cars for the full season in 2009.

Hunter-Reay's best open-wheel season came in 2008, where he won one race for Rahal Letterman Racing and finished eighth in points. This performance landed him a personal services contract with Izod, and gave the IRL an American talent to go alongside Patrick.

But when RLR couldn't find sponsorship to compete in the 2009 season, Hunter-Reay was without a ride until days before the season opener; series founder Tony George rescued him by putting him in a second car at Vision Racing, the team he operates.

That partnership lasted six races, until Hunter-Reay left to fill in for an injured Vitor Meira at A.J. Foyt Enterprises. Hunter-Reay's second place at the season opener in St. Petersburg was his best result of the season, as he fell to 15th in points.

But thanks to the Izod deal, Hunter-Reay looks like he will again be bailed out.

This time, however, instead of going to a team with little firepower, he joins the 2004,'05, and '07 series champions. After a dismal 2009 season in which AGR failed to reach victory lane for the first time in six years, Hunter-Reay will be looked upon to bring the No. 27 team to the next level in 2010.

One and Done: Dickies 500

Christopher Leone — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:37:01 -0500

Three races remain on the Sprint Cup Series schedule as the teams head to Fort Worth for the Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. This is the third and final "cookie cutter" (1.5-mile tri-oval) race of the Chase, and its defending champion is Carl Edwards.

Going into Texas, the championship is all but settled, as Jimmie Johnson only needs to finish 10th or better in the next three races, even if second-place Mark Martin wins all of the next three races and leads the most laps, to clinch the title.

It's a magnificent achievement if Johnson can pull it off, as it will be his fourth consecutive title (a Sprint Cup record). A 10th-place finish should be easy for Johnson at Texas, who has only failed to finish in the top 10 three times in 12 starts at Texas.

And, oh yeah, there are other drivers competing too. Sorry, forgot about that. Since this column is about One and Done, and I have a format that I prefer to follow, I'll get into some other picks too. But first and foremost of those picks:

Jimmie Johnson (avg. fn. 8.5): With one win and three second place finishes in his last six Texas starts, he's just too good. Does anybody else think it's time to Jimmie-proof the Chase? Texas wants to move this race date anyway—it's the opening week of deer hunting season in the state.

Tony Stewart (avg. fn. 12.6): He won this race in 2006, led laps here in the spring and has an average finish of 8.5 in the four times Texas has had a November date. It's not on par with Johnson, but it's the best you're going to get.

Carl Edwards (avg. fn. 13.4): Look, I know Cousin Carl hasn't been himself this year. The broken foot doesn't help. And to be honest, his Texas record isn't all that impressive other than the three wins—his only other top 10 was a 10th this spring. But hey, he does have two more wins than Johnson here, and in three less starts—meaning he wins at a 33.3 percent clip. I think that even despite his off year in 2009, that winning percentage merits a long, hard look.

Mark Martin (avg. fn. 13.8): Martin has no choice but to do well at Texas. After his wild ride at Talladega, he's mired in quite a hole in points, 184 back of Johnson. Simply put, he has to win, and not only win, but dominate. They've been hot and cold all season; this weekend we'll see how good the 5 team really is.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. (avg. fn. 13.9) : I know, I'm breaking my own rule - no picking drivers outside the Chase—but this one just felt right. Junior had six top 10 finishes in his first seven Texas starts, winning the first, and has led at least one lap in all of the past six Texas races. He also had the best driver rating last week at Talladega, and you never know what even the weakest link in the Hendrick Motorsports chain can do with a little bit of momentum.

A Tale of Two Race Teams: Bass Pro Shops' NASCAR Dilemma

Christopher Leone — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:59:47 -0500

The sponsors of NASCAR teams are obligated to pay the bills in order to plaster their logos on the cars. They're obligated to stick with a team through the length of their contract, for better or worse, and make the best of what the race team can provide them. But that doesn't mean that when the situation is less than stellar and the contract is approaching its final year, the sponsor isn't going to look for a quick out; they've also got an obligation to look for the greatest return on their investment.

Bass Pro Shops has been a major primary sponsor of a car in one of NASCAR's top two series since 2003, when they debuted on the hood of Hank Parker Jr.'s Chance 2 Motorsports Chevrolet at a then-Busch Series race in Atlanta. They stuck with that team for the next two seasons, winning championships with driver Martin Truex Jr. and crew chief Bono Manion.

In 2006, the whole team moved up to the Cup series. They made the Chase in 2007, with Truex taking his maiden Cup win at Dover. But in 2008 and 2009, the wheels started to fall off: the team failed to make the Chase in 2008, was forced to merge with Chip Ganassi's team in the offseason, and right now is mired at 24th in the standings while teammate Juan Montoya challenges for victories week in and week out. In response, Bass Pro Shops has scaled back its sponsorship of the car, with a presumptive 26 races this season and only 20 next year.

Right now, that car is vacant for the 2010 season, with Truex heading to Michael Waltrip Racing to replace its namesake in their flagship car. New owner Ganassi wants to put Jamie McMurray in the car, out of a combination of history (McMurray never finished worse than 13th in points in three years spent with Ganassi) and "best available"; the sponsor isn't so sure that McMurray fits their image.

In a FoxSports.com article, Lee Spencer mounts a weak defense for McMurray, saying that last week's winner "will go above and beyond for his sponsors whether it's Bass Pro or anyone else." Duh. Name me one successful driver this side of Stroker Ace who hasn't.

Former champion Bobby Labonte is available to Ganassi, and he fits the sponsor's image much better. But two things stand in the way of that marriage: TRG Motorsports is working to keep him on board with their team, and Labonte is having the worst season of his illustrious career, lingering at 30th in points.

The other available drivers, Reed Sorenson and Casey Mears, are other Ganassi castoffs who never did anywhere near as much with that team in the past (or with other teams as of late) as McMurray did.

The other, more desirable option that Bass Pro Shops has is to find a way out of their contract with Ganassi and head to Stewart-Haas Racing, where they would fill out the gaps in the schedule on Ryan Newman's car left by the U.S. Army. It's been an open secret for a while that the match makes a lot of sense; the sponsor occupies a B-pillar spot on owner Tony Stewart's car, they've had an association with him for years, and Stewart-Haas is a step up from Ganassi in almost every way.

Back in April, Hermie Sadler reported on SPEED that there is no "out" in Bass Pro Shops' contract for the 2010 season, just a day after Fox Sports posted rumors of the sponsor switching teams due to a performance clause. But sometimes, ripping up a contract makes more sense for both sides.

Ganassi, through Target as well as his team's other partners, could probably find enough sponsorship to field McMurray for the full season if Bass Pro Shops were to be let out of its contract. Before the merger with Dale Earnhardt Inc., Ganassi had a commitment from Target that would have allowed him to run two full-time cars in 2009. This year, Target and its partners combined to sponsor 18 races for Truex and Aric Almirola, besides the full schedule for Montoya (who had other Target partners on his car for four races).

Running a two-car Target program in Sprint Cup could work similarly to Ganassi's IndyCar Series program with Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti. This year, Dixon drove a Target car all season, while Franchitti's car carried a multiplicity of sponsors who marketed through Target for the majority of the year.

It's hard to convince an existing sponsor to expand its support in this economy, but given Target's 20 years with Ganassi, McMurray's solid history with the team, and the fact that his personality fits Target's marketing programs much better than those of a hunting outlet, it seems only plausible. That would then free up Bass Pro Shops to fill out Newman's schedule, strengthening Stewart's new team even further.

Of course, this only works out as well as it does when you keep the monetary figures away. I don't know that a buyout would be worth it for either Ganassi or Bass Pro Shops, or that Target would really be willing to expand its Sprint Cup participation. But for the sponsors, being involved in racing requires a return on the money they've invested. The way that things stand right now, everybody stands to be more successful if things get switched around.

More Wrecks At Talladega: Hate To Say I Saw It Coming, But...

Christopher Leone — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:07:44 -0500

Another Talladega race, another wild and dangerous finish.

So it goes every time the Sprint Cup Series visits the Alabama track, where upside down stock cars and a boring first 180 laps or so are about as inevitable as death and taxes.

Yesterday, both Ryan Newman and Mark Martin found themselves a little closer to the pavement than they would have liked over the course of the last few laps. Newman's flipping Chevrolet actually landed on the hood of Kevin Harvick's car, nearly putting his rear wing through Harvick's windshield. Martin's car was overturned by a spinning Martin Truex Jr. after the third controversial tri-oval finish in as many races.

At least there was some excitement at the end, though. For the majority of the race, cars ran in single file; before the race, Mike Helton warned drivers against bump drafting in the turns, threatening penalties against those who were too aggressive. Since nobody wanted to cross the line and find out how harsh NASCAR's penalty would be, the cars ran as if in a parade for much of the race.

Everybody remembers Carl Edwards' car taking off into the catchfence earlier this year, when Brad Keselowski turned him to win Talladega's spring race. That incident caused NASCAR to crack down even further on the drivers, adding to the old "out of bounds" restriction—no passing below the yellow line. Ironically, bump drafting in the tri-oval, where most of the problems at Talladega take place, is still fair game.

The restrictions have turned off drivers like Newman, who feels that the drivers should be able to police themselves on the track.

"The more rules, the more NASCAR is telling us how to drive the race cars, the less we can race and the less we can put on a show for the fans. They have created a lot of boredom because we couldn’t race. It is survival," he complained after the race.

"Richard Petty, Bobby Allison, Dale Earnhardt, Darrell Waltrip, all those guys, they respected each other."

The real cause of the problems that NASCAR currently has at Talladega dates back to the finish in October of last year. In that race, Regan Smith made an out-of-bounds pass of Tony Stewart in the tri-oval for what he and his team felt was the victory.

Smith cited NASCAR's previous comments that any driver who was forced below the yellow line made an out-of-bounds pass, the pass would stand. Smith felt that Stewart forced him below the yellow line, and instead of deliberately wrecking the two-time champion, he made a clean pass.

NASCAR's response was to dump him to 18th in the finishing order.

So when Keselowski found himself in Smith's position this spring, he learned from the precedent that NASCAR had set, and dumped Edwards. The result, one of the scariest wrecks that the new car has ever seen, injured eight fans. NASCAR's response was to further exacerbate the problem by giving the drivers even less control of the race, forcing them to be patient until the very end, at which point accidents happen.

The least that NASCAR can do to remedy the problem, if not removing all of their restrictions altogether and letting the drivers monitor themselves, is to change their rules about the tri-oval. The accidents are always caused by bumping and running out of room in the tri-oval in the final laps. NASCAR should be cracking down on bump drafting on the tri-oval at the end of the race, while allowing passes on the apron.

This forces separation between cars in the problem area of the track, while also freeing up another lane for those drivers who get forced down. It makes a whole lot more sense than risking more major tri-oval accidents at the end of the race, and putting more drivers in danger.

Then again, NASCAR hasn't made a lot of sense with most of their decisions at Talladega in the past year or so, have they? I hate to say that I saw this coming when Smith's win was disallowed last year, but the sanctioning body has made it clear that under the current rules, drivers will not be penalized for wrecking others to win.

As long as that mindset is around, there will be major wrecks at Talladega. And I don't care how safe the car is, or that none of the drivers have gotten hurt (yet)—they shouldn't be happening in the first place.

One and Done: AMP Energy 500

Christopher Leone — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:35:47 -0400

For the first time in its history, Talladega Superspeedway hosts a race in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, as NASCAR's premiere series heads to Alabama this weekend for the AMP Energy 500.

Of the ten tracks in this year's Chase, Talladega is by far the most unpredictable. Only four drivers boast an average finish better than 10.0 at the track, and they have a combined four starts—all of which occurred in this spring's race. That event featured a wacky finish in which Brad Keselowski found himself in victory lane, but Carl Edwards found himself airborne.

At a massive track like Talladega, where the cars reach some of their highest speeds and restrictor plates bunch up the field, the "big one," a massive 20-something car pileup, is looming around every corner, on every straightaway, in every drag race to the finish line. For that reason, picking this race is a crapshoot. Take everything with a full shaker of salt, and go with any hunch you might have.

Seriously. Scott Speed finished 5th here in the spring. Think about that.

If there's any weekend where staying within the confines of Chase drivers isn't necessary, it would be this one, because of the likelihood that an incident will wipe out half the field. Whoever survives the wreck, if it happens, probably won't have the best car in the field, just the best luck, and luck doesn't discriminate based on the points standings. But week in and week out, the Chase drivers give fantasy players the best chance of scoring a lot of points, so we might as well stick with the established system, no?

The five Chase drivers with the best records at Talladega:

Kurt Busch (avg. fn. 12.1): The older Busch brother has quietly assembled a solid Talladega record, with 12 top-10s in 17 starts. He has also led at least one lap in 13 of his 17 Talladega starts. Only two of his last 10 Talladega starts have been worse than eighth. While he's never won a Cup race at the track, the first thing you look to do at Talladega is survive, and he's only crashed out twice.

Tony Stewart (avg. fn. 13.8): Smoke "won" this race in controversial fashion last year (and as far as I'm concerned, that still should have been Regan Smith's win). He's led laps in 10 of the past 11 Talladega races, with the lone exception being this spring's race. Smoke's crashed out in four of his 21 starts, a slightly worse percentage than Busch, but he's also been able to do something that Busch can't say: finish better than third (one win and six second place finishes).

Mark Martin (avg. fn. 16.1): Martin only has five crashes at Talladega in 43 starts, a slightly better percentage than Busch, and both of his wins came after his horrendous 1994 incident, proving that bad crashes don't negatively affect everybody. But the last of those wins came in 1997, and Martin only has six laps at Talladega under race conditions in the new car: he skipped the track altogether in 2007 and 2008, and his spring race was cut short by an early incident.

Jeff Gordon (avg. fn. 16.4): The spring race didn't go well for Gordon, as he finished 60 laps off the pace in 37th. But he swept the track in 2007, and generally finds himself up front: he's led laps in 12 of the last 14 Talladega races (including six of the last eight). A statistic that should bring pause, however: In 11 starts since 2004, Gordon has won four, but has not finished better than 15th in the other seven.

Ryan Newman (avg. fn. 18.5): Well, Newman ran well and led laps in the wacky spring race... He also hasn't wrecked out of a Talladega race since 2005, as he kept the car going during the Edwards wreck and scored his career best finish at the track (third). Here's a question for you: If taking another stock car off the hood meant improving by another couple of spots, think he would take it?

Richard Petty Motorsports Further Solidifies 2010 Plans

Christopher Leone — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:41:47 -0400

An Associated Press report published today suggests that Best Buy, Elliott Sadler's sponsor on the No. 19 Richard Petty Motorsports car for the past couple of years, will move to its teammate, the No. 43 car, which A.J. Allmendinger will drive for the 2010 season.

Best Buy began its relationship with Allmendinger this season at Darlington, when they sponsored his No. 44 car as he finished 17th. Allmendinger also finished seventh at Sonoma and 23rd two weeks ago at Charlotte with Best Buy on the hood.

Best Buy sponsored Sadler in 19 races this season, including the Sprint All-Star Challenge, the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, and the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard. Sadler's best finish this season was a fifth place in the Daytona 500.

The move is one of marginal elevation for the Richfield, Minn.-based company: Allmendinger sits one spot ahead of Sadler in points, although their records this season are virtually identical: 32 starts, no wins, a top-5 and four top-10s apiece.

The move leaves the No. 19 with one primary sponsor, Stanley Tools, which has covered 22 races over the course of this season (19 with Sadler and 3 with Allmendinger).

However, the move also strengthens Richard Petty Motorsports as a whole; instead of putting together a multi-million dollar sponsorship package for Allmendinger, they only need to patch holes for both Sadler and Allmendinger, a much easier task. RPM also has experience with this method, having utilized it all year with Allmendinger's car and the No. 43 of Reed Sorenson.

Thus far, the biggest supporters of those two teams have been McDonald's and Valvoline, with 10 races apiece. Hunt Brothers Pizza sponsored eight races for Allmendinger this season, with the last one this weekend at Talladega. Charter Communications covered seven races, but none since Phoenix in April. Super 8 Motels, the Air Force, and PVA.org have also sponsored RPM cars this year.

Ideally, RPM will fill its sponsorship gaps with the companies that have already appeared on its cars this year, giving them three fully-sponsored and factory-supported teams for next year.

Pending the potential addition of Paul Menard and his family sponsorship, RPM could finally have a financially stable four-car team for the 2010 season.

Will a New Crew Chief Bring Kyle Busch to the Promised Land?

Christopher Leone — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:42:17 -0400

Joe Gibbs Racing announced today that Dave Rogers, a championship-winning crew chief in the Nationwide Series, will be paired with Kyle Busch for the final four races of this year's Sprint Cup Series schedule.

The move, which has been rumored for a couple of days now, is designed to make the No. 18 team stronger for the rest of this season and beyond.

Rogers replaces Steve Addington, who has been the crew chief of the 18 car since 2005. In 67 races together, Busch and Addington have 12 wins and 32 top-10s, but have failed to impress down the stretch both this year and in 2008, faltering in the Chase last year and failing to make it altogether this year.

Rogers, on the other hand, crew chiefed the No. 20 in the Nationwide Series to an owners' points championship last year, as Busch, Denny Hamlin, Tony Stewart, and Joey Logano combined for nine wins in 2008. The team has five wins this season as well, with Logano, Hamlin, and Brad Coleman, among others, behind the wheel.

It's unclear whether this move is more about Rogers or Addington. Sure, the Nationwide equipment at Gibbs is probably the best in the series, and to that end, by winning all of those races, Rogers is just doing his job. But to have such an assortment of drivers sharing the car, talented as they all are, is difficult for a crew chief. No two drivers are ever going to be exactly alike, and the fact that his team can run so well with every single one of them is a testament to Rogers' skill atop the pit box as well.

Addington, on the other hand, never did anything to elevate Busch; neither, for that matter, did he help any of the other drivers to run the 18 car while he was leading it. He took over the car in 2005; that year, Bobby Labonte had his worst-ever season (up to that point) in the Cup series, and left the team for Petty Enterprises at the end of the year. J.J. Yeley did nothing to impress in 2006 or 2007, save a second-place finish in the 2007 Coca-Cola 600.

Busch joined JGR in 2008 with a chip on his shoulder, having been ousted from Hendrick Motorsports in favor of Dale Earnhardt Jr., and the team was entering its first year as the de facto lead Toyota team. The fact that they performed so well in the first 26 races of last year was more of a testament to the right combination of driver and horsepower at the right time than anything else; the car was leading laps and contending for wins week in and week out.

But to sustain that success through the Chase, especially with a driver as terse as Busch, the crew chief has to keep his driver calm when the team encounters problems. Whatever it was that Addington was doing during last year's playoff collapse and this year's free-fall out of the playoffs, it wasn't working. It seems apparent at this point that Steve Addington needed Kyle Busch more than Kyle Busch needed Steve Addington; the fact that all 12 of Addington's Sprint Cup wins came with Busch behind the wheel is a telling statistic.

Rogers' strong Nationwide record and past experience working with Busch bode well for improvement in 2010. He's certainly earned his promotion. But keeping the 18 team from falling victim to the same challenges that it succumbed to under the leadership of Addington will be his strongest challenge yet.

One and Done: Tums Fast Relief 500

Christopher Leone — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:56:06 -0400

With half of the Chase for the Sprint Cup completed, the Sprint Cup Series heads to the bullring that is Martinsville Speedway this weekend for the Tums Fast Relief 500.

Eight of the last ten Martinsville races have been won by Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolets, with six of those wins by Jimmie Johnson and two by Jeff Gordon. The other two races were won by Joe Gibbs Racing cars.

As for some of the other teams in the Chase, Penske Racing hasn't won since 2004, Roush Fenway hasn't been victorious since 2002, and most of the other teams in the Chase have never won at the track.

Want to make this whole fantasy-pick thing even easier? The rule I set for this column at the beginning of the Chase was to only pick Chase drivers. Six of the best seven active drivers at Martinsville are Chase drivers, and five of them are current or former Hendrick and Gibbs drivers. I'm not going to touch Mark Martin after last week's mediocre finish, but he was the sixth-best driver anyway.

This week's list is going to look like a giant "duh," but without further ado, the picks are:

Jimmie Johnson (avg. fn. 5.3): 14 top-10s in 15 starts and six wins—five in the last six Martinsville races. I don't think I need to say any more.

Jeff Gordon (avg. fn. 6.8): Before Johnson dominated this track, his Hendrick Motorsports teammate was the king of the bullring. He has 27 top-10s in 33 starts at the track, and had a run from 1995 to 2000 where he didn't have a single double-digit finish—a streak of 12 races. He topped that streak with a fourth this spring, making an active streak of 13 consecutive races with finishes of better than 10th.

Denny Hamlin (avg. fn. 8.0): Denny's career is shorter than those of the two drivers above him on this list, but his record is similar to that of Johnson. Save one finish in the 30s in each of their rookie seasons, all of their other finishes are top-10s. Hamlin's win, top-five, and top-10 percentages are slightly lower than Johnson's, and he's all but out of Chase contention, but his track record here is too strong to ignore.

Tony Stewart (avg. fn. 12.1): Stewart's 3rd at Martinsville this year marked the first top-5 in a points-paying race for Stewart-Haas Racing. Though his overall track record at Martinsville is less magnificent than Johnson's, Gordon's, or Hamlin's, Smoke's past eight races would be envied by most drivers: During that span, he has a win and an average finish of 7.6.

Juan Montoya (avg. fn. 12.6): I know, I know, he only has one top-10 at Martinsville in five starts. But we all know that statistics can be misleading, and here's why that one isn't reliable: Because Montoya has never had a DNF at the track, and because he's only failed to complete one lap of a possible 2510, he's never finished worse than 16th at Martinsville, and that was in his first race. Given his past consistency, the elevation of his game during the Chase, and his desire to make up for a bad weekend at Charlotte, we should see those statistics improve this weekend.

Want to play One and Done? Head over to OnPitRow.com ! The game lasts through the end of the season at Homestead.

Some Sports "News" Just Doesn't Matter

Christopher Leone — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:36:13 -0400

When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is tune my TV to ESPNEWS. Since I'm usually in a rush in the mornings, I feel the need to get as caught-up in the world of sports as I possibly can in the limited amount of time I have, and ESPNEWS is the best network with which to do it.

The expanded Bottom-Line they have gives me everything I need to know. Except for, you know, when it gives me things that I don't need to know.

No, I'm not referring to my Bostonian heritage here and claiming that I don't need to know that the Yankees are on the verge of heading back to the World Series. I'm not referring to not wanting to know about Marc Savard's foot injury that has further set back my beloved Boston Bruins.

I'm referring to the kind of stuff that shouldn't be news.

Check this one out: Apparently Manny Ramirez missed the end of the Philadelphia Phillies' comeback win in Game 4 of the NLCS. The Los Angeles Dodgers slugger was in the shower at the time. Manager Joe Torre has said that Ramirez often hits the showers early when he is pulled for a defensive replacement because his team has a lead late in the game.

My question is, why do we care?

So Manny wasn't there to watch. Big deal. It would be a different situation entirely if he had chosen to leave the game by his own volition in order to beat the stadium traffic or something. But that's not what happened.

Everybody knows that Manny does his own thing—especially Bostonians, who put up with it (with various reactions) for the better part of eight years. "It's just Manny being Manny," we said. Hell, when the Red Sox were down 3-1 in the 2007 ALCS, Manny shrugged it off, and the team didn't lose a game for the rest of the playoffs.

But the fact of the matter is, when we give sports superstars a lot of attention for doing things like that, it only adds to the problem. Don't like Manny being Manny? Get over it. He is who he is, and he's going to do what he needs to do. And when Manny is happy, he's one of the best players in baseball.

This "news" should have come as a surprise to no one, and that's why, as far as I'm concerned, it's irrelevant. How about, instead of criticizing the team's star player, who had been removed from the game by the manager, for not watching his team collapse, you criticize the nine guys on the baseball diamond, who only needed one out, but failed to get it?

Here's another one that baffles me: Tennessee Titans coach Jeff Fisher, the leader of a team that went from NFL title contender to cellar dweller this season, donned a Peyton Manning jersey at a charity event in Nashville. When he introduced former Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy, he removed his formal attire to show the jersey, and quipped, "I just wanted to feel like a winner."

Fisher apologized on his weekly radio show in Nashville, but commented that, "If you're offended over the nature of that type of thing, then I think you need to rethink things."

And you know what? He's absolutely right. This should not be news. This is not Don Imus calling a women's basketball team a bunch of "nappy-headed hoes." This is one of the longest-tenured coaches in the NFL who, while mired in an abysmal season, decided to be a good sport and have a little fun at his own expense.

It's a joke, people. Lighten up. There's really no reason to blow it up and make it news—just like there's no reason to care about Manny Ramirez's showering habits. You don't need to obsess over stupid things like these because you need something on which to vent your frustrations. That's why these things are reported in the first place.

How about, instead of finding scapegoats, we actually look at the mistakes made within the game itself? Or, by making these stupid little anecdotes into front-page news, have we forgotten that sport is, in the end, just a game?

NASCAR: About That Championship Chase...

Christopher Leone — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:16:23 -0400

So, two weeks ago, after the Kansas race, I wrote an article about how this year's Chase may not be settled as early as last year's was. I wrote about how Tony Stewart, Juan Montoya, and especially Mark Martin would pose a challenge for three-time reigning champion Jimmie Johnson, and that it wasn't going to be easy for the 48 team to four-peat. And at the time, I fully believed it.

But after this weekend, I'm not so sure I buy into it anymore.

So Johnson couldn't capitalize at Kansas. Big deal. He led huge chunks of the NASCAR Banking 500, both early and late. He had a driver rating of 139.1, nearly 14 points better than that of Kasey Kahne, who ran the second-best race according to NASCAR's loop data. And after Martin finished a mediocre 17th, Johnson now has a 90-point lead in the standings.

Simply put, it's gonna take a bad finish or two from Johnson to give anybody else a shot, and he simply doesn't do that during the Chase.

The maximum point swing that can occur between any two drivers in the same race is 161 points. This requires one driver to finish first and lead the most laps, while the other finishes last and leads none. As the points stand right now, if Tony Stewart was able to pull that on Johnson next week, he'd still only be 11 points ahead of the 48 team in the standings.

Montoya is 190-plus points back in sixth after a dismal run at Lowe's, effectively ending his championship hopes.

Even Hendrick Motorsports teammates Martin and Jeff Gordon, who run the same high-caliber equipment as Johnson, are going to need misfortune to befall the Lowe's boys to make this thing interesting again, and that seems like it's just not going to happen.

It's been three full years since Johnson has finished worse than 15th in a Chase race. That race, the 2006 UAW-Ford 500 at Talladega, could have easily been won by Johnson, too, had then-teammate Brian Vickers not taken him out.

Oh, and about this weekend's race at Martinsville: Johnson has won five of the last six races at the paper clip. He has 14 top-10s in 15 career starts at the track. The 48 car has spent time out front in nine of the past 11 Martinsville races, and he's led at least 42 laps in each of those occurrences (winning six of them).

So, yeah, about that championship chase: Looks like I was wrong. Start buying the champagne, boys, you've all but won it.

Everybody else can wait 'til next year. Or the year after. Or the year after that...

Jenson Button Wins 2009 Formula One Championship

Christopher Leone — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:59:59 -0400

Red Bull and Mark Webber may have won the battle, but Brawn GP and Jenson Button won the war at Formula One's penultimate race in Brazil.

Webber, starting from P2, led most of the Grand Prix of Brazil on the way to his second win of the season, but in the end, Button's fifth-place finish was enough to clinch his first world driver's championship.

In his seventh year with the Brawn GP team, counting its previous incarnations as BAR and Honda, Button blossomed at the beginning of the season, winning six of seven races. Since then, he has come under fire for not "driving like a champion" in the worldwide press, but has nonetheless amassed enough points with his Brazil finish to take the title.

The only two drivers mathematically eligible to catch Button, team-mate Rubens Barrichello and Red Bull's Sebastien Vettel, were not able to close the gap on Button in Brazil, finishing eighth and fourth, respectively.

For Barrichello, the result was especially disappointing, as the native Brazilian had qualified on the pole and was looking for his first win at Interlagos in 17 starts.

Vettel and Button both qualified far back in the field, but were aided by a series of lap-one wrecks that either damaged or took out the cars of Giancarlo Fisichella, Heikki Kovalainen, Jarno Trulli, Adrian Sutil, and Fernando Alonso.

It was an especially disappointing day for Red Bull as a team, even with their combined 15 points to Brawn's five. Brawn still clinched the constructor's championship for 2009 and will have the honor of carrying car numbers one and two next season.

While Button and Brawn may have coasted to the championship on fumes, that isn't to diminish their achievements for the season. The team has scored 161 points thus far this season, with the Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi remaining to add to their total. They also have scored eight wins, six by Button and two by Barrichello.

Red Bull, on the other hand, only has 133.5 points and five wins (three by Vettel, two by Webber).

The Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi will take place Nov. 1.

One and Done: NASCAR Banking 500

Christopher Leone — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:27:23 -0400

Half a dozen races remain in the Chase for the Sprint Cup as the teams head to Charlotte for the NASCAR Banking 500. This is the second race of the Chase to be held on a 1.5-mile tri-oval, following Kansas two weeks ago and preceding Texas on Nov. 8.

While Jimmie Johnson failed to seize an opportunity to take the points lead from Mark Martin at Kansas, Martin did not capitalize by extending his lead by any sizable margin. Last week at California, Johnson had no problem taking the lead from his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, but the 30-point swing only gave him a 12-point cushion.

This weekend will provide an exciting clash of the titans, as the two drivers have combined for nine wins, 25 top-fives, and 34 top-10s at Lowe's. Johnson won every points race at the track in 2004 and 2005, and won this weekend's race last year; Martin, however, has struggled at the track of late, not having won here since the 2002 Coca-Cola 600.

This week's fantasy pick is going to be a bit difficult. I'm sure that most One and Done players have already used their Johnson and Martin picks for the game, so I'm going to deliberately leave them off of this week's list. With that in mind, what other Chase drivers are left?

Juan Montoya (avg. fn. 27.4): Do me a favor and ignore that stat to the left, as it's more a reflection of poor equipment and luck in 2007 and 2008. Montoya finished eighth in the 600-miler earlier this year, and his worst Chase finish is fourth. Obviously, he has to seal the deal and win a race at some point, but when it comes to consistently good finishes in the Chase, the 42 team is an easy bet.

Greg Biffle (avg. fn. 18.4): Biffle's Charlotte record is all over the place, with as many DNFs as top-fives (two apiece). His Chase has also been a bit inconsistent, with consecutive finishes of ninth, 13th, third, and 20th.

That's not going to win a championship. The third, however, was at Kansas, a 1.5-mile track similar to Lowe's, and in that race Biffle led 113 of 267 laps.

Denny Hamlin (avg. fn. 15.6): Of active drivers with more than five starts at Charlotte, Hamlin has the seventh-best average finish. A word of caution, however: He doesn't have a single top 10 at the track, with his best finish an eighth in his track debut.

Hamlin gets the nod over former teammate Tony Stewart, however, just because Stewart's recent record at the track is so pathetic compared to the abundance of top-fives the 20 car scored in the early 2000s.

Kasey Kahne (avg. fn. 12.4): Since 2006, Kahne has won three of seven Lowe's races, with only one finish worse than eighth. He led laps in each of his first six Charlotte starts, and has won every race at the track since 2006 in which he has led laps.

He may be all but eliminated from the title hunt, but the Bank of America spokesman should do well at his sponsor's race.

Carl Edwards (avg. fn. 10.0): He's got the best Charlotte record of anybody not named "Johnson." I know the Roush Fenway cars have been crap this year, that he's never led more than 11 laps in a points race at Lowe's and certainly never won, but seven top-10s in nine starts has to mean something, right?

Want to play One and Done? Head over to OnPitRow.com! The game lasts through the end of the season.

Silly Season Gets Sillier: TRG To Dodge With Labonte?

Christopher Leone — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:23:02 -0400

Autoweek reports today that fledgling NASCAR Sprint Cup team The Racer's Group and floundering manufacturer Dodge are interested in hooking up for the 2010 season.

The combination would be a marriage of two backmarkers in the series looking to move on to better things after markedly different 2009 campaigns.

Dodge has two contenders in the Chase for the Sprint Cup in Kurt Busch and Kasey Kahne, but neither appears a threat to win the championship. Worse for the manufacturer, Kahne and his Richard Petty Motorsports team will join the Ford camp in 2010, although whether their proposed merger with Yates Racing goes through remains to be seen.

TRG, however, has exceeded their expectations for the season. Owner Kevin Buckler only created the team a few weeks before the season, as one of many proposed start-and-park outfits popping up in a poor economy. Expectations were decidedly low, despite Buckler purchasing former Richard Childress Racing equipment.

Despite missing the Daytona 500 with driver Mike Wallace, the team has qualified for every race since while operating on a shoestring budget. Lead driver David Gilliland finished 14th at Las Vegas for the team's best result of the year, and perseverance has landed the team 37th in owners' points. With the possibility of at least two teams eliminated next year due to NASCAR's budget cap, the team may find itself 35th in owners' points come Daytona in 2010, locking it into the first five races of the year.

The team has also benefitted from the presence of Bobby Labonte in a handful of races. When Labonte was forced from his ride with Hall of Fame Racing in select events due to sponsorship issues, TRG picked him up to fill the ride.

Hall of Fame began a partnership with Yates at the beginning of this season, but it's unlikely to carry over into 2010. Not only that, the Ask.com sponsorship that has adorned that car for much of the season appears more tied to past champion Labonte than the struggling race team. It seems unlikely that Labonte would want to return to HoF, especially with the ride being generally uncompetitive all year.

Rumors have thus been swirling that Labonte could go to TRG for the full 2010 season, bringing the Ask.com sponsorship with him. Thanks to Labonte's past champion's provisional, that team would then be guaranteed into at least the first 11 races of next season—surely an attractive prospect to all parties.

The marriage of TRG and Dodge works for both sides by establishing the manufacturer with a distinct entity to rank second in the hierarchy behind Penske Racing. Even though it would only add one car for the foreseeable future, the prospect of more than three Dodges in the field has to be attractive to the company.

Buckler could also use the manufacturer support to help him attain his goal of building a successful stock car team to go along with his strong road racing operation. Keep in mind that Dodge sponsored most of the RPM cars in some associate capacity this season, and any of that free money contained within Dodge's budget could go towards establishing the TRG team.

Buckler and Roger Penske even have manufacturer connections in sports car racing—both run Porsches in the Rolex Sports Car Series (Buckler in the GT class, Penske in the Daytona Prototypes).

Bringing in Labonte may simply be a step sideways for the former champion, but it would certainly help solidify The Racer's Group as a legitimate NASCAR team for the future. With the right combination of an experienced driver, a knowledgeable crew chief, and solid funding, TRG should climb up the standings in 2010.

The question right now is, will everything fall into place?

Don't Put Dale Earnhardt In The NASCAR Hall Of Fame, At Least Not Yet

Christopher Leone — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:48:45 -0400

Call me a lover of controversy, call me a rebel, call me what you will—I do not want to see Dale Earnhardt inducted as one of the first members of the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

For those of you not in the know, the new attraction's first five inductees (out of a previously announced pool of 25) will be announced on Wednesday at 4 PM on SPEED Channel. As NASCAR is the most recent sport out of the "big five" to create a hall of fame, the first five men to be enshrined in the hall will receive a great honor.

Now, all 25 members of that list deserve to be Hall of Famers. There's not a soul on there that didn't do his part to make NASCAR what it was in the past, and what it is today. Whether an old-timer like Herb Thomas or Raymond Parks, or a still-active member of the sport like Rick Hendrick or Darrell Waltrip, they all ought to go in within the first five years.

Earnhardt, obviously, has a strong case. He has 76 Sprint Cup wins as a driver, seventh on the all-time list. He has seven championships, tied with Richard Petty for the most in NASCAR Sprint Cup. His 1987 Winston Cup season, where he had 11 wins and 24 top-10s in 29 races, may be one of the best statistical seasons in NASCAR history.

Add 21 Nationwide and 11 IROC wins as a driver, and 47 wins over NASCAR's top three series as an owner (counting from 1995, when he first started fielding full-time Busch and SuperTruck teams, through the 2001 Daytona 500), and Earnhardt is one of the most successful figures in NASCAR history. Few can claim more successes on the track, besides perhaps the Petty family.

So where does some Northern kid like me get off on saying that the Intimidator ought to wait a couple years to get in the Hall of Fame?

Simple: I think the pioneers of the sport ought to go in first.

My other passion in life besides sports is music, and although I generally criticize the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for being a letdown, they've gotten at least one thing right. When the Hall was first established, its voters decided to induct the founders of the genre—men like Ray Charles, Little Richard, and Fats Domino—over such dominant bands as the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Rolling Stones.

This move ensured that memories of the founding fathers of rock and roll would be preserved, and re-introduced the public to those figures during its first few years, when those other important, but chronologically later, bands weren't in the Hall.

Transcending boundaries of art and sport, I think the philosophy fits. NASCAR has claimed to be a tradition-oriented sport in the past, and we all know that its fans enjoy tradition. Changes to cater to the shaky West Coast crowd on television have not been well-received in the past, partially because they have messed with tradition. I contend that if NASCAR really wants to get back to its roots, the announcement of its first five Hall of Fame inductees is a key cog in the equation.

Thankfully, the voting committee is made up of many who were in the sport long before its modernization of the 1990s and 2000s, and not too many NASCAR representatives (or an overwhelming fan vote), so I'm hoping that they will share my sentiments. Inducting members chronologically, and not based on popularity, seems like the best way to do NASCAR's rich and storied history justice.

So here's to my ballot—Red Byron, Herb Thomas, Raymond Parks, Lee Petty, and Big Bill France—making it in the first year.

We all know that the Earnhardt fans will keep coming back until he gets in.

ESPN Needs to Cut the Corporate Crap and Display Race Sponsor Names Properly

Christopher Leone — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:37:02 -0400

When ESPN announced its return to NASCAR coverage a couple of years ago, I was excited. The network that did the best job ever of producing NASCAR coverage was finally returning after a six-year layoff, and I had missed them greatly.

I looked back fondly to the days of Bob Jenkins, Benny Parsons, and Ned Jarrett in the booth. Terry Lingner's production of the races was always stellar, and pit reporters like Dr. Jerry Punch and Bill Weber set a standard that no reporter since has ever achieved.

While none of the old team was returning, and the few who were coming back were rejoining in different capacities, I still felt as if, once they got their act together, they'd be an upgrade over NBC since Weber took over as play-by-play announcer.

The first couple years of ESPN's return have seen a fair share of mistakes. Some have been remedied—namely, placing Rusty Wallace in the broadcast booth, and having college football specialists host NASCAR coverage—but some, like the criminal under-utilization of Allen Bestwick, have not. (I feel as if Bestwick is a better play-by-play announcer than Punch; if I was in charge, they'd swap positions for a couple of races as an experiment.)

Now, I can forgive some of the issues with ESPN's NASCAR coverage, even though it's been three years and the kinks should have been worked out by now. It's better than that infernal Digger character (and if a driver ever hits and kills Digger at 200 MPH, I think he should be given a contingency bonus). But there is one issue with the coverage that I cannot forgive, and will actively crusade against until it is remedied.

Here's an example: "NASCAR Sprint Cup Series at Pocono presented by Old Spice."

Never has a broadcast network done something so downright money-grubbing nasty as this. ESPN circumvents both NASCAR and the race title sponsors by selling the naming rights to their broadcasts. For a race sponsor to be mentioned on TV by the ESPN announcers, they must pay ESPN as well as the race track.

If you didn't recognize the race I named above, try the "Sunoco Red Cross Pennsylvania 500."

That's right; ESPN sold out broadcast rights to take away advertising time from the American Red Cross. That's like putting a giant Nilla Wafers ad in the back of a church and using them as the body of Christ.

Let's go a little more in depth: Check out the ESPN.com schedule pages for NASCAR's top three series, Sprint Cup, Nationwide, and Camping World Trucks. I want folks to notice something here. Even on ESPN's web site, they refuse to refer to the races by their proper names in Sprint Cup and Nationwide. They don't even give the proper names for the races in Sprint Cup that they don't broadcast.

But look at the Camping World Truck schedule: Everything is completely accurate. Note that the Speed Channel, not ESPN, handles Truck broadcasting duties. Obviously, ESPN saw no point in devoting any energy to making a quick buck off that series.

Hell, look at Jayski.com's series pages—the pages for the two series ESPN broadcasts have shiny new layouts; the Truck page still has Jayski's old one.

Not only is ESPN cheating the race sponsors out of exposure during their 17 Sprint Cup and 35 Nationwide races a season, they're showcasing bias and presenting factually incorrect reporting. What ESPN calls the races is not what they are actually called.

Metaphorically, it's like ESPN is the mafia, charging a poor small business owner for "protection." It's also like calling the Super Bowl "NFL Championship Game presented by GoDaddy.com." Does that fly with you, loyal fans?

I feel like this issue will eventually drive race sponsors away, and that's one of the last things NASCAR needs. Why should a sponsor pay a race track all that money for exposure when ESPN won't even mention your product unless you pony up even more?

Worse, it sets a standard that could cause even more problems as television technology improves. What if sponsors begin paying the broadcasters to superimpose their logos over the entire car?

What if McDonald's decides to tell Burger King "up yours" and pays to have the golden arches superimposed on Tony Stewart's hood? Would you stand for that?

It'd likely be cheaper for McDonald's, because they wouldn't have to pay Tony Stewart anything, but it'd make it pointless for the sponsors to pay any of the race teams directly. With no race teams, you can't run a race. I know this is an exaggeration, but it is the path on which we're headed.

We all know that NASCAR is driven by money, but there needs to be a line. I have no problem with ESPN tagging a phrase like "Broadcast presented by Old Spice" onto the end of the race name, but the current system is ridiculous, unethical, and compromises any journalistic integrity ESPN's NASCAR coverage has. Somebody—be it the NASCAR or the FCC—needs to step up and put an end to this.

Hey, Bleacher Report: Fix Your ******* Website

Christopher Leone — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:15:15 -0400

I love writing for Bleacher Report, but trying to use this website is getting ri-god-damn-diculous.

I cannot tell you how many frustrating issues I've been having over the past week, especially today, and it's really bothering me that these problems are still going unresolved, because I'm sure that I'm not the only one having them.

The biggest issue lies in the site's miserable "draft" feature. "What draft feature?" some of you will undoubtedly ask. "This site doesn't have a way to save drafts! Chris, you're hallucinating?"

Truth is, folks, for people like me who leave themselves logged into the website because we have a personal computer, there is a draft feature. It's just hidden...and it's the bane of my existence on this site.

Last night, I began to write an article on the Boston Bruins' salary cap situation. As it was very rough, needed a lot of work, and I was writing at one in the morning, I decided to go to bed and leave it for the next day.

Today, I woke up and realized that a weekly piece I write for OnPitRow.com and syndicate here was due. I wrote the piece there and attempted to post it here.

When I clicked the "Write" button, I saw the remnants of my article from the previous day, along with a picture that I went to use for a different Bruins-related article two weeks ago. No problem, I figured. I'll just change the photo, delete the Bruins text, paste in my OnPitRow article, and we'll be all set, right?

Wrong.

Twice I attempted to post the article; twice was I denied. When I clicked "Publish," it sent me right back here to the "Write" page, with my same Bruins text and a misaligned, uncropped version of the photo I attempted to use on the racing article.

Combine this with the many issues I get with the image finder (either Getty Images gives me six-year-old images, plays dumb and doesn't find any, or takes an eternity), and I'm pretty unamused with the technical aspects of this site now. I miss the old Bleacher Report of a year ago, when the "Write" page actually worked.

There is nothing more frustrating than attempting to use technology that simply does not do what it is designed to do. That is what happens half of the times that I attempt to use this site.

A few errors here and there are fine, but the frequency at which I experience problems is simply ridiculous. Even logging out and switching web browsers from Firefox to Safari, the same goddamn Bruins text keeps coming up. It's like a bad April Fool's Joke.

I address this to you, Bleacher Report employees and technical folks: Fix. Your. Shit.

Give us a "draft" option, so I don't keep getting malfunctions every time I leave an article unfinished, but then need to publish something different.

Make the Getty Images search more reliable.

Make it so that, when writing about the recent Braylon Edwards trade, I don't have to first say that the article is about the Browns so I can tag him, and then have to go back and select the Jets.

In other words, do your jobs to make this site less frustrating for its writers. Thanks for your time.

Do We Really Need More Open-Wheelers In NASCAR?

Christopher Leone — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:48:39 -0400

Will somebody please explain to me this new trend of Formula One drivers coming over to try and race stock cars?

Over the course of this past week, Nelson Piquet Jr., Mika Salo, and Jarno Trulli have all been announced to test with NASCAR teams in hopes of potentially securing rides for 2010 and beyond.

Piquet Jr. is fresh off of the Crashgate scandal that rocked Renault F1. For those not in the know, Piquet Jr. was recently fired as Renault's second driver, behind Fernando Alonso. He then came out with information about a race in 2008 in which he deliberately crashed his car to help Alonso win. Former team boss Flavio Briatore was banned indefinitely from all FIA-sanctioned motor-sports as a result, and if Renault does anything to compromise the integrity of Formula 1 in the next two years, the team will be banned from F1 permanently.

His snitching left him damaged goods in F1, which has historically been dominated by team orders; Piquet hopes to secure a Truck Series ride in 2010. He'll be testing with Red Horse Racing alongside Vitor Meira, an IndyCar Series driver who injured his back in this year's Indianapolis 500 and hasn't raced since.

Meira, for the record, isn't contemplating a NASCAR career. He's just trying to get back in the saddle and run some laps. His IndyCar team, A.J. Foyt Enterprises, doesn't have the resources to run him at their season finale at Homestead this weekend.

Salo and Trulli both have links to Toyota's F1 team; Salo was one of the team's drivers in its inaugural season in 2002, and Trulli has been with the team since the last two races of 2004. Unsurprisingly, they're both testing with Toyota's original flagship team, Michael Waltrip Racing. They'll be running at USA International Speedway in Lakeland, Florida, the week before NASCAR's season finale at Homestead next month.

Rumors continue that Toyota will back out of F1 soon, leaving Trulli without a ride. With many of the new teams on the grid next year expected to be backmarkers, Trulli likely considers NASCAR a better option. Salo has been looking to run a Nationwide Series schedule for a couple of years now.

The question is, why?

Sure, sports car racing may not be as well-funded or popular as NASCAR or F1, but it'd be a much better fit. The types of companies that sponsor sports car teams are the ones more concerned with the racing itself than the marketing, and thus are more concerned with the best drivers. If these drivers are concerned with winning championships, that's their best bet. The glory of Le Mans is also an enticing factor in deciding to run sports cars.

Of all the open-wheel drivers to make the switch in disciplines, only one has seen any measure of success, and that's Juan Montoya. But Jarno Trulli is no Juan Montoya. Hell, Nelson Piquet Jr. is no Jarno Trulli, either — at least Trulli won a race in F1.

That's right, one race. And that's the grand total of victories that those three drivers have accrued in F1. What makes them think NASCAR is going to be any easier?

It seems obvious to me that this latest open-wheel experiment is not going to work. The only way Piquet will ever be successful in a race car again is if he rejoins his father's team in GP2, and Salo and Trulli would make much better sports car drivers. And quite frankly, they deserve better than failed attempts at driving stock cars. I don't think anybody wants to add their names to the list of disastrous experiments: Dario Franchitti, Jacques Villeneuve, Patrick Carpentier, the early stages of A.J. Allmendinger and Sam Hornish Jr.'s NASCAR careers... need I say more?

New York Jets Get Badder With Braylon Edwards

Christopher Leone — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:48:20 -0400

ESPN's Adam Schefter reports that embattled wide receiver Braylon Edwards has been traded by the Cleveland Browns to the New York Jets for two players and a draft pick.

The move gives the Jets and QB Mark Sanchez another top receiver to line up alongside Jerricho Cotchery and TE Dustin Keller.

Thus far this season, Edwards has 10 receptions for 139 yards and zero touchdowns. That's about on par with the numbers of Chansi Stuckey, one of the two players headed to Cleveland. Stuckey has 11 receptions for 120 yards and one touchdown.

The team is hoping that Edwards will revert to his 2007 form upon his arrival in New York. That year, he caught 80 passes for 1289 yards and a whopping 16 receiving touchdowns. Like his quarterback, Derek Anderson, he went to the Pro Bowl that year.

Edwards, who in the past few days has come under fire for allegedly punching a friend of Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James, has a history of sticky situations, including being with Donte' Stallworth in March on the night that he hit and killed a pedestrian. (Edwards, however, was not with Stallworth at the time of the incident.)

However, he seems a perfect fit for the Jets, who have cultivated somewhat of a bad-boy image as of late. Coach Rex Ryan and linebacker Bart Scott have been providing plenty of bulletin-board fodder for their opponents all season, and the 49ers recently made allegations of Jets tampering with their first-round pick, extended holdout Michael Crabtree. Even with all the distractions and background noise, the Jets are 3-1 and tied for the lead in the AFC East.

Not only is Edwards going to have to clean up his act under the bright spotlights of New York, he adds to the fresh, brash image of the Jets that opponents can't quite figure out this season. Edwards also has to appreciate the trade to a legitimate contender, a team which has a great chance at winning the AFC East this season and toppling the New England Patriots.

Meanwhile, the Jets get an explosive player who is a threat to score just about any time he touches the ball. In 2004, his longest receiving touchdown was 80 yards; every complete season he's played since, his longest play has been at least 70.

So the Chase Is Settled, Eh? Not Quite

Christopher Leone — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:37:43 -0400

It seems like a grand majority of NASCAR fans and pundits are convinced that Jimmie Johnson is well on his way to an inevitable fourth consecutive championship.

Tony Stewart may have won the race at Kansas on Sunday, but Johnson still appears to have the upper hand in the war. He may have lost eight points on leader Mark Martin, finishing ninth to Martin's seventh, but Johnson's car was better throughout most of the race. He led 42 more laps than "The Kid" and finished with a driver rating nearly 18 points better than Martin's.

Remember, Kansas was the race last year after which Johnson claimed the points lead for good, extending a gap over Carl Edwards that the affable Aflac spokesman found insurmountable.

With the gap between first and second so tight, and given Johnson's history in past Chases (three consecutive championships under the Chase format, suggesting he may go down as the format's greatest driver ever), plenty of people, me included, expected Johnson to claim the lead and start running away down the stretch.

And yet it didn't happen.

Perhaps we've just postponed the inevitable. Perhaps Johnson will just pass Martin for the points lead at California, a track which he dominates (6.2 career average finish in 13 starts, with three wins).

Perhaps those eight points won't matter the same way that they did in 2004, when Kurt Busch won a championship over Johnson by that very same margin, or at Richmond, when Brian Vickers made it into the Chase by scoring eight more over the course of the season than Kyle Busch did.

Keep in mind, too, that last year's Chase run was not at all like Johnson's first two championships. In 2006, he didn't claim the lead until eight races into the playoffs, in the Dickies 500 at Texas.

In 2007, Johnson and Jeff Gordon started out fairly evenly matched. When Johnson claimed the points lead at Kansas, the gap was only six points. He lost it the next weekend, and didn't reclaim it again until Texas.

In other words, last year was an outlier. Johnson can easily repeat his 2006 and 2007 performances, claiming the points lead late after the other drivers make mistakes.

Sure, Martin could have done better than a seventh at Kansas to open a larger gap over Johnson. And simply beating the 48 team every weekend won't win them a championship—not with Stewart and Juan Montoya as strong as they are. This isn't a two-horse race between Johnson and Martin, as it was with Johnson and Edwards a year ago.

If Johnson couldn't seize an easy opportunity to pace the field at Kansas, however, he might be human after all. Hold your horses, cynics—this Chase ain't settled yet.

Dennis Wide Right: The Best Game Ever

Christopher Leone — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:09:40 -0400

Hey, everybody. This is a post from my Bruins-centric blog, Dennis Wide Right. I don't usually post these here—not only are they blog posts, they're incredibly biased in favor of the black and gold, and that's not what sports journalism should be, in my opinion. On Bleacher Report (and almost everywhere else), I do my best to be objective and not show allegiances. This one, though, was special, and I felt like sharing it.

I took my girlfriend to the Bruins-Hurricanes game on Saturday night. It was my first game of the regular season and her first Bruins game ever, so both of us were hoping for a good showing. Add the fact that Carolina used to be the Hartford Whalers, the sustained bad blood from last year's untimely playoff exit at the hands of Scott (F*****') Walker, and a poor showing on Thursday against the Washington Capitals, and the Bruins were looking for revenge.

Boy, were we in for a treat.

Thanks to escalator "issues" (and that's putting it NICELY...the entire crowd had to use the stairs), we didn't get into the arena until right when they were dropping the puck to start the game. Once we finally made it to the balcony, which landed us on the opposite side of where our seats were in the arena, we heard the goal horn go off, signaling Marc Savard's power play goal.

We didn't get to section 310 in time to see the replay, but the crowd was still pretty pleased by the time we made it over. Luckily for us, the Bruins still had plenty left in the tank—Michael Ryder and Blake Wheeler both scored before the end of the first, and it was 3-0.

Of course, I had to explain a few things to Ariana over the course of the game—why Scott Walker and ex-Bruin Aaron Ward were on the kiss cam, the historical bad blood between the two teams, the irony of Cam Ward's poor play in lieu of a multimillion dollar contract extension—but she got into it pretty quickly. It certainly helped that the teams brawled at the end of the second period, when the score was a nearly insurmountable 6-1 and pugilist Shawn Thornton had scored the last goal.

We had a few laughs at Eric Staal's 25-stitch injury, as any fan with a vengeance would have, and at Jay Harrison's pitiful showing in a fight with Milan Lucic. During the brawl, her cry for Zdeno Chara to "teabag that son of a bitch" Tom Kostopoulos, a former hated Hab who was trapped beneath our captain's legs, was one of the greatest things I've ever heard a rowdy fan scream at the players.

Yep, she was one of us.

Best of all (on the ice, anyway)? Denny had a fantastic game. I have friends who have hated Wideman since we acquired him. They give me hell for wearing his jersey. At one point, Denny did something stupid (I forget what) and I lamented the fact that I was wearing his number. It always seems to me that when the player whose jersey you wear does something stupid, people start looking at you.

Then Denny scored a power play goal and I started getting high fives.

Then he broke Erik Cole's leg, and my friend Chris (leader of the "I Hate Wideman" bandwagon) announced to me via text message that he was now a Wideman fan.

As far as hockey games go, it was one of the best possible ones that I could have ended up seeing. Being able to share it with someone special only made it that much better. It's always nice to share a blowout victory with somebody when it's their first professional hockey game.

Especially when your team makes the other guys bleed.

Dennis Wide Right, with its sporadic updates and excessive Dennis Wideman fandom, can be found at denniswideright.wordpress.com.