NASCAR 2014: Winners and Losers from the Sprint Cup's Regular Season
The 2014 regular season ended in a Brad Keselowskian feat of dominance at Richmond, the site of last year’s SpinGate but also the last chance for certain drivers to qualify for The Chase.
Twenty-six races ago, the NASCAR season kicked off with Dale Earnhardt Jr. winning the Daytona 500, making Steve Letarte, Earnhardt’s crew chief, an instant winner in his final year in the pit box.
The ageless Jeff Gordon, despite a bad back, made every start yet again and likely will finish the year on a 760-race streak.
And, of course, there’s Tony Stewart’s year. It started with questions about the health of his mended right leg that he broke in early August 2013. Nearly a year to the day later he struck and killed Kevin Ward Jr. on a similar dirt track. It's neither proper nor fair to label Stewart a loser, even in a regular season where he went winless.
There were probably enough storylines to fill up twice the slides here, but 10 will have to suffice. Read on to see the winners and losers from the 2014 regular season.
Winner: Steve Letarte's Last Hurrah
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Much was made at the beginning of the year when Steve Letarte, Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s crew chief, announced his departure from the pit box with eyes for television.
If the entire season ended now, Letarte could resign with his head buzzing on Diet Mountain Dew. He won the Daytona 500 to start the year and then won two more races.
His big driver is having his best season in 10 years and will contend for the Sprint Cup. Earnhardt Jr. must be considered one of the top three drivers with a chance at winning NASCAR’s holy chalice.
Bob Pockrass of The Sporting News wrote:
"If Earnhardt doesn’t win the championship, he and Letarte would have very little margin for improvement. The chances of having a worse season next year are much, much higher. Chances are they would just continue to try to win the title and fall short of both their 2014 results and the championship. It would be very frustrating.
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There’s still the matter of The Chase, but win or lose, Letarte’s final season in the headset calling shots for Junior makes him a big winner in 2014.
Loser: Jimmie Johnson
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If Rick Hendrick can be seen as the Emperor, then maybe Jimmie Johnson is his Darth Vadar. The six-time champion has won three races this year—good for a tie with four others—but his season hasn’t been Johnsonian.
It took the No. 48 team 12 races to finally win, that being the Coca-Cola 600 (a race handed to him thanks to Kevin Harvick’s band of merry men on pit road). Johnson won two of the next three races and was second in the points standings behind Gordon.
Then summer came. And Johnson had back-to-back 42nds, a 39th and 28th. Heck, his 14th-place finish at The Brickyard was a good run through the summer.
But now, with The Chase starting in just a week, here comes Johnson with three top 10s and two top fives.
Bleacher Report’s Jerry Bonkowski wrote, “For whatever reason, Johnson and Knaus seem to have a knack at having most of those bad races and slumps at what can be considered the 'right' time, during the 26-race regular season, before putting on their best game faces for the final 10 races.”
Maybe he’s peaking at the right time, but his season was so up and down that it’s hard to give Johnson a winning grade when so many others remained the model of consistency.
This year, he hasn't quite had boom to his confetti.
Winner: The New Chase Format
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Some people have serious beef with the new playoff system that effectively grants any winner of a race a place in The Chase. By now you already know the rules, the amendments, the skinny.
All it did was put an emphasis on winning. Those with the greatest shot at winning from week to week saw no room for complaining.
Take Howard Bloom, writer for The Sporting News. He wrote:
"Offering a winner-take-all event involving the top four drivers maintains the integrity of what’s behind the origins of the Chase, while at the same time creating an interest in the last race of the season. More national media will make it to Homestead-Miami Speedway. The event should produce solid ratings for NASCAR, and given that NASCAR’s ratings have been stagnant or declining for the last five to eight years, NASCAR’s decision to alter the Chase’s format is both a sound and prudent business decision.
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Anything that emphasizes winning makes for strong television and drama, and this sport desperately needs both. College football finally expanded its playoff system, and this year, presumably, will be the most popular season to date.
The same can be said for NASCAR’s Chase. By the time November rolls around, four drivers—the four best and sharpest—will leave it all on the track for a championship.
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Loser: Kyle Busch
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It’s a good thing Kyle Busch managed to win a race early in the season because his body of work so often lands him in the body shop.
His average finish on the season was 19.52, and this is from a guy with one win, three second-place finishes and two third-place finishes. He puts the nut in peanut M&Ms.
Busch is just as likely to win as he is to finish last. He recorded four finishes in the 40s.
The Sporting News’ Bob Pockrass wrote after Atlanta, “Kyle Busch can’t seem to have a night lately where things don’t go wrong.”
That’s a case that can be made for almost any race, and at some point that’s what we call a trend. Maybe he’ll win a race, maybe he’ll even grab a runner-up finish, but he just as often spends his day inside the garage—out of his car and out of contention.
After another crash at Atlanta with Martin Truex, the two drivers jawed after the race. Busch ran up on Truex’s bumper, causing a wreck.
Busch’s crew chief Dave Rogers said in Pockrass' story, “We just have had a hard time executing lately. I don’t even want to call it bad luck. We just haven’t been executing.”
And if by "lately" Rogers means "2014," then yes, lately the No. 18 hasn’t been executing.
Winner: Jeff Gordon
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In his 22 years of racing he has yet to miss a race. That’s 751 and counting.
Going all the way back to February, people wondered whether this would be Gordon’s final season behind the wheel. He dismissed those rumors, but remember that back injury? That made retirement more of a reality than the four-time champ would like to admit.
Gordon said in Auto Racing Daily:
"I don’t know what exactly transpired there, but it’s not the same. And I have to be much more careful. I’m just having to treat it more with ice and stem and be more careful and do more stretching. Is it going to flare up again? It could. But I’m just trying to be more cautious with the things that I do that I feel like contribute to that. But, yeah, it’s not great, that’s for sure.
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No matter what, Gordon won three races in the regular season—tied for first with his two teammates Jimmie Johnson and Earnhardt and the two Penske boys. Gordon was rarely out of contention in any race this season. His highlight may be the restart with 17 laps remaining in the Brickyard 400.
Gordon said in USA Today, "I'm not very good on restarts and wasn't very good today. I finally made the restart of my life when it counted most."
Through 26 races, Gordon won three, had eight top fives and 16 top 10s.
Retiring may be a good idea because duplicating these results may be impossible.
Loser: Matt Kenseth
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Maybe this slide should be titled "Matt Kenseth's sponsors," since they lose the most when a driver doesn't win. Kenseth's Home Depot No. 22 never got its proper shout-out under the rain of confetti and Coca-Cola.
How is it that a driver who won a Cup-best seven races from a year ago could be in the breakdown lane instead of victory lane? Now, it should be said that Kenseth still made The Chase on points. This is National League-style, Moneyball, bunt-him-over NASCAR. Is Billy Beane in the pit box?
There's a strong chance he'll be alive after a round or two after the elimination rounds, which is a testament to his team in the garage and on pit road. Kenseth said on NASCAR.com:
"I'd like to consistently have wins, that’s what I'd like to have. The team has really been performing at a high level all year, really. I know when you look at the record books we have some crashes and some bad finishes and we don't have a win yet, but I feel like our pit stops have been more consistent and faster than they were last year.
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As consistently solid as Kenseth has been all year, not reaching victory lane after 26 races is a head-scratcher and a major drop-off in performance from a year ago.
The hope, in the end, is that Kenseth has lost the battle in favor of winning the war.
Winner: Team Penske
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Team Penske’s double-barrel shotgun of Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano proved they belong in the upper echelon of NASCAR along with Rick Hendrick’s monolith. Keselowski is no stranger to The Chase as he won the championship back in 2012.
Keselowski failed to make the postseason in 2013, but with four wins—including his onslaught at Richmond—he’s back. And when he was on, his Ford Fusion ran away from the field.
Logano, too, charged to the head of the pack with three wins, tying Keselowski, Johnson, Earnhardt and Gordon. NASCAR.com’s David Caraviello wrote earlier in the year:
"Keselowski ran well at both the start and finish to the 2013 campaign, and barring another major penalty there's no reason he can't return to the Chase in 2014. Both Penske cars ended last season strong, although rule changes on this year's vehicle will test the team's car development. Logano is as comfortable and confident as he's ever been, and appears to be coming into his own.
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He pegged it early on, and Team Penske’s drivers delivered.
Loser: The No. 4 Pit Crew
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Kevin Harvick probably should be the leader in points and certainly the leader in wins this year. He has two wins, which is two more than Stewart, Clint Bowyer, Matt Kenseth and Danica Patrick.
But, man, is there any pit crew in the game that has cost a driver more races than Harvick’s? Take the Coca-Cola 600 in Charlotte. He had a fast car all night, led 100 laps and then pitted only to hit the track with a loose wheel. Harvick then pitted under green and rallied for second.
Harvick said after the race, “We had a fast car all night, just kind of fumbled again on pit road. (We) got behind, got a lap down. We needed a 700-mile race to get back to where we needed to be. All in all, they're doing a great job of putting cars up on the track; we just have to clean up on pit road.”
Take the Oral-B USA 500 at Atlanta. Harvick led for 195 of 335 laps and eclipsed 1,000 laps led this season, but it was pit road where Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth crushed him.
“We lost control (of the race) every time we came to pit road tonight,” Harvick said. “So I thought we had that better, but we got just absolutely murdered on pit road every time we came down by the 11 (of Hamlin) and the 20 (of Kenseth).
At this point in the season, the crew is not going to get any better. This happens routinely for the No. 4. Harvick has a championship car but lacks championship execution on pit road. That has—and will—cost him.
Winner: Hendrick Motorsports
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Imagine a world where the Death Star never exploded and the galactic empire never toppled at the hand of the Rebels...
That world may look something like Hendrick Motorsports with its four drivers in The Chase accounting for 10 of the 26 races of the regular season. That’s 38.5 percent with more to come.
Kasey Kahne, thanks to an epic restart at Atlanta in the 25th race of the season, joined his other three teammates who had previously qualified for The Chase. When Kahne won, Gordon approached, saying how proud he was of him. Then came Johnson, followed by Earnhardt.
As it stands, Hendrick’s coldest driver these days is his six-time champion in Johnson.
With 10 races remaining, is there anyone more likely to win the Cup than a Hendrick driver? Maybe one of the Penske boys, but either way, Hendrick was a big, big winner in 2014 and will definitely have one and maybe more drivers gunning for the Cup in November.
Loser: The Resonant Affect of SpinGate
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Michael Waltrip Racing failed to make The Chase in 2014 with its two full-time drivers in Brian Vickers and Clint Bowyer. The roots for this year’s failure were planted a year ago this weekend.
Were they still reeling from 2013’s SpinGate? It appears so.
Bleacher Report's Joe Menzer wrote, "[Co-owner Rob Kauffman] knows if he doesn't cut costs, MWR might not survive long without regaining some of the sponsorship it has lost and the technical advantage it had to give up by laying off 15 percent of its workforce after SpinGate (per the Associated Press via GoDanRiver.com)."
Funny how one little moment of (alleged) greed and desperation from a year ago sent MWR into a tailspin.
Neither Bowyer nor Vickers won a race all year. In 2013, the pair combined for two wins, 22 top fives and 44 top 10s; they led for 830 laps. Contrast that with 2014 when they led a combined 133 laps and tallied six top fives and 17 top 10s.
It’s no coincidence that SpinGate—whether accident or scheme—turned a promising MWR team a year ago into a 2014 loser.
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