The Biggest NASCAR Storylines Ahead of the Sprint Cup Season Finale at Homestead
It all comes down to this.
One race, four drivers vying for the 2014 Sprint Cup Championship, and may the best man win.
The new Chase format has produced a somewhat lopsided quartet of drivers competing for the championship. And there remains a chance that the champion may be winless this season.
However, that’s not likely to happen.
With the season coming to a close, so does the career of one driver, and another big name ends a longstanding relationship to move on to a new home in 2015.
The drive for five is over, and two outstanding rookies come to Homestead-Miami Speedway to begin the next generation of NASCAR.
These stories and more will be on our radar screen in the week leading up to the Ford EcoBoost 400, the final race of the 2014 NASCAR Sprint Cup season.
First up, the oddsmakers' favorite, per Odds Shark, brings a fast race car and a laid-back attitude to South Florida.
Kevin Harvick Takes a 'What, Me Worry?' Approach into Season Finale
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With the biggest race of his career less than a week away, Kevin Harvick is determined to remain focused on the job at hand.
“I think we've won a couple of the last nine races in the Chase in high-pressure situations and (the) cars are doing what they need to do, and that's what it's all about,” Harvick said in the post-race press conference at Phoenix.
“It's definitely the best position that myself personally I've ever been in, and I would say Rodney and Gene...they've obviously been in this position before and made it happen. We're just going to do what we've been doing.”
Harvick has the best average finish at Homestead of the four Chase finalists. Harvick’s average finish is 8.1. Denny Hamlin (11.2) has won the season finale twice. Winless Ryan Newman brings an average finish of 17th, and Joey Logano, whose strength this season has been on the 1.5-mile tracks, has the worst average at 20.8.
However, the statistics are meaningless when everything is on the line, and as we saw at Phoenix with Ryan Newman, who literally took Kyle Larson out of contention with a bodyslam on the final turn of the final lap of the race, Chase drivers will do just about anything to win.
Is that great or what?
Ryan Newman Plays Hit-and-Run to Make Chase Field
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The new Chase format has produced several dramatic finishes. Perhaps none was more dramatic than on Sunday, when Ryan Newman pushed Kyle Larson into the wall in Turn 4, moving the Chip Ganassi Racing driver out of the way and allowing Newman to finish with enough points to not only place him in the Chase field, but bump Jeff Gordon out of it.
Newman made no apologies.
"I think if Kyle Larson was in my shoes, he'd have done the exact same thing,” Newman said in the post-race press conference. “I didn't take him out (sic). He still finished the race albeit, but I think in a day or two he'll understand, if he doesn't now.”
“It's hard to rationalize that, but like I said,” Newman added, “I did what I had to do and tried to keep it as clean as I possibly could. I don't like racing that way, but there's a lot on the line here, and we'll keep digging.”
The general consensus among the fans and the talking heads on the television broadcast, including former Cup champion Dale Jarrett, who is now an analyst for ESPN, as well as Ricky Craven, another former driver who now works as an analyst, was that Newman’s move was completely kosher.
“I would have done the same thing,” Jarrett said during the live post-race broadcast.
Then there is the other camp, those who feel that Newman’s move put him, a winless driver, into the final Chase field while at the same time bumping out Jeff Gordon, who won four times this season. Newman’s edge over Gordon? One point.
And a third camp, the karma camp. Those are the fans who believe that this kind of move—in the end—will find Newman facing payback. As an example they point to Brad Keselowski’s maneuver past Jeff Gordon at Texas. According to the laws of karma, Keselowski’s failure to make the Chase field was directly the result of his actions against Gordon. You be the judge.
However you look at it, Ryan Newman, who made it into the Chase field using the smoke-and-mirrors approach, stands on the brink of becoming a winless champion.
That was not what the NASCAR execs had in mind when they came up with the new Chase format, but it's a possibility nonetheless.
Denny Hamlin to Carry Banner for Toyota at Homestead Finale
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Toyota teams have struggled all season with speed, or maybe its best to say the lack of speed.
Denny Hamlin’s sole win this season came at Talladega Superspeedway, a restrictor plate race, and as NASCAR fans know, restrictor plate races are always a crapshoot.
Hamlin knew that as the Chase field narrowed down from 16 to 12 and then eight, he and crew chief Darian Grubb would have to be smarter than everyone else to remain contenders.
They were.
Heading into Homestead, they expect that might be enough to get them to the title.
“These races just don't—they don't give trophies out for who's the favorite and who's got fast cars,” Hamlin said in the post-race press conference at Phoenix. “You have to execute, and you have to go through the due process of running 300 or 400 miles, and next week is going to be no exception. It's going to be whoever executes a flawless day is going to be the champion.”
Hamlin’s pit crew has delivered flawless performances throughout the season. The smarter part of winning? That came into play when other teams questioned Hamlin’s team’s use of modified air guns to remove and replace lug nuts during pit stops.
Hamlin’s team had routinely been the quickest on pit road, in part because of the slightly modified guns that can shave 10ths of a second off a pit stop.
Crew chief Grubb has been in this pressure cooker before. He directed Tony Stewart to his Cup championship in 2011. An additional advantage—Hamlin is the defending race winner at Homestead.
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Can Joey Logano Put the Finishing Touches on Remarkable Season?
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Joey Logano has generally had what could be described as a textbook-kind of championship season.
His five wins have come at a variety of tracks: Texas, Richmond, Bristol, Loudon and Kansas.
During the second half of the season, Logano finished out of the top 10 only three times. He has shown dominant speed at some tracks while also showing the smarts of a more experienced driver.
This is, after all, only his sixth season as a full-time Cup driver.
Is he ready to become the champion? There is the prevailing philosophy that to win a NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship you have to lose one first. Many of the sport’s biggest names have. It’s supposed to make you appreciate the title when you win.
Logano stands poised to stand on the top step at Homestead next Sunday without losing one first. And why should he lose one first? He’s done everything right this season. He’s known to be a clean racer, and his mastery of restarts does have some drivers scratching their heads.
“We've just done what we've done all year, and there's no point of changing it,” Logano said in the post-race press conference at Phoenix. “Todd (crew chief Gordon) said to me, he goes, you know, don't reinvent the wheel at this point, you just polish the wheel a little bit and just become a little better in every area. That's what we've been able to do throughout the last couple years since we started working together and it's paying off. It's been a fun ride so far.”
The ride could be a little bumpy on Sunday, but Logano has proved that he can handle it. Lose one first? Not likely.
Jeff Gordon's Dream Season Comes to an Abrupt End; It's Time to Turn to Future
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Once again, Jeff Gordon’s "Drive for Five" came to an abrupt ending when Ryan Newman's bump of Kyle Larson took the four-time champion out of the field of four racing for the championship in Homestead.
“Yeah, it’s disappointing,” Gordon said in a post-race interview on live television. Ever the professional, Gordon had been in this position before, and he handled what was the lowest point of the 2014 season with poise and grace.
“We have a lot to hold our heads up high about; the way that we raced this race and this whole Chase and the whole season,” Gordon continued. “We raced hard. We raced together as a team. But I hope we taught somebody that you can race clean and still go out there and give it your best. You don’t have to wreck people to make it in the Chase or win the championship.”
He obviously was alluding to the race at Texas when Brad Keselowski wrecked him in an attempt to win. Gordon’s 29th-place finish at Texas put a serious dent on his points and made it an even more difficult task at Phoenix to race into the field of four.
“I thought if we came out of here second, even if it was to Kevin or (Brad) Keselowski, I thought we’d still make it in,” Gordon added during the live television interview. “That’s pretty disappointing to do all of that. It just makes last week that much more disappointing and I’m going to be thinking about that one for a while.”
There's not much else he can do. Although there is still one more race to go, and the winter break would be a lot sweeter with a victory in the finale.
Rookie of the Year Honors a Slam Dunk for Kyle Larson
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Kyle Larson’s rookie season will long be remembered for his veteran-like performances.
If he's not remembered for some of his exceptional races in a Sprint Cup car—Fontana early in the season (second), Watkins Glen (fourth) or Chicagoland (third), then surely he will be for his equally entertaining Nationwide Series races with wins at Fontana and Charlotte.
And there was also his late-race duel with Darrell Wallace Jr. in the Camping World Truck Series race on dirt at Eldora Speedway during the summer.
Larson turned the competition for Sprint Cup Rookie of the Year honors into a romp, with his closest competitor, Austin Dillon, barely being mentioned throughout the season.
He gave the Chase field fits at Loudon and Kansas, where he finished second.
And in a sure sign of his maturity, Larson even handled his being bumped out of the way at Phoenix like a veteran.
“It's a little upsetting he pushed me up to the wall, but I completely understand the situation he was in and can't fault him for being aggressive there,” Larson told Motor Racing Network. “I think a lot of drivers out here would have done something similar if they were in that position."
Larson has not won a race yet, although many, including this author, predicted that he would. There is still one more race to go, and it’s a 1.5-mile track, where Larson has turned in his best drives.
Ongoing Investigation Dogs Busch in Final Days of Season
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As the investigation into the alleged domestic violence incident involving NASCAR driver Kurt Busch continues, it puts a cloud over everything NASCAR.
It’s the latest in a series of incidents involving athletes recently, but the investigation into what happened at Dover International Speedway on September 26 is still in progress, and no charges have been filed.
In an emailed statement from his attorney, Busch has denied any wrongdoing, per ESPN, and he has continued to race while authorities look into the allegations against him.
The story brings an unwelcome follow-up to the summer, when Stewart-Haas Racing co-owner Tony Stewart, Busch's teammate, was involved and later exonerated of any wrongdoing in the death of a Sprint Car driver in New York.
Homestead Finale End of the Road for Some, Beginning of Next Chapter for Others
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Marcos Ambrose is one of two drivers whose career in Sprint Cup racing is coming to an end at the close of the season.
Ambrose is heading back to Australia at the conclusion of the season to re-enter the Australian V8 Supercar Series, where he won the championship prior to coming to America to race in NASCAR.
"In my time here, I've seen plenty of excited NASCAR fans,” said Ambrose in a pre-race media release before the Phoenix race. “And let me tell you, they have passion! They cheer for their favorite driver, favorite team, and in our case, their favorite 'King'. It's been a pleasure and an honor to race all across America for them, hear them and try to give them some excitement.”
Carl Edwards will be competing in what is likely his final drive for team owner Jack Roush. Edwards has driven for Roush his entire 11-year NASCAR career. He was runner-up in the Sprint Cup Championship twice (2008, 2011). Edwards moves to Joe Gibbs Racing in 2015.
Veteran driver Dave Blaney told the Penn Live Patriot-News this week that he’s hanging up his NASCAR driving gloves after nearly two decades in the sport.
Blaney is returning to his sprint car roots and would like to run up to a 60-race schedule in 2015 if sponsorship can be found.
"I'm not in any position to get any kind of ride that is going to be competitive, but I will go to a lot of races to watch [my son] Ryan,” Blaney told the Patriot-News. “So by no means will [sprint cars] be full time, but it could be a lot more than this year."
Son Ryan Blaney drives in the NASCAR Nationwide Series for team owner Roger Penske.
Both Blaney and Ambrose will be missed on entry lists, but it will be Ambrose who will likely be remembered the best for his aggressive driving style and his mastery of the road course.
Ambrose plans to race for a team that will be part-owned by Roger Penske, who owns several auto dealerships in Australia and New Zealand.
All quotes are taken from official NASCAR, team and manufacturer media releases unless otherwise stated.
Bob Margolis is a member of the National Motorsports Press Association and has covered NASCAR, IndyCar, the NHRA and Sports Cars for more than two decades as a writer, television producer and on-air talent.
On Twitter: @BobMargolis
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