New Year's Resolutions for NASCAR's Top Stars
What’s a new year without resolutions?
Many of us make annual vows to ourselves, most typically for self-improvement, including losing weight, eating healthier, quitting smoking or drinking and just in general trying to have a better life going forward into the new year.
As we begin 2015, we thought it would be fun to make some New Year’s resolutions for some of the top drivers in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.
Of course, everyone wants to win the championship, so that’s a given for most resolutions.
But there are also other hopes that could be very prominent for many drivers.
Let’s check some out.
Kyle Larson: Continue His Ascent into Victory Lane
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The 2014 NASCAR Sprint Cup Rookie of the Year had a great first season in the sport’s marquee series. With the talent show 22-year-old Kyle Larson put on, he has the potential to become one of the best drivers in NASCAR history.
But first things first.
Our New Year’s resolution for the driver of the No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet is pretty simple: to earn his first career Sprint Cup win.
Larson came close several times in 2014. But in 2015, it’s a matter of when, not if, Larson wins his first race. In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised to see him win two or three in the upcoming season.
The most likely place for Larson to win will be one of the West Coast tracks, particularly Phoenix and Las Vegas.
Kevin Harvick: Improve on Pit Road
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Sure, a second consecutive championship would be great. It’s practically a given for the reigning 2014 Sprint Cup champ.
But our resolution for Kevin Harvick is a bit more basic.
His pit crew made a number of mistakes during pit road stops in the first 26 races of 2014.
The issue became so pronounced that crew chief Rodney Childers “traded” Harvick’s pit crew for that of Tony Stewart prior to the start of the Chase for the Sprint Cup—and the rest became NASCAR history.
With Harvick expected to have his original pit crew back in place to start 2015, our resolution for him is to have significantly better performances on pit road.
Ryan Newman and Matt Kenseth: Just Win, Baby!
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This one is as simple and basic as they come for both Matt Kenseth and Ryan Newman.
Our New Year’s resolution for each driver, after both went winless in 2014, is to reach Victory Lane in the Sprint Cup Series in 2015.
Newman became the Cinderella story of the 2014 Chase for the Sprint Cup, ultimately finishing a close second to Harvick, even without a single win the entire 36-race season.
Kenseth, meanwhile, went from a personal best (and series-high) seven wins in 2013, his first season with Joe Gibbs Racing, to zero wins in 2014.
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Kyle Busch: Win That Elusive Championship
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OK, we tried to avoid giving any driver a New Year's resolution that was solely about winning the championship. But we’re going to make an exception in Kyle Busch’s case, as he has done some incredible things in his NASCAR career—he just hasn’t won that elusive Sprint Cup crown.
It’s time for him to do so in 2015.
The biggest thing, of course, will be to survive the first three elimination rounds of the Chase before he gets to the Championship Round.
We’ve said it for a long time: It’s not a matter of if the younger Busch brother will win a Cup crown, but when.
We believe that “when” is 2015.
Tony Stewart: Bounce Back from Worst Year of His Career
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Three-time Sprint Cup champ Tony Stewart has gone through so much over the last two seasons.
First, there was the brutal sprint car crash in August 2013 that caused multiple fractures in his right leg. The injury and resulting surgeries caused Stewart to miss the final 15 races of the 2013 season.
Stewart came back to start the 2014 season, but it was clear that he was both in lingering pain and not fully recovered from the wreck the prior season. Still, he was a gamer and raced through the pain.
Then came the evening of August 9, 2014, when Stewart was involved in a tragic incident at a small dirt track in upstate New York, where fellow racer Kevin Ward lost his life. Stewart sat out the next three Cup races after the Ward tragedy and ultimately wound up with the worst season of his 16-year Cup career.
Not only did he set record lows in top-fives (three) and top-10s (seven), but for the first time in that lengthy Cup career, he failed to win even one race in 2014.
Our resolution for Smoke in 2015 is actually a three-parter:
1. To feel pain-free.
2. To win his first race since 2013.
3. To have one of the greatest comebacks of any driver in NASCAR history.
If anyone can accomplish all three, it’s Stewart—or so we hope.
Brad Keselowski: Be Nicer
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We love Brad Keselowski’s old-school style of racing. Nothing else matters to him than winning, even if it draws the ire of fellow drivers, the media and fans.
But Brad needs to learn a few lessons about how to be more couth and judicious, particularly with his fellow drivers.
It’s never a good thing to be the kind of driver who has few, if any, friends on the race track other than his teammate (Joey Logano).
If Keselowski was a bit more politically correct with some of his comments about other teams and drivers, and if he was a bit more selective on who he beat and banged with, much of the criticism that has come his way the last season or so would greatly diminish.
Our New Year’s resolution for Brad is this: Be a nicer guy.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. : Expand on 2014 Success
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Much like Kyle Busch, we’d like to see Dale Earnhardt Jr. win his first career Sprint Cup championship.
Obviously, his long-suffering fans would put that at the top of their bucket list for their favorite driver as well.
But to get to the championship, Earnhardt has to take a more basic step in 2015: having a similar, if not better, season than he had in 2014.
Earnhardt will be under scrutiny, particularly early in the season, to see how he communicates with and performs with new crew chief Greg Ives. But Ives is somewhat of a clone of Earnhardt’s last crew chief, Steve Letarte, so we don’t see that as being a significant issue.
If Junior can get an early-season win or two, he could put himself on track to not only come close to repeating what he did in 2014, but also go even further, perhaps all the way to that ever-elusive championship.
Danica Patrick: Break into the Top 20
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The 2015 season could be one of the most important seasons in Danica Patrick’s overall racing career.
She’ll be in her third full Sprint Cup season, and after finishes of 27th and 28th in her first two campaigns, it’s almost a necessity that she does significantly better in 2015.
Granted, her first career NASCAR win (on any level) would be a great accomplishment.
But to improve to a top-20 finish in the overall 2015 season would be our New Year’s resolution for Patrick.
Jimmie Johnson: Reach the Championship Round
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Our New Year’s resolution for six-time champion Jimmie Johnson is not to win a seventh championship, which would tie him with NASCAR Hall of Famers Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt for most individual championships won in a Cup career.
Rather, our resolution for Johnson in 2015 is to have a better season than he had in 2014. Sure, he won three races last year, but he also finished a career-worst 11th in the final standings. He failed to make it to the Eliminator Round, let alone the Championship Round.
Our resolution for Johnson is to at least reach the Championship Round, although we don’t believe it’s in the cards for him to win title No. 7.
Jeff Gordon: Keep on Keepin' on
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After perhaps his best attempt at a “Drive For Five” championship since his last title in 2001, Gordon came up short of reaching the Championship Round by a mere one point.
Almost everything went well for Gordon in 2014, including four wins—among them a record fifth triumph in the Brickyard 400—and first place in the standings for 17 of the 26 weeks of the regular season.
Gordon seemed poised to reach Homestead Miami Speedway as one of the four finalists to battle it out for the championship. But Newman had other ideas and shockingly stole away Gordon’s berth in the Championship Round by one lone point.
Our resolution for Gordon in 2015: While we’d like to see him win the championship, to do that, he'll need to just keep doing what he was doing. If one point had not kept him out of the Championship Round, he very well may have won that fifth title. And if he can get there next year, we’ll leave it to him to do the rest.
Follow me on Twitter @JerryBonkowski
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