Top 4 stories from Sunday's UAW-Ford 500 at Talladega Superspeedway:1st gear -- Gordon is the master: If Jeff Gordon's not careful, people are going to start saying he can see the air the way Dale Earnhardt was often accused of. The move he pulled off to cut in front of Tony Stewart and take advantage of that momentum was masterful, plain and simple, Gordon fan or Gordon hater. If there's a better driver out there in the Cup Series right now, I say prove it. He's got 6 career wins at Talladega now, 5 series wins in 2007 and inherited the points lead from teammate Jimmie Johnson with the victory.
2nd gear -- DEI/Childress engines: What it is now, like every other race that Junior's blown up in? Clint Bowyer was the only DEI or Childress driver in the Chase not to grenade it at some point, which leaves you wondering not only what happened to the 2 teams -- who happen to have an engine alliance -- but why these problems are still popping up at DEI. The future is, at best, a tenuous one moving on to 2008.
3rd gear -- Villeneuve doesn't cause the big one!: So Jacques "He-Doesn't-Belong-Out-Here-With-Us-NACAR-Good-Old-Boys" Villeneuve ran all 188 laps, finished 21st, never got into a scrape and didn't wipe out all 12 Chase contenders by deciding to hang a hard right across 4 lanes of traffic. Amazing that a Formula 1 champ can drive, isn't it? And, for the record, for all the accusations of inexperience -- Bobby Labonte (yes, THAT Bobby Labonte, a former champion and guy with a resume that's 7 pages long) was the one who caused the dreaded "big one." Not that it was necessarily his fault, but it just served to show that restrictor plate racing is such a crapshoot, anyone can have troubles.
4th gear -- Cut to The Chase: It looks like it's down to a 4-horse race with 6 Chase events left. Gordon, Johnson (-9), Clint Bowyer (-63) and Stewart (-154) are the only guys with legitimate hopes. For 5th-place Carl Edwards, 200 points back (assuming his appeal is denied this week), is a lot of ground to make up on 4 teams that are running really well right now.
9 comments:
It's a two-car race - Bowyer has no chance and Stewart was eliminated.
Stewart only needs to make up fewer than 26 points per race to get back -- and given the runs Johnson has made in recent years, you're awfully quick to write him off.
I thought Bowyer had no chance before this thing started, but given that he's only a handful of points behind and showing incredible perseverance here in the Chase, I'm not willing to write him off the way you are. Not yet.
TB
tbarrett - where has there ever been a comeback win in this playoff format? And where is there any weakness in the Johnson and Gordon camps right now? Bowyer can't even trust his engines as much anymore after the epidemic of failures at Talladega, and as for Stewart - are you kidding? Chevy has washed their hands of him - no way are they going to let him close in on the top two.
Where has there been a comeback win? Are you kidding?
You're 2006 champion (Johnson) crashed out of the New Hampshire race last year.
TB
tbarret - come off it, the biggest team's star driver winning the title after a wreck in the first race is not a comeback win - a comeback win is the driver outside the top five by now erasing that gap and beating the favorites.
There is no possibility of that ever happening. The Chase has become the Waste For The Championship. Gordon and Johnson have the title chase all to themselves.
Monkeesfan - But in the old format the championship run would be even worse with Gordon holding a 439 point advantage over Johnson. Are you faulting them for at least trying to keep our attention now that football has started and baseball playoffs are underway?
kfarra - the old format was honest. Gordon would have clinched the title right now under the old format - I don't care that the champion would be clinched early because it's the race wins, not points, that matter.
I am faulting NASCAR for contrivances to try and keep our attention when they need to be working exclusively on fundamentals to keep our attention. The fundamentals are - more lead changes, more different winners, more winning race teams. Right now the sport does not have that.
NASCAR has done nothing to break the semi-monopoly held on the sport by a few teams - Hendrick and Roush primarily. It has not broken the engine stranglehold those teams have on most of the rest of the sport - the team formerly known as MB2/Ginn Racing never built its own engines, Yates Racing has all but lost control of its engines to Roush; fewer teams build their own engines now than before; the talk is always getting lease deals from Hendrick or Roush. Why is NASCAR not breaking up these engine monopolies?
Where are the new winning teams and the comeback winning teams? The sport has not seen a new winning team since MB2 won in 2002 and the only comeback team win was when Montoya won for Ganassi/SABCO at Sears Point, their first win since 2002; other than that the sport hasn't seen a comeback team win since the Wood Brothers won at Bristol in 2001.
Where are the lead changes? Talladega is almost the only track left with actual good racing.
The Chase is a fraud format and has failed to deliver on its promise.
Thanks for the responce and I'll tell you that I have fallen off the wagon this year and not watching cup races this fall. As Travis recently discussed in a newer post, what was the promise NASCAR made to you with the Chase?
kfarrar, the inferred promise of the Chase was better racing and higher ratings - it's failed on both counts.
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