The Atlanta Falcons 500

NASCAR's annual foray to Atlanta wound up resembling the Atlanta Falcons' 2016 playoff run - Kevin Harvick monopolized the first two rounds and monopolized the championship round before the entire enterprise disintegrated.   And when the final few laps arrived it was Brad Keselowski grabbing the win and Harvick left to stew with only a ninth place finish after leading a whopping 292 laps.    The race left some tidbits to munch on heading to Vegas -

Repave Atlanta - Before the weekend Marcus Smith of SMI said the track will be repaved for 2018, but drivers said and wrote on social media insisting the track should stay as it is because drivers like the feel of the track and like tire falloff.    This 2017 running by any sober reading ended any justification for putting off repaving any longer.   Tire wear was more of an issue than usual with several failures due to excessive wear, and passing was more limited than usual - almost a rumor, due not just to the unraceability of the asphalt but also to NASCAR's latest downforce reduction.  

In its history as a quad-oval Atlanta's most competitive races - such as the two on display above - came when the asphalt was still fresh and teams didn't have to use ten sets of tires to run 500 miles.    



The Aaron Rodgers Mister Irrelevant Award -  Kevin Harvick has made something of a habit in recent seasons of leading a lot and not cashing in the win.   In his last 110 starts spanning 2014 onward he has led the most laps a stunning twenty times without a win to show for it.    So far in 2017 he's reached one such Mister Irrelevant race to go with 342 total laps led.     "I didn't follow what I preach," he said afterward about botching his last stop.


Upshots come in stages - Yet for Harvick leading all these laps is doing him a world of good - his average finish is 15th compared to 4th for Kurt Busch - yet Harvick leads the points race thanks to winning NASCAR's new stages, with the bonus points awarded therein.    This validates the basic premise of the stages - incentivizing going for the lead.   

The only nit to pick there is NASCAR no longer awards bonus points for leading or most laps led - keeping that would further incentivize going for the lead.



It's a Stewart-Haas Racing World -  And right now we in NASCAR are just dwelling in it.   Harvick and Busch are 1-2 in points and SHR is easily the deepest team in the garage area - to where even the inept Danica Patrick hasn't been the total embarrassment she's been in the past.   No one else can come close despite Penske Racing's Atlanta win by Brad Keselowski to go with his third in points and Joey Logano's fifth, and respectable depth being shown by Ganassi's team, now building its own chassis and showing noticeably more muscle.  



The harder they fall - Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing so far look like walking wounded - Chase Elliott is fourth in points and Kasey Kahne is eighth, while Hendrick's Name drivers Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr. are 32nd and 33rd in points with the Daytona crash so far serving as the nadir; Atlanta didn't exactly spark any kind of rally.   JGR isn't in any better shape as Kyle Busch's Daytona stage win and Matt Kenseth's surprising third at Atlanta have highlighted an otherwise terrible start to the season; and so far the less said about Daniel Suarez's efforts the better. 



Is this the beginning of a Roush Renaissance?  -   At Atlanta the Roush-Fenway Fords were not the minor embarrassment they've been for the last four seasons as Ricky Stenhouse actually showed some respectable form while Trevor Bayne finished tenth.   Sustaining competitive form has been a problem with this gang the last four seasons, so promise still needs to be replicated before we can see the Roush guys as a legitimate force again.  



If it looked too good to be true...... - .....then it must be RCR.   A promising Speedweeks and a promising Atlanta Sunday netted very little, and I was surprised by some of the vehemence against Austin Dillon on some forums following this Atlanta 500.   Even with that Dillon's career has been nothing to feel encouraged about and there hasn't been reason to believe there's any potential there.   Ryan Newman likewise provided a big tease in the Atlanta 500 but in the end posted another mediocre result.  As for Paul Menard, he is what he is - lower-level talent.  



So it goes, with Vegas now on the docket; it should be a better test of NASCAR's new segments format et al as the wildcard of having to change tires every 40 laps shouldn't play out.

From Daytona To Kentucky With The Kez

 

 

Brad Keselowski literally survives to win the Quaker State 400.

The last two weeks of the 2016 Winston Cup season have seen one of the races of the year and the most bizarre finish of the year.   Sandwiched amid the two Cup races were also one of the most exciting Busch-Xfinity Series races of the year and the Truck Series' first test of Kentucky Speedway's new asphalt.  

The Firecracker 250 and 400 weekend was far and away more competitive than the BGN and Cup portions of February Speedweeks.   Aric Almirola's spectacular win in the Firecracker 250 was overshadowed by controversy over NASCAR's timing of yellows and the issue of not racing to the line remains the most foolish and needless controversy NASCAR has.    It put a damper on a statement win by Almirola, driving a Fred Biagi Ford two years after his Firecracker 400 win in Richard Petty's #43.   The win was followed by a superb storm to the front in Richard Petty's car in the 400, an effort wiped out by the two lines shaft-drafting him out of the top-15 near the end, and the result was a disappointing 15th.

Aric Almirola's win at the Firecracker 250 was followed by a stout effort in the 400 and another superb effort - derailed by gas - in the Kentucky 400

The common demoninator above everything else is Brad Keselowski won both races; his sidedraft fight with Kyle Busch in the final 30 laps was the highlight of the season so far.   When people advocate that drivers prove themselves in different forms of racing I'm not sure they meant winning the way Keselowski had to win it - by running out of gas yet sipping enough residue to hold off Carl Edwards.  

Brad Keselowski and Carl Edwards had not squared off against each other for a number of years until Kentucky, but less than ten years ago the two became blood enemies as seen in the 2010 Gateway 250.


Brad Keselowski has now become the odds-on favorite for the title, and his title chances are one of numerous subplots from the last two weeks.

The Firecracker 400 was the best Cup racing of the year so far, with the final 30 laps seeing an epic sidedraft war for the lead.


** Kentucky saw its first racing with new asphalt and predictions the surface would be one groove proved only partly accurate.   The Trucks hit first and the trickiness of the surface was apparent right away, yet the longer the race went the wider  albeit slightly - the surface seemed to get; there was also a striking draft effect for the leaders, as the first-place Truck could never get any gap on the others.

It was another win by William Byron as his career continues to advance faster than a lot of people expected. 

It was the Cup 400-miler that was considered the real test, and with very low downforce the cars endured a bizarre event as multiple crashes led to eleven yellows, and with so many restarts the lead changed twice in Turn One on seemingly all of them.   There were also several incidents where cars passed by taking air off the lead car and aero-shoving him out of the groove.   But the downside was the high incidence of air-off-the-spoiler crashing, and while the telecast noted air-off-the-car passing the race also saw aeropush, most glaringly when Martin Truex caught the top two and suddenly couldn't close up to pass.   The inevitable result of low downforce remains aeropush and it will always get worse.

The biggest upshot of the high number of crashes is that it wound up making for the bizarre fuel duel at the finish.

The issue of Kentucky's asphalt overall looks more promising than some may have felt - with more racing the groove will widen out, as it seemed to do so in One and Two more than on the other side in this season's 400.


** Keselowski, Edwards, and Almirola were the primary focus of the race, between Keselowski going for the win, Edwards doing likewise, and Almirola was easily the best Ford other than Keselowski - with a 4th-place effort on the final lap derailed by gas.    The effort by Ford overall began to show real progress in the Firecracker and while Kentucky wasn't as fulfilling in terms of competitive depth there remained evidence that Ford's NASCAR program is finally getting out of being dead last.  

Petty's guys showed they're capable of winning and the Roush fleet finally has become worth taking seriously again after being irrelevant for several years now.   The most bizarre resurgence has been Greg Biffle, while Trevor Bayne has come back from career death with stout finishes the last two weeks.   Ford needs them to win so they stop being only about Penske's guys.


** Toyota has definitely suffered from NASCAR's underside aero changes.   Not that they're uncompetitive, but the Toyotas no longer have the firepower they had the first third of the season.   The upshot of that is Martin Truex appeared to be the strongest car (leading 48 laps) at the end and it didn't become a win. 


** In 2015 Chevrolet fell behind Toyota and Chevy's fall from grace continued at both Daytona and Kentucky, even with the resurgence of Stewart-Haas Racing in its final season as a Chevrolet team.   Jimmie Johnson's Kentucky crash best symbolized Chevy's fall from grace while Tony Stewart's sudden rise to the front cannot be looked at sympathetically by Chevrolet given SHR's pending switch to Ford next season.

The race also displayed a striking trend with Kevin Harvick - he led handily (128 laps) and still couldn't cash in on anything, ending in ninth.  
 Lost in the shuffle was RCR, which saw Ryan Newman come home third in the fuel duel - the kind of strategy that damned him in Rusty Wallace and others' eyes in his second season in Cup - and got some good effort from Paul Menard and Austin Dillon, though neither was around at the end. 


And it adds to NASCAR's first sojourn to Loudon, New Hampshire of 2016.

At Talladega NASCAR Gets Worse

And it gets worse for NASCAR. TV ratings for the Chase in 2015 have been dismal and the moving of the Diehard 500 at Talladega to NBC Sports Network instead of airing it on NBC (which aired the USGP for F1) was not a good sign for the Cup Series; adding insult to that injury, the Truck 250 was aired on FOX's over the air network.

But what transpired at Talladega is bound to anger even more people.  Not only was the racing once again enormously under-competitive due to NASCAR's ridiculous diktat against push-drafting, the finish was the biggest insult to competitive integrity in years, certainly since the absurd Regan Smith yellow line penalty that cost him a last-lap win in the 2008 Diehard 500.   NASCAR dictated only one green-white checker finish for this Diehard 500, apparently thinking having the normal three would produce more crashes; what they got instead was two, the first coming on what NASCAR disingenuously claimed was not an attempt - the green light came on as the cars hit the gas, but a crash occurred in the trioval and NASCAR waved the yellow, claiming it was not an attempt, this even though the radio chatter from drivers indicated it was an attempt. 

NASCAR tried again and as Joey Logano and Dale Earnhardt Jr took off Logano got the lead but another wreck, involving among others the eminently-forgettable Denny Hamlin after a bad day where he had to get a roof hatch repaired, erupted and NASCAR wasted several minutes trying to determine who was leading at what scoring loop even though it was obvious Logano was the leader and thus, under NASCAR's field-freeze rule, the winner.

The wreck happened because Kevin Harvick - who took out Denny Hamlin at Daytona and thus launched Austin Dillon into spearing the fencing - swerved into Trevor Bayne.   But of course Harvick refuses to be accountable for it - and NASCAR as usual will not hold the responsible driver accountable for it.

It combined the worst of everything for NASCAR.

Without push-drafting the cars basically are stuck sidedrafting with the leader basically immune from challenge; for most of the race the top five hogged the bottom line without any challenge, where the racing should have been about rocket-surges from midfield into the lead by lock-bumper two-car superdrafts, the lead thus changing at a spectacular rate, and the field able to keep up and sort out without being stuck in place.

Then there is the chronic problem that NASCAR gives the officiating tower the power it has to determine the outcome instead of the racers,   That the restart was declared not a restart by NASCAR was doubletalk; that it was important is also absurd both for the aborted start and for the one that was stopped after the leaders hit Turn One; because NASCAR ostensibly doesn't allow racing to the line, instead freezing the field when the caution comes out - this even after numerous examples (such as the 2004 Firecracker 250, the 2007 Daytona 500, the 2008 Talladega Truck 250, and the 2011 Firecracker 400) where NASCAR left the green out amid a crash and let the field race to the line.  The result all these times was that racing to the line is not the safety problem NASCAR seems to pretend it to be.

What transpired was Joey Logano was declared the winner, based not on the start-finish line but by the officiating tower reading a scoring loop.   No matter how it is sliced it is not a legitimate win; Logano didn't race to the line to earn the win.   Such rule-induced fraudulence has been a depressingly frequent occurrence, most infamously illustrated in the 2004 Winston 500 and 2004 Pocono 500.  

The tower wasn't supposed to make the call - it was supposed to be determined by racing to the stripe.   That it was officiated like this shows anew NASCAR's credibility problem.

At Talladega such problems are easily fixable - let the cars (and Trucks) push-draft again; it's the strongest power to pass ever seen, and what matters is passing, period; give the racing at Talladega and Daytona back the 60-plus lead change average it had just a few years ago.  Reduce the officiating tower's role and give some control of the racing back to the racers - let them race to the stripe and thus legitimately determine the outcome.   And stop pretending a restart is not a restart.  

NASCAR's credibility issues of course extend far beyond Talladega.   The Chase concept has no legitimacy and the disintegration of TV ratings shows it; drop the Chase, go back to the Latford Point System, and increase the points bonuses for the win and for most laps led - incentivize going for the win above everything else.   The issue of costs and team spending need to be addressed by NASCAR and the new Race Team Alliance - the low number of winners in 2015 (just eleven with the Talladega outcome) is indicative of a disturbing lack of competitive depth for the sport. 


*****


It was a lousy race even for the winner, and it certainly stunk for the rest of the field.   Joe Gibbs Racing was dismal even though it led some laps; Stewart-Haas Racing was basically MIA; so were any Fords outside of Penske Racing; Ganassi-Earnhardt had a forgettable day.   That racing always produces more widespread disappointment than cheer is true enough; that even the winners couldn't honestly feel good about how it all transpired merely shows how dismal a day it was for a track where it should always be so much better.

Monday Knights Logano At Texas

It's become a running joke in Winston Cup - if you're suffering a drought, then bring NASCAR to your region and the drought will end.   Rain has hit the majority of the first seven NASCAR weekends of the season and it was appropriate for Texas given the Duck Commander sponsorship.   The race nonetheless got in on Monday and Joey Logano swam to the win, his second with Penske Racing and where he led the most laps (108) of any of his four Winston Cup wins.   He had to sweat out an ill-timed late yellow that set up a green-white-checker finish, but on fresh tires he easily disposed of Jeff Gordon and also a wildcard bid by Brian Vickers.

So what to take out of this Texas 500?   Some observations -


++++++++++


Not a banner weekend for Hendrick Motorsports or its Stewart-Haas satellite -  Gordon finished second and Tony Stewart finished tenth - other than that it wasn't much to feel good about for Hendrick Motorsports and Stewart-Haas.  Stewart led 74 laps but never seemed up to challenging again once he lost the lead.   Kevin Harvick's season has gotten worse since winning at Phoenix, Kurt Busch's season has never really gotten going even with the Martinsville win and third at Fontana, and Danica Patrick is getting worse, not better.   On the hendrick side, Dale Junior's Daytona win keeps fading in the rearview mirror of a 12th at Fontana, third at Martinsville, and finishes 24th or worse in two of his last four races.   Gordon and Johnson have run good, but not great, and Johnson suddenly isn't dodging the bullets he seemed to dodge in his title heyday, while Kasey Kahne has almost fallen off the map.



So when does the series get a repeat winner? - So far seven drivers have won the first seven races, and there are suddenly more than expected in terms of potential winners.  The Hendrick fleet is what they are, so keep an eye there.    Brad Keselowski has curiously faltered in terms of finishes since Vegas but showed real hustle at Texas despite hood damage from one of the jet dryers (insert your own Juan Montoya joke here).   There remains the JGR Toyotas, which showed some return to competitive form at Texas.   There is also the Ganassi/SABCO pair, as Kyle Larson is running away with top rookie honors and contending for even more.

Among the darker horses, more and more Richard Petty's team is making a case for itself as it starts developing its own adjustments to its racecars and Trent Owens steadily proves himself a star of the future among crew chiefs. 

Curiously quiet have been Richard Childress and Roush Fenway - since Carl Edwards' Bristol win the Roush fleet has managed just one top ten finish, while RCR looks lost as an organization - that Austin Dillon's crew chief acknowledged during the race to running conservative setups, right or not, isn't the ringing endorsement of Dillon that he needs, and you cannot be a credible team with the worthless Paul Menard leading the way in top ten finishes for your organization. 



Tires an issue - or not - Tires were a controversy before the race and there were several tire issues during it, but overall it was a quiet day for Goodyear.   Given Goodyear's history, though, at some point later this year tires will become an issue again.



There was a Trevor Bayne sighting - Trevor put the Wood Brothers #21 in the top-seven in qualifying and ran okay for awhile.   It remains curious nothing more consistent has been assembled for Trevor and the Woods.



So it goes with Texas now a wrap and the Southern 500 beckoning this Saturday before the Eastern bye week.