2008 OPeR Award: Best Owner/Team

January 1, 2009

All right all you fans of the Coach and the Cat in the Hat, bring it on. But you will not convince me that, in 2008 - and ‘06 and ‘07 too - Joe Gibbs, Jack Roush or anyone else was the equal of Mr Hendrick in NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series.

A third straight championship probably would have been enough, but throw in the recruitment and successful integration of NASCAR’s biggest box-office star, Dale Earnhardt Jr, the addition for ‘09 of Hall-of-famer Mark Martin (full time too) and a satellite team that includes Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman.

That’s Earnhardt Jr, Stewart, Martin, Newman to go with the seven Cup Championships of Jeff Gordon and Jimmy Johnson. We rest our case, your Honor.

Written by Charlie Turner · Filed Under 2008 OPer Awards, Hendrick Motorsports, NASCAR | Leave a Comment

Is Tony Stewart Afraid of Monsters?

September 15, 2008

Do you suppose that Michael Waltrip and Bobby Labonte look nervously beneath their haulers when in Delaware, thinking they heard something go bump in the night?

If they do, you couldn’t blame them. Dover Downs might be haunted by the ghost of someone the’ve wronged, given the performance of those guys on the Monster Mile these last three years.

No driver who has competed in the last seven Dover races has lower overall NASCAR Loop Data stats than Waltrip. Only Waltrip, Labonte, Robby Gordon and Joe Nemechek show worse than Stewart.

The Home Depot No. 20fought back to finish eigth at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. This time, Stewart apologized to his team for problems ON PiT ROW …

“Sorry, guys,” he radioed his team

Last week it was a mistake in the pits and this week it was a mistake on the driver’s part,” Stewart said. “We had some bad luck and then I made our problem worse with the speeding penalty.”

But this year, it’s always something - not just with the No. 20 but withMatt Kenseth’s No. 17 as well. Kenseth got tangled with Chad McCumbee on lap 230 and finished 40th.

“If we would have been running where Greg (Biffle) and Carl (Edwards) were running, we wouldn’t have got wrecked to start with, so I always feel it’s partially your fault,” Kenseth said. “Even though we got caught up in somebody else’s mess, if we would have been running better, we would have been ahead of their mess.”

Kenseth has the second best Loop Driver Rating for Dover, just south of Loudon winner, Greg Biffles’s. But that can’t cover the team’s current struggles and the driver’s apparent lack of team confidence.

I don’t know if Stewart or Waltrip are really looking under the proverbial bed for Dover track gremlins, but Dale Eanhardt Jr was acting like an X-Files devotee according to Rick Hendrick…

Earnhardt said he was tired of his car’s handling and then suggested someone was tampering with his tires and said the team needed to beef up security. That’s when Hendrick got on the radio to calm him down and suggested Junior “take a deep breath.”

It isn’t a good sign though, that Hendrick had to get on the horn to settle Junior down. That should be Tony Eury Jr’s responsibility.

“We’ve got to be right there in striking distance,” Hendrick said. “He’s got so much talent and they’ve been doing things the way they do them for a long, long time. I’m just trying to give them some old man experience. A little more focus, think about what the car’s doing, give Tony the feedback and we’ll make the right adjustments.”

Kevin Harvick’s Ave Finish in the Dover Loop era is only 22.4 and he has led exactly zero laps. That’s 491 less than Kenseth, who tops the stat. The Monster hasn’t been very good to Kasey Kahne either with an Ave Finish of 24.3 and a Driver Rating of 69.8.

Thanks to FoxSports.com for the quotes. And Icon Sports Media for the photo.

Written by Charlie Turner · Filed Under Fantasy NASCAR, Hendrick Motorsports, NASCAR Loop Data, Nascar Chase 2008, On Pit Row | 1 Comment