Friday, August 31, 2007
AROUND
THE CIRCUIT
Analyzing
the NASCAR scene
Carl Edwards: Sure he won at Bristol. The impressive thing was that after 500 hot laps he was able to pull off a back flip.
Ricky Rudd: Retirement looms, but not before he clicks off his 900th career start at California.
Dale Earnhardt Jr.: Gets a top-five at Bristol and winds up treading water in the points.
Setting the field: There’s a very real possibility the Chase for the Nextel Cup could be set when Sunday night’s race at California is over. Barring some major missteps by Clint Bowyer, Kevin Harvick, Martin Truex Jr. or Kurt Busch, it won’t matter what Dale Earnhardt Jr. does there and at Richmond the following week. If Earnhardt Jr. wins both of those races and leads the most laps, he’ll have 3,111 points after 26 races. That, for now, is the magic number for Chase contenders. Busch, who’s 12th, needs 233 points in two races to lock himself in. That’s two top-15 finishes. One could argue, I guess, that 12 is the right number for the Chase this year. Earnhardt Jr. and his team certainly don’t appear to be championship caliber right now. Busch, on the other hand, is riding a wave of momentum and could be a factor. The whole point of the Chase is to create drama and competition for the right to move into the championship showdown, isn’t it? It doesn’t look like there’s going to be much of that this year. What if NASCAR had left well enough alone, as it should have, and only 10 drivers qualified for the Chase this year? How good would these final two races be with Harvick in 10th, one point ahead of Truex Jr. and nine points up on Busch? Bowyer, who’s 56 points ahead of Harvick, would be sweating, too. The way you can tell if the Chase is working is if good teams get left out. At 10 this year, good teams would be left out. At 12? Not so much.
News and notes: Rudd will make his 900th career start in Sunday’s Sharp Aquos 500 at California Speedway, another milestone in a career that’s coming to an end. Rudd will retire, at least from full-time Nextel Cup competition, after this season. As he begins to reflect on things, he said he believes racing increasingly will become a sport for younger people. “Life cooped up in a motor home five days a week is not an ideal situation for kids,” said Rudd, driver of the No. 88 Ford. “It’s sort of forcing the kids to take on our lifestyle. So, you start weighing the plusses and the minuses. When you’re competitive, it’s sort of a fix for some of the negatives of the sport. I think you’ll see guys come in at 18 and probably leave when they’re in their early 30s, mid-30s max. Then they’ll still have a chance to have a family life after that.” … One of Rudd’s former crew chiefs, Michael McSwain, told the Wood Brothers this week he won’t be back as crew chief on the No. 21 Ford in Nextel Cup next season. He might take another role, but if he does he said it would be one that doesn’t have him on the road and away from his family as much. … The latest rumor about Earnhardt Jr.’s car number involves the No. 38, with at least two reports this week that Robert Yates Racing had been approached about giving up that number for him and his 2008 team at Hendrick Motorsports. Indeed, according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Electronic Search System, the No. 38 is one of five numbers for which Hendrick Motorsports recently has applied for trademarks for a wide array of products that could be used in marketing the Earnhardt Jr. team. Applications were filed Aug. 9 for the 38 and 51. Earlier applications were filed July 5 for the No. 81 and Aug. 2 for the 58 and the 82.
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