 | | Tony Stewart's consistency paid off -- in a big way. Credit: CIA Stock Photo |
By Dan Beaver, Special to NASCAR.COM
November 25, 2005
10:44 AM EST (15:44 GMT)
Parity reigned in 2004, but this season Tony Stewart proved that domination is never out of fashion in professional sports. Gone for now are the days when a driver could win 10 or more races in a season; last year Jimmie Johnson came close, recording eight victories in a 36-race schedule. Dale Earnhardt Jr. was second best in that category with six victories and Jeff Gordon earned five. The 2004 champion Kurt Busch earned only three victories and no other driver had more than two. The victories were fairly well spaced. Parity reigned as 31 different drivers scored a top-five and 39 teams scored top-10s. In 2004, streaks were hard to come by as the field played a game of hide-and-seek at the front of the pack. In 2005 the victories were hoarded by a select few: Greg Biffle earned the most with six, while champion Stewart was second in the wins category with five. Three other drivers earned four victories as Carl Edwards, Jimmie Johnson, and Jeff Gordon teamed up with the leaders to capture nearly two-thirds of the races for the year among only five cars. This left the remaining drivers to scramble for those few races remaining. Catch Me if You Can At the beginning of the season, top-10 streaks were difficult to come by, but as the dog days of summer began to heat up, Stewart turned on the afterburners and told the field to catch him if they could. There was little to suggest Stewart was going to run away with the season when the field rolled into Michigan for the first of that track's two races. Joe Gibbs Racing had not yet visited victory lane, and even though the No. 20 came close on a few occasions, Stewart also suffered through two three-race streaks of 15th or worse. In fact, five of his previous nine races ended in results outside the top 20. These poor finishes served to make his runner-up finishes at Talladega and Richmond seem more frustrating than successful. Stewart left Michigan with another second-place finish and fantasy owners could be forgiven if they did not see the promise inherent in that result. His next two races set the tone for the remainder of the year, winning at Infineon and Daytona before taking a week off to finish fifth at Chicago. Stewart regrouped and won three of the next four races. Those were to be his only victories of the season, but it was not the end of his strong run. Only fantasy owners who were already on his bandwagon could afford to have him on their team for the remainder of the season in the salary cap games, which was a pity because he continued to stretch his monetary advantage over the remaining drivers in those contests and increase his owners' budget. Stewart strung together one of the best streaks in recent years when he finished in the top 10 in 12 consecutive weeks. From his second-place finish at Michigan into the season-ending race at Homestead, Stewart amassed 18 top-10s and 14 top-fives in a 20-race span. In the finale he did what he had to do in order to win the championship, finishing as the penultimate car on the lead lap, but even that disappointing finish netted him a 15th-place result. Fantasy owners will do well to remember in 2006 that auto racing is about momentum, and avoid the tendency to switch drivers with abandon only because they can. Now that Stewart has proved it can be done, some other driver will string some incredible finishes together. Gordon Slides That driver might be Jeff Gordon. The hallmark of his career to date had been consistency entering the 2005 season, in particular on the similarly configured 1.5-mile tracks that make up the majority of races on the schedule. This year, however, the unrestricted intermediate speedways were his Achilles' Heel. Gordon got off to a great start winning the biggest race of the year, the Daytona 500. He dominated that race like no one other than a DEI driver in recent seasons, and it appeared he was off to a great start. He blew an engine at California the following week, but the danger signals were lost in the cacophony of a host of Hendrick Motorsports' engine erupting that day. The No. 24 team finished fourth the following week on a cookie-cutter track at Las Vegas, but then crashed out of the following event at Atlanta. That crash set an unfortunate trend for the Rainbow Warrior. In the following 27 races he was sidelined or slowed by crash damage 10 times, and even when he completed the races his rhythm was gone. What has made Gordon so successful during his career has been an ability to adjust on his car until he has it nearly perfect in the closing laps; in 2005, this knack evaded him and changes to the car made it worse in the middle stages of most events. Even though he won four races -- and even though only a few others won more -- all of his victories came on the specialty tracks of Martinsville and the restrictor-plate superspeedways. Gordon had his worst season since his rookie year, finishing outside the top 10 in points for the first time in more than a decade, but it gave the team a chance to work on his program. Robbie Loomis opted to return to a more sedate position at Petty Enterprises and Hendrick Motorsports elevated Steve Letarte to the crew chief position. The team ripped bodies off cars and replaced them with better pieces and Gordon's season finally turned around in the final month. All season long, Gordon failed to record three consecutive top-10 finishes and the closing races were no exception, but from his victory at Martinsville in October through the following four races he finished in the top-10 four times and was never worse than 15th. In the season finale he had one of three cars to beat until he was shuffled out of the lead pack in a late-race caution period or he might have had a shot at another victory. Late Season Phenoms Last year Carl Edwards was elevated to the Nextel Cup series late in the season when Jeff Burton left Roush Racing to drive for Richard Childress. Edwards was an immediate success, finishing in the top 10 in three of his first four attempts. He brought that energy with him into 2005 and it was a big part of the momentum that nearly made him the surprise champion of this season. This year the role of late-season phenom was played by Denny Hamlin. Joe Gibbs' No. 11 team was lackluster at the start of the year with Jason Leffler behind the wheel. This team skirted with being outside the top 35 in owners' points on several occasions, and veteran driver Terry Labonte was brought in a time or two to insure the car was in the field. Labonte had a past champions' provisional that guaranteed him a spot in the race. In the first 20-odd races, Leffler and Gibb's team never cracked the top 10 in a race, and rarely were inside the top 20. Something had to change, and the driver is the most visible variant. J. J. Yeley was the first of Gibbs' Busch drivers to get the a chance in the No. 11, but in four races the best he could do was 25th and he never finished on the lead lap. Along came Hamlin. With seven races remaining in the season, he stepped into the Gibbs' Chevrolet and immediately qualified the car in the top 10. As soon as the race started, however, he ran into trouble on the track, lost a lap, and ultimately finished 32nd. It broke a streak of top-10s in series debuts, since he came into the Craftsman Truck, Busch and ARCA series with a front-of-pack finish in each. Hamlin made up for that in the second race of his career, earning a top-10 at Charlotte and then following it with another on the flat short track where he cut his racing teeth, Martinsville. Entering the final race of the season, he was riding a five-race streak of top-20 finishes that included three top-10s and four top-15s. He struggled at Homestead, but finishing the final seven races with a flourish will propel him into the 2006 Daytona 500 with momentum on his side and a solid top-35 position in the owners' standings. The best news is that this rookie of the year candidate will not have to worry about making the biggest show of the year. Musical Chairs All season long, the fantasy pages were filled with a magic word: "chemistry." This semi-scientific explanation of what makes a team great is second only to "momentum," but it will be sparsely used in the first few events of 2006. The 2005 silly season was borderline ridiculous as more than a fourth of the field experienced major overhauls in their team's structure. From crew chief changes such as Gordon's, as well as the re-unification of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Tony Eury Jr. at the No. 8 and long time Ray Evernham employee Tommy Baldwin moving to Robert Yates, to enough driver swaps to make purchasing a program at Daytona a necessity to see where everyone landed. Veterans Rusty Wallace and Ricky Rudd left the sport at the end of the season and fellow grey beard Mark Martin tried to quit, but with massive re-organizations already under way, Roush Racing convinced him to stay one more year. Reigning champ Kurt Busch jumped ship to race for Roger Penske leaving the seat of the No. 97 open. Chip Ganassi's driver Jamie McMurray signed to take Busch's place, but McMurray had to be released from his existing contract to do so. Rookies David Stremme and Reed Sorenson will graduate to the Cup series, replacing two of three drivers in the Ganassi organization, and the round robin affair that was initiated by the defections of Busch and McMurray ended up affecting nearly every major team in the garage. In fact, from a driver's view, only Hendrick Motorsports will have all its talent in place. Those teams that made their changes early in 2005 (Gordon and Earnhardt), and those who remain intact (Stewart, Edwards, Biffle, and Johnson) will be among the rare few that have chemistry entering Speedweeks in February, and a premium should be placed on them. In the final tally, 36 races were not enough to hold all the twists and turns of NASCAR's 2005 plot line. Despite new impound procedures, testing mandates, and qualification rules, the drivers' news trumped the sanctioning body's in 2005. With so many rookie contenders coming next year, look for the 2006 season to be just as dramatic. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer. | 
