Play NASCAR Fantasy Live
Create your dream team here.
29-year-old to run 20 Sprint Cup Series races in the No. 95 car
He’s never won a race at the national level, and his most famous moment in NASCAR was when his car barrel-rolled down the frontstretch during a qualifying attempt at Texas. For the past five years, he’s driven almost exclusively vehicles that have rolled into the garage reporting mechanical issues only a few dozen laps into the race.
Through it all, Michael McDowell has managed to become something else — a survivor. He’s lost a high-profile ride, been resigned to squeeze go-or-go-home cars into races, even driven his own motorhome to tracks to cut down on travel costs. But he’s hung on long enough to snare a new job with Leavine Family Racing, which will attempt 20 Sprint Cup Series races in 2014, with what team officials believe can be a competitive No. 95 car.
"For me, it’s not so much about the things I don’t have, but I’m fortunate to have the opportunities I do have," McDowell said. "You look, there are a lot of great drivers that are a lot more talented than I am who are not in this sport any longer. So I feel very fortunate to still be in the sport, and I feel that perseverance, almost, has given me the opportunity to see a lot of different aspects and elements of the sport, which helps me bring a little bit to the program with LFR being a smaller program trying to grow."
McDowell has seen it all, all right, even though he’s just 29. The Phoenix native and former ARCA star broke through in 2008 in Michael Waltrip Racing’s No. 00 car, but back when MWR often struggled to just make races, and had not yet transformed itself into the winning organization is it now. Although he often showed speed — too much of it in that epic qualifying crash at Texas — the results never came, and one year later McDowell was making his living sneaking less-than-competitive cars into races.
He’s been doing that basically ever since, despite a dozen runs in Joe Gibbs Racing Nationwide Series equipment where he’s consistently finished inside the top 10 and even had a few chances to win races. It’s those performances — like a runner-up finish at Mid-Ohio last season, and another at Road America in 2012 — that give him confidence that he can make it in NASCAR.
"Really, those Gibbs races gave me the opportunity to show myself whether I could or couldn’t do it. As a driver, that’s really all you want," McDowell said. "You fight your entire career to see if you have the stuff, you know? You think you have the stuff, and you’re confident you do, and then you get to this level, and everybody does. It’s so difficult. And without the right opportunities, you just never know. So a lot of it was my own stubbornness, me saying, ‘I’ve got to stay in this thing long enough to see if I can do it.’"
McDowell remembers a race for Gibbs at Iowa in 2012, where he was racing Kurt Busch for third on the final lap. McDowell challenged Busch for the spot and it ended with Busch in a sideways slide and a fifth-place finish, while McDowell took third place.
"That’s not a highlight," said McDowell, who expects to have more Nationwide starts for JGR this season. "But the fact of the matter was, I was racing Kurt Busch for third place on the last lap. Which sort of re-sparks that — hey, I want to be here, I want to do this. And with the opportunity I have now in the 95, I think we’ll have runs where people go — wow, they are serious."
That’s certainly the hope. LFR has one top-10 finish in its three-year history — ninth at Talladega last spring with Scott Speed, who has left to pursue rally racing. McDowell filled in for Speed during last year’s Sprint Showdown, and the relationship with LFR owner Bob Leavine proved fruitful when the ride became open for 2014. Thanks in part to sponsorship from the Christian radio network K-Love, McDowell will once again have the opportunity to actually race at NASCAR’s highest level.
"Obviously, we’re all very competitive," McDowell said. "Being one of 43, you don’t get there just by enjoying the ride and not being intense. That part’s definitely hard. And then especially when you have a good car and a good week, you know you can’t run. Now with this new program, we know every weekend when we show up, we’re going to have an opportunity to compete. We’re going to have good pit stops, we’re going to have tires, we’re going to have all the things we need to need to be competitive."
The team will field a Ford and use Roush-Yates engines in its 20-race schedule, which will begin with the Daytona 500. McDowell finished a career-best ninth in the event last year, getting a rare chance to compete for the full race in a vehicle fielded by Mike Curb. This season, he’ll be able to do the same thing every time he rolls onto the track.
"The biggest thing was, for me it was an opportunity to race," he said, "and that’s all I want to do."
MORE:
|
highlight Chase changes |
WATCH: Brian France breaks
|
READ: Coors Light qualifying
|
WATCH: Qualifying: One-on-one
|
|---|
Trevor Bayne will run in 12 Sprint Cup Series events with team
In the mid-2000s, when a sponsorship squeeze led some race teams to merge with one another or take on partners in order to survive, one of the sport’s oldest organizations took the opposite approach. In a move urged by its manufacturer partner, Wood Brothers Racing scaled back to part-time — a decision that’s kept the historic franchise on the race track, and netted a Daytona 500 victory three years ago.
The Woods will continue that trend in 2014, where the team’s famous red and white No. 21 car will compete in 12 Sprint Cup Series events with Trevor Bayne once again behind the wheel. But the 64-year-old organization continues to make inroads toward returning to full-time status, something it might find itself forced to consider should Bayne pull another shocker in The Great American Race.
"We would be really love to be back full-time," said team co-owner Eddie Wood. "With so much emphasis now on the championship with the Chase … we work toward getting back full-time all the time. My kids Jon and Jordan, they do a lot of research and try to generate marketing strategies, and we’re open to anything to find more funding."
Particularly given NASCAR’s move to revamp the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, which has been expanded to 16 drivers, and will almost certainly accommodate everyone who wins a race. Since playoff hopefuls must attempt to qualify for all 36 points races and remain in the top 30 in the standings to be eligible, a potential sixth Daytona 500 victory for the Woods would demand some hard decisions about whether to accelerate full-time plans.
"That would change the game a little bit," Wood said. "If you’re fortunate enough to say, win the Daytona 500, then you’d figure out a way to do it. But that would be huge."
As far as infrastructure and support, Wood said the team is more prepared for an expanded schedule than its current limited slate might indicate. The Woods have 30 people working in their Charlotte-area shop, and receive cars from Roush Fenway Racing and engines from Roush-Yates. With support from Ford and its Motorcraft brand, the team has purchased four new race cars. Its over-the-wall crew will be the group that pits the No. 43 Nationwide Series car each weekend at Ford stable mate Richard Petty Motorsports, and crew chief Donnie Wingo receives technical information from Roush whether he’s at the track or not.
"The engineering and data that happens on a particular weekend, Donnie has that live whether it’s in the shop, or on his phone, or at home," Wood said. "So we’re the same as being there, we’re just not there. We’ve got all the information and all the input, and know what’s going on live. It’s like real-time. So it’s really not a disadvantage in that sense. You just don’t get to go."
The missing piece is funding. Wood said the team is open to using other drivers in the No. 21 car beyond Bayne, should they bring some sponsorship to the table that would help Wood Brothers expand its schedule. Jon and Jordan Wood send out "half a dozen proposals a week," to prospective sponsors, he added, some of which have shown interest.
"We’re getting calls back," Eddie Wood said. "It’s getting better, and there are some new sponsors coming in. But for us, people are calling back now, and asking questions, and asking for more information. We’ve got a couple of things working, knock on wood. They may or may not happen, but we got close to some things in the offseason for half a dozen more races or something like that. We couldn’t go jump right back into all the races in one year like right now. If you knew you had the funding to do it in ’15, yeah, you could. You’d need a lot of buildup time. But we could run 20 to 25 races easily with the people we’ve got."
For now, though, a team with 98 career victories remains a part-time competitor, limiting its schedule to the restrictor-plate tracks and fast intermediate venues where it has the best chance for success. Although Bayne also races the full Nationwide slate for Roush, the limited Sprint Cup schedule brings some challenges from a driver’s perspective. After Daytona, he’ll be in the No. 21 car just twice — at Las Vegas and Texas — before the next plate race at Talladega. Late in the year, he’ll go nine weeks at one point in between starts.
Drivers who compete on a weekly basis are able to lean upon trends that help them better identify what setup packages fit them best. For Bayne, those trends don’t necessarily exist, so he has to use practice time to find comfort levels that full-time drivers might have established weeks ago. And because the No. 21 car usually has to make the event on speed, the Woods must carve out even more practice time for qualifying, all while the competition is working on getting better for the race.
"We spend the majority of our practice doing one-lap, two-lap runs, and then when it gets to race practice time, we kind of have to rely on the information we have, which makes it extremely tough," Bayne said. "If we have a little more speed this year and don’t have to worry about qualifying as much, especially with the new (group) format, if that plays to our advantage them we could spend more time in race practice, and that would extremely help our races."
And yet, every week the Woods are at the race track, Eddie Wood said, they’re there operating as if they’re running every race. The limited schedule doesn’t lower the team’s competitive goals, as evidenced by a test the No. 21 car took part in this past week at Talladega.
"We still have an opportunity to win races," Bayne said. "These guys really believe in our superspeedway program. … It’s kind of an even playing field there. The thing that Donnie and I will work on is just communication, because we pretty much race once a month, and that makes it a little bit more challenging. But we know that. We know what we’re up against, and we know our strengths and our weakness, and we’ll try to make more of this season to where we can contend for those top-10s and top-15s, and then that leads to those top-fives and wins that you’re looking for."
MORE:
|
highlight Chase changes |
WATCH: Brian France breaks
|
READ: Coors Light qualifying
|
WATCH: Qualifying: One-on-one
|
|---|
Veteran driver looks to improve off ninth-place finish in final standings of 2013
MORE: Chemistry key for Stenhouse Jr.
Uncharacteristically, short tracks became one of Greg Biffle‘s stronger suits last season. But increased performance on NASCAR’s bullrings came at a cost, specifically on the intermediate-sized speedways that used to be his Roush Fenway Racing team’s safe haven.
Was the trade-off worth it? Biffle isn’t so sure.
"We had a stranglehold a little bit on those (intermediate) type of race tracks," Biffle said during late January at the annual Sprint Media Tour. "Last year, we were just average. It felt like we lost our edge. We weren’t really sitting below those other guys, we just lost that stranglehold, it felt like, on those tracks. Although: Better at Richmond, better at Martinsville, better at Loudon, but I don’t know if I want to trade that for the dominance we had on the intermediate tracks.
"And it seems like you can never have both. It’s like, take your pick, you’re only allowed to have one. That’s been so hard of a balance."
The focus shifts back to regaining the intermediate-track advantage this year as Biffle embarks on his 12th season driving Roush Fenway’s No. 16 Ford. From a personal standpoint, Biffle enters a contract year with optimism about an extension with longtime sponsor 3M. From a team view, Biffle was the head of the Roush Fenway class last season with a ninth-place result in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series points, but the team made it clear that finishes of ninth, 13th and 19th in the final standings were not acceptable.
Biffle has had brushes with the Sprint Cup crown before — a runner-up finish in a six-win season in 2005, third place in 2008, and fifth as recently as 2012. For the 44-year-old veteran to have a chance at becoming the first driver to win championships in all three NASCAR national series, Roush Fenway’s general manager Robbie Reiser said the team has to hold up its end of the partnership.
"I believe on Greg Biffle’s part, it’s a little more on our shoulders to be able to help support what he’s doing there," Reiser said. "Greg’s got all the ability in the world to win the championship and we’ve got to supply a team, and parts and components around him that can go out and do that. We’ve got to look in the mirror on that one and be able to understand that we’ve got to build a better company for Greg to be sitting at the head table at the end of the year."
Biffle, who has driven for team owner Jack Roush in all but three of his 55 NASCAR national series wins, isn’t quite ready to assign blame — not when he watches his crew grind through double shifts and manage the rigors of an extensive testing schedule to get ready before the season-opening Daytona 500 on Feb. 23.
"You’re never going to have the fastest car all the time. So to say they need to provide better cars or wish we had faster cars or this or that, it’s hard to point fingers," Biffle said. "Yeah, do we wish we had the fastest car all the time? Sure. The one thing I bring out of that is, the second that you feel like the team or the organization is not doing every single thing possible,that’s when you get upset. …
"That’s never the case with us. … We’re doing everything we can to have the fastest cars, so that’s all I can ask of them."
Biffle led just three laps all last season at the intermediate-sized 1.5-mile tracks that used to be the team’s best venues. The flip side to the performance trend was finding himself among the top 10 cars on a more consistent basis on short tracks.
The key to improvement this year will be transforming the top-10 efforts into top-five finishes, and not just on a certain style of track.
"We want to run in the top five the whole race, but then again, so do 42 other guys. Only so many of us are going to," Biffle said. "For us to be running in the top 10 at those races, that’s not far from being in the top five. Like I say, it’s stepping stones. You’re not going to win unless you’re running in the top five, right? You’re not going to win from 12th, normally. You’re not going to win from ninth or eighth. You’re going to win from fourth, third, second, fifth — you’re going to win from there. So that’s the progression."
MORE:
|
highlight Chase changes |
WATCH: Brian France breaks
|
READ: Coors Light qualifying
|
WATCH: Qualifying: One-on-one
|
|---|
Sunoco Rookie of the Year contenders could be in the mix
In the Daytona 500, anything can happen.
We’ve certainly been reminded of that before, in the form of Trevor Bayne screaming in disbelief over the radio after delivering Wood Brothers Racing perhaps the most unlikely of the storied team’s five victories in the Great American Race. We saw the possibility when David Ragan made a move to the front in a green-white-checkered finish in 2011, and when Dave Blaney sat in the lead at a red flag one year later.
It may be the biggest stock-car event on the planet, but the limits of the restrictor plate and the vagaries of the draft can still combine to jack improbability to the hilt. Premier-series events at Daytona have given us winners like Sam McQuagg and Greg Sacks, shockers even before restrictor plates became a fact of life on the high banks. It gave us a victory by Greg Biffle before anyone had any idea who the guy was. It helped a rookie named Danica Patrick nearly steal the show at Speedweeks one year ago.
In fairness, form typically holds, and it’s usually a championship-caliber driver from an established powerhouse team lifting the Harley J. Earl Trophy in the sport’s most famous Victory Lane. But nearly every year, there’s a long shot in there at the end. Michael McDowell finished ninth in the Daytona 500 last year. David Gilliland finished third in the season Bayne won it. A part-time Mark Martin almost stunned everyone in in 2007. We all remember Blaney, sitting in the lead during the red flag for the jet dryer fire in 2012, wondering if the event would resume.
It did, and once again the dark horses were led back to their stables while more familiar names bathed in confetti and champagne. But another Bayne has to emerge again eventually — doesn’t it? After all, anything can happen in the Daytona 500. Discounting former champions of the event, as well as Patrick — who is a known entity on plate tracks after her run last season — here are the top 10 candidates to pull a shocker in this year’s edition of the Great American Race.
10. Michael Annett
Wait — a guy with zero victories in the Nationwide Series, making his Sprint Cup debut? Granted, Annett may be something of a reach, although what shaped up as a strong 2013 Nationwide season with Richard Petty Motorsports was derailed by a broken sternum suffered in the opener. Still, car owner Tommy Baldwin knows how to build strong restrictor-plate cars, and we’ve seen his drivers flirt with breakthroughs at Daytona and Talladega before. J.J. Yeley finished 13th in last year’s July race at Daytona, and Blaney was 16th at Talladega. Those same two drivers were 10th and 17th, respectively, in the Daytona 500 a year ago. The rookie Annett may be an unknown in the draft, but his car won’t be, and that’s half the battle.
9. Casey Mears
It’s been a while since Mears earned his lone career victory, at Charlotte, in one of the strangest fuel-mileage finishes you’ll ever see. Still, the guy was in Hendrick Motorsports equipment then. For the past three seasons he’s been with Germain Racing, and in a car that’s often proven more competitive than it’s received credit for. Mears finished ninth in Daytona’s 400-mile summertime event last season — his lone top-10 in the No. 13 car to date — and 18th the year before that. The guy has been around for a while and has a lot of good friends in the garage area, always helpful when you’re looking for a push in the draft. So much of Daytona is a matter of being there at the end, and Mears has done more than enough at Germain and his previous stops to convince you he can manage that much.
Admittedly, recent history doesn’t exactly instill a whole lot of faith in JTG Daugherty Racing, which has placed 26th and 31st in owners’ points the past two seasons. But the single-car team now has a technical alliance with Richard Childress Racing, which can be as strong on plate tracks as anyone, as the results of January testing might indicate. And another positive note is Allmendinger, whose limited runs last season in the No. 47 car offered some promise, and had had his moments on Daytona’s high banks before. He finished third in the Daytona 500 in 2009, and in 2011 was 10th and 11th in the two races on the 2.5-mile track. Of course, he was also in arguably better equipment then, and the onus is on JTG to roll out a car as capable as its driver.
The team name may be different — it’s been changed from Phoenix Racing to HScott Motorsports, reflecting the recent purchase by new owner Harry Scott Jr. — but this is the same outfit that’s excelled at plate racing throughout its long tenure at NASCAR’s top level. Under former owner James Finch, it tallied five top-10s at Daytona, including Regan Smith’s seventh-place run in the 500 last year. It won in 2009 with Brad Keselowski at Talladega, where Smith placed sixth in the team’s most recent plate outing. Now it has a proven quantity on the pit box in Steve Addington, while Allgaier was a regular contender at Daytona in the Nationwide Series. All that remains to be seen is if the cars are as good on plate tracks as they’ve typically been.
6. David Gilliland
His Front Row Motorsports teammate may have won last year’s spring race at Talladega, but don’t forget who was right behind him, pushing Ragan through the middle of the pack to the victory. Don’t forget who finished third in the 2011 Daytona 500, or 15th in the track’s summertime event last year. Gilliland is an exceptionally strong restrictor-plate racer — the guy has four top 10s in 13 career starts at Talladega, not bad at such an unpredictable venue — and perhaps as importantly, the other competitors in the field know it. Given his results and experience level, drivers with better-funded teams aren’t going to be shy about making a move with Gilliland if that’s what’s necessary to get them to the front. In a race where it’s good to have friends, that could make a difference.
Would there be any place better for the storied No. 43 car to finally break its 13-year winless skid than the biggest race of the year? Almirola may not have the best record at Daytona — his top finish was 13th in last year’s 500 — but he’s been very competitive at Talladega, and he’s historically shown plenty of speed on plate tracks. Beyond the driver, Richard Petty Motorsports has traditionally turned out fairly strong plate cars — indeed, some of Allmendinger’s best runs at Daytona were during his days in RPM equipment. And thanks to an increase in sponsorship support, RPM has been able to start its own research and development team, which certainly can’t hurt in the quest to return the No. 43 to Victory Lane.
4. Kyle Larson
The organization formerly known as Earnhardt Ganassi Racing hasn’t had the best of track records recently, but let’s not forget what team won the most recent restrictor-plate event on NASCAR’s top series. Oh, and let’s also not forget that Talladega winner Jamie McMurray also has a Daytona 500 title, and that former driver Juan Pablo Montoya was almost always a threat on NASCAR’s most famous track. All that has to bode well for Larson, who has shown a penchant for being able to drive the wheels off everything. Daytona will mark his first Sprint Cup plate race, and veterans are understandably hesitant around drivers without much experience in the draft. But Larson has long shown a savvy beyond his 21 years, and could provide just the boost the rebranded Chip Ganassi Racing is looking for.
3. Paul Menard
OK, in fairness, it might be a little unfair to put Menard on this list. After all, the guy drives for one of the sport’s better teams in Richard Childress Racing, he’s been at NASCAR’s top level for more than seven years now, and he has a Brickyard trophy on his mantle. Still, with one career Sprint Cup victory, Menard’s name doesn’t immediately jump to the top of the list of prime Daytona 500 contenders, and casual fans would certainly be surprised to see him in Victory Lane. They shouldn’t be — at one point Menard enjoyed three consecutive finishes of ninth or better at Daytona, and he was fourth last fall at Talladega. The guy is steady in the draft, and has that combination of speed and experience that could make him very dangerous in an event like the Great American Race.
2. David Ragan
It you needed any reminding, then last spring at Talladega should have done the trick — on restrictor-plate tracks, Ragan is for real. His first career victory at the Sprint Cup level came in the summertime event at Daytona in 2011, five months after jumping a green-white-checkered restart likely kept him from beating Bayne in the 500. During his Roush days, he was a regular contender on the sport’s two biggest layouts. Since moving to Front Row, his record at Talladega has been hard to beat — over the past two years there, his average finish is 4.5. As with Gilliland, that degree of consistency means something at such an unpredictable track. Ragan doesn’t have quite the same recent record at Daytona, but he clearly knows his way around the place, and he’s more than capable of pulling a stunner even bigger than the one he delivered last spring.
If you think the sight of the No. 43 in Daytona’s Victory Lane would warm the hearts of traditionalists, just imagine the prospect of the No. 3 taking the checkered flag in its first Sprint Cup event in 13 years. It’s absolutely possible, given the strength RCR cars have traditionally shown on plate tracks, and the savvy Dillon has shown in his limited runs at the premier level thus far. At Talladega last fall, where he substituted for the injured Tony Stewart, Dillon was third at the white flag before being caught up in a last-lap crash. Daytona is a narrower layout, but for the 500 Dillon is bringing back the same car he used to top the speed chart in preseason testing last month.
Perhaps as importantly, the former Nationwide and Camping World Truck series champion fully believes he can win the race. "I definitely do," he said recently. Given that he has 13 previous Sprint Cup starts to his name, including two on plate tracks, Dillon won’t be an unknown to the rest of the field. There will be an overload of attention paid to his No. 3 car, but by now he’s used to that, and his experience level belies those yellow stripes on his rear bumper. If there’s anyone best positioned to pull a stunner like Bayne did three seasons ago, it’s Dillon. Winning the 500 took Dale Earnhardt 20 years — could his successor do it as a rookie?
Hey, in the Daytona 500, anything can happen.
MORE:
|
highlight Chase changes |
WATCH: Brian France breaks
|
READ: Coors Light qualifying
|
WATCH: Qualifying: One-on-one
|
|---|
After making the most of his medical leave, Vickers is excited to get back behind the wheel
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — When Michael Waltrip hired Brian Vickers to drive his team’s flagship No. 55 Aaron’s Toyota for the 2014 season, he did so knowing that Vickers brings proven talent in the car and high marketability out of it.
But Vickers brings a significant something else too — great motivation driven by unique perspective.
After missing the last three months of the 2013 season recovering from a blood clot in his leg — the second time in three years that major health issues sidelined him for a substantial duration — the 30-year-old Vickers is at last set to have a complete run at the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship in a competitive car at full health.
"It’s been a journey," Vickers conceded. "A lot of ups and downs and trials and tribulations but I look back at it and I’m thankful for it. I learned so much going through these past two experiences as a person, as an individual and as a race car driver and it makes you appreciate so much."
After being on a three-month regimen of blood thinners to fight the blood clot found in his right leg, Vickers was cleared last week by his doctors to compete this season.
Doctors discovered the clot in his calf last October — a complication Vickers says occurred from a boot/ankle brace he wore for an injury.
In 2010, Vickers was out of competition for six months. After initially checking himself into a hospital with chest pains, doctors found multiple blood clots in his left leg, lungs and left hand. He also had surgery for a small hole in his heart.
Even after all that, Vickers smiled when asked if he worries about the situation arising again.
"From a medical standpoint, doctors are really happy," Vickers said, stressing that common sense and awareness will be the biggest factors in anticipating future issues. "Be mindful of what the signs and symptoms are and that’s really all you can do. When you take long flights, you stand up and walk around and that’s not just for me, everybody should do that. When I’m in the race car there’s really not a lot you can do. My last incident was a provoked incident. I had to wear a boot and ankle brace for a week. … and in those situations I’ll be more mindful, more careful, try to get in front of it.
"Other than that, I just live my life and go racing."
Being able to do both full-throttle is something Vickers says he no longer takes for granted.
Vickers got married in Jackson Hole, Wyo., last September and used the doctor-ordered time shortly after to travel the world with his new bride, Sarah. They couple spent much of their time in Southeast Asia — places like Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand — where Vickers found a recurring theme in his life.
"Our honeymoon trip really makes you appreciate how good you’ve got it as an American,’" Vickers explained. "And going through these (health) experiences makes me appreciate how amazing it is I get to be a NASCAR Sprint Cup driver. Anything in life, you do it long enough and you take it for granted that’s human nature, it becomes routine.
"Then all of a sudden it’s ripped away from you and that’s not routine, you realize that’s cool and I want to get back.
"It’s been tough, but when I look back at the whole experience, I’m thankful for it. There were moments when I wasn’t sure if there would be a next of anything. And then once that was behind us, I was glad to be back in a Sprint Cup car and… fight through all that.
"Michael [Waltrip] and [team co-owner] Rob [Kauffman] taking a chance on me and taking a chance on me again, really their support and commitment is why I’m here. I’m excited to being in a stable situation, being in the car week in and week out and focusing on the championship."
This will be only the second full-season Cup effort for Vickers since 2009. He finished 25th in points in 2011 driving for Red Bull Racing and made 25 starts in the last two years while the 2003 NASCAR Nationwide Series champ pursued a second title in that series.
Top among those sporadic Cup starts was an emotional and popular victory at New Hampshire last July driving Waltrip’s third entry — a trophy Vickers believes “sure didn’t hurt” his cause to return to Cup full-time.
The fresh start for Vickers extends to his team. He’ll be paired with new crew chief Billy Scott, formerly the lead engineer on the car. And Vickers didn’t hesitate reeling off goals and expectations.
"Not to make it sound too simple, because it’s not, but we want to win multiple races, sit on poles and try to win the championship and I think we can do that," Vickers said with a grin.
"We’ve got some testing come up before Daytona to knock the rust off so to speak. It’s hard to argue you’d be as sharp after being out for three months as you would be having tested for three months. But when you’ve been doing something for 20 years — and 12 years in NASCAR — you don’t forget things either. It’s like riding a bike.
"The break’s been nice, but I’m ready to get back out there and race for the championship."
MORE:
|
highlight Chase changes |
WATCH: Brian France breaks
|
READ: Coors Light qualifying
|
WATCH: Qualifying: One-on-one
|
|---|
Championship-winning crew chief details what it takes to succeed as Letarte plans exit
MORE: Evernham leaves ESPN for bigger Hendrick role | Dale Jr. leaves crew chief decision to others
Dale Earnhardt Jr. and crew chief Steve Letarte are about to begin their fourth and final year together at Hendrick Motorsports.
In 2015, Letarte will make the move to the television booth as part of the NBC Sports’ NASCAR Sprint Cup Series broadcast team.
A new crew chief for the 39-year-old Earnhardt Jr. isn’t expected to be named until late in the 2014 racing season or after the season has been completed.
Ray Evernham, who led Hendrick driver Jeff Gordon to three of his four championships and 47 victories, has rejoined the competition group at Hendrick, but is adamant that his crew chief days are behind him.
“I used to say, ‘look, you’ve got a better chance of getting hit by a meteorite than me being a crew chief again,’” he said. “But you don’t even have that much of a chance today.”
Still, Evernham, a winner of 13 races as a NASCAR team owner after leaving Hendrick to help Dodge re-enter the sport, obviously has a pretty good idea of the qualities shared by those who have enjoyed success atop the pit box.
“What makes a good crew chief is sometimes I think what makes a good football coach,” he said. “I think if you really wanted to be a great driver and understood what it took to be a great driver but you didn’t have the talent to do it – you know they say those who can’t do, teach. I wanted to drive; man I wanted to drive. But it just wasn’t my calling but I understood what it took. I think I had so much respect for the drivers that I worked with that I would take what they would say to heart.
“The fact that I know how hard it is to drive one of these cars at the level that these guys do, I’ve always respected drivers and worked hard. And understood that it takes a team to pull all that together.
“I felt like I worked hard and worked well with a small group of people. When I had 25 guys I felt like we could conquer the world; when I went and hired 350 we couldn’t get out of our own way. I think it’s that one-on-one connection, but mostly respect for your driver.”
Hendrick doesn’t always promote from within – when driver Kasey Kahne joined the organization in 2012, he brought along crew chief Kenny Francis. Likewise, Tony Eury Jr., Earnhardt Jr.’s crew chief at Dale Earnhardt Inc., made the move to Hendrick along with Earnhardt Jr. prior to the start of the 2008 season. Even Evernham was hired from the outside to be paired with Gordon in 1993.
But the four-team Cup organization does have a deep talent pool working within its walls. Letarte, Gustafson and Chad Knaus held other positions at HMS before being promoted to the role of crew chief.
Knaus, the series’ winningest active crew chief with 64 career victories, has been paired with Jimmie Johnson since 2002 when Johnson moved into Cup fulltime. Together, they have won six Cup titles in a span of only eight years.
“Jeff and I were good,” Evernham said, “but we could not keep up the level of intensity that those guys have done and I admire that from both of them. Jimmie is one of the most committed persons I’ve ever met in my life. And Chad Knaus is single-minded – his focus is to win as many championships and races as he can and until he decides he doesn’t want to do that, those other guys are in trouble.
“Those guys have got it going on. People say ‘you’re coming back.’ Why would I ever want to come back and have to race against those two guys?”
MORE:
|
highlight Chase changes |
WATCH: Brian France breaks
|
READ: Coors Light qualifying
|
WATCH: Qualifying: One-on-one
|
|---|
Second consecutive desert race to be 200 laps this time
RELATED: NASCAR Home Tracks
The NASCAR Toyota Mexico Series is once again returning to Phoenix International Raceway, this season with a longer event.
NASCAR announced Friday that the sport’s Mexico Series will hold its opener under the lights at Phoenix for a second consecutive year, running Friday, Feb. 28, as part of a weekend that also includes the Nationwide and Sprint Cup circuits. The Mexico Series became the first international NASCAR-sanctioned tour to hold a points race in the United States when it competed on the 1-mile desert oval a season ago.
That event was a 75-lap race comprised of two segments with a 10-minute break in between, and won by Abraham Calderon. This year the Mexico Series event at Phoenix will be lengthened to 120 laps, and instead of a break the teams will have to make two pits stops.
"The drivers’ experience was amazing."
— Federico Alaman, general director of the NASCAR Mexico Toyota Series
"The teams were asking to have like a regular format race," said Federico Alaman, general director of the series. "In Mexico our races are an average of two hours, two hours and a half, which is almost 200 miles, on every track that we have in Mexico. When we discussed the opportunity to go again to Phoenix, it was something that we decided between the NASCAR team in the U.S., the NASCAR Mexico team, and obviously some team representatives."
Alaman is expecting a usual field of about 30 cars for the race, despite the travel distance involved for most teams, which are based around Mexico City. But feedback from competitors was universally positive, he added.
"The drivers’ experience was amazing. They didn’t realize that it was going to be a bunch of fans in the grandstands, especially Latin fans or Mexican‑American fans," Alaman said. "… We’ve more than compromised with all the teams to make this happen, and the experience that we as a series and the team owners, the drivers, the Mexican sponsors that we have a chance to invite to the race, it was amazing. We didn’t measure or realize that the first event from the NASCAR Toyota Mexico Series was going to be that big."
George Silbermann, NASCAR’s vice president for touring and weekly series, said discussions about this year’s event began "the day after we ran last year’s event." Phoenix president Bryan Sperber, whose track is celebrating its 50th anniversary this season, called it "really a magical night" when the Mexico tour raced at the venue last season.
"I thought the event was a tremendous success on a lot of fronts," Sperber added. "We hoped that the race would resonate with fans and potential fans in the American Latino market, and it truly delivered." The grandstands were "full of fans that I think probably had never been to PIR before, or if they had, they hadn’t been in a long time. The level of enthusiasm and excitement among what I think is an emerging fan base for the sport as a whole was really exciting to be around that. So I think the event as a whole was just tremendously successful."
Sperber said ticket sales for the event are up over last year. The Phoenix race kicks off a Mexico Series schedule comprised of 15 events, and concludes in November at the Mexico City road course that once hosted the Nationwide Series. The Phoenix opener has quickly emerged as one of the circuit’s crown jewels.
"This is a big step for us on the exposure side, on the growth, on the format and the series of what we’re very proud working on with NASCAR in Mexico," Alaman said. "And I think not only the Latino market, but the Mexicans must feel very proud … because there has not happened in the past to have 100 percent Mexican series go to the U.S. for a second time and have this kind of event."
MORE:
|
highlight Chase changes |
WATCH: Brian France breaks
|
READ: Coors Light qualifying
|
WATCH: Qualifying: One-on-one
|
|---|
Letarte, Earnhardt entering fourth and final season together
MORE: Dale Jr. profile | Hendrick Motorsports preview | As Junior searches, Evernham insists he’s out
When it comes to determining who his new crew chief will be beginning in 2015, Dale Earnhardt Jr. wants to be in the room when the discussions are taking place. But he’ll leave the ultimate decision up to others within his Hendrick Motorsports team — owner Rick Hendrick foremost among them.
Earnhardt’s current crew chief, Steve Letarte, is leaving after this coming season to become a race analyst for NBC Sports, which returns as a NASCAR broadcast partner beginning in 2015. Although Earnhardt and Letarte have won just one race in their three years together to this point, they’ve helped revive a once-flagging No. 88 program that finished fifth in final points — Earnhardt’s best-ever standing at Hendrick — in 2013.
The duo hopes to build on that this season, during which decisions on a successor to Letarte will eventually have to be made. And although Earnhardt will work most closely with whomever the new signal-caller is, he feels others — like Hendrick, team general manager Doug Duchardt, and Jimmie Johnson‘s crew chief Chad Knaus — are better suited to make the call.
"I know we’ll have these conversations in the middle of the year, or whenever Doug and Rick and those guys want to start having them, and I want to be in the room having those conversations. But Rick was smart enough to put me and Steve together. Doug has his finger on that company as well as anybody. Chad knows the culture inside the race shop. Steve knows the culture inside the race shop. Steve knows what makes me tick, and what makes that team tick. And those are the guys who need to get together and have that conversation," Earnhardt said.
"I’d love to be in that room, but I wouldn’t have the intelligence and expertise that they have to make that decision. They (have) a certain perspective that’s unique to be able to do that. I really want to trust what they think. I don’t know what I would have a big impact on at this point. It’s so fresh still, we haven’t even looked in that direction yet."
Indeed, Hendrick said in the immediate aftermath of Letarte’s decision last month that a call on a replacement would likely wait until late in the year. In more recent days, he’s stood by that timetable.
"I don’t plan to make any decision right now," the team owner said. "I mean, we’ve got a whole year to race. We’ve got a deep bench if you look at the guys we have in the organization, and guys throughout the Nationwide Series and everything else. It’s definitely going to take the right fit. All of our guys, Dale will be involved in that decision and Chad, who’s in that shop, but we’re going to try to run as well with Steve Letarte until the end of the year, and then we’ll make that decision."
And Hendrick said he would welcome any input from Earnhardt. "He has a lot of confidence in us to make the right decision," the owner said, "but at the same time, the chemistry has got to be there, and we want him involved."
Traditionally, Hendrick had made such moves in-house, or looked to those with previous ties to the organization. Letarte moved to Earnhardt’s program from the team of Jeff Gordon, whose current crew chief Alan Gustafson previously worked on Hendrick’s No. 5 team. Although Knaus worked at Melling Racing immediately prior to becoming Johnson’s crew chief, he had been a member of the No. 24 crew under Ray Evernham.
"We’re in a great organization where we have a lot of great people to lean on, and I’m sure we’ll look inside the organization first to see if we find that guy," Earnhardt said. "I want to get excited about what 2015 looks like, I want to get excited about what that change is going to be like, and how that team can get better, and what effect that can have on us as far as performance goes. But I’m going into the last season with Steve, who I love to work with, and I want to really enjoy that moment that is the whole season."
Although Evernham is expanding his consultant work with Hendrick to include some areas of racing operations, he has reiterated countless times that he has no desire to return as a crew chief. And while the organization would appear to have internal candidates such as No. 48 car chief Ron Malec and JR Motorsports crew chief Greg Ives, there are no early indications as to who Earnhardt’s next crew chief might be. Letarte believes the ultimate decision will rest with Hendrick, who was behind the personnel shuffle following the 2010 season that paired him with Earnhardt in the first place.
"I have my opinions on all of it, I’m sure at some point I’ll have my opportunity to sit down with management," said Letarte, who in 2015 will join an NBC booth that also includes 21-time race winner Jeff Burton and announcer Rick Allen. "That’s really Rick’s decision. He knows how to replace people the best, and I want to be around to answer questions, because he might need some questions answered to make his decision. But I think he knows what everybody needs once he gets those questions answered."
Earnhardt sees the looming change as an opportunity to ultimately make the No. 88 team better. "Steve will tell you that as well," the driver said. For the moment, though, he has confidence in his organization to make the right decision on a successor, and he has faith that he and Letarte can make their final season together a memorable one.
"I’m in a good position. If you’ve got to change something as big as a crew chief, I’m in a great organization that can make that change and make it seamless. I’m in a shop with the 48/88 team where the culture is amazing. I know whoever comes in and handles that job will have all the resources needed to have success. Part of me wants to get excited about that and what that looks like and start to figure that out, but there’s a job at hand, and that’s this season," Earnhardt said.
"Me and Steve have an opportunity to wok together one more year. I really enjoy working with that guy, so I feel lucky to have one more year to work with him before he goes off and does his own thing in the broadcast booth. I’m excited for him to have something he’s looking forward to, as a friend, and everything’s going to work out. I’m a believer that everything happens for a reason, and I know it’s gong to be great for him, and I believe it’s an opportunity for our team to get better as well."
MORE:
|
highlight Chase changes |
WATCH: Brian France breaks
|
READ: Coors Light qualifying
|
WATCH: Qualifying: One-on-one
|
|---|
Reunion with Nationwide Series crew chief has second-year driver feeling good for 2014
RELATED: Ricky Stenhouse Jr. profile | Roush Fenway Racing preview | Biffle focused on regaining intermediate edge
Disappointment isn’t an emotion Ricky Stenhouse Jr. is used to feeling on the race track. In seasons where he competed in every race on the schedule, from the ARCA Racing Series to the NASCAR Nationwide Series, he’s ended with a top-10 average finish. In 2011 and 2012, Stenhouse took home the Nationwide Series championship.
So by the time he had finished the 2013 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season with an average finish of 18.9, Stenhouse had become familiar with disappointment for perhaps the first time in his racing career.
"It sucked," Stenhouse candidly admitted. "You know, last year was the first year I didn’t win a race in my career of racing, from the time I was 6.
"… But I think if you take a look at it, a lot of these guys have been working a long time to set their foundation in the Sprint Cup Series, to reach the level they are at. Yeah, some come in and really dominate right off the bat, have that success; some have to build on it."
While in the Nationwide Series, it was Stenhouse who dominated relatively quickly. On the path to his back-to-back championships, he nabbed eight wins, 35 top-fives and 52 top-10s in his two title campaigns. That success didn’t follow the Nationwide champion to NASCAR’s premier series, where he was faced with new challenges.
In addition to driving against the best in stock car racing, the rookie was getting used to the more powerful Generation-6 car, a new crew chief in Scott Graves and interest in his relationship with fellow driver Danica Patrick. A best finish of 11th in the first 25 races of the season indicates just how much the No. 17 Roush Fenway Racing team had to learn.
"I think across the board we were all disappointed last year at our results," Stenhouse said. "I definitely wasn’t disappointed in the effort that our guys put in last year; they put a ton of effort in, we just didn’t see those results. But I think we looked at what we needed to look at, saw what we needed to improve, and I think we’re working really hard this offseason, the guys are really pumped up and I think our work’s gonna pay off sooner than later now."
The team’s hard work started showing results at the end of last season. Things began to change at Atlanta, where Stenhouse took home the Coors Light Pole award. A week later, Stenhouse notched his first top-10 of the season at Richmond, the final race of the regular season. The following week, he had an eighth-place finish at Chicagoland, the first race of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.
Something was starting to click. The rhythm the group had found carried them to a third-place finish at Talladega Superspeedway. The crew was more consistently giving its driver a setup he was comfortable in, and the results were starting to show. Yet there was one comfort Stenhouse was without last season: His championship-winning Nationwide Series crew chief, Mike Kelley — though Kelley was never far from Stenhouse’s ear.
"I don’t think — from the time that we started running together in Nationwide in 2010 — I don’t think there’s been a day that we haven’t talked," Stenhouse said. "Even last year, I talked to him every single day, we texted every day, after every race we would call each other. If him and Trevor (Bayne) had a bad race, he’d call me; if I had a bad race, I’d call him. We never lost that chemistry that we had."
When it came time to reflect on the season and consider improvements, bringing Kelley up from Trevor Bayne‘s No. 6 Nationwide Series entry was a frequent offseason topic of conversation.
"What we try to do at the end of the year is sit down and look at what would be the best situation, and we started with the drivers and worked through the crew chiefs and on to the crew members and tried to understand what they were looking for," said Robbie Reiser, the general manager for Roush Fenway Racing. "It’s no different than if you have a Peyton Manning and you’ve got to build a team around him. It’s the same situation when it comes to the driver.
"So we sat down as a group and looked at what made him the most comfortable, what would build a team that they felt they could go out and win with, and Mike’s name kept coming up, and we just decided to make that change."
That chemistry — something Stenhouse mentions frequently when discussing Kelley — is clearly important to the driver. If chemistry is truly what Stenhouse needs to see numbers like his Nationwide Series runs, there should be no question that the 2013 Sunoco Rookie of the Year can have a sophomore breakthrough.
"Having Mike back on the pit box is going to be huge," he said. "You know, that chemistry that we have, that we had in the Nationwide Series, is tough to match, and so him and I are having a lot of fun this offseason, the guys are having fun. And that’s what teams are all about. Just cause you have the best mechanics on a team doesn’t mean you’re going to have the best team, you’ve still got to have that chemistry, and I think we have that this year — and that’s exactly what I felt like we were missing last year."
MORE:
|
highlight Chase changes |
WATCH: Brian France breaks
|
READ: Coors Light qualifying
|
WATCH: Qualifying: One-on-one
|
|---|