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The wheels of the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round…
As NASCAR’s third Chase for the Championship approaches, as Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr. try to hold off Kasey Kahne, Kurt Busch and Greg Biffle, another battle has broken out. The battle for stupidity.
I wrote an article a few weeks ago about a goofy season that already included Brian Vickers getting fired from Hendrick Motorsports and helping start a new Toyota Red Bull Racing team; Casey Mears leaving Ganassi for the old Vickers #25 with Hendrick; Todd Kluever replacing Mark Martin for #6 at Roush; Dale Jarrett leaving the iconic #88 for Michael Waltrip’s Toyota team; and Juan Pablo Montoya jumping from F-1 to Ganassi’s #42. But that was before the last explosion in the Smokeless Set.
While Kahne has threatened the top 10 all season, his Evernham team-mate Jeremy Mayfield has been truly terrible; he currently sits 34th in points, and surprisingly hasn’t posted a single top-10 finish in all of 2006 (this from a guy who snuck into the Chase each of the last two seasons). The ax finally fell on Evernham this week, as an increasingly whiny Mayfield was relieved of his duties. Surprisingly, the guy replacing him is Elliott Sadler, another guy who made a Chase, and who was having a mediocre year at a suddenly mediocre team: Robert Yates Racing. Sadler was 20th in points, had one top-five and five top-10 finishes this year, and was part of a Yachts organization that has collapsed to the seams. Jarrett left in November and no replacement has been named (could Ward Burton really drive the Cup again?), general manager Eddie D’Hondt was fired after being blamed for allowing Sadler to leave, and the bosses of Team Tommy Baldwin (Sadler’s boss) and Slugger Labbe (Jarrett’s) were released. It’s been a brutal year overall for all the Ford teams, considering the Fords have won only three events all season (they had won nine at this point in 2005), and Yates certainly bears the brunt of this.
This weekend, David Gilliland takes over from Sadler in #38, Jarrett continues his losing streak in #88 and Sadler takes control of #19, as Mayfield watches from the sidelines. Considering that Sadler, Mayfield and Jarrett are three of the megastars in the sport, this is amazing. (Imagine Gary Sheffield and Manny Ramirez getting traded in a three-team trade, and Vladimir Guerrero being forced to sit out the rest of the season as a result.) As we head to Michigan for our second trip to Irish Hills this weekend, a track where Fords have traditionally dominated, all you can really say is: Wow. And let’s make the decision not to bet on any of these drivers for the rest of the year, okay?
Last week: Tony Stewart couldn’t hold off Kevin Harvick at Watkins Glen, so I barely missed an outright win (albeit a slim one). However, Junior outscored Mears, so I won a heads-up bet of -180, which gave me the smallest winning week I’ve ever had: I ended up with 0.06 units. Wow! They were rich! Anyway, for the season, I’m holding my ground with a profit of 14.56 units, which is much, much better than a poke in the eye. We have also posted winning weeks in 14 out of 21 attempts. So let’s keep it up.
Take Carl Edwards (+900), 1/6 drive. Edwards probably had the best car here on Father’s Day weekend, but he never got a chance to show it off. It was a rainy day in June, and Kasey Kahne (+450) was able to come out of the pits at what would turn out to be the last stop of the race just a fraction of a second faster than Edwards, thus opening the heavens. I’m not discounting how good Kahne has been on the downforce tracks this year, but I think he’s a little better suited to the higher banked 1.5-mile racers at Charlotte, Atlanta and Texas (where, not coincidentally, he’s swept until now in ’06). Meanwhile, Edwards seems to like that two miles per ton: His career average finish at Michigan is 5.25, and he has finished second, fourth and fifth in the last three events here. He’s also great at Michigan’s sister track at Fontana, where he’s finished third, fourth, fifth and sixth the last four times there. His year sucks, but lately he’s had good cars at Pocono and Indy. I think he can make his way through here.
Take Greg Biffle (+600), 1/6 unit. Hey, didn’t I just say that Fords have sucked so far in 2006? Well, get used to it, because you’re about to see a pretty clear pattern in what I expect to happen this weekend. Biffle has won twice at Michigan (in the fall of 2004 and in the spring of 2005), and only failed to finish in the top six once here in his last six attempts. The Biff is known for his love of these big wide tracks, which follow his style of going hard in the corners and letting his car slide maniacally into the wall. He’s capable of carrying as much speed as anyone on the field using this method (which also tended to suit him on ACT tracks last season, though not as much in 2006). Plus, Biffle is desperate to get close in the Chase; he currently ranks 13th, 180 points behind Dale Earrhardt Jr. (+1400). He still has time to crack the top 10, but he has to start now.
Take Matt Kenseth (+900), 1/6 unit. Kenseth won the California race this spring, and probably should have won the Michigan race exactly a year ago, had it not been for some crazy fuel strategy by eventual winner Jeremy Mayfield (who, as I mentioned earlier, won’t be racing this weekend). week). Kenseth was just 13th here in June, snapping a streak of six consecutive top-10 finishes; also won this set in the summer of 2002. It’s clear I’m making one last stop with the Roush cars this weekend, even though there’s no question that the Dodges, and even to some extent the Chevys (especially when driven by Jimmie Johnson (+1000), they have made up most of the gap between them and Roush’s downforce cars. I wasn’t convinced Kahne was the better man in June, so we’ll find out if Roush is ready to hold out; Right now, only Kenseth and Mark Martin (+1600) are safe in the Chase, and getting only two of their five drivers to make the postseason would certainly be a big surprise for Roush.
Note: Check back for updated odds and a head-to-head pick either Saturday night or early Sunday, depending on when the online books put the odds online. Thank you.