Five things to expect from the next six Cup races

Five things to expect from the next six Cup races

 

(August 1, 2011)

 

INDIANAPOLIS—As if we needed a refresher course, Sunday’s Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway showed once again what a victory can do for a Sprint Cup driver.

 

Paul Menard entered the race 19th in the Cup standings and an afterthought as far as the Chase for the Sprint Cup was concerned. He left Indy with a victory and a legitimate shot at qualifying for NASCAR’s playoff under the new wild-card format.

 

As of now, Menard is 14th in the standings and will make the Chase as a wild card if things remain status quo until the Chase field is set Sept. 10 at Richmond.

 

The wild card has changed the game significantly in the way it has reoriented the thinking of crew chiefs in their approaches to race strategy. With Chase positions available to the two most prolific winners in positions 11-20 in the standings, with points position as the tiebreaker, the premium on victories has grown exponentially.

 

Accordingly, here’s what to expect from the remaining six races—Pocono, Watkins Glen, Michigan, Bristol, Atlanta and Richmond—as Cup drivers battle for positions in the Chase.

 

Casino Night. Crew chiefs will continue to gamble on fuel mileage, timely calls for two tires or no tires on pit stops or simply staying away from pit road altogether to gain track position. Regan Smith stayed out at Darlington and won the race in a shootout with Carl Edwards. The bottom line is that crew chiefs will make calls they never would have made under the old format simply because the premium on winning is so great.

 

Get used to fuel-mileage races. The last two events—with Ryan Newman winning at New Hampshire and Menard at Indy—have been decided by stretching fuel mileage. You can expect more of the same at Pocono, a 2.5-mile triangle that gives drivers ample opportunity to save gas. The two tracks that follow, Watkins Glen and Michigan, also lend themselves to this sort of strategy.

 

Strange bedfellows. Believe it or not, Denny Hamlin is Brad Keselowski’s new best friend. Why? Because Keselowski’s Chase hopes may well depend on Hamlin (who has one victory) moving from 11th in the standings back into the top 10 to open another wild-card spot. Regardless, Menard’s win made Keselowski’s life much more difficult. As it stands now, Keselowski can no longer make the Chase simply by moving up one position into the top 20. Over the next six races, he’ll either have to overcome David Ragan (16th) or Menard to move into a Chase-eligible position—even if Hamlin regains the top 10 and no other driver in positions 11-20 wins a race. Keselowski trails Ragan by 35 points and Menard by 42.

 

Junior watch. Dale Earnhardt Jr. perhaps is in the most difficult position of all. Despite finishing 16th at the Brickyard and losing one position to 10th in the standings, he widened his margin over 11th place from seven to 19 points. That gives Junior a reasonable cushion heading to Pocono and Watkins Glen, neither of which is a favorite track of the No. 88 team. Here’s the question: Do Earnhardt and crew chief Steve Letarte gamble for a win in the next two races, or do they simply try to hold serve with decent finishes at Pocono and the Glen, knowing they have four tracks coming up (Michigan, Bristol, Atlanta and Richmond) where Earnhardt has run well? It’s a tough call, with merit on both sides.

 

The esteemed seven. You can engrave the invitations to the Chase for Carl Edwards, Jimmie Johnson, Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch, Matt Kenseth, Kurt Busch and Jeff Gordon. Eighteen points separate first-place Edwards from sixth-place Kurt Busch. There’s a 34-point gap from Kurt Busch to Gordon in seventh, but Gordon has two wins. Those seven drivers have an enormous luxury that translates into a huge advantage—they can start working on their Chase packages now and shift their focus to the final 10 races. Ryan Newman (eighth), Tony Stewart (ninth) and Earnhardt are still fighting for Chase spots and don’t have that margin for error.

By Reid Spencer
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service