NASCAR NATIONWIDE SERIES OPEN WEEK

Open Week Allows Late-Season Excitement To Build

While the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and NASCAR Camping World Truck Series take their late-season championship chases to New Hampshire, the NASCAR Nationwide Series puts its closest points battle in five years on hold with an open week.

 

The break before racing resumes at Dover on Oct. 1 allows the dust to settle a bit between standings leader Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and second-place Elliott Sadler. Stenhouse takes a 14-point lead over Sadler into this intermission, including a run of three top-10 finishes that featured two third-place results.

 

Although 47 points out in third, Reed Sorenson still has life. The next race at Dover may prove to be where he makes his final stand. In 10 series races at Dover, Sorenson’s average finish is 7.2. He has never finished below seventh in a Dover fall race and was fourth in this event last year. He finished third in May.

 

Sadler will use the open week to spend time with family and friends. On Sunday, he’ll head to Raleigh, N.C., to visit his good friend, country music star Blake Shelton, who will be performing in concert with Brad Paisley.

 

Patience Pays Off For Scott

It’s taken what seems like forever for Brian Scott to catch a break. His career-defining race last Saturday at Chicagoland – he won his first pole and tied his career-best finish with a third-place – was the type of result he and his No. 11 team thought would be the rule this year rather than the exception.

 

Scott felt he was poised to challenge for the 2011 NASCAR Nationwide Series championship. He’d signed with Joe Gibbs Racing, considered by many as the series’ flagship team. That was big considering he’d lost his ride with Turner Motorsports with seven races left in the 2010 season. It was at that very point in the year that he’d also lost his battle with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. for the Rookie of the Year award. After leading much of the year, Scott was overcome by Stenhouse with seven races to go. He did hook up with RAB Racing for the final stretch but was unable to hang on to his lead and ended up losing out to Stenhouse by six points.

 

But the excitement leading into 2011 quickly wore off with a 34th-place finish at Daytona due to engine failure. A promising season seemed to lose its steam after that.

 

Scott and the No. 11 team have been solid – toss out the three more Did Not Finish (DNF) results after Daytona’s February race and his average finish has been 13.8. He cracked the series’ top 10 for the second time in his career, and actually has been ranked among that class since the March race at Bristol (he’s currently ninth).

 

But those four DNFs have been coupled with other incidents that cost him and his No. 11 team precious track position in numerous events. Many of those misfortunes weren’t his doing. One of those DNFs came at Dover in May, where he finished a season-worst 30th due to an accident. However Dover is one of his best tracks. He won his first national series race there in 2009 in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series and has one of his 10 career NASCAR Nationwide Series top-10 finishes at the track