RacingNation.com | Motorsports News

by Mike Maruska
4/7/2008

Carl Edwards and Roush as a whole are the team to beat at intermediate tracks. Only a blown engine at Atlanta kept Edwards from winning all four intermediate track races in 2008. It shouldn’t be a big surprise. Roush has always had great chassis at 1.5 and 2 mile tracks. As for Edwards, it might be convenient to believe that the oil lid was the reason for his early dominance, but he is just dialed in at the high speed tracks. And as usually happens with a suspended crew chief, expect his cars over the next 6-8 races to be really good too.

• Nobody was happy with their car and it might stay that way for most of the year. That’s not necessarily a bad thing either. Texas was hot and slick and one of the trickier tracks on the circuit to begin with. If everyone is struggling with the car, then driving talent will rise to the top. Cars up and down the leaderboard struggled with making proper adjustments. Teams might not like it but for the most part things appear fairly equal.

• The tires and the racing appeared to be better. Mark Martin on the tires at Texas.

  These are acceptable. Atlanta was not. I’ve driven these cars 30 years. I’ve never driven on anything like Atlanta in 30 years of experience. So, these tires were great. They were very acceptable. I give them high marks. I didn’t see anybody having any problems and the car is a handful.

  I thought the racing was better than Atlanta. And most of the drivers were more worn out by the car than the tires. But just because the focus was turned away from Goodyear shouldn’t mean they can’t afford improvement with the tires.

• Hendrick might not be totally down, but something is wrong in the house. First Jimmie Johnson struggled at Las Vegas. Then Jeff Gordon and the #24 car were like Jack Shepard. Lost.

  I can’t remember the last time we struggled this bad. Yes, it is just a bad day gone worse for our DuPont Impala SS team. I wish I had an answer for you, but I don’t. We are just really, really bad and I lost control of the car and I was hanging on just every single lap. We are going to fix the car and get back out there and do some testing. We have never felt anything like this.
  “We saw the NO. 48 in Las Vegas with their troubles but we haven’t sensed anything like that until we got here and we have been way off. We have to find it because we can’t go through the year like this.

  It’s hard to say if it’s related to the new speedway program that the CoT requires or Hendrick is simply stubbing their toes so far in 2008. What is known is that Gordon and Johnson aren’t simply showing up and running in the top five at every track. By no means does that mean that it will remain that way in 2008.

Notes

• Through seven races no driver has won from the pole this year. Every winner has come from a top ten starting position however. Three times this year’s winner started on the outside pole.

• I really liked the split screen view that showed 9 drivers’ in-car cameras at once. It’s something Fox should do every week. With all of the technology

• For the third straight season Jeremy Mayfield has driven his way out of the top 35. He has one finish better than 20th (16th at Las Vegas). In a familiar plot, the #70 car is unsponsored and missing races would only hurt that effort.

• A Ganassi car was actually spotted on Sunday. Too bad it was mostly Juan Pablo Montoya irritating lead lap cars. It’s interesting the Chip Ganassi ripped into his teams earlier in the weekend. Sure things aren’t going well, but publicly admonishing the drivers and crew doesn’t really help anything.

• Obviously the rookie class has been a collective dud, but one that is showing the most improvement is Patrick Carpentier. He crashed in Daytona qualifying but has made every other 2008 race where qualifying has been held. He’s scored top 30’s in his last two races and most importantly he’s avoiding trouble and turning laps. He doesn’t have the resume of the other open wheel rookies or the seat time in a stock car like Regan Smith or other young drivers, but Carpentier is one that could show improvement over the course of the year.

• Be sure to visit Autismspeaks.org and watch the Chevy video. All you have to do is watch a video and Chevy will donate money to autism research. It’s a simple way to help that doesn’t cost you a thing.

Check out more NASCAR news and opinion at Trouble in Turn 2.