East Bound and Down

You know that old Jerry Reed song from the Smokey and the Bandit movie – “East Bound and down, the boys are loaded up and truckin'”? That’s what the NASCAR boys are doing. We’ve had a couple of weeks now out west but now its time to head east.

The haulers are headed back to their shops in the East as fast as they can. They will load up their Atlanta cars and be there this weekend.

While we may be far from the West Coast, I really think the results probably will be the same. It just seems, based on the first three weeks of the season, that Hendrick Motorsports, Richard Childress Racing and to a certain extent, Roush Fenway Racing are the three teams that will be at the front.

I think we will have a better balance this weekend, but I really think you can expect to see Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick, Matt Kenseth and probably Carl Edwards leading the way. You can’t overlook that last year Kurt Busch dominated this race in a Dodge and that Brian Vickers had a fast car last year as well. The other thing is it’s about time for Kyle Busch to make some noise.

Atlanta has always been the kind of track that provides good racing. Like always at Atlanta, we will see multiple grooves and probably multiple strategies. If Goodyear brings the same kind of tire they have the last two races, then the speeds should be incredible.

We’ll see well over 200 mph down those short straightaways and blazing fast speeds through the corners. With qualifying early Friday evening, the track will be cool and fast. While I doubt we will break the track record (Geoffrey Bodine, 197.478 mph in 1997), I think we still will be the fastest we ever have been in Atlanta with this Sprint Cup car.

Also don’t forget this is a 500 mile race on a fast racetrack. This is the kind of race that gives the motor guys fits. A race like this is hard on the ol’ engine. The motor guys will be looking over the crew chiefs shoulders constantly reminding them to keep the practice laps at a minimum.

This is shaping up to be one of the best Atlanta weekends we have ever had. The weather is supposed to be good and the competition is really heating up. Can Jimmie Johnson win three in a row? How can you bet against him right now? Kevin Harvick is the guy that might be the one to be able to stop Jimmie. If you look at that No. 29 team, they had a chance to win every race so far this year. They won the Budweiser Shootout. Kevin finished second in his Gatorade qualifying race. He had a great car for the 500. He finished second at Fontana and again last Sunday at Las Vegas. Kevin and Gil Martin really have a good thing going.

We know that Harvick loves Atlanta. How can you forget the 2001 race he won at Atlanta, stepping in after we lost Dale Earnhardt in Daytona a few weeks earlier? He should be primed and ready for Atlanta this weekend.

Of course Jeff Gordon is going to be licking his wounds from last Sunday. He knows one got away from him. That’s the best car from start to finish of a race I have seen Jeff have in years. That car ran up front all day long. Crew chief Steve Letarte didn’t make a bad call by taking only two tires instead of four Sunday in Vegas. Let’s face it, the only car that didn’t take two tires was the No. 48 that took four tires and naturally won the race. I don’t fault Steve at all for the call. We have seen many times in the past where Jeff had gotten back in traffic and then had a problem with his car. So you have to imagine that Steve believed having Jeff up front with two tires was better than Jeff back in the pack with four tires.

Again, I can’t fault the call. It was a safe bet, it just wasn’t a winning bet. I really believe though that if Letarte had been a little more of a gambler that Jimmie Johnson might not have won that race.

Looking back

Sunday’s Las Vegas race boiled down to the tale of two wrecks. You had Jamie McMurray wrecking out this teammate Juan Pablo Montoya. Then you had Jimmie Johnson wrecking his teammate Jeff Gordon’s weekend.

For Jamie and Juan, well it simply was a car owner’s worst-case scenario. There really is no excuse for it; whenever your teammate is around you, you give him more room than anybody else. You also don’t race him as hard as everyone else. That is especially true early in the race. Now at the end of the day, sure you take the gloves off and have at it.

I know it was an accident. I am not blaming Jamie one bit. They raced off into the corner, Jamie lost the nose, shoved up into Juan and they wrecked. I understand that. But it’s a lot easier to have your teammate mad at you for holding him up than it is to be apologizing for wrecking him out. I am sure car owner Chip Ganassi made that point perfectly clear to those two guys Monday morning back in Charlotte.

The other part of the tale of two wrecks has to be Jimmie Johnson wrecking teammate Jeff Gordon’s plan for returning to Victory Lane. Jeff looked all but unbeatable. He knows he should have won that race and he knows that last Sunday it was one that got away.

We wondered what happened to Jeff Burton when he was running along there in the Top five or six. All of a sudden he said he had a problem and he came in. He thought he had a tire problem. I talked to Mark Martin after the race and now I think I know what happened. Martin was telling me that about the time Burton had his problem, the No. 83 lost his gear. He started putting grease down on the racetrack. Mark told me hit it and he thought he had a problem too. Mark said he even radioed his crew to be on standby in case he had to come in.

Martin said after running a couple more laps that he realized he didn’t have a problem and there was probably grease on the racetrack. He thinks that may have been what happened to Burton.

The other thing that was crazy to me was the speeding penalties. Folks, the risk/reward for getting busted on pit road just isn’t there. You are not going to make up enough time to warrant the risk. Let’s face it, once you get a speeding penalty during a green flag stop, your day is all but ruined at that point. I would back things down and always be on the safe side there. Everybody is pushing the envelope and so we are seeing lots of speeding penalties. That to me is one area where you have to be on the conservative side. It just doesn’t make sense to me to gamble on the hope you won’t get caught.

Danica Patrick raced her last NASCAR race for a while as she heads back over to IndyCar. We had her as a guest Friday night on Trackside and what a delightful young lady. She is a competitor. I was talking to Dario Franchitti who is my neighbor over here in Franklin, TN and he told me that Danica is as fierce a competitor as they come. He said she is a racer through and through.

We have already seen that in the short period she has been in stock cars. I believe she made progress in the races she ran. I think however that it’s going to hurt her going away and then coming back and basically starting all over again.

It sure was fun having her around. I think she added a lot of excitement to the program. She was getting better and she was pretty competitive in Las Vegas.