8/23/11

Debris Caution: Irwin Tools Night Race

Debris Caution is a regular feature that puts you in the driver's seat for upcoming NASCAR events. It previews upcoming races and looks in depth at everything from point battles to the offseason.


Ah, Bristol Motor Speedway. I remember growing up and playing NASCAR '98 and causing complete chaos on the track with its paintball mode. Still, no track out there is quite as distinct and this is a track that divides drivers. Out of the past nine races eight drivers have five or more top-10s (Kyle Busch, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Greg Biffle, Kurt Busch, Ryan Newman, Matt Kenseth, Clint Bowyer, and Kasey Kahne). Think about that for a moment. Eighty percent of the top-10 finishers in the past five years have been there more than half the time. It's a track that, when mastered, becomes a chance of contenders to gain a lot of ground in the standings.

So who exactly are the favorites to win the Irwin Tools Night Race? Well, not to sound like a broken record but it's the Busch brothers. Kurt has won five times in 21 career races and brother Kyle has another five in just 13 career starts. Kyle won the spring race and coming off of a win last week he looks to be a prime candidate to win yet again. It's really hard to argue against him, too, because his average finish of 8.7 is second among active drivers. Kurt is no slouch either, though, at a 10.5 average finish and coming off of a week that saw him drop two more spots in the points standings (though he's safely in there, barring the most dramatic collapse imaginable) he will be pressing to one-up his brother and break that time with Kyle and Jeff Gordon as the winningest active driver at Bristol.

As I learned last week, though, it's not as much fun to pick safe bets. The Busch brothers will definitely be on my fantasy NASCAR team and I'll probably start Kyle when all is said and done (since both are A-List drivers on Yahoo!), but I'm going to throw a Hail Mary here. The one driver out there that needs a win more than anyone actually has a higher average finish than Kyle Busch. That driver is Dale Earnhardt Jr. and I am going to call for him to win this week. Shocked? Don't be, Earnhardt Jr. has 12 top-10s, seven of which were top-5s, and a win (granted it came in 2004) in his past 19 starts. Everyone points to Daytona as Dale's best track, and granted he has a lot of great moments there, he is actually better at Bristol (career finish of 15.0 in 24 Daytona races and 11.5 in 23 at BMS). Earnhardt Jr. and Tony Stewart are the only drivers in The Chase without wins and I expect that if Junebug is going to win this year, it will be on Saturday.

I can't have a blog post about NASCAR nowadays without mentioning Brad Keselowski. If he was white hot last week then I don't know what to say about the guy this week. The past three weeks he has finished first, second, and third, so it's only logical that Kes will finish fourth this week at Bristol. In all seriousness, Kes won in the Nationwide Series at Bristol and while his 16.7 average finish at the Sprint Cup level leaves a lot to be desired, there's something to be said about having a teammate who knows his way around the track and there's that whole momentum thing. Anything besides a fourth place finish will be disappointing, so get on it, Keselowski.

Originally I had planned to go with Matt Kenseth as my darkhorse this week, but how can a guy who has won at Bristol twice, has an average finish of 9.6 at the track, and sits fifth in points be considered anything close to that of a darkhorse? Since I seem to be going boom-or-bust this week, I may as well go with someone that could change the entire landscape of the points standings. Clint Bowyer sits 11th in points at the moment and without a win he would need to pass Stewart (24 points behind) or Earnhardt Jr. (30 points behind) to secure his spot. I opened by saying that this is a track that can be a great spot to gain some ground in the standings and that's exactly what Bowyer needs to do. In the past five years he has bested Stewart at just about everything Bristol related (Bowyer's five top-10s and three top-5s beat Stewart's three and two respectively and his average finish of 14.9 bests Stewart's 17.7). The problem with Bowyer is the DNFs (two, which is the most of non start-and-parkers and puts him in the company of David Gilliland, Casey Mears, and Michael Waltrip) and Stewart has finished each of his nine most recent starts. If Bowyer wants to make The Chase, he has to beat Stewart this week (by quite a bit, actually).

Just so you know, the earthquake happened in the middle of writing this.

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