Why Rick Hendrick’s ride on the #48 after the All-Star Race was so special

After Jimmie Johnson completed some impressive burnouts following his win in the All-Star Race Saturday night, he had team owner Rick Hendrick hop up on the door and ride along for a victory lap on the frontstretch at Charlotte Motor Speedway to let fans solute possibly the greatest car owner in the history of NASCAR.

The move harkened back to days long gone by when pit crews would ride on top of a winning car as it drove to Victory Lane, and it was an awesome solute to arguably the best team owner in the history of the sport.

Yes, Hendrick Motorsports still has 68 wins to go before it catches Petty Enterprises for the most wins all time, but that number could be in reach in the next five to seven years.

In any case, Hendrick’s victory ride on the frontstretch after Saturday night’s race was a fitting tribute to a great man and a team that just won its 200^th race the week before in the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway.

All of the leaders involved in both the Southern 500 win and the All-Star Race win are going to go down in history as legends of the sport.

Hendrick will be compared to the Petty and Wood Brothers Racing organizations, crew chief Chad Knaus will be compared to Petty’s crew chief Dale Inman and Johnson will be considered at least one of the 10 best drivers in the history of the sport.

Although it is easy to hate the #48 team and Hendrick Motorsports for all of their success, please still appreciate it. They have put together arguably the best run any team has ever had in NASCAR history.

Everybody loves to think about how great the Pettys were, how great Earnhardt was and how much success Jeff Gordon had in the first half of his career. But, people also tend to forget how much they hated those drivers and teams for their success when it was happening.

Instead of waiting until the success is over, why don’t we properly appreciate the success while it happens.

It might seem impossible right now, but there will be a time when Johnson no longer consistently wins race. There also might be a time when Hendrick Motorsports no longer competes for wins week in and week out. Ask somebody in the 60’s and 70’s if Petty and the Wood Brothers would be struggling just to remain in the sport, and they likely would’ve have said you are absolutely crazy.

Sports have a way of evening out successes and failures. A great team doesn’t stay great forever. Some teams have longer runs on top than others, but success is certainly not eternal, especially in NASCAR.

Go ahead and wish for some other team to rise up and challenge for race wins and championships. But the eventually everybody will get tired of that team too and start to wish for the next team to arrive on the scene.

That is fine, but fans might be left always hoping for the next big thing and never enjoy what they see on the track in the present.

The Hall of Fame is great, but make sure to recognize Hall of Fame achievements when they happen. Hendrick Motorsports, Jimmie Johnson and the #48 team are in the midst of Hall of Fame achievements. It would be a shame to miss them.

Rating the All-Star Race: 4 Stars ****

NASCAR’s all-star’s fired up for an intense 90 laps Saturday night at Charlotte Motor Speedway in what might have been the best race of the season. That said, Jimmie Johnson once again to the drama out of the end and ran away to grab his third all-star win. Still, the All-Star Race gets a 4 Star Rating.

Fans have waited pretty much all season for a race where the drivers really got after it and raced hard for every spot. Boy, we certainly had that Saturday night. This race had by far more three-wide racing and hold-your-breath moments than there has been in any race this season outside Daytona and Talladega.

This race might have been considered for a five-star rating, but Johnson took any drama out of the finish.

Plus, the All-Star Race also showed that NASCAR can have a good race without wrecks. All of the complaints about the lack of wrecks had begun to get a little ridiculous. Hopefully people understand after watching this race that we don’t have to have cautions for a good race.

Sure, the segments meant the drivers had to race hard only 20 laps at a time, but they also weren’t content to ride around all night. The drivers certainly were up on the chip a little more Saturday night than for a normal race, but there can be full 500-mile races that have more green-flag action than what we’ve seen lately.

A couple of additional factors may have played into why this was such a good race.

First, the race was at Charlotte Motor Speedway, which is an excellent track for NASCAR racing. Drivers can race side by side, but the track is also narrow enough that it creates very tight situations. The high side in Turns 1 and 2 creates a great run down the backstretch, but a car on the low side in Turns 3 and 4 can hang on and actually come out of the turn with the lead. Having those options is critical to a good race.

Second, NASCAR shortened the side skirts on the sides of the cars to take away some downforce. That is a factor that will take a few more races to determine how much it affects the cars, but early indications are it helped take some of the stability out of the cars to allow for more movement throughout the field.

The format changes by adding a segment also worked out very well. Even though the winners of each segment dropped to the back until the end, the other 17 or 18 cars raced plenty hard to fill the action. Plus, Johnson might have very well kicked butt all night if he had stayed up front.

Anyway, congratulations to Johnson and the #48 team. Although many people can’t stand their success, Johnson is the Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt or Jeff Gordon of this era. He and Hendrick Motorsports are putting up historic numbers that will become the standard for future generations.

Hopefully the All-Star Race is a sign of things to come. It has been a quiet start to the season, but the last couple of weeks have been better.

Now once we get through this week, one of the best racing weekends of the entire year is upon us. Almost every big-time racing series has a great race on Memorial Day weekend.

So stock up on some good food and have a great week, everybody.

Ford engines are new leaders in NASCAR

After years of domination by Chevrolet teams, the Ford group has come back with the best start to its season since all five Roush cars made the Chase in 2005.

The Ford camp made this abundantly clear during the past two weeks at Charlotte Motor Speedway where Fords led a combined 319 of the 502 laps run in the All-Star Race and the Coca-Cola 600.

Plus, the teams that have dominated the past five years or so had troubles of their own Sunday night. Two favorites to win the Coca-Cola 600, Jamie McMurray and Jimmie Johnson, blew engines.

While they were both driving Chevrolets, they aren’t on the same team and have different engines. McMurray had an Earnhardt-Childress engine under the hood while Jimmie Johnson had a Hendrick engine.

It might not be terribly surprising the Fords have finally come back to the front of the field on tracks where horsepower and aerodynamics are important, but it is surprising to see the failures from the Chevrolets.

The Earnhardt-Childress engines won nine races last season, including all four of the restrictor-plate races, and all of those wins came on tracks that were at least one mile in length.

Hendrick engines also won nine races last season, with Johnson bringing home six of those wins.

The #48 car has been the gold standard in the Sprint Cup Series nearly since it was formed in 2002. The Lowe’s Chevrolet simply never breaks down, but it did Sunday night.

Are we seeing a changing of the guard? Possibly. The #48 team doesn’t always have a great first half of the season, and it likely will be in contention for the championship late into the Chase, if not all the way to Homestead again, but an engine problem combined with the resurgence of Roush-Fenway Racing has the path to a sixth championship a bit more cluttered.

The other aspect to this issue is the Ford engines. The FR9 engine has been in development for several years, and it just started running full time last season. However, the teams running the new engine are reaping the benefits in 2011.

NASCAR recently took an engine from each manufacturer and found they all make similar power. So, where does the Fords’ advantage come from? Maybe it has to do with more than raw horsepower. One feature of the new Ford engine was that it had a lower center of gravity and ran cooler than the old engine.

These factors help with the overall setup of the car just as much as the power to move the car forward. It’s great to have a fast car down the straightaways, but it doesn’t do much good if the car won’t turn in the corners.

So, the teams can use a lower center of gravity to help the car turn in the corners and a lower water temperature allows the team to run more tape on the grill, which gives the car more downforce.

Maybe it’s not so much the Fords all of a sudden have more power than everybody else; maybe they just have the ability to use that power more effectively.

In any case, the Fords are as strong right now as they have been in a long time, and they could hold this advantage for a while as other teams adjust to try and keep up.

Rating the All-Star Race: 1 Star *

The stars were supposed to come out and the gloves were supposed to come off, but neither happened Saturday night at the All-Star Race. The race reserved for the biggest winners in the sport came up well short of expectations and gets a 1 Star Rating.

While this was one of the most boring All-Star races in the 27-year history of the event, there isn’t really one reason that sticks out as to why the intense battles and crazy moves never materialized.

Maybe it was the tires, but they were the same combination as what the teams ran at Darlington and that was an incredibly exciting race. Or, maybe it was simply the fact that Carl Edwards had a great car and stunk up the show. That’s been known to happen. Both Darrell Waltrip and Jeff Gordon come to mind as drivers who have been given a special car for this race, and they went out and dominated with it.

Edwards currently leads the points standings, and is starting to put together the type of season that could lead to winning the championship. Even though this race didn’t pay any points, drivers who are on top of the sport often shine in the All-Star Race, as they should; this is a race that tests the best against the best.

Another factor on Edwards’ side is how the Roush-Fenway Racing cars have run on the intermediate tracks this year. The Ford cars have struggled the past few years in general as a new engine was in development. However, that engine has been fully implemented this season and is starting to show the power the Ford camp was hoping for. Next Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600 will be the ultimate test in this engine’s durability, but so far there hasn’t been any cause for concern.

Had the All-Star Race been a regular event, the race would have probably been more interesting. A few races this season have been saved because strategy came into play in an otherwise bland race, but the setup for the All-Star Race takes that aspect out. At first it looked like the teams that pitted on lap 61 had made a great call because they got off sequence with the leaders and had enough fuel to the finish, but the mandatory four-tire pit stop before the final 10-lap shootout made any pit strategy irrelevant.

Often, the All-Star Race doesn’t need strategy to be interesting and that lack of strategy usually makes for a wild final segment, but that simply didn’t happen. After the cars got through the final restart, the field strung out and raced pretty much single-file to the end of the race.

So, next week strategy will almost certainly be a factor in the longest race of the season and one of the best days of the year for a motorsports fan. Memorial Day weekend is always a great racing weekend and it’s pretty difficult to dominate the 600 because of the length of the race and the changing track conditions as the race goes from late afternoon into the night.

Plus, we’ve got the Hall of Fame induction ceremony Monday night and make sure to check in here for coverage of the event as Monday Morning Crew Chief will be on the scene.

Rating the All-Star/Hall of Fame Week: 5 Stars *****

All-Star week continues to get bigger and better each year, and this year was the complete NASCAR experience. From the pit crew challenge to the Hall of Fame inductions, everything involved in this week was worthy of a 5 Star Rating.

In one of the most competitive events of the week, the pit crew challenge had teams battling head-to-head throughout the evening, until the #11 team followed its driver’s lead and all it did was win. In the final it nosed out the #31 team, which almost won the event for the second consecutive year. The results from that event determined the order of pit stall selection, a cool twist to the normal qualifying procedure, and this year it was needed as qualifying sessions for both the Sprint Showdown and All-Star Race were rained out.

After waiting out the rain, the trucks got on the track for their turn at the “Beast of the Southeast.” Per usual, Kyle Busch led for the majority of the event. However, this week he was able to hold on despite late-race cautions and take home his second truck series victory for his own team.

Saturday night was time for the main event, and the Sprint Cup stars battled it out under the lights. The first three segments of the All-Star race were as clean as any race we have had all season. I’ve said several times recently that this group of drivers is maturing, and 20 or so of the best in the sport showed that long stretches without a caution can be done. The fourth and final segment, however, was a completely different story. Just like last year, everybody went crazy in the 10 lap dash for cash. While no driver was out of the race after segment three, only 13 drivers took the checkered flag.

Anything and everything was possible in those final laps. There was a big one, the champ spun out and two Joe Gibbs Racing teammates had to settle things in the hauler after the race. What was that about the new Kyle Busch? That looked a lot like the same brash kid who left the track at Texas while his team fixed his car in 2007. According to Denny Hamlin, Coach Gibbs and the two drivers were able to talk things out and it will be business as usual next Sunday. Hamlin did say he had to remind Busch this was not a points race. That’s why we love the All-Star race. Things happen in that race that fans don’t see week in and week out.

Also, congratulations to Kurt Busch and the #2 team. Busch was wearing out the high groove throughout most of the race, and that final 10 minute break allowed the team to get the car back in shape and dialed in so he could take off on those final restarts, which were very similar to the restarts in the last race that he won at Atlanta.

Finally, Sunday marked the induction of five NASCAR greats into the brand new Hall of Fame. What a great day. The ceremony was terrific. This will be a fantastic annual event. Throughout the coming years, people will be able to hear stories that have never, but should have been, told. Also, each year there will be five new people that will be honored. Now, even if someone’s favorite driver has retired, they will still be able to celebrate their career in the Hall of Fame. Congratulations NASCAR. This is great for the sport.

Next week is the longest race of the year, the Coca-Cola 600. After the shootouts of the All-Star race, endurance will be a factor in the 600. This is an event where the best will likely rise to the top of the leaderboard by the end of the evening. And, based on the way the #48 took control of the Saturday night event, he very well could do the same in the Sunday night race. Maybe he will be able to close the deal in this one.