Don't blame David Reutimann or Danica Patrick, blame the system

David Reutimann single-handedly changed the finish of the Sprint Cup Series race Sunday at Martinsville Speedway, albeit accidently.

Reutimann caught some serious heat from fans and people in the sport after stopping on the frontstretch with four laps to go. His car was obviously down on power several laps beforehand, but Reutimann and his team decided to stick it out and hope they could limp to the finish.

Unfortunately, the car didn’t make it and NASCAR officials had to throw a caution. That caution set up a green-white-checkered restart that ended up with the top three drivers all day, Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Clint Bowyer, wrecked in Turn 1 while Ryan Newman went on to win the race on the following restart.

Obviously, everybody was upset that Reutimann’s caution caused a mess that ruined the days for the top three cars and gave the win to what was a 10th to 15th-place car that day.

However, Reutimann was a man caught between a rock and a hard place. NASCAR only guarantees starting positions for the cars in the top 35 of the owner points standings. Reutimann’s #10 car was right on the edge and would’ve made the top 35 had he completed one more lap. Instead, he sits one point out in 36th and will have to qualify in on time in two weeks at Texas Motor Speedway.

Many people looked at the #10 car as the car Danica Patrick will race in five weeks in the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. That’s true, and her big-money sponsor Go Daddy certainly doesn’t want to risk her missing the race because she didn’t qualify fast enough.

But, five weeks is a long time to make up one point.

Make no mistake, that #10 team wanted to be in the top 35 in points heading to Texas for their own sake. Sure, there might be some sour consequences for the entire Tommy Baldwin Racing organization if Danica Patrick doesn’t make the Southern 500 field, but they also have to take care of their own business. Missing a race does nobody any good.

Let’s move the situation forward and say a driver on the cusp of a Chase spot needed one more point to make the playoffs in the final race at Richmond but had a motor coming apart. Would people crucify that driver if he didn’t make it around and brought out a late caution that changed the end of the race? Or, would they praise that driver and say he pushed it to the limit and tried as hard as possible to make the Chase?

Either way, the situation Sunday was not a good one, but NASCAR’s current system creates desperation for teams on the top-35 bubble. More than any previous situation, Sunday’s events should have given proper fuel for the top-35 rule haters to scream from the mountaintop.

NASCAR doesn’t have a perfect system right now, and it may even be part of the reason those teams on the bubble can’t find any sponsorship. Who would want to sponsor a car that might not even race on Sundays?

It would be nice to have teams race straight up each week to make a race, but there is too much money involved. Imagine if Dale Earnhardt Jr. crashed in qualifying and missed a race. That wouldn’t be good for business.

If there is anything positive to take out of the situation late in the race at Martinsville, it was proof that NASCAR teams and drivers put their full effort into what they do. Sure, the start and parkers don’t race to win, but they park early in a race so that some day in the future they will be able to race for the win.

Tommy Baldwin Racing is a perfect example of a team that had to build through start and parking. Right now the organization still isn’t strong, but it is moving in the right direction.

People will say what they want about points racing and drivers taking it easy, but that might be a little bit more of a myth than some people would like to believe. If they have a chance to race for the win, no driver is going to sit back and let someone else win.

Wins in the Sprint Cup Series are extremely difficult to come by, and the absolute joy of winning a race should be plenty of motivation for drivers to give it everything they have.

Reutimann didn’t have a good day Sunday, but he did give it everything he had. Keep that in mind if something similar happens late in the season to a Chase contender.

Rating the Goody's Fast Pain Relief 500: 4 Stars ****

Several drivers walked out of Martinsville Speedway in need of some Goody’s pain relief Sunday in a finish that was as wild as a finish at a restrictor-plate race. However, much of the rest of the race was dominated by a few usual suspects. The second short track race of the season gets a 4 Star Rating.

Martinsville produces racing that Bristol Motor Speedway would love to have back. The only way to make a pass is on the low side and usually that requires bumping the car in front out of the way. Sunday’s race had a lot of green-flag racing, but it also had upset drivers at the end.

The point is that short tracks can have it both ways. Bristol doesn’t have to immediately turn into a wreckfest if track owner Bruton Smith makes some changes to the track, but it could turn the track back to a fast-paced version of Martinsville.

Interestingly, the race at Martinsville would’ve had just five cautions and no major wrecks if David Reutimann hadn’t stopped to bring out a caution with four laps to go. That’s the same as the race at Bristol two weeks ago. That’s not to say one style of racing is better than another, but it does show that a one-groove track can have long stretches of green-flag racing.

Anyway, on to Sunday’s race where Ryan Newman shockingly found himself in Victory Lane. Hendrick Motorsports drivers Jeff Gordon Jimmie Johnson dominated nearly the entire race. Gordon led 328 laps, Johnson led 112 and both were involved in a great battle for the lead at the end before the green-white-checkered restarts.

So, Newman got a pretty large gift Sunday, along with drivers such as A.J. Allmendinger and Martin Truex Jr. All of those drivers ran most of the day between 10th and 15th, but they avoided the big pileup on the first green-white-checkered and came home with top-five finishes.

Many of the Hendrick haters will be thrilled with Sunday’s finish because Gordon and Johnson wrecked at the end and gave the win to somebody different. But, in fairness, this race did not end the way it was supposed to. Thankfully, it was due to a problem with another car and not because NASCAR wanted to spice up the finish of the race.

Up next is the first off week of the season for the Sprint Cup Series. A change in the schedule this year eliminated the early off week. Overall, the break comes at a good time. It actually feels like we have a significant portion of the season behind us, and now everybody can gear up for the next long stretch of races that will take us into July if the All-Star weekend in May at Charlotte Motor Speedway is considered a race weekend.

After the break the series will visit a couple of mile-and-a-half tracks with Texas Motor Speedway and Kansas Speedway. If we don’t have a good idea of who the real contenders will be this season, those two weeks will go a long way toward helping answer those questions.

Have a blessed Easter, everybody.

Danica Patrick takes unusual route to Daytona 500 starting grid

It wasn’t easy, but Danica Patrick has a guaranteed starting spot in this year’s Daytona 500 before Speedweeks even begin.

Patrick’s owner, Tony Stewart, worked out a complicated deal with Tommy Baldwin Racing that will allow Patrick’s #10 car to use last year’s owner’s points for Baldwin’s #36 car.

But, Patrick will technically share her ride for the length of the season with David Reutimann. Since Patrick will only compete in 10 Sprint Cup Series races in 2012, the deal between Stewart and Baldwin allows Reutimann to run the other 26 races.

This is a great deal for Patrick and her Stewart-Haas Racing team. Patrick is guaranteed to race in the 500 and won’t have to put up with the incredible spotlight she would’ve been under during Speedweeks as she tried to qualify for the race.

The situation also works out pretty well for Tommy Baldwin Racing. Patrick will run under the TBR name, so that organization will receive the owner points for all 36 races the #10 car runs. Since this is almost certainly a one-year deal, TBR will have a guaranteed spot if it wants to bring back the #36 car in 2013.

Although everything appears to have worked out for those two organizations, this deal did little to help Ruetimann or his teammate Dave Blaney, who will now have to race his way into the 500 field.

Unfortunately, NASCAR’s rules facilitate these problems.

Those who hate the top-35 rule will only scream louder in the wake of this announcement, and they have a legitimate reason.

The top 35 cars in owner points from the previous season are guaranteed starting spots for the first five races of the following season. The rule is designed to protect big-time teams from missing a race if they don’t qualify well.

However, the consequences of that goal reverberate in strange directions each offseason. Too many teams shut down and too many new ones are born each year for the top-35 rule to be effective.

In the past, teams have purchased owners points from teams that shut down. Well, NASCAR outlawed that and in turn created a system where teams have to be really creative, as Stewart was in this instance, to find a way to assure their new teams will have a guaranteed spot in the first five races of the season.

Many people will say NASCAR should abolish the top-35 rule. That’s fine, but it’s not going to happen. There is way too much money invested into the top teams in the sport to risk having one of them miss a race.

There isn’t an easy answer for this problem, but it is something NASCAR needs to seriously review. The sanctioning body has responded to issues in the sport very well in the past few years, but this one might be more difficult.

First, most people will only care about this issue during Speedweeks and then forget about it until the season starts again next year. Others will maybe care for the first five races, but as the season goes on the top-35 rule usually only affects the small, minimally sponsored teams that don’t factor into the finish of a race anyway.

Maybe this is just a necessary evil in the sport, but there is something wrong when a former race winner has to share his ride with a rookie just because of sponsorship dollars.

NASCAR offseason picks up again as Almirola gets rare second chance

The holidays passed and the NASCAR offseason picked up right where it left off with two more driver signings and another team shutting down.

David Reutimann landed with Tommy Baldwin Racing for the 2012 season, TRG Motorsports couldn’t find a driver or sponsor and will cease to exist, and Aric Almirola jumped back into the Spring Cup Series with the #43 Richard Petty Motorsports Ford.

It’s good to see Reutimann get a ride after being fired very late in the season from the #00 Michael Waltrip Racing team and it’s not good to see another team leave the sport, but the biggest winner of the week is Almirola.

Sure, the #43 car currently doesn’t have a sponsor and could struggle to finish in the top 20 in the points standings next year, but at least he will race in the Cup series once again.

Almirola’s first shot in a Cup ride came in 2007 when he ran six races in the #01 U.S. Army car that he shared with Mark Martin. His best finish was 26th.

The next year he doubled his number of races as he and Martin again split duties to fill the empty #8 seat left by Dale Earnhardt Jr. when he went to Hendrick Motorsports. Almirola did record a top 10 with an eighth-place finish at Bristol in the spring that season.

Since then he bounced around to several different teams and ended up only racing in the Nationwide Series in 2011. He was successful at that level, however, and finished fourth in the points standings while driving the #88 JR Motorports car.

Regardless of his results, Almirola should feel like the luckiest guy in the sport. Not many drivers get a second chance at the Cup level, especially with a top-20 team.

While Almirola drives on Sundays, former Cup drivers such as Reed Sorenson and Elliot Sadler will likely remain in the Nationwide Series and only drive on Saturdays. Others such as David Ragan and Brian Vickers are also on the market and still don’t have a ride lined up.

Since Almirola got the job, the attention will now turn to how successful he can be in that car. Remember, the #43 car isn’t in the NASCAR elite anymore, and it hasn’t been for nearly two decades. Although the car has 198 victories, it hasn’t really come close to reaching Victory Lane since 1999 when John Andretti won at Martinsville.

A.J. Allmendinger put together the best season the #43 car has had since Bobby Labonte finished 18th in the points standings in 2007. Allmendinger finished 15th in the points standings in 2011 and 19th in 2010. Before that, the #43 hadn’t finished in the top 20 in points since Andretti’s year in 1999.

Overall, there probably shouldn’t be very high expectations for the #43 car in 2012. The vicious cycle between mediocre runs and horrible runs could easily continue for that team this season, especially if it has trouble finding sponsorship.

It’s an unfortunate situation because the organization just came off of its best season with two cars in the top 20 in the points standings, and now it is back to the same struggles it dealt with the previous season when it almost went bankrupt.

Maybe we’re overstating the negative of this situation. Maybe the organization has potential sponsors about ready to sign on and Almirola will follow in the footsteps of the five first-time winners of 2011 and burst back onto the scene.

In any case, Almirola has a Cup ride, and that’s more than a lot of other Cup-winning drivers can say at this point.

Will Bowyer be better at Michael Waltrip Racing?

One of the final major pieces of the 2011 Silly Season fell in place last week when Clint Bowyer finally announced he will be moving to the #15 Toyota for Michael Waltrip Racing in 2012.

But, is this a good move for Bowyer?

Ever since Bowyer broke into the Sprint Cup Series with Richard Childress Racing in 2006, he has been a fringe contender for the Chase. Some years he squeaks in and makes it, other years he misses by just a few points.

This year he missed by just a few points, but Childress couldn’t put together a sponsorship deal to keep Bowyer in the #33 so Bowyer will try his hand as the third car at Michael Waltrip Racing.

On the surface this looks like a win-win situation for everybody. Waltrip gets a high-profile driver that has consistently finished better than his current two drivers, David Reutimann and Martin Truex Jr, and Bowyer gets a fresh start after several up-and-down years for Richard Childress Racing.

However, people who think Bowyer is instantly going to be as much of a Chase contender next year as he has been in the past need to temper their enthusiasm. Just because he’s helping an organization expand and has full sponsorship doesn’t mean he’s going to succeed. Just ask Truex Jr.

The driver of the #56 car hasn’t won a race since joining MWR in 2010 and finished 22nd in the points standings.

Michael Waltrip Racing is still a young organization and growing each year, but this isn’t a group that has consistently won. In fact, it has hardly won at all.

Reutimann won at Chicago in 2010, but his best points finish was 16th in 2009. He and Truex Jr. are currently 28th and 22nd in the standings, respectively.

So, Bowyer is leaving an organization that has won 10 times in the past two years and had drivers contend for the championship to a team that has won one race in the past two years and has yet to put a team in the Chase.

Sure, it’s nice to think Bowyer will help raise the performance level at MWR, but many people hailed Truex Jr.’s move to the #56 in the same way. Granted, Bowyer has had more success in his career than Truex Jr., but it is going to be an uphill climb for the new #15 team.

Bowyer may have had to move because Childress couldn’t field a car for him next year, but he and the #15 have a lot of work to do just to maintain the performance Bowyer had at RCR.

Rating the Heluva Good! Sour Cream Dips at the Glen: You Rate the Race!!

Light rain and fog covered Watkins Glen on Monday morning, but the Sprint Cup Series cars provided the lightning and thunder in a hard-hitting race that brought yet another first–time winner.

This week Monday Morning Crew Chief lets you decide the Rating of the Heluva Good! Sour Cream Dips at the Glen. Check out the Rating System page and put your rating on this one.

Marcos Ambrose deserves a huge congratulations for winning this race. He has been close in almost every road-course race since he entered the sport in 2008. He has scored a top-five finish in every road course race of his career, except 2010 at Sonoma when he infamously shut off the engine going up a hill. However, he still finished sixth that race. That is simply an incredible record he has put together.

While Ambrose broke through and finally got to Victory Lane, a good chunk of the rest of the field ended up back in the garage area with cars that were absolutely destroyed.




Those cars are more torn up than any car from the rest of the season combined, unless you include the car Brad Keselowski wrecked in a test two weeks ago at Road Atlanta, which is also a road course.

The drivers always talk about Watkins Glen being the superspeedway of road courses, and that certainly held true Monday. Ten or 15 years ago, Denny Hamlin, David Ragan and David Reutimann might have been seriously injured or worse from those hits, and it’s unbelievable they all happened in the same race.

Watkins Glen is likely going to receive plenty of criticism for not having safer walls, and the track deserves it. But, this is a problem across the sport. Pocono finally put up a fence and SAFER barriers down the Long Pond straightaway for this season, and Richmond has work to do to cover the inside wall on the backstretch where Jeff Gordon found exposed concrete in the spring race.

Why is it so tough to get these tracks to cover everything with a SAFER barrier? No matter how unlikely it looks that a car could hit a certain part of the wall, it will at some point. In Monday’s case, however, it’s easy to picture a car crashing where Ragan did.

It would be nice if tracks were actually proactive for once. Dale Earnhardt died before real safety improvements were made, Kasey Kahne nearly flipped out of Pocono before they put the fence up. Auto racing is simply too dangerous to take chances.

Finally, we can’t leave out the Boris Said-Greg Biffle scuffle after the race. A fight nearly broke out between the two, and Said certainly made his interview count afterward, calling Biffle an “unprofessional little scaredy-cat” and “a chump.”

Only Said would come up with gems like those. Just imagine Kyle Busch calling Kevin Harvick a chump.

Too bad Said won’t be around for the rest of the year, but he certainly made his final appearance.

Rating the Quaker State 400: 2 Stars **

Kyle Busch stunk up the show in the Sprint Cup Series debut at Kentucky Speedway on Saturday night to add his name to the list of active driver who have won a track’s inaugural race. Unfortunately, the first-ever Kentucky race barely scratched out a 2 Star Rating.

Lots of hype preceded Saturday night’s race. This track is old and bumpy, with lots of “character,” something a lot of tracks lack these days. However, instead of making for a close, exciting race, there was hardly a green-flag pass for the lead after the Busch brothers settled their early race battle.

NASCAR has raced at Chicagoland Speedway on this weekend for the past 10 years, but this race could have easily been run at Chicago. Shoot, David Reutimann nearly won again. Maybe he thought they were still at Chicago.

This race also played out similar to a bad race at Richmond. Sometimes a driver, and Busch has done this in the past, will dominate the majority of a race at that track amid several different pit strategies that shake up the entire field. That situation is even worse now with the wave-around rules.

It’s not terribly surprising one team absolutely dominated this race because nobody had any notes on the track coming into the weekend. Any time there is a big change in the sport, a few teams tend to jump out from the pack for a while before everyone else catches up. That’s part of what happened at Kentucky, and future races will likely be better than what we saw Saturday.

It’s also not surprising that Busch won this race. Jeff Gordon has won three inaugural races, including Indianapolis, California and Kansas. At the time of those races, from 1994 to 2001, he was the best driver in the sport. He was the guy who chased all-time records.

Well, 10 years later Kyle Busch is the new Jeff Gordon. Busch is a brash, hard-charging young driver with loads of talent. He wins regularly and is starting to climb up the all-time ranks where talk about the big records starts to become relevant.

When Busch is nearing age 40, we will likely look back on all of his special achievements in racing. The great ones just seem to capitalize on big moments, and winning the first Cup race at Kentucky is one of them. Busch is still becoming a great driver. He has already accomplished a lot, but the next step will be winning the big races and being a consistent contender for the championship.

He has already won at Darlington, but don’t be surprised if he starts winning races such as the Brickyard 400, Coca-Cola 600 and contend for the Daytona 500 in coming years. The great drivers win these races, and Busch is a part of that class.

Now it’s time to head up north to New Hampshire to put in 301 grueling laps. It will be a while before the series returns to a track with significant banking. The next four races are all flat tracks, so a team could start to make a charge toward the Chase if they hit on a good, consistent flat-track setup. Have a good week everybody.

Rating the LifeLock.com 400: 3 Stars ***

After a wreckfest at Daytona, the drivers settled down at Chicagoland with only four cautions and a very clean race. Also, the final 79 laps were run uninterrupted with a surprise winner at the finish. The first race of the second half of the season gets a 3 Star Rating.

David Reutimann kind of came out of nowhere for this victory. Yes, he had qualified in the top 10 and had run well the past several weeks, but guys like him usually have something go wrong during the race before they can close the deal. The way races tend to go, the likely scenario would have been a caution with 20 or so laps left and either Carl Edwards or Jeff Gordon would have won the race. However, Reutimann’s car was so strong late in the race he may have still been able to hold on for the win.

Overall, the racing at Chicagoland wasn’t too bad. There were several stretches of green-flag racing, which is always better than the alternative. But, things may have been better if NASCAR had allowed a practice session after qualifying. It wouldn’t have made sense to have a practice the day of the race, but maybe the schedule could have been adjusted for the weekend to give the teams a chance to dial in a race setup. Both practices were run during the heat of the day and it showed early in the race Jimmie Johnson and a few drivers at the front dominated the first half of the race.

However, as day turned to night a few different cars came to the front of the field. Johnson spun out and then had several different issues that took him out of the picture for this race. As the race came to a close, including Reutimann, eight of the top-10 finishers have not won a race in 2010. It was kind of ironic that there was a top 10 with such diversity after a few big names dominated early.

While there were certainly big-name teams up front early, there was also several Chase contenders way back in the pack. Kevin Harvick and both Buschs never did find what they were looking for. The #2 team even changed both front shocks at one point. That looked like something Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s team tried a few times last year when he was running so terrible.

Well, the Summer Series has come to a close, and with a week off the series gets set for the final run to the Chase. There are still several drivers on the outside of the cutoff at this point that still have a very real chance of being in the Chase once the checkered flag falls at Richmond in September. The last few years have had one or two drivers with a realistic shot of racing their way into the Chase on that final night of the regular season, but this year the point standings have been so fluid I would expect several drivers to have a chance to race into the Chase in that final race.

It's now time to step back and take a week off here in the middle of the summer. With another month before the final week off, everyone can get set for the Brickyard. The Ganassi cars of Jamie McMurray and Juan Pablo Montoya will probably be strong, as will the Hendrick cars. It was great to see Reutimann win at Chicagoland, but the big boys will likely be back in full force at Indy. Have a great break everybody.