Now We Return To Your Regularly Scheduled Season

I will say, this year's Speedweeks was well worth it. Maybe it's because we wait all winter for a peek of racing, then we get two weeks of the most-exciting edge-of-your-seat racing NASCAR has to offer. (Speedweeks might not be the same if it were held at California or Michigan.) Never mind the surprise stories I spoke of last time, capped off with a rookie winning the Daytona 500 in storybook fashion.

But that was three weeks ago. It's March now, and we're back into the regular season. Gone are the one-off Daytona dreams and big headlines and fantasy stories. Back are, well, the typical tales of an early NASCAR season. Let's take a look.

Trevor Bayne is a Sprint Cup rookie again. No doubt, the biggest story of Speedweeks 2011 was Trevor Bayne. The Tennessean turned 20 the day before the Daytona 500, but caught the press' attention when he not only debuted a fast Ford in qualifying, but drove with savvy and patience in his qualifying race Thursday. In the 500, Bayne ran up front all day, proving he could indeed be trusted in tight traffic. He inherited the lead late and never flinched on the last lap, blocking Carl Edwards and taking his first Sprint Cup victory in his second start.

At Phoenix the following week, brake problems cost him a car in practice, and he wrecked a second car early in the race. The critics noticed.

Of course, everyone wants to be the one who correctly determines if Trevor Bayne is the next Jimmie Johnson or the next Casey Atwood. Somehow, people think we can figure that out from two races. Here's what we know for sure: He is a 20-year-old Sprint Cup rookie. At Daytona, he drove like a veteran and won a hard-fought race, no doubt. But he's still a rookie. He's still driving for a team that, legacy aside, had not won a race since 2001, and only scored three top-ten finishes since 2006. I won't write this one off as a fluke - he was a threat as soon as the Wood Brothers unloaded - but as of now, he's just a member of a club occupied by Richard Brickhouse, Dick Brooks, Ron Bouchard, Greg Sacks, Bobby Hillin, Phil Parsons, and more recently Brad Keselowski.

All won their only career Cup race on a plate track. (Sacks was the only of those to do so at Daytona.)

Trevor showed lots of maturity by turning down opportunities to run for Sprint Cup rookie honors, and has chosen to run full-time in Nationwide while running a limited Cup schedule. We'll see how he matures, and if Jack Roush can prepare a better Cup ride for him for 2012.

A Nationwide driver hasn't won a Nationwide race yet. This year, it was a big deal that Cup drivers wouldn't be able to score points in the Nationwide or Truck series, meaning that the second-tier series will have its first full-season series-only champion since Martin Truex in 2005. Critics pointed out that this didn't limit participation by Cup drivers, of course, and fueled speculation that this year's Nationwide champ could win the title without winning a single race.

Well, Tony Stewart won Daytona again, using a late-race push from Landon Cassill to pass fellow Cup drivers Clint Bowyer and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Kyle Busch led every lap at Phoenix to win. And at Las Vegas, Brad Keselowski's flat tire on the last lap opened the door for Mark Martin, who won a race in which no Nationwide-only drivers led a lap all day.

This coming week is Bristol. Last year, Justin Allgaier won his first career race at the half-mile bullring. It was his only win all year, but more astonishingly, it was the only race won by a Nationwide regular all season. Could Allgaier or another Nationwide regular pull it off again?

The Truck Series isn't looking any better, for now. In the neighboring garage area at Daytona and Phoenix, the Camping World Truck Series had a similar outlook to the Nationwide Series. The Trucks have traditionally had fewer interloping Cup drivers stealing victories, though those who moonlight in the series usually come away with a trophy on race day.

Daytona opened with series regulars James Buescher and Timothy Peters leading the first sixty-seven laps, but Elliott Sadler took over at lap 71 and led until Michael Waltrip stole the lead on the last lap. At Phoenix, Kyle Busch led the last 107 laps to win. This week, the Trucks raced at Darlington, an off-week for the Cup and Nationwide teams. Of course, Kasey Kahne showed up to race in Kyle Busch's truck and won the Darlington race.

At least this trend won't continue on the Truck side, by virtue of the fact that Kyle Busch won't run most of the Truck races. But three races into the big three series' seasons, the only big-three race not won by a Cup "regular" (the semi-retired Waltrip is registered for Cup points) has been the Daytona 500.

There are too many bare fenders out there. The argument that keeps Cup drivers stepping down into the other series (and winning) on Saturdays has two parts. For one, it steps up the competition level of the minor leagues, forcing them to race against a higher level of talent. And second, it draws fans. Fans who can't get a ticket to see Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick on Sunday can see them Saturday for half the price and half the crowd. In theory, this brings more fans to the race who might not have gone to see Jason Leffler and Reed Sorenson fight it out.

But my real issue with the Cup drivers isn't fan attendance or driver talent. It's money. Daytona's starting field contained a lot of cars with blank fenders, the so-called "sponsor-me white" paint scheme. At Phoenix, where only forty cars showed up for 43 starting positions, even more cars were blank. Even Jack Roush was running unsponsored cars, with only partial-season deals in place for Ricky Stenhouse and perennial contender Carl Edwards. And there are still a few teams showing up to "start and park," dropping out after a few laps to collect last-place prize money and go home with an intact car. Add in the fact that this is the first full season for NASCAR's "car of tomorrow" chassis to be implemented in the Nationwide Series, making last year's entire fleet of Nationwide cars obsolete. Some teams showed up at Daytona with only one or two cars built to start the season.

With so many teams scrambling for sponsors, prize money is even more important. But that prize money was cut after last year, when NASCAR announced a twenty-percent reduction in weekend purses for the Nationwide Series. So teams are having to rebuild their entire fleet of race-legal cars, funded with nonexistent sponsors and reduced prize money. And when fully-funded, fully-sponsored cars from Cup teams are winning Nationwide races, that leaves even less money for the series regulars. After three races, Reed Sorenson leads the Nationwide points standings with two top-five finishes and $120,000 in series earnings. Brian Keselowski, who completed 28 laps of the Daytona 500 before being crashed out, took home over $270,000 for his forty-first-place finish.

Interestingly, where in past seasons teams would often start a backup car to fill a short field, the new car introduced this year has left a lot of teams without backup cars to start and park. When Joe Nemechek crashed his primary car at Vegas in practice, he had to race his #97 S&P entry for points, then borrow a car for Kevin Conway to start and park after two grueling laps.

The Truck Series, by contrast, looks pretty healthy early in the season, with a number of new teams coming to play. Three trucks failed to qualify at Darlington, by far the fewest number of DNQs in a Truck race this year. But many of those trucks are still scrambling for sponsors, even those of Kyle Busch and series champions Todd Bodine and Ron Hornaday.

Danica Patrick is apparently a stock car driver now. Last year, after Danica's first three races in a Nationwide Series car, the Joyce Julius numbers suggested that her sponsor, GoDaddy.com, had enjoyed more TV exposure from her mediocre runs by leaps and bounds over the next-closest sponsor, Verizon Wireless (whose driver, Justin Allgaier, had three top-ten finishes to start the season). It's a way of quantifying the judgment that the cameras couldn't get off of Danica last year, no matter how poorly she was running (or, at Daytona, if she was running at all).

This year, ESPN was again quick to keep us abreast of Danica's progress, or lack thereof, throughout the races. I didn't think they went too overboard at Daytona. But after mid-teens finishes at Daytona and Phoenix, Danica survived a fuel-mileage battle to finish fourth at Las Vegas.

The next day, an ESPN article surfaced discussing how Danica's finish wasn't anything resembling luck, and how she has come into her own as a winning stock car driver. Pundits were also fast to mention how it was the first time a woman had finished in the top five in a NASCAR race (incorrect, as Shawna Robinson scored a few victories in the Goody's Dash Series back in the '80s, but apparently the Dash Series doesn't count anymore). It's no secret that Danica's performance thus far has been a disappointment to everyone who thought she might come in and set the series on fire, but to praise her after one top-five finish is like calling Trevor Bayne the next Jimmie Johnson after Daytona.

From everything I've read, Danica was mostly thrown into the driver's seat last year, without a real effort to develop her talents. This year, she has Johnny Benson, Jr. serving as a driver coach, helping her to refine her skills behind the wheel of a stock car. Between that and having a consistent teammate in Aric Almirola, instead of last year's driver-of-the-week rotation in the #88, Danica has looked less lost behind the wheel. It shows in the point standings, too; Danica is fourth headed to Bristol.

Danica is in the #7 car at Bristol, too. We'll see how much she has arrived when she takes to the half-mile.

There has to be a different way to set the early-season fields. Back in 2005, Robby Gordon had a strong run in his Daytona 500 qualifying race, finishing seventh. A year or two before, it would have meant a top-fifteen start in the 500. But that year, the new franchising system had been put in place, and Robby's #7 Chevy was not locked into the field. Instead of racing in the Daytona 500, Robby Gordon failed to qualify.

The old NASCAR provisional system allowed new teams a fair shot at qualifying for a race if they were fast enough, with a few spots at the tail of the field for a regular team that missed the setup or blew an engine in qualifying. Under the current system, where drivers in the top of the owner's standings are guaranteed a starting position, it is more difficult for a non-guaranteed team to qualify for a race at all. There are thirty or thirty-five cars locked into the field, not just seven, so the chance of making the field is slimmer. And as Robby Gordon found out at Daytona in 2005, a driver is equally dependent upon speed and fortune. Two cars ahead of him in his qualifying race were also non-guaranteed starters. If all six were guaranteed starters, he would have made the race.

Late in the season, this is not a huge deal. But early in the year, when new teams are forming, it is a big problem. The first few races of the year, the guaranteed starting positions are established by the previous year's top finishers in the owner's points (top-35 in Cup, top-30 in Nationwide, top-25 in Trucks). Team owners with a multi-car team will often switch their points from one car to another, so a veteran driver can qualify on time (or, preferably, a past-champion's provisional) while the rookie driver has the safety net of owner points. And this results in some interesting dealings in the offseason, as new team owners will name a "silent partner" who had a guaranteed starting position from the previous season, rather than let the points go unused.

So far, the biggest victim of this in 2011 has been James Buescher in the Truck Series. Last year, James' Nationwide Series deal came apart early in the season, and so he and future father-in-law Steve Turner turned their part-time Truck Series plans into a full-season effort. They started their season five races in, but by season's end had emerged as weekly contenders in the Truck Series. James was eleventh in driver points, and Turner Motorsports was fifteenth in the owner's standings.

However, the guaranteed starting positions are only awarded to teams that attempt all the races. So going into 2011, Turner Motorsports' #31 truck was not locked into the starting field. At Phoenix, James Buescher was fast in practice, but he could only muster the 25th-fastest qualifying lap. Unfortunately, there were enough faster trucks that were also not locked in. James Buescher failed to qualify at Phoenix.

Similarly, at Daytona, Rick Crawford turned a lap that was fast enough for 24th on the grid. Eleven of the faster drivers, though, were not locked into the field either. Crawford, Cole Whitt, Tayler Malsam and seven other drivers went home early while a few slower trucks made the field by virtue of their locked-in positions. Malsam was in a similar position to Buescher; his Randy Moss Motorsports team had taken a late-season hiatus, so the missed attempts cost them a guaranteed spot despite being in the top-25 in owner's points.

The aim of the guaranteed positions, much as the original aim of the provisional system was, is to reward teams that have made a full-season effort with a safety net for the occasional blown engine or cut tire on a qualifying lap. I'm all for that, but in the early part of the season, there needs to be a better way to award starting positions so that new teams have the opportunity to break into the sport. It's one thing if a team is consistently slow and fails to qualify. It's another when a team goes home while ten or fifteen slower cars are guaranteed to start.

Some expected contenders are struggling. Every year, one or two of the expected title challengers falls short early in the year. A DNF at Daytona, or a couple early crashes, and the media feels obligated to say that someone's title hopes are over.

On the Cup side, someone mentioned to me that Jimmie Johnson is back in thirteenth in points after Vegas, and hasn't run well yet this season. As usual, that means little; they'll be in form by the Chase. Jeff Burton and Greg Biffle are the bigger surprises, stuck in 31st and 32nd after three weeks. Again, they will be in top-ten form by mid-season. By contrast, Paul Menard is sixth in points overall. I can't imagine him staying there very long.

In Nationwide, the big surprises have been Aric Almirola, running for JR Motorsports, and Elliott Sadler, running for Kevin Harvick, Inc. Aric is seventh in points, Elliott twelfth. The surprise is that neither has scored a top-ten finish yet. Elliott was crashed out early at Daytona, but otherwise, both have just been underwhelming so far, finishing a couple laps off the pace. (Granted, when the pace is set by Kyle Busch, it's a hard act to follow.) Similarly, underfunded Joe Nemechek and Mike Bliss cling to the top ten in points. Kenny Wallace is a pleasant surprise in eighth, with two top-ten finishes this year after not scoring one since 2009. Kenny could hang on for a good year if his team keeps it up.

Matt Crafton leads the Truck standings with three top-ten finishes in three starts this year. Of course, Crafton has one victory in 250 series starts, so he falls under the category of consistent, but not title material yet. Rookie Cole Whitt sits second in points, with two top ten finishes and a strong run at Daytona in a borrowed ride. Contender Brendan Gaughan sits all the way back in 20th, with Travis Kvapil struggling in 26th. It could be worse, though; Kvapil's teammate Tayler Malsam, in Randy Moss' second truck, sits 38th after missing the first two races.

But it's only four weeks into the season. Let's sit back and see what things look like in a few more weeks, when the early surprises wear off and normalcy settles in a bit more.

Surprises On The High Banks

Last Saturday, I killed a few minutes watching the first half of the Daytona ARCA 200. Afterwards, as I explained to my girlfriend that this wasn't The Big Race and that there was another week of Daytona action to come (never mind the short-track action at New Smyrna that slips past the Fox camera crews), I realized that the season-opening Daytona Speedweeks are truly something unique in sports, a multi-divisional kickoff from the first hour of the Rolex 24 to the last lap of the Daytona 500.

And it's not just the combination of high-tech sports cars and road-weary weekend warriors and stock cars from shops in the Carolinas. It's not just the long-awaited debuts and anticipated reunions as teams descend upon Daytona just as their press releases promised the year before when their contracts were inked. It's not just the fact that, after a three-month offseason, it will be nice to see cars racing around a track somewhere.

I think it's the way that Daytona just creates surprises.

For me, it started with the 1996 Daytona 500, when Wally Dallenbach raced a white Ford Thunderbird wearing last year's sheetmetal and hastily-applied sponsor decals into a sixth-place finish in the biggest race of the year. Since then, I've realized that Daytona is for surprises. Somewhere, mixed in with the press releases and the predictable headlines, is a story about an underdog making good on their Daytona gamble, or some eleventh-hour deal putting a driver in a car just in time for qualifying. Sometimes it's the tale of big promises gone sour, or a satisfying Speedweeks going up in smoke on the pace lap. Motorsports is about expecting the unexpected, but never is this truer than at Daytona.

So far, Speedweeks 2011 isn't that much different.

One kid almost blew more than a .32: Less than two weeks from opening practice for the Nationwide Series DRIVE4COPD 300, Michael Annett was in the headlines. It wasn't for his new ride with Rusty Wallace's team; instead, he had been picked up for driving while intoxicated. Very intoxicated, if the Breathalyzer result is accurate. I doubted he would lose his ride - he does come along with sponsorship, after all - but if the initial accusations were correct, it seems a bit awkward that he can just slide behind the wheel of a race car. Michael has vowed to get a handle on his behavior; I hope he's sincere, for his sake.

ARCA ran a clean show: Every year, new kids show up in fast cars for the ARCA Racing Series opener, looking to turn heads while the NASCAR teams and top sponsors are sharing garage space. This year, eighteen-year olds Ty Dillon (grandson of Richard Childress) and Kyle Fowler (Venturini Motorsports' latest development driver) qualified on the front row at Daytona. Only twenty laps in, though, veteran Bobby Gerhart was in the lead, holding off Chris Buescher to capture his seventh overall win in the season opener. Gerhart led the final sixty-one laps, and with Buescher choosing caution over valor, it was a dull parade to the checkered flag. The biggest surprise was the fact that less than half the race was run under caution, a departure from the usual ARCA Daytona wreckfest. An honorable mention, though, must be given to the driver who finished eighteenth - James Hylton, who finished on the lead lap at the young age of 76.

Ladies steal the show, if not the results: Back when Shawna Robinson drove James Finch's Chevy to a second-place finish at Daytona in '99, it didn't matter that her greatest impact in NASCAR had been getting wrecked on the start at Atlanta after winning the pole in 1994. To be fair, having a woman in the starting grid was a big deal back then, and it's still more the exception than the norm today. But in the last few years, we've had a few women running several races, and only Danica Patrick has been called out by the announcers as if we might forget she was in the race otherwise. Last year, six women started the ARCA race at Daytona, and toward the end of the race, the broadcasters could only muster "what's-her-name" in regards to the young lady running third who wasn't Danica Patrick. (More on "what's-her-name" later.) This year, the broadcasters went on nonstop about the two women who qualified at Daytona, Maryeve Dufault and Milka Duno. Dufault, a Québec native, was making her oval-track stock-car debut with little fanfare. Duno crashed out early at Daytona last year, echoing her performance in other United States racing series where she has earned a reputation as a rolling chicane, only on the track because of her ties to sponsor CITGO. For the first half of the race, wrecks were typically described in relation to where the two ladies were running on the track. Interestingly, both were taken out in the same wreck fifteen laps from the end. Dufault plans to run the full ARCA schedule, but plans for Milka Duno are hazier, as she has been mentioned as a full-season driver behind the wheel of defending champion Patrick Sheltra's cars.

Sheltra finds a ride: Lately, the jump from feeder-series champ to rookie challenger has been hard for drivers who don't come as a package deal with their own sponsorship. I was going to count Patrick Sheltra in this crowd. Patrick won the 2010 ARCA Racing Series title after a couple wins and a steady season. He announced he would be moving to NASCAR for 2011, but the announcements were nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, Milka Duno (without results, but with a sponsor) tested Sheltra's car at Daytona. At last, this week Rick Ware Racing added another car to the Nationwide Series field at Daytona with Sheltra behind the wheel. Timmy Hill is scheduled to run the full season (starting at Phoenix, when he turns 18) in Ware's #15 car, so it's hard to say if the #41 will be a full-season effort for Sheltra or just a Daytona one-off. I hope he impresses.

A challenger appears: After a 2010 season in which one rookie made a full-season bid for Rookie of the Year, the 2011 ROTY campaign in Sprint Cup looked bleak. Raybestos pulled out as sponsor after 2010, and as of the start of Speedweeks, only Brian Keselowski had suggested he might run enough races to be eligible for Rookie of the Year. Some speculated Trevor Bayne may make a run for it in the Wood Brothers #21, but NASCAR squelched that talk this week stating that a driver has to run for points in the division, while Trevor is chasing the Nationwide title this year. This week, Andy Lally, driving the TRG Motorsports-sponsored Chevrolet at Daytona, signed up for the ROTY battle. I'm not sure how this will work into his road-racing schedule, but time will tell.

A local girl makes good: Last year, while ARCA broadcasters waxed poetic over Danica Patrick's stock-car debut, they glossed over a pearly-pink #15 Chevrolet running third, dismissing the driver as "what's-her-name." The girl in the pink Chevy was Alli Owens, who brought her longtime sponsor to Venturini for a partial season in 2010. With a few laps to go, she was running third until she got shuffled out of the draft and cut a tire. After the season, her sponsor (a voc-ed project backed by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) backed out due to the economy, leaving Alli high and dry for 2011. Still committed to race at her home track, Alli started shopping...this time, for sponsors. A few weeks before Daytona, it was confirmed that she would try to qualify a Ford truck for Ray Hackett Racing at Daytona. Local sponsors, including a chapter of the IBEW, a Daytona-area Ford dealership and even some fan contributors, signed on to back Alli's effort. In the first Truck Series practice, Alli clocked in at eleventh-fastest, the fastest Ford in the field.

Even champs struggle for rides: In 1995, Mike Skinner drove RCR's #3 Goodwrench truck to the inaugural NASCAR SuperTruck Series championship. After a lackluster 2010 season with Randy Moss Motorsports, in which Mike was critical of the involvement of his football-star team owner, it was expected (and eventually confirmed) that Mike Skinner would be looking for a 2011 ride. By the time it was confirmed, however, most of the competitive Toyota rides had been spoken for. Speculation pointed to the SS/Green Light Racing team, where David Starr had taken his sponsorship and Moss' #81 number mid-season, but nothing came up. A week before Speedweeks, Eddie Sharp (who moved his ARCA team to the Truck Series this year with Craig Goess) entered a second truck, #45, for Skinner to drive at Daytona. It's hard to believe that a driver with a winning record in the series could find, at best, a one-off deal to run at Daytona.

Junior lends a hand and a car: Jimmy Means isn't a name most people recognize. He was, in the spirit of J.D. McDuffie and Dave Marcis, an "independent," a driver who ran his own equipment without factory backing or much in the way of sponsorship. His Cup results were never much to look at. Neither are his Busch/Nationwide Series results as a car owner. But he persists with the hope that, with a little help, his team could become something more. This year, Massachusetts driver Bobby Santos III was tabbed to run Jimmy's sole Nationwide car at Daytona. They wrecked badly. And in a tremendous show of class, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. (who admits to having a longtime respect for Jimmy Means and a friendship with his son Brad) lent Jimmy's underfunded team a backup car to race Saturday.

Nothing's guaranteed in qualifying: Alli Owens clocked in eleventh fastest in practice in her one-off deal, and in the second practice session for the Trucks, rookie Cole Whitt (driving a Red Bull-sponsored truck for Stacy Compton's Turn One Racing in a last-minute full-season deal) was fastest in practice. But qualifying is the only part that actually counts. Austin Dillon matched his brother's ARCA achievement by winning the Truck Series pole in the black #3 Chevrolet. Johanna Long, making her first start at Daytona, qualified fifth. Chad McCumbee, a late replacement in a Ford owned by Chase Mattioli, qualified twentieth. Alli Owens, Cole Whitt, and Tayler Malsam (driving a second truck for Randy Moss) were instead among the drivers to go home early, none with the benefit of a guaranteed start. Joining them was Mike Skinner, who was ineligible to use his past champion's provisional because of the late entry.

Brotherly love comes through: When I saw the results of the second Gatorade Duel qualifying race from Thursday, I did a double-take. Brian Keselowski, in the unsponsored white #92 Dodge, finishing fifth? Then, I noticed that Brad Keselowski (now driving the Miller Lite #2 for Roger Penske) finished seventh. Involved in a late wreck in the qualifying race, Brad restarted deep in the field, but found his big brother and shoved him straight to the front. And so Brian Keselowski, who showed up at Daytona with a five-year-old Dodge and a used engine and a single set of tires and one crew member (his father Bob, a former ARCA champion and Truck Series driver), starts twelfth Sunday. Ray Evernham has stepped in to pick up Brian's tire bill, sponsors are talking with Brian for the race, and Roger Penske has offered a newer engine for race day. This could be the feel-good story of the week.

Even the winner couldn't go unscathed: The Truck Series race at Daytona was held Friday night, on the ten-year anniversary of Dale Earnhardt's death at Daytona in 2001. The first half of the race was predictably clean, with teammates James Buescher and Ricky Carmichael holding the lead past halfway. A few single-truck incidents slowed the race after that, and Elliott Sadler worked with Michael Waltrip to take the lead, shuffling Buescher through traffic. A blown tire for Travis Kvapil wrecked several trucks with 25 laps remaining (and several others who slowed for the wreck were damaged when Donnie Neuenberger drove into the back of Johanna Long and pushed her through the high groove), but the racing remained fast and furious. Finally, with five to go, using the two-car tandem draft that proved successful in the Cup sessions, Kyle Busch shoved unknown Chris Fontaine into the lead for a few seconds, before tight racing behind them (and Brad Sweet in a loose truck in the middle) left all but five trucks undamaged. On the restart, with two laps remaining, Sadler and Waltrip rocketed away from the remnants of the field. Coming through the fourth turn, half of Waltrip's rear spoiler came unbolted, falling flat. Waltrip pulled outside through the turn, pulled alongside Sadler and stole the win with a last-lap pass. It was Waltrip's first Truck victory, coming in a flat-black #15 Truck painted similarly to the NAPA car Waltrip had won with at Daytona the day Dale died. Ten years before. No word yet on penalties for the spoiler problem, but no one was going to take Michael's emotional victory away.

In the aftermath, Clay Rogers stole third place, courtesy of another Kyle Busch shove. Jennifer Jo Cobb recorded her best finish, coming home sixth, also the strongest finish for a woman at Daytona in any of the major three divisions and the strongest finish for a woman in the Truck Series. Jeffrey Earnhardt, grandson of Dale and son of Kerry, finished seventh. Fourteenth in a battered truck was Cole Whitt, who had jumped into Shane Sieg's truck after failing to qualify, and took the unsponsored black #93 into the top five before the wreck with five to go. Behind him by one spot was fellow rookie Parker Kligerman, who had raced the evening's sole Dodge Ram into the top five until the last big wreck.

Today, the Nationwide Series teams get their shot at the high banks of Daytona. Clint Bowyer is on the pole, with Dale Junior in his mirror, and Tony Stewart not far behind. Five Cup drivers and Danica Patrick start in the top ten. That does it for the usual, but there are bound to be some surprises in store.

After all, Bobby Santos, the Modified driver in that Jimmy Means #52 wearing the same black and silver scheme as Aric Almirola's JR Motorsports #88?

He qualified 23rd.

And The Point Of All These Changes Is...

There are two weeks to go before Daytona. A responsible blogger would have been blogging on the daily announcements leading up to the 2011 season opener...well, daily. Unfortunately, blogging doesn't pay the bills, and so here I am, playing catchup.

And I would be remiss if I didn't first address probably the biggest announcement of the 2011 NASCAR seasons thus far: the new points system.

The story of the now-former NASCAR points system is often touted as legend: Bob Latford supposedly drew up the system on a napkin before the 1975 season, and it stuck. The winner of a race was awarded 175 points, with five fewer points going to each position until sixth place. Sixth through eleventh would be separated by four points each, with points decreasing by three for every position after eleventh. Unlike previous systems, which were relative to conditions such as race length and prize money earned, the new system was standardized for all races. It was intended to encourage teams to run for a championship, in an era when few teams had the luxury of funding to chase a title. Richard Petty won the 1975 championship, but independent drivers Dave Marcis and James Hylton finished second and third under the new system, on the strength of their consistency (only seven drivers ran all 30 races, and Marcis had one victory in 1975 to Petty's 13).

Not that Latford's system went unchallenged since the seventies. It was in the media-rich '90s and 2000s that it truly came under fire. When Matt Kenseth won only one race en route to his 2003 championship, while Ryan Newman won eight races and finished in sixth place overall, the outcry was that Newman's race victories should have carried more weight in the points than Kenseth's consistent season. With Kenseth's steady success blamed for lagging TV ratings and NEXTEL primed to be a new series sponsor in 2004, NASCAR chose to tweak the system. The result was the controversial "Chase for the Championship," a sort of playoff system where, after twenty-six races, the top ten drivers in the points would be locked in to compete amongst themselves for the series title, re-seeded according to their position in the points, and later based upon the number of wins they scored on the season.

The points system was never a totally intuitive points system. But at the same time, if you (as a fan) could grasp the workings of the points system, you were part of the "in" crowd. It was sort of like the track operator who explained that for years, they had never needed a scoreboard because "we knew Vermonters could count."

I suppose that's why I felt insulted when Brian France announced a new "easier to understand" points system for 2011. The new system awards 43 points for first place, with one fewer point for each lower position, and three bonus points to the race winner (plus a single bonus point for laps led and one more for the driver who leads the most laps). All drivers still receive points, so if you scale down the old system, the spread through the field is still about equal, with the exception of the top eleven (where the spread used to be a bit wider) and the race winner. So while I'd prefer no change to token change, it's not the system that I have a problem with.

It's that we, as fans, were told we needed something "easier to understand." So are NASCAR fans stupid? (My friends would argue this point, but mostly for my reaction.) What about simply widening the gap between first and second place, as was done a year or two ago? That way, a small points premium still exists for a top ten finish, with a higher weight for winning. That's the effective outcome here, anyway. Or give first, second and third places a higher points differential and keep the rest the same.

Instead, Brian France and NASCAR have handed fans the equivalent of the Easy Reader version of the same points system, simplified for fans' convenience. Never mind that only the savants in the fan base (who already would have no problems with the old system) and ESPN's statisticians (who have computers) are going to compute points standings on the fly. And never mind that they've altered the Chase recipe yet again, this time including the two drivers outside the top ten (but inside the top twenty) who have the most race wins.

The PR line is that this is another step toward solving sluggish TV ratings and race attendance. Incidentally, this is a problem NASCAR has faced since, oh, they started messing with the championship system wholesale in 2003. I would go out on a limb and even point to 2001. That was the year NASCAR transitioned from a primarily cable-TV schedule to broadcast-network fodder. Instead of no-nonsense broadcasts for race fans, we were treated to gimmicky broadcasts playing NASCAR up as some kind of spectacle. I've long felt that the pressure was on to shift NASCAR racing from an enthusiast's sport to a sport that could be followed by the most casual viewer, like football. And so we old-guard fans were treated to inane interviews and contrived catchphrases and broadcasts that assumed that everyone tuned into Fox was watching cars go around in a circle for the first time ever. NASCAR and their TV partners started chasing viewers, not fans. In the boardroom, viewers can be quantified. Fans are a little harder to pick out.

That's the best explanation I can come to as to why, since 2001, NASCAR racing has undergone so many tweaks and changes. "Aero-matched" race cars. A championship playoff system. Green-flag finishes. Caution flags for "debris on the track" that bunched up the field, but without any debris to show for it. A tweak to the playoff system. The "car of tomorrow" redesign (which I can't argue has produced a safer race car, but the original model lacked aesthetics that have been creeping back into the newest version). Another tweak to the playoff system. Late race-start times to benefit West-coast fans, then consistent start times to benefit all fans, and now late-season late-start times to conflict less with NFL football. Now, we get a new points system, and yet another tweak to the championship system.

All of the above have been introduced as solutions to sluggish ratings and attendance that started when NASCAR started tweaking the system in the first place.

NASCAR's biggest problem, at least as I've seen it, has been credibility. I'm not going to argue credibility this time, but I feel that in order to establish credibility, a sporting organization needs to be consistent, and this goes back to the method that determines a champion. Again, I'll draw the comparison to the National Football League. Over the last several years, much like NASCAR, the NFL has tweaked its rules to create a better game (as athletes improve) and to promote better safety for the players. Evolution is natural. But the method of determining the NFL Champion has not changed. When the New England Patriots missed the 2008 playoffs despite a strong season in a strong division, no one changed the rules. This year, in the wake of the Seattle Seahawks clinching their division with a losing record, there was talk of new rules as to how home-field advantage is determined, but no one talked of keeping such a team from the playoffs as long as they win their division.

Yet when a NASCAR driver wins a bunch of races but runs inconsistently the rest of the season, and misses the championship cutoff, suddenly the rules must be reconsidered. It reminds me of a few seasons back, when both Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. had weak seasons and were likely to miss the Chase for the Championship. The talk centered around how TV ratings might suffer if two of the most popular drivers missed the Chase. Two years later, not ten but twelve cars were now eligible for the Chase. And Earnhardt still missed it.

In the last ten years, there have been at least four different approaches to determining NASCAR's premier-series champion, including this year's changes. To me, it feels like there should be just one.

No matter how easy it is to understand.

Pace Laps...

I feel as though, in order to kick this blog off in style, I'm obligated to write some kind of expository piece that sets a sort of baseline to the blog, something to tell the readers what to expect. Of course, this is a challenge, because frankly, I don't have any readers at this point, nor do I know what kind of audience is going to come along with time. This is the kind of entry that might only ever be read by my best friend and a really bored reader looking at past entries to see how far back this thing goes. But that's no reason to go about it halfheartedly, is it?

Truth be told, it's my best friend Carmine who steered me in this direction. I've been blogging for years, on and off, as inspiration (and a lack of censorship) allowed. I'd just never tailored a blog to one particular subject. Then Carmine asked why, with my love of auto racing, I hadn't started a NASCAR-related blog by now. He mentioned it more as the kind of thing that would start as a labor of love, and maybe progress to something with a following, an audience, maybe even actual media relevance. Now there's a dream I could buy into.

The name is something I'm sure readers will eventually try to read into, much as people guess that the "3" on my license plate is a Dale Earnhardt homage (which it isn't). It's actually an old name. Back in the late 1990s, I was part of a relatively active and closely-knit community of people playing "NASCAR Racing" for Macintosh. While the Windows gaming world got all the iterations of NASCAR games from Sierra and later EA Sports, the Mac community got a port of the original circa-1994 "NASCAR Racing," and that was it. The result was an active fan community that released converted tracks, designed current car sets to replicate the modern-era NASCAR teams, and even managed Mac-only league racing. I was part of that scene, designing cars and helping to share tracks people had converted. One of my antecedents had started a site called The Tri-Oval, and others shared similar names related to the track metaphor, so I called mine Turn Three. When it came to naming this blog, a quick search on Google turned up nothing for a motorsports blog named Turn Three, and so I borrowed from my own past. Back then, I actually did kind of pen some timely commentaries on NASCAR from my own rather naïve perspective, so you could say I was blogging on the subject of NASCAR way back then.

Yes, I've used the acronym NASCAR a lot. It's a trend that will continue through this blog. As far as motorsports are concerned, NASCAR is my primary interest. Ever since my dad talked me into buying that NASCAR plastic model in 1995, ever since we turned on the TV as I glued it together and watched a team trying to correct a pit-road blunder (I would later learn it was the 1995 Daytona 500), NASCAR has been the one sport that I actually care about. I follow the NASCAR news and the rumor mills and the insider chatter, and so most of my entries will be relative to the world of NASCAR. But, as a car lover, I can't exclude other forms of motorsports from my blog. If something amazing happens in the world of WRC or Formula 1 that deserves commentary, I'll write about it. Besides, we can learn so much from what happens outside of our own sphere of relevance. For instance, the Ferrari F1 debacle of a few weeks' ago (a team-orders gaffe that cast a temporary black eye on Ferrari) should make us talk about the notion of team orders in team-driven motorsports. And with my friends participating in grassroots motorsports of all sorts, I'd be remiss if their adventures didn't make their way to my blog, too.

So, who am I? In short, I'm a fan and nothing more. But, as those of you who don't already know me will surely find out, "in short" is not my style. I grew up in New Hampshire, and outside of four years spent in upstate New York getting an education, I've lived here all my life. I started following NASCAR in 1995, when building a plastic model of Geoff Bodine's #15 Ford led me to watch a few races on TV. I'd never been a fan of any sport, so for the first time, my father and I had a sport we could enjoy together. That summer marked my first trip to the race track, a rain-shortened afternoon at New Hampshire International Speedway, but despite the rain and the lightning, I was hooked. And as with most subjects that intrigue me, I sought an encyclopedic knowledge of the sport. It wasn't enough to know who won the Daytona 500 in 1995. I wanted to know who won it for ten years prior. And I wanted to know everything about the minor leagues of auto racing, the divisions where tomorrow's stars cut their teeth and where today's hopefuls made their careers while hoping for that big break. Over the years, NASCAR has remained my true love in motorsports, but as my best friends have introduced me to new forms of motorsports, I've come to appreciate each form for the special challenges they offer.

At times, I'll call myself an "outsider." I read a fair number of message forums, some of which are frequented by men and women who are clearly "in the know." They're track announcers, crew members, media liaisons, and so forth, people who know what's happening because they make it happen. I'm just a fan. So when the conversation calls for it, I'll present myself as an outsider, to make it clearer that all I can offer is opinion or observation. I'm content with that, though. There are plenty of people to report the news; I'd rather analyze it.

But enough said on the who and the why. It's time for commentary. As a real motoring journalist, Jeremy Clarkson, has said ad nauseam, "How hard can it be?"