|
|
Thursday, July 3
20 crazy weeks
By Jerry Bonkowski
Special to ESPN.com
Twenty weeks. More than four months. A 141-day countdown, starting with Saturday night's annual renewal of the Pepsi 400 ... or the Firecracker 400, as longtime fans still like to refer to it as.
No matter how you say it or count the days, weeks and months remaining, the rest of this season holds the promise of being a marathon of epic proportions in Winston Cup racing.
Not only is the championship and the $4.25 million prize that comes with it a strong incentive, the sentimentality of being the last driver to win the 33rd and final Winston Cup title before Nextel takes over the series' title rights is an added bonus that will have drivers pushing their bodies, minds and cars to the absolute limit.
A maximum total of 3,700 points remains available for the taking by any driver in the final 20 week stretch. But with nearly unparalleled parity this season -- 13 different winners in the season's first 16 races -- it's conceivable to pick someone like Joe Nemechek, currently ranked 20th in the standings, as the potential champion by season's end Admittedly, Nemechek is a very distant 757 points behind points leader Matt Kenseth, but with the closeness of competition this season, no one currently in the top-20 can be mathematically discounted.
A lot can happen between now and the season finale on Nov. 16 in Homestead, Fla. Kenseth, who has been the most consistent driver this season, could suddenly go into a slump. Wasn't it just last season that we saw a similar happenstance with Sterling Marlin? The driver of the No. 40 Dodge led the standings for 25 of the first 26 races of the 2002 campaign, but when his consistency began to falter in the second half of the season, he eventually lost his lead a few weeks before an injury ended his season early.
Looking at the standings heading to Daytona, I'm going to make several predictions and observations that we very well may see happen in the remaining 20 races:
|  | | Earnhardt Jr. is currently third in the Cup standings, 176 points behind Matt Kenseth. |
The normally mild-mannered Kenseth will likely hold on to the lead for at least the foreseeable future, but if he starts ending up with average finishes like the 14th-place showing he had at Sonoma, rather than constant top-five and top-10 outings that he recorded in 13 of the first 16 races this year, he'll be prime fodder for racing's version of a hostile takeover.
I expect Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. (a favorite for Saturday's race), Jimmie Johnson, Ryan Newman, Kurt Busch and Tony Stewart -- all who have won at least once already this season (Busch has won three times and Newman twice) all to be back in Victory Lane at least once between now and season's end.
At the same time, drivers who still haven't won this year, including Rusty Wallace, who has been winless for more than two years now, as well as Kevin Harvick, Marlin and Mark Martin, could find the path to Victory Lane all that much more harder the deeper we get into the season. I'm particularly surprised that Martin and Marlin haven't won by now. And as for Harvick, he returns to Chicago following the Daytona race, where he has won the first two events ever held at Chicagoland Speedway. Can he make it three in a row?
Could Gordon, who has the potential to become the hottest driver of the second-half -- as he's done time and time again over the years -- do so again in 2003? If the driver of the multicolored No. 24 Chevrolet puts together any semblance of a winning streak or a string of consistent top-five finishes, he could easily overtake Kenseth and be on his way to winning a fifth Winston Cup title by season's end. For the most part, Gordon has remained in the shadows of notoriety and publicity this season, stealthily sneaking up to where he's at heading into Daytona: in second-place, two points ahead of Earnhardt Jr.
Speaking of Junior, he made a mighty rally -- much like he's done time and time again on the racetrack -- to sneak in behind Kenseth in the standings over the last several weeks. And while he slipped slightly from second- to third-place behind Gordon after Sonoma, he has the potential to become the most dangerous threat to Kenseth's superiority in the second-half of the season. If Junior is able to once again win at Daytona (and/or Talladega in a few months) and maintain the consistency he showed during the first-half of the season, 2003's might very well be his year for the taking.
Jeff Burton, meanwhile, could very well be in an improve-and-win situation, lest he be looking for work at the end of the season. Once one of the most promising drivers on the circuit, Burton has struggled miserably for much of the last two years. His current 16th-place ranking belies just how hard of a road he's traveled. And with primary sponsor Citgo pulling its multimillion dollar sponsorship at the end of this season, Burton has to pull out all stops to return to a regular level of success -- and quick -- lest he part ways with Roush Racing.
Still recovering from the broken foot he suffered at Charlotte, Bill Elliott keeps dropping hints that he may retire at the end of this season. While he's done that same schtick the last couple of seasons, you can't but help and take Elliott's veiled threats a bit more seriously this year. After all, he's in 19th-place right now, is still hobbled, and if his performance doesn't improve markedly and quickly, he may just decide to call it a career at season's end.
What about former teammates Ricky Rudd and Dale Jarrett? Since they parted ways at the end of last season, both have had nothing but trouble in 2003. Rudd is currently in 26th place with just one top-five finish in the first 16 races. That's a far cry from the expectations Rudd and his new employers, the Wood Brothers, had at the beginning of this season.
Jarrett, meanwhile, is in a situation that is nothing short of a full-fledged calamity. He's lost his crew chief, team manager and several other team members already -- and the season isn't even half-over yet. Even though he does have one win this season, there's no good reason why Jarrett should be in 29th place heading to Daytona. Rumors have become increasingly stronger and more frequent in recent weeks that Jarrett, who has a long-term contract with Robert Yates Racing, may ask to be released at the end of this season if his bad luck continues.
One the strongest tails I've heard of late is Jarrett could very be headed back to Joe Gibbs Racing to drive a third car for the team in 2004. Or, for that matter, Yates may just wind up jettisoning Jarrett much like he did with Rudd last season, feeling that DJ has fulfilled all his usefulness in the No. 88 car and that it's time to put a new face in the UPS Ford for next season.
What happens to seasoned -- and currently unemployed -- veterans like John Andretti and Mike Skinner? Will either of them be picked up by another team as a fill-in or replacement driver between now and the end of the season? Will they finally both find a team that can collectively give them what they didn't have or couldn't achieve with Petty Enterprises (Andretti) or at Richard Childress Racing and Morgan-McClure Motorsports (Skinner)?
Will we finally, after a long wait, start to see any type of rally from the newest young guns on the circuit, namely rookies like Jamie McMurray, Greg Biffle, Casey Mears, Jack Sprague, Tony Raines or Larry Foyt? Or will last season's ultra-exciting showdown between Newman and Johnson be an aberration, the type of year that comes along maybe once every decade between two or three of the sports most promising newcomers?
Will we see Jerry Nadeau, critically injured in a horrific crash at Richmond, return to Winston Cup racing at all, let alone this season? One of the friendliest and most highly respected racers on the circuit, the absence of Nadeau from the Winston Cup scene has made the sport a little poorer. While little has been said about his future prognosis, other than he still has a long road of rehabilitation ahead of him, the most important thing is for him to worry most about what's right for him, his health and his family -- and not worry about getting back behind the wheel, if at all. If he's unable to return as a full-time driver, Nadeau has a lot of business acumen and a high level of intelligence that could easily make him as much a success in the corporate world as he has been behind the wheel of a race car.
Will we finally see a resurgence of the Dodge nameplate in the second-half of the season? Chevrolet has dominated the first 16 races this season with eight wins, followed by five from Ford, one from Pontiac and only two from Dodge. Both Mopar-powered wins came from the same driver: Ryan Newman. While that's good for Newman, it's a bitter disappointment to other winless Dodge drivers including Rusty Wallace, Marlin, Elliott, Ward Burton, McMurray, Kenny Wallace and Kyle Petty.
So let the roughly final 204,480 minutes of the 2003 season begin. While that may seem like a lot of time to most people, ask any Winston Cup driver and they'll likely tell you that it still may not be nearly enough time for most teams to make the kind of move or marked improvement they want to make in the second-half of the season.
Yes, there's a grueling 20-week marathon ahead of us, but at the same time, if we don't keep a close eye on things, the end of the season and the crowning of the latest champion may be upon us before we know it. And that could potentially be the biggest surprise yet.
Jerry Bonkowski covers NASCAR for ESPN.com. He can be reached at Motorsportwriter@Yahoo.com.  Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories
|
|
|
|
