The NASCAR travelling road show travels across the continent to Fontana, California for the second race of the Sprint Cup season. This is where the complexion for the season ahead really starts to gel though there are a handful of drivers who have tougher tasks resulting from bad finishes at Daytona. Teams prepare all winter for Daytona. Now they’re in the week-to-week grind. We’ll start to see which drivers with the right equipment and team resources are poised to compete in 2010. Forty six cars are entered to compete for forty three starting positions in Sunday’s Auto Club 500.
Lots of attention will be on Roush-Fenway cars. They had an off year last year and are beginning to work in the new Ford engine. How will Richard Petty racing perform having switched to Ford with Roush-Yates engines? 2009 was an off year for Joe Gibbs racing. Will there be evidence their Toyota operation has turned things around.
How serious are some of the new operations going to compete?
Having signed a support alliance with Doug Yates to obtain Roush-Yates engines, the Front Row racing team will get owners’ points from the consolidation of six teams to four from the Yates merger with Richard Petty Racing. Cars #37 and #38 get points from last year’s cars #96 and #98.
Furniture Row Racing has been barely a cut above the start and park gang but this year has a support agreement from Richard Childress Racing and takes the owner points from #07.
The #26 car retains its points from Roush and will get engines and other support from Roush with Boris Said as their driver.
Of the remaining entries, which ones are serious about racing or are just putting in an appearance? Will the dreaded “start and park” withdrawals appear before the top 35 owners’ points transfer to 2010 results? What does it say about an entry that won’t even attempt to compete for the top 35?
Here are the teams with limited resources that could bow out shown as entries in the Auto Club 500.
#09 – Aric Almirola, Chevy, James Finch
#13 – Max Papis, Toyota, Bob Jermain
#35 – Johnny Sauter, Chevy, Beth Baldwin
#36 – Mike Bliss, Chevy, Tommy Baldwin
#46 – Terry Cook, Dodge, Dusty Whitney
#55 – Michael McDowell, Toyota, Prism Motorsports/Randy Humphrey
#66 – Dave Blaney, Toyota, Prism Motor Sports/Phil Parsons
#71 – Bobby Labonte*, Chevy, Kevin Buckler
#87 – Joe Nemechek, Toyota, Andrea Nemechek
#90 – Casey Mears, Chevy, Raymond Key
*Bobby Labonte has a past champion’s provisional to enter up to five races.
Aric Almirola, Johnny Sauter, Terry Cook, Michael McDowell, Dave Blaney, and Joe Nemechek have no sponsorship established for the race.
In evaluating Sprint Cup races last year, 2009, we had a hard time accounting for the “start and park” entries but did find it annoying. Late in the season when Jimmie Johnson wrecked at Texas and where his car finished relative to the rest of the competition could have been impacted by refusal to compete rides. One would hate to think a possible champion might get an advantage because of entries in the field who made no effort to complete the race. For 2010, our position is if a team does not intend to finish the race, stay out.
How this could be enforced is hard to determine. Invariably, some bogus cause is given for withdrawal such as “handling.”
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