This weekend the Sprint Cup Series heads to the hallowed grounds of the Daytona International Speedway, a track where victory is the most prestigious among the stock car racing world. 43 drivers will try to etch their names into history with a win under the lights, but only one will succeed.


1. Kyle Busch

Busch had an off day at Loudon, racing with a bad setup and never cracking the top-10. A late race scuffle with Juan Pablo Montoya added insult to injury, dropping Busch to 25th for the finish. However Daytona is a good place for Busch to rebound. In the Daytona 500 this year, Busch finished 4th after leading the most laps. He also finished second in this race last year by just .005 seconds. If things go his way this weekend, he may just end up in victory lane this time.

2. Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Earnhardt also had late race trouble when Jamie McMurray plowed into the rear end of his car while he was trying to enter pit road. From there he would limp his way around to a 24th place finish. Again though, Daytona is a great place for Earnhardt to recover. He is an excellent plate racer, and he's won at Daytona twice, including this race in 2001.

3. Matt Kenseth

Kenseth's car was off at Loudon, but he had started making a comeback before the final round of pitstops. When the rains came, however, Kenseth was back in 18th, and that would be where he would finish. Kenseth has been stout at Daytona lately though, with six top-10's in the past ten races.

4. Carl Edwards

Like his teammate, Edwards' car was off most of the day at Loudon, but had worked his way back into the top-15 before the last round of pit stops. When the rain came, Edwards was mired back in 17th, giving him a worse finish than he deserved. He hasn't been very stout at Daytona, with just one top-10 finish in six starts. However, that was a 4th place finish in this race last year.

5. Jeff Burton

Burton was consistent as usual at Loudon, charging into the top-10 after starting 31st. When he made his final pit stop Burton fell to 12th though, and that was where he finished. Burton hasn't done very well at Daytona lately though, with only one top ten in the past nine races.

6. Greg Biffle

Biffle was never in contention, spending most of the race on the tail end of the lead lap. When it was finally over Biffle settled for a 21st place finish. In his past two races at Daytona, Biffle has been able to crack the top-10.

7. Jeff Gordon

Gordon had a top-5 car all day long at Loudon, but had to settle for an 11th place finish when other drivers stayed out. Gordon is still searching for his first victory of 2008, and Daytona may be the place to earn it. Gordon has earned six career victories at Daytona, including a win in this race in 2004.

8. Jimmie Johnson

Johnson had a top-5 car all day at Loudon as well, and after others stayed out he still ended up with a solid 9th place finish. He's enjoyed sucess at Daytona in his career. His first career pole came there, and he's earned 8 top-10's in 13 career starts, including a win in the Daytona 500 in 2006.

9. Tony Stewart

Stewart had the car to beat at Loudon, but poor strategy late cost him not only the victory, but a top-10 finish, leaving him 13th. Stewart is also looking for his first victory of 2008, and Daytona is the perfect place for him to do it. He has won this race twice in the past three races, and he also finish 3rd in the Daytona 500 this year after leading on the final lap.

10. Brian Vickers

Vickers continues to be consistent as he tries to work his way into the top-12 in points, as he finished a solid 16th at Loudon. Vickers only has two top-10's in eight starts at Daytona, but his only victory came in a plate race at Talladega in 2006.



Other Notables:

11. Ryan Newman- Newman won the Daytona 500 earlier this year, he should be a driver to watch on Saturday night.

12. Kevin Harvick- Harvick had a good run at Loudon, but had to settle for a 14th place finish. He won the Daytona 500 in 2007.

13. Kurt Busch- Busch earned a much needed win at Loudon, and might make it back-to-back wins at Daytona, where he finished 2nd in the Dayton 500 this year.

14. Martin Truex Jr.- Truex earned a good top-5 finish at Loudon, finishing 4th. Though he hasn't had good finishes at Daytona he has run well in plate races in the past, having learned from former teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr.

15. Michael Waltrip- Waltrip earned his best finish in over three years at Loudon, finishing 2nd to Kurt Busch. Walrtip may carry that over to Daytona as well, where he's earned three of his four career victories.

Heading into the Lenox Industrial Tools 301, Kurt Busch, the 2004 Sprint Cup Series Champion, had struggled all season, with just two top-10's. Busch spent most of the race outside the top-10, but came to the pits on lap 217 for fuel, with plans to stay out the rest of the way.

After a wreck by Dale Earnhardt Jr. on lap 271, Busch gained the lead as the rest of the leaders came into the pits for fuel. Busch's concerns were making it to the end of the race with the remaining fuel in his tank, and holding off the pack in the final 25 laps.

However, just a couple of laps after the restart, Sam Hornish Jr. made contact with Clint Bowyer, sending the two spinning in turns three and four. The caution came out for the seventh time, and then the race was red-flagged for rain. Less than ten minutes after the red flag was thrown, Nascar called the race, giving Kurt Busch his first victory since August of last year.

"These guys made an awesome call," Busch said. "Sometimes you just don't win 'em the right way, I think we can honestly say that, but we had a lot of work and a lot of effort put in today and we'll take it."

The win vaulted Busch from 22nd to 18th in points. Busch is still 215 points behind Bowyer, who sits 12th in points, but this win was the first step towards a possible rebound for the team that has finished 32nd or worse five times in 17 races.

Behind Busch was Michael Waltrip, who earned his best finish since April of 2005, and J.J Yeley, who's third place finish tied the team's all-time best.

Meanwhile Tony Stewart dominated the race, leading 132 of 284 laps, but fell to 13th when Busch and others stayed out on the track or took fuel only on the last stop, and when the race ended just a couple laps later he was left with another disappointing finish.

"It's just been the oddest year I've ever seen for this race team," Stewart said. "It's just frustrating. There isn't anybody that's going to tell you any different than that. There's nothing you can do. If there was something we could do about it we'd change it."

Stewart's teammate Kyle Busch was involved in a late-race conflict with Juan Pablo Montoya. The two had bumped and banged in the laps before the final caution. Several moments after the field had slowed to caution speed, the two exchanged bumps on the front straightaway before Montoya turned into Busch, who's spinning car came back and made contact with Montoya and sent him spinning as well.

Montoya would be penalized two laps for reckless driving, and finished 32nd, while the points leader Busch finished 25th.

With just nine races left before the Chase begins, the battle to be in the top-12 is heating up, with 9th to 14th place seperated by just 97 points. 12th place Clint Bowyer is just 8 points ahead of Matt Kenseth who sits 13th.

I despise math in all its forms, but I am curious if anyone has ever complied statistics comparing the average number of years in NASCAR and wins.  I would like to see how drivers’ finishes with the CORN versus the COY.  Outside of that obvious correlation (younger drivers do better), I think that the number of years in Cup with the old car is going to have a bigger impact on current performance due to an inability to adapt.  If my hypothesis is correct, then drivers with less seat time in the COY are going to have better finishes than those who do. (Which means that the open wheel guys might really take off once they find their feet.)  Conversely, well maybe additionally, I would also like to know if NASCAR’s second agenda, equalizing the field, is really happening. Since everyone is starting at square one, it should follow that more teams should have similar finishing averages.   

That said, I think that a part of Busch the Pariah success in the Cup series is he doesn’t care what car he’s driving.  Yeah, I know, no kidding, but think about how many drivers you hear comparing the two cars. Busch grouches about the handling of the car, but I don’t hear him comparing the two like many drivers. Which is why the lack of success from Hendrick Nation and Gibbs (Busch excluded) stymies me. Those drivers are all talented multi –track, -vehicle, -series winners. I don’t think for a minute that Kyle Busch is THAT much better driver than (it pains me to say this) either Gordon, Johnson, or Stewart. But I am beginning to think that Busch IS that much better at taking the necessary (and un-necessary) risks to see what the car will and will not do and dealing with the car on its own terms and adapting to it, rather than trying to force the car to be something it isn’t (the old car). 

That still doesn’t make him any less annoying, but I think until more drivers adapt to the car instead making futile attempts at making the new car act like the old one, we are going to hear about Kyle for a loooong time.

As if we all needed another reason to dislike Kyle Busch.

(h/t to Bob, aka 4ever3)

"He’s got an issue because he gave me the finger, and you know what?" Gordon said. "That’s not necessary for a guy he just didn’t like racing him the way I did."

Gordon and Busch were teammates at Hendrick before Busch left for JGR this season.

"Kyle and I never had any issues," Gordon said. "But I raced him hard tonight just like I did everybody. And when track position is as important as it is here, you’ve got to race every single car for every single position.

"And I wasn’t going to give anybody an inch, and I was racing for position."

The brief article doesn't state what portion of the race Gordon hacked Kyle off by racing hard, but it wouldn't surprise me if it occurred while Jeff was trying to get his lap back during the middle part of the race.

At any rate, this incident marked the second time over the weekend that a member of JGR took exception with another driver racing them hard. Which makes me wonder when these JGR guys got such a sense of entitlement?

Hey Restrictor-Plate This,

Today is the big day. We've switched your community over to the new SB Nation sports blog platform. My name is Trei, and I'm here to help you get adjusted to the new home we've built for you. If you have questions or trouble with the new system, post a comment in this thread and myself or one of the team (lovitt, sixfoot6 or odacrem) will try to point you in the right direction.

Before we begin, I want to let you know we still consider this a beta platform, so don't be surprised if you find a few bugs or if everything isn't exactly right yet. We hope you'll take the time to report any problems you encounter at bugreport@sbnation.com. We'll be continuing to make changes and improving things.

Please take a few minutes to read about what's new below. But if you just can't wait to jump in, here are some quick things to check out:

1. Sign up for your SB Nation network account and claim your old blog accounts
2. Once you're logged in, press your  Z  key in any thread with new comments
3. Explore your dashboard and setup your profile
4. Read the guide to the new FanPost editor
5. Install the FanShot bookmarklet and post videos to Restrictor-Plate This from YouTube or images from Flickr
6. Click the "Rec" button on posts and comments to help other people find the good stuff.
7. Customize display options on your Edit Settings page

What Has Changed

SB Nation Network Accounts - the Big Change

Readers across all of our blogs told us they wanted one account to use on every SB Nation blog. To make this work, we're requiring that everyone create a new SB Nation network account. In most cases you should be able to keep your old username, but a few of you may have to choose something new, since every other community in SB Nation will be going through this same transition. We tried to be as fair as possible in deciding who gets to keep which name, using a formula that takes into account length of membership and frequency of activity.

We want to make it as easy as possible for you to participate on all of our blogs, but we don't want to encourage everyone to start visiting rival team blogs and initiating flame wars. To maintain friendly communities we ask that you explicitly join each blog in order to participate. It's a two-click process, but it does means accepting each blog's community guidelines. Just as you join each blog individually, you can be banned on each blog individually.

You can claim old accounts from multiple SB Nation blogs, and your new username will be retroactively attached to all your old comments and diaries. So now you'll be able to access all your writings from your single profile page... like magic.

To get started, click here to claim your old blog accounts and create a new SB Nation network account.

FanPosts (the Section Formerly Known as Diaries)

We changed their name. Why? Because we took this major upgrade as an opportunity to leave behind some vocabulary that never made much sense for a sports blog. SB Nation is the network of, by and for fans, and these are the blog posts we make. So we call them FanPosts. When you're at a bar telling someone to check out your online sports opinions, you don't have to suggest they read your diary.

FanPosts are displayed differently on the homepage - we include your avatar to give more credit for the time you spend writing great posts. The new post editor has a WYSIWYG view that provides easy formatting. It also auto-saves drafts so you don't have to worry about losing your work when you compose a post within the web browser. And you can now associate teams, players and games with your posts: these tools promote your FanPosts on our new team, player and game pages - across the entire network.

The new system does not work like the old diary editor. For example, in HTML mode the new editor doesn't auto-create a new paragraph from two line breaks. But it does offer a whole array of new features. Look for the blinking help button on the right side of the FanPost editor for quick tips, and take a look at our full guide to writing FanPosts on the new platform.

IMPORTANT - if you write your posts in Microsoft Word or some other off-line editor, you will get the most reliable behavior if you cut & paste your post into the HTML view of the FanPost editor. And if you do that, remember to wrap <p></p> tags around each paragraph so your text doesn't run together.

Visual Redesign

This one is probably the most obvious change of all. Like other major websites working to improve readability for their audience, we've adopted a fixed-width layout optimized for the 1024 x 768 resolution used by the majority of Restrictor-Plate This and SB Nation network users. Use the switcher below the user menu if you prefer the wider layout designed for 1280 monitors. We've introduced a top navigation bar with quick links into old and new sections of the site. We also polished a few edges, made some things larger, others smaller and moved a few boxes here and there. More changes and adjustments to come.

Search

We've completely replaced the old search engine with a new one. We're excited to make it easier to find old posts and comments, but we've only taken our first pass on the tools we're offering. We're focused on making search even better than what you had before, so please know that we're aware search is missing key features and we're working on it.

What's New

Schedule, Scores, Stats and Roster

Restrictor-Plate This now has all the basic information about the sports and hundreds of other teams. During games you'll see a regularly updated line score, and as the season progresses we'll track team stat totals and leaders. This is just our first step, so look for us to publish more detailed and archival stats in the future. The best part about all this sports data is that we've integrated it directly into the blog so. We now have special pages that aggregate all blog posts written about games, players and teams.

Recommending FanPosts

Some writing deserves more attention and more conversation. If you want to bump a FanPost up to the top and keep it there for awhile, just click the 'Rec' link under the body of the post. When a FanPost receives enough recommendations it will make the recommended list.

Auto-refreshing Comments

You no longer need to refresh the page to see new comments. If you're logged in, new comments will automatically appear on the page every few seconds. When you post a comment, the page will not refresh either. If you want to quickly cycle through all the new comments, you can press the C key on your keyboard. Unmark a new comment after you've read it with the X key. And use the Z key if you want to umark comments as you're cycling through them.

As you use these shortcuts to cycle through comments, press the R key to reply to the current comment. All these helpful keyboard shortcuts are listed at the top of each comments section for reference.

Recommending Comments

Now you can reward those folks who take the time to look up stats and make smart arguments in the comments. Next to each comment there is an 'actions' link that you can click to find the recommend and flag options.

Flagging Comments

To help the moderators on a site, we've built-in tools that let you flag comments that are spam, trolling or just plain inappropriate. Only moderators can see those flags.

FanShots

Many members of the community just want to post that one link, video, photo or quote, but don't need a full FanPost. We've got you covered: FanShots let you share YouTube videos, Flickr or PhotoBucket photos, quotes from articles, portions of chat transcripts, top 5 lists and simple links. If it's a video or image we'll put a thumbnail on the homepage when you post it.

For those of you who are experienced internet hunter-gatherers of sports material, install the bookmarklet onto the links bar of your browser and share FanShots with the community from wherever on the web you find that killer quote or photo.

Archives

It's much easier to find that post about a certain deadline trade or prospect retro feature. You can browse by year and month.

Avatars

Upload an image so folks can see your custom avatar on your profile, your FanPosts, and all your comments.

Network Profiles

Now that we have unified SB Nation network accounts, your profile will be your central hub for all of your activity on any blogs where you are a member.

Network bar

The top bar stays with you on all SB Nation blogs. It's a quick way to login and logout. When you're logged in, you'll see your avatar and screen name which links to your profile. The icon to the right leads to your Dashboard area where you can edit your settings, profile, account details and any FanPosts or FanShots you've published. As we add more blogs to the new SB Nation network, the My Blogs menu will be a handy way to navigate between the blogs you've joined.

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There are plenty more small changes and additions we've made, so please take a careful look around and explore this new system. We appreciate your patience and hope you'll help us improve the new platform for this and all the other SB Nation blogs.

And in case you missed it, you'll want to start by claiming your old blog accounts and creating a new SB Nation network account.

Hello,this is my first post to say hi and kinda get used to the place.I`ve been reading from here since the end of last season,when I was thinking about joining a site that covers NASCAR!I went to my first race in 1989. It was the Spring race at Bristol.I was hooked right away with the smell of fuel,tires and awesome racing.Since Bristol isn`t the best place to go and have someone explain things to you,because you can`t yell at the person next to you and have them understand what you are saying.I had to wait and bombard my buddies with questions on the way home(5 hour trip allows alot of questions)Well, within a few weeks...I was the one being asked the questions,because I had soaked up so much info on my new passion in a short time.      

As the title indicates, I am a novice to NASCAR.  I watch the panel of guys on Sunday mornings prior to the race of the day.

I have two questions.  What is the function of a restrictor plate? My first thought was that it controled the speed of the car.  Many years ago, when a person bought a new car from a dealership, there was what they called a govenor install for a break in period.  it restricted the cars speed to 50 mph if I remember correctlly.  Then when X amount of miles were put on the engine, it was removed by the dealership.   The second question is, What is the funtion of the oil plate cover?  There was an issue a few weeks back of the oil plate on Carl Edwards car coming loose or being off.  I saw on the program what an oil plate was, I just want to know it's function?  In my minds eye, a loose oil plate cover would mean oil would be flying everywhere. Gearhead Mom  

I just finished watching the Nationwide race at Talladega.  I was actually entertained......except for the red flag, it was delightful.  I even don't mind that Smoke won......I like Tony Stewart.  When little Brittany from Make-A-Wish hugged him I actually had some tears.......I think it was the look of absolute happiness that she had on her face.  Peace and God Bless, Mike.  

I am sad to report that NASCAR Inspector Brienne Davis was killed in a traffic accident Tuesday.

Continue reading this post »

Hey!  If you enjoy any kind of racing like I do....you may want to check out some F1.  I would love to attend one of the races live, but if you thought NASCAR was expensive....I mean I would have to leave the country.....'nuff said.  As you all know, cup is off this weekend.  But the Nationwide Series will be racing.  Have a safe and Happy Easter. Peace and God Bless you all, Mike.