NASCAR Wrecks - Phoenix, Fire It Up!

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Vote for "Driver of the Year"
and get a FREE NASCAR Jacket.
Click here to make your choice
http://www.nascarstockcar.com/driver.html

Drivers and Storylines to watch at Phoenix
By Greg Engle - Cup Scene Daily

Right now, the Busch brothers may be on fire at Phoenix, but can Kyle win here again? No driver has ever won from the pole at Phoenix but the same was true at Texas a few weeks ago; Kasey Kahne led from the pole there and won so he must not have heard that stat. Maybe Kyle isn’t listening either.

Here are your drivers to watch Saturday night:

Kyle Busch will start from the number one position Saturday night after scoring the second Bud pole award of his career Thursday night. And while no driver has ever won from the pole here, Busch does have a win (last November) and an eighth place finish in this race last year in just two starts at Phoenix.

"That was a great run for us,” Busch said. “It was a very strong effort for the entire Kellogg's/Carquest Chevy team. They did a great job for me today. We have a good racecar. It's the sister car to what we won with here last fall, so hopefully they can make it just as good if not better.”

Overall so far this year, Busch has finished inside the top 12 in five of seven races .The reigning Raybestos Rookie of the Year placed 15th at Texas Motor Speedway and fell to seventh in the standings with 950 points. He finished eighth at Bristol and ran third at Las Vegas.

The Las Vegas native has said the first Cup Series race he ever saw as a fan was at Phoenix;

Terry Labonte in the No. 5 Kellogg’s Chevrolet won it, that’s the same car Busch now drives.

Kurt Busch the older half of the Busch brother combo is also defending champion of Saturday's Subway Fresh 500. He’ll roll off seventh Saturday night.

Busch has an impressive record here; in his six Phoenix Cup races, Busch has one win, two top-five finishes and four straight top-10 finishes. In last year's race, Busch led five times for 154 laps. Maybe even more notable, Busch has completed all but one of the possible laps (1,874 out of 1,875). He’ll be seeking his second consecutive Busch Series win in Friday night's Bashas' Supermarkets 200.

Busch will be debuting a brand new car this weekend. The team used the testing session at Richmond last week as opportunity to shake down the new car. Until now, Busch has driven cars that were used by the previous driver of the No. 2, Rusty Wallace.

However, Busch will be without crew chief Roy McCauley this weekend. McCauley is sitting out the race while he recovers from a surgical procedure performed Tuesday to treat an arterial blockage after he experienced mild chest pains. He plans to be back in action next weekend at Talladega Superspeedway.

"The procedure was 100 percent effective in alleviating the problem, but my doctor advised me to take it easy and spend this weekend relaxing at home," said McCauley.

Matt Gimbel, who was Busch's crew chief two weeks ago in his Busch Series win at Texas, will fill in for McCauley.

Unlike absentee crew chiefs in the past though, McCauley won’t be in constant contact with his team this weekend via phone.

"We told him just to relax," Busch said.

Jeff Burton has been rather quiet so far this season, but this could finally be the weekend he makes some noise. Even though he’ll roll off 37th Saturday night, look for Burton to head to the front quickly.

“It is what it is and we've just got to get on it and make something happen, “Burton said of his qualifying run. “It's not the first time I've ever started in the back."

Burton is in his second year with Richard Childress Racing and the team spent the off-season revamping in hopes of returning to their former glory. That reworking seems to be paying off with solid runs so far this season. Burton has a pole, a top five finish and three top tens.

He now heads to the flat track at Phoenix, the type of track Burton excels on. Burton has seven wins overall on these type of tracks; four at New Hampshire, two here and one at Martinsville. In 2000, Burton started on the pole at New Hampshire and went on to lead every lap in route to the win. That was the only time in modern NASCAR history a driver has done that.

There have been 16 winners in the 19 races at Phoenix and only Burton, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and the late Davey Allison have scored two victories each. Burton's victories came in back-to-back seasons (2000 and 2001). He finished third in the spring race a year ago. That was his fifth top-five finish at the one-mile track.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is working hard to get back on pace in the points and he seems to be accomplishing that quite well. Dale Jr. placed in the top 12 in six of the first seven races this season and is sixth in the standings with 951 points. He finished 12th at Texas, 11th at Bristol and third at the Golden Corral 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway on March 20.

The next three tracks on the schedule combined, starting with Phoenix, are venues where Earnhardt has scored nine victories overall, including two wins here at Phoenix (back-to-back checkered flags in the Checker Auto Parts 500 in 2003 and 2004). He has four top-five finishes in his last five races here. He finished fourth in this race one year ago and 40th there last November; his worst Phoenix finish and second DNF here while in the midst of a forgettable 2005 season. He’ll roll off 11th Saturday night.

"We run pretty good at Phoenix. Last year, I thought we had a car that could run in the top three at the second race here (but) we blew a tire,” Earnhardt said. “We had a camber issue or setting or something that was bad for that tire.

But we like this racetrack and we've won a couple of races here and we still seem to have a good handle on the set-up when race time comes. Even when Tony (Eury) Jr. wasn't crew-chiefing the car in the first race, we still had a top five finish. So I'm really getting to where I like the track and I get a lot of confidence when I come here."

Tony Stewart is at one of his favorite tracks. He’ll start third Saturday night. Stewart has raced in six different series here since 1993 – the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series, the NASCAR Busch Series, USAC Midgets, USAC Silver Crown, the Indy Racing League and Supermodifieds.

In fact Phoenix is where it could be said that Stewart's climb to the top ranks of the auto-racing world began.

It was his performance in a USAC Silver Crown car in the famed Copper World Classic in February 1993 that had team owners in the IRL IndyCar Series and in NASCAR sitting up and taking notice of the future champion. The race was his first ever at the desert mile and the season opener for USAC's Silver Crown division. Stewart qualified second and went on to lead 31 of the 50 laps before finishing second to Mike Bliss, the 2003 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series champion.

His record in the Nextel Cup Series now stands at one win (1999) and five top 10s in eight series starts at Phoenix; and with a record like that Stewart could be the driver to watch not only Saturday night but in the big picture of the points race as well.

Historically a slow starter early in a season, Stewart is sneaking up behind series leader Jimmie Johnson with one win (Martinsville) and three top-five finishes in his last four events. Currently fifth in the standings, he’s only 97 points behind Johnson and Stewart’s team looks more like their typical mid-season form rather than early season.

“Last year, I think if you look, we ran well at a lot of races earlier,” crew chief Greg Zipadelli said. “We just made some mistakes; some things were costly to us. We didn't win as early as we should have last year. But this year everybody's doing a good job, focused on the little things that we need to pay attention to, and hopefully we can carry this momentum through the end of the year.”

“You know, I'm happy with where we're at. I'm glad we've got such a great start to the season and hope we can maintain that, “Stewart added. “Our team is working hard towards that obviously.”

But Stewart still maintains a cautious attitude when it comes to his strong early season start.

“We're in a lot better shape than we were last year at this time” Stewart said. “You still have -- at the end of the day, you still have to take it one week at a time right now. I wish I could say, yeah, I'm real excited about the opportunity and possibility of winning another championship this year.

Others:
Jeff Gordon has fared well here, registering six career top-five finishes and 11 top-10s. He starts 19th. Jimmie Johnson finished 15th in this race last season but has enjoyed success here, recording one top-five finish and three top-10s. He rolls off 10th. Matt Kenseth has competed in seven races at Phoenix, scoring one victory (November 2002) and three top-10 finishes. He starts 4th. Mark Martin has finished among the top 20 in 18 straight races at Phoenix. His only finish outside the top 20 came there in the inaugural race in November 1988, when he finished 36th behind first-time race winner Alan Kulwicki. He’ll start 18th. Dale Jarrett,who won the 1997 race at Phoenix, has nine top-10 finishes in the 19 Cup races held at Phoenix. He’ll roll off 17th.

Greg Engle, the Editor of the Cup Scene Daily is seeking employment within the motorsports journalism industry. If you are interested, please contact him at:greg@cupscene.com