NASCAR opinion, analysis and news
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My former USA Today co-worker Brant James joins me to break down all things Homestead, including how the championship was decided, the final career moments for Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Matt Kenseth and what’s next for both NASCAR and Brant.
I’m playing DraftKings this season and will be posting my picks here each week. Disclosure: If you want to play and sign up using this link, DraftKings will give my website a commission.
Last race’s results: Did not play in Phoenix due to Arizona state law.
Season results: $102 wagered, $104.50 won in 26 contests.
This week’s contest: $8 Favorite Son Finale contest ($100,000 in prizes)
Homestead picks:
— Kyle Busch ($10,500): I think he’s going to win the championship, which means he’s probably going to have to win the race. He’ll have to lead laps if he’s going to do that, so he’s my primary hammer pick.
— Kevin Harvick ($9,700): He starts seventh, but I could see him running top three for much of the night. So I’m going with Harvick here, although Chase Elliott ($9,400) was also tempting based on a place differential pick (Elliott starts 18th).
— Denny Hamlin ($8,900): He’s going to lead a lot of laps in the first stage with what might be the fastest car in Florida. That makes him a good hammer pick if he delivers, despite being on the pole.
— Erik Jones ($8,100): I’ve picked Jones so many times this year, and it’s been boom or bust. But he’s often been the cheapest Toyota option, and he starts 14th — which means he could gain you spots in a fast car. He had the ninth-fastest 10-lap average in final Cup practice.
— Ty Dillon ($6,900): This is a position differential play, because he starts 32nd. But he was 16th of 31 drivers who made runs of at least 10 laps in final practice, so that’s promising.
— Michael McDowell ($5,800): Obviously a bit of a risk — especially since he starts 23rd — but McDowell had the 21st-best 10-lap average in final practice (better than the likes of Kasey Kahne, Jimmie Johnson and Daniel Suarez), so there might be some potential there.
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With two fewer sets of tires available to teams this year, will Homestead turn into a tire strategy race? In this special edition of the podcast, the championship contenders sound off on the positives and negatives of the potential tire situation on Sunday.
At the end of a Richmond race in May 2011, Dale Earnhardt Jr. pulled into the garage, climbed out of his car and disappeared into his hauler. He had finished a disappointing 19th and was particularly upset about the result that night.
In those days, I covered Earnhardt like he was the home team — meaning he warranted a story regardless of the race outcome. So I waited 15 minutes or so, but he never emerged. Finally, someone from the team came out to say he had already left.
That was really surprising. Earnhardt always talked — always, always, always. He talked after good races, ho-hum races and even those terrible races in the Lance McGrew Era.
So when he didn’t comment at Richmond, I made it the subject of a column. The premise was basically this: Earnhardt declining to talk shows he may have reached a new low in his frustrating slump.
But here’s the thing: Even that night, it was never Earnhardt’s intention to leave without comment.
I know that because I got an email the next day with an unusual subject line: “yo, its Jr here.”
Huh? Was someone pranking me? Earnhardt had never reached out to me before that.
It began: I didn’t know of any other way to contact you. I guess I could have asked Mike (Davis), but I just read your column and got this addy from the bottom of the page.
The email address looked legit, so I read on. Earnhardt wrote he was certainly upset about the result and wanted to talk with Steve Letarte in the hauler afterward — but he did not mean to leave without speaking to the media. He had asked someone if there were any reporters waiting outside and was told no by mistake, so he went out the side door closest to the exit tunnel and left the track.
Earnhardt swore he would have commented had he known any reporters were waiting.
I promise I didn’t refuse a word with the media, he wrote. I just wanted to let you know that I wouldn’t disrespect you or any of your colleagues like that. If you don’t mind passing that along to whomever you think it would concern, I would appreciate it. See ya in Darlington.
Think about that for a moment. Most drivers wouldn’t give a second thought about declining comment to a reporter after a bad race — let alone feeling bad enough about the perception to reach out and clear the air.
But the most popular driver in NASCAR? That attitude is indicative of how he treated the media throughout his career. If any driver could have gotten away with being rude over the years, it was Earnhardt. Except he was the opposite.
For those in the NASCAR media, lucky us. The biggest superstar of this era has been respectful, courteous and understanding of the role reporters play. He has given some of those most deeply thoughtful and introspective answers many of us will ever hear. And he always treats media members like peers instead of peons, which is remarkable for someone of his celebrity.
Earnhardt could have turned out to be an ass to the NASCAR media and the coverage wouldn’t have changed. Just look at how Tiger Woods treated the golf media: Even though Woods was a jerk, his value to the sport demanded endless stories.
Fortunately for us, that’s just not in Earnhardt’s personality. It’s not part of his makeup to think he’s above anyone else, and it showed in his actions time and again over the years.
For example: On pit road after a race, he would often call out to reporters with a grin as the interview concluded.
“Everyone travel safely!” he’d say while walking away. “Y’all have a good week!”
When ESPN’s Bob Pockrass started to leave as a post-race interview wound down at Texas earlier this year, Earnhardt yelled, “Hey!”
Pockrass stopped and looked back.
“Happy Easter!” Earnhardt said with a grin and a wave. “I’m not gonna see y’all for two weeks!”
But more than just being cordial, Earnhardt scored points with reporters for his detailed answers. In an era where the media increasingly relies on page views, Earnhardt was a frequent clickbait topic. That would irritate and annoy many an athlete, because their social media posts and quotes get blown up and taken out of context in the name of clicks.
If Earnhardt was upset, though, he didn’t show it. He understood reporters’ jobs, why they wrote the things they did and didn’t make an issue of it.
But to really see a glimpse into Earnhardt’s character, just look at how he approached his answers to different reporters. Earnhardt never seemed to play favorites. An unknown blogger nervously asking a question at their first race was just as likely to get a stellar, memborable answer as the beat reporters who Earnhardt encountered every week.
I was fascinated by that, and once asked him privately whether he tried harder to give good answers based on who was asking the question. He looked at me, puzzled.
“Why would I do that?” he said.
It didn’t occur to Earnhardt, because he treats everyone with respect. Whether he knew a reporter or was seeing them for the first time, he consciously tried to give his best answer.
I’m telling you all this for two reasons. First, I’m not sure we’ll ever get that fortunate again. And second, I want to write it down in order to look back and remember what it was like to cover Earnhardt during his driving career.
Look, there are still personable drivers and accommodating drivers and interesting drivers remaining in NASCAR. But Earnhardt may very well be a once-in-a-lifetime package in terms of his star power, quotability, accessibility and authenticity.
To say he’ll be missed by the media doesn’t really do it justice, and it’s also premature. Only years from now will we realize how good we had it covering a uniquely genuine athlete who never acted like he was better than those who sought to make a living writing about his story.
What happened: Danica Patrick will retire from full-time racing and conclude her career with two races next season: the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500, she announced Friday afternoon. In an emotional and often tearful news conference, Patrick said she wasn’t forced into leaving NASCAR but was “nudged” into the next phase of her life after a ride for 2018 did not materialize. The 35-year-old has seven top-10 finishes and no top-fives in 189 career Cup Series races. Patrick acknowledged she has had “a little bit more struggle on a car-to-car basis than everyone, and it took me a really long time to say that. … With stock cars, the closing rates aren’t quite as quick, so I think it showed up more over time in stock cars just because you can be more defensive than in an IndyCar.”
What it means: The Great Star Power Drain continues in NASCAR. Whether or not you thought Patrick was worthy of an elite Cup Series ride for five full seasons despite not producing results on the track, you can’t argue with the name recognition she brought to NASCAR. There are people in this country who can only name one NASCAR driver — and it’s her. Though her celebrity and fame didn’t save NASCAR from its decline or turn the sport around, Patrick absolutely brought new eyes to the sport and created new fans — many of them young females — by giving people someone different to root for. Her loss, particularly combined with the departures of Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Dale Earnhardt Jr., is a big blow to NASCAR when it comes to coverage in the general sports world.
News value (scale of 1 to 10): 10. This is a mega celebrity retiring from NASCAR when some people were hopeful she could somehow remain in the sport and find another team despite her ride at Stewart-Haas Racing going to Aric Almirola.
Three questions: What team will Patrick run the Daytona 500 and the Indy 500 with? Can she jump back into an IndyCar and be competitive again? In a decade from now, what will Patrick’s NASCAR legacy be?
The drivers involved in NASCAR’s best rivalry are going to race against each other for the championship on Sunday.
Lucky us.
Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch genuinely do not get along, and there’s nothing phony about it. Busch sincerely dislikes Keselowski and has no plans to ever work on their relationship — this despite Keselowski making a public attempt to extend an olive branch in 2015.
“Sometimes you just don’t like a guy. Fact of the matter,” Busch said Thursday.
When Busch and Keselowski are put in situations where they have to be together — like riding in the back of a pickup truck before the race, for example — there’s rarely any conversation. At Dover in September, Busch was so ready to get out of Keselowski’s company that he undid the lift gate while the truck was coming to a stop and jumped out.
“Talking is a little overrated,” Keselowski joked Thursday. “I grunt — arugh! — like Tim ‘The Tool Man’ Taylor (from Home Improvement).
“Nah, I don’t know. (People) probably get caught up in all these relationship things and forget about the reality of what this stuff is supposed to be all about — and that’s going on the racetrack and racing.”
But bad blood between drivers can matter — as evidenced by the recent Denny Hamlin/Chase Elliott incident at Phoenix — and could actually manifest itself on the track. The rivalry, while not overly heated at the moment, could play an outcome in deciding the championship.
It’s probably annoying to the competitors — particularly Keselowski, since he is the kind of guy who enjoys getting along with people — but the rivalry is a fun championship subplot for everyone else.
For whatever reason, Busch and Keselowski always find themselves together. They are a year apart in age, have children born two days apart from the other, own championship-caliber teams in the Camping World Truck Series and have one Cup title and Xfinity title apiece.
This week, they were together again for a media tour in New York City — along with Martin Truex Jr. and Kevin Harvick. Truex joked Busch and Keselowski “were like best pals,” but then added “they acted like normal people, so it was good.”
Said Harvick: “I thought they did fine. We kind of kept them separate in the cars. Martin took one car and I took the other car to keep them apart. So they did all right.”
But what’s the deal? Why has the rivalry continued for so long? It was all the way back in 2010 when Keselowski made his famous “Kyle Busch is an ass!” comment at Bristol.
That’s seven years ago! And it’s still going. Why?
“Both of us are fortunate to have great cars and great teams, and when you run up at the front a lot, things are going to happen when you’re going fast,” Keselowski said. “… When you race at the front and you’re racing for championships, it’s a great position to be in, and it’s just the way it has unfolded.”
In the end, two drivers not liking each other might not matter. Harvick noted Thursday the championship race “is not boxing.” It’s about the teams putting fast cars on the track, not a battle of the minds.
And it might not even last. Just look at Harvick and Busch, who used to hate each other but now get along.
“This week when we were doing the media stuff in New York, we were kind of like high school buddies,” Busch said of Harvick. “We were kind of joking around and making fun of the others.
“So that was kind of weird. Kevin and I, friends? What? I guess we’ve grown to respect one another and what each other has done.”
But does Busch ever see getting to that point with Keselowski?
“Probably not,” Busch said. “He’s just too different.”
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The 12 Questions series concludes for 2017 with Landon Cassill, who has been in the last-but-not-least position for six consecutive years now. Cassill will end his tenure at Front Row Motorsports this weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway and is currently looking for a new ride.
1. How much of your success is based on natural ability and how much has come from working at it?
I’m (leaning) more heavily toward working at it than natural ability. There’s a lot of people out there that are just good at everything and I don’t think I’m one of those people. I think I’m good at a lot of things, but I definitely am a person who learns through my mistakes and fixing my mistakes, so I feel like I kind of have to work at it.
2. Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Carl Edwards and now Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Matt Kenseth have all either retired in the last couple years or will retire soon. What’s your pitch for fans of theirs to become fans of yours?
I feel like I’ve made that pitch almost every day through my social media activity in the way I communicate with fans. I mean, you just have to meet me at the racetrack and kind of see and understand how I kind of conduct myself, the way my sense of humor works. If you’re looking for a driver on the entertainment side of things, someone you’d like to follow off the track — and I think my on-track story is kind of cool and compelling as well. I think I’ve been through a lot in the Cup Series and had unique opportunities. I haven’t had that breakthrough opportunity yet, so I think it’s kind of, as Mark Martin put it awhile back, I’m kind of coming up the old-school way and I feel like that’s the way I’m doing it. So that’s a cool story to follow on-track.
3. What is the hardest part of your job away from the racetrack?
I think balancing the work between, “How do I make myself a better race car driver?” but also “How do I market myself?” and “How do I brand myself and spend time on social media?” Things like that.
It’s kind of going back to Question No. 1 a little bit. I work pretty hard on my feedback and my post-race reports and try to reflect on what I did at the races, how I can use that for the next race. Sometimes it’s busywork, like office work, and so much work that you have to get done at a desk. A lot of it is writing; I have an iPad Pro and a pencil and write a lot of my notes, whether it’s on the plane on Mondays or whatever. And it’s time sensitive, too, because I tend to forget what my car did as the week goes on. So I don’t write as well on Wednesday or Thursday after a Sunday race as I do on Sunday night or Monday morning.
So balancing that kind of stuff, getting that work done versus trying to be sponsor-friendly or fan-friendly and keeping up a solid brand and a good personality — because that stuff takes time, too — that balance definitely is a tough part of the job.
4. Let’s say a fan spots you eating dinner in a nice restaurant. Should they come over for an autograph or no?
Absolutely. Yeah, just form a line and we’ll stop eating our dinner and I’ll sign autographs and take pictures until everybody is through. I do that on Wednesday nights at the Brickhouse in Davidson.
You have a big line, huh?
Yeah. (Laughs) I’m just kidding. I’ve never ever been to the Brickhouse in Davidson, that’s just the first restaurant I thought of.
Yeah, I don’t care. I’m totally fine with it. I really appreciate people who know who I am or know something about me — like if you feel like there’s one thing you know about me and you see me out in the wild, you feel like, “Landon, I want to remind you of this funny thing you did,” or something I did on the racetrack or whatever, I want to hear it. I think that’s cool. That’s the kind of race fan I am: When I see somebody I look up to or admire, that’s how I open a conversation. It doesn’t bother me to meet fans in the wild, in public.
5. What’s a story in NASCAR that doesn’t get enough coverage?
(Long pause. His public relations representative Shari Spiewak notes he had all year to think of an answer.) I feel like this is important, this is like the story that hasn’t been covered enough. I don’t want to screw it up. I don’t want you to turn around and be like, “Well, actually, it was just written about last week in the New York Times, they did a big special about it in their sports section. Yeah, you’re gonna screw up the whole thing.”
I think we should talk more specifically about how drivers drive, what makes up their driving styles and what certain drivers do compared to other ones to make their cars go fast.
I think that’s a product of two things. I think number one, we don’t necessarily know. I think we do, but in all the money and engineering that we spend in the sport, we spend it all on the race cars because it’s kind of a long-hanging fruit in some ways. Because if we kind of put the drivers in the car and trust that they’re going as fast as they can, why not just build the car to go faster?
But we’ve never really over-engineered the drivers. I feel like there’s speed left in the drivers, learning their techniques and what Kyle Larson does differently than Jimmie Johnson, what Kyle Busch does differently.
And I think the second reason why we don’t talk about this a whole lot is because I think a lot of the way to talk about that and learn more about that is through data, through the feedback that we get back from the EFI and things like that. So I think the teams don’t want to give up a lot of information. But I think it would be really cool if you could get the engineers and the crew chiefs to be a little bit more open about their drivers and what they do specifically, what they do with the throttle, what they do with the brakes, if they’re really erratic with the steering wheel, if they use a lot of steering wheel, if they don’t use a lot of wheel. I think it would be cool to see a breakdown of how everybody drives, what path that sends them and their teams down.
6. Who is the last driver you texted?
David Ragan yesterday, and Dale Jr. before that. David asked me if I wanted to go hiking yesterday after we landed kind of early in Phoenix and I didn’t take him up on it. Usually I do. When David hits me up, we usually get dinner every few weeks, something like that, on the road.
In the past, you’ve tweeted a couple of screenshots of you having an incredible amount of unanswered text messages. Why do you not read your text messages? I understand not reading your emails, but how do you explain not reading your texts?
(Laughs) I don’t know. I don’t know, I just don’t open them. Like sometimes if we’re having a text conversation and it finishes and you’re the last person, like if you send the closing text to the conversation and I see it, then I just don’t open it. Does that make sense?
It pops up, so you don’t actually click on the conversation and read it. You just see it come up and you’re just like, “OK?”
And I have my read receipts on, so people know if I read it or not.
So you gotta be careful about that, because you don’t want people to say, “You didn’t write me back.” So it’s easier to say, “I didn’t read it.”
Yeah, kind of. It’s a way to maybe control the situation.
7. Do you consider race car drivers to be entertainers? Earlier this year, when we were talking about it, you predicted most would say no. It turns out that mostly everybody have said yes. So what’s your answer?
I mean, I feel like we’re entertaining for sure. I think we’re athletes and I think that NASCAR is an entertainment sport. But I don’t know if we’re entertainers.
I feel like professional wrestlers are entertainers, and I don’t want to compare NASCAR to professional wrestling. I think that’s a slippery slope and I don’t want to get in trouble for anything like that. And that’s not what I’m implying anyway.
But I think maybe we can be both. There’s some drivers out there who are not that entertaining — so would you call them entertainers? Or are they more like heavy on the athlete, not as heavy on the entertaining?
I don’t know. It’s up to the next person (in the 12 Questions). Well, I guess we’ll never know! We’ll never truly know the answer because I’m the last person to do that question.
8. This is the question you came up with last year: What is your middle finger policy on the racetrack?
This is such a good question. It really is. It is one of your all-time best questions for 12 Questions?
It has to be. Not to heap all this praise on you, but that’s one of my favorite questions.
Go ahead, heap all the praise.
So I feel like first of all, I’m guilty of it both ways. I’ve flown my share of birds in my career and I’ve received them in my career. When you take the emotion down and you think about it, I feel like it’s a sign of weakness on both sides.
It’s a sign of weakness if you’re flying the bird — it shows that you’re frustrated with the person behind you, that you’re letting them, whatever they’re doing to you, get in your head. I think back in the times that I’ve done that, and like I regret it every time because it shows I was more concerned being mad at that person, flipping them off, than focusing on the race.
So usually if nothing happens, that’s great, but if something happens, you end up in a pissing match with that guy. Then you just screw up your race because you’re worried about a middle finger. So I feel like it’s a sign of weakness if you’re flying the bird, and I also I feel like it’s a sign of weakness if you’re reacting to somebody who’s flying the bird.
Some people’s policy is, “I’m gonna wreck anybody that flies me the bird.” Well, that’s stupid, because you just let them potentially ruin your day. I mean, you might wreck them and ruin their day, but what if you damage your car? What if you ruin your own day? All because they flipped you off? And so I think it’s a sign of weakness if you fly the bird, and I think it’s a sign of weakness if you have a reaction to someone flying the bird.
When I get the bird, it makes me laugh because it lets me know that person in front of me, I’m in their head now, and it makes me want to keep doing whatever I was just doing to them to get them out of my way.
9. Some drivers keep a payback list in their minds. Do you also have a list for drivers who have done you a favor on the track?
No. Not really.
You don’t? Most people said yes this year.
I don’t know. I generally race people pretty fair, but my number one rule of thumb is I do what gets me the best possible finish. So that’s why my knee-jerk reaction to that question is no, because I prioritize myself. And I guess I’m not implying that those other people that say yes would prioritize someone else over their own finish, but I definitely prioritize my finish over everybody else.
10. Who is the most famous person you’ve had dinner with?
So I had a really cool dinner in England at the Goodwood Festival of Speed with some really cool guys, Dan Gurney and Sir Jackie Stewart. We were all at the same table, so there was maybe 12 of us there. That was a pretty cool dinner. I spent a lot of time with those guys at Goodwood. Those are definitely the most famous people I’ve ever been around.
At the time, I was driving a Chevy on the NASCAR side and my suit had a Chevy emblem on it. Sir Jackie Stewart said, “Oh, you drive a Chevy?” And I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “Someday, you’ll be good enough to drive a Ford.”
11. What’s something about yourself you’d like to improve?
(Thinks for a moment.) I guess I’d like to get better at answering questions on the spot.
These shouldn’t be on the spot, Landon. You helped vet these questions.
I forgot about that. Man, you know, I feel like I have good communication skills, but I feel like I’m not always the best communicator. Sometimes I feel like I can be a better communicator.
That’s what I hear from all the people who haven’t gotten replies to their text messages to you.
Yeah.
12. Last week I interviewed Austin Dillon. He wanted me to ask you: If you could bring three sponsors into this sport to make it better, what would they be and why?
That’s a really cool question. I would bring in some sort of technology company like Apple or Google or Microsoft. And I would hopefully build a deal around accessing their smart people and using that to our advantage on the racetrack, whether it’s like developing artificial intelligence for a simulation program or something like that. I think that would be cool, so definitely one of the major technology companies.
I would definitely like to have Whole Foods as a sponsor because the discount card at Whole Foods would be great. That would be useful for me and my family.
And beer sponsors always seem to work out pretty well, too. I think it’s nice having a beer sponsor.
Now the question that you are going to ask is going to an unknown person before the Daytona 500 next year — provided I’m still employed by all my patrons. What is something I can ask somebody going into the Daytona 500 next year?
Kind of going off of the answers to one of the questions earlier, I wanna know: What is your driving style? That’s kind of my question. But I want them to answer specifically:”Do you use a lot of brake? Do you get to the gas earlier than most?” I’m curious what your driving style is.
So essentially, “From what you know from comparing yourself to other drivers, how much brake do you use, how quickly do you get to the gas, how do you make it through the corner compared to others?” Something like that?
Yeah, I think so. It would be useful to know if they drive the car loose or tight, but I don’t know how they’ll answer that. But yeah, I’d like to know, “How much data do you look at and what does that tell you about your driving style?” How about that?
Thank you for joining us, and I truly hope we are doing this together next year at Phoenix, which meant you would have found a ride.
Do I have to be a full-time Cup driver to do the 12 Questions?
No, definitely not, but it would just be convenient.
Would you do 12 Questions with a used car salesman?
Sure.
There we go.