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Friday roundup: Dover news and notes

Here are some of the highlights from Friday’s media availability sessions at Dover:

Pressure for the 48?

Jimmie Johnson hasn’t won since last year’s Dover spring race (which was in June, so it’s not a full season), which means you might expect him to come here feeling a bit more pressure than a normal weekend.

After all, it’s his best track — he has a record 11 victories here.

But Johnson says there’s actually less pressure when he shows up at Dover, because he’s so confident in how to get around this place.

Still, with Johnson in the midst of a career-long winless streak, Dover could be the best chance to grab a playoff spot and turn his season around.

Can the 48 get back to its old winning ways?

“I think we have created an environment of very high expectations because of the success we’ve had, and I think people forget how special our run has been,” Johnson said.  “We certainly want to get back into those ways and have it happen again — but history shows it doesn’t happen very often. We were very fortunate to harness lightning for a long stretch of time.”

Johnson said he’s “a realist” about his team’s progress.

“The encouraging news is we are making our cars better each and every week,” he said. “… We’re a victim of our own success, and I hope to create the headlines that we want and the headlines being along the lines of ‘Well, they should have won. It was Dover.’”

Pit guns among drivers council topics

This is probably a big “duh” since you would figure the drivers would want to talk to NASCAR about the pit gun issue, but Joey Logano confirmed the topic was raised during Tuesday’s driver council meeting at the NASCAR R&D Center.

“We talk about everything — we talk about pit guns and lots of other things,” Logano said. “I think the pit gun thing will be fine. There will be growing pains with some changes. There is a learning curve for the teams and NASCAR, but we have to make changes to continue growing and sometimes there will be pain when that happens. You can’t stay in your comfort zone forever because there is no growth in your comfort zone.”

Logano praised the drivers council as a positive forum for competitors to air their concerns with NASCAR in a private group. And it’s not all bad, he added.

“Our sport is in great health and we talk about that,” Logano said. “We talk about the amount of fans that are still watching our sport and how great things are going and we have a lot to be proud of.

“There is also a lot to work on, and I don’t think that is a secret that we are trying to make our sport better and better each day.”

Pain in the grass

Austin Dillon was just trying to avoid a wreck last week when he cut through the Talladega grass and ended up destroying his car as a result.

“I saw the cars starting to come even lower, and I saw there was a gap in the grass, so I just cut left,” Dillon said. “When I cut left, the first part of the grass was OK — then all of a sudden it felt like I hit a tabletop jump or something and destroyed the car.”

Dillon speculated he may have hit a drain or a buried pipe that had raised the grass. Otherwise, there was no explanation aside from the grass itself.

“It completely destroyed the car,” Dillon said. “It knocked the front clip up and the rear quarter panel off of the car and punctured the radiator, too. We were done after that.”

Drivers like Kyle Busch have been vocal advocates of getting rid of grass at racetracks, but Dillon said he’d like to go back and look at the exact spot he hit before making a judgment on whether the grass needs to go in that area.

Suarez still healing

Daniel Suarez has been posting workout videos lately where he’s using his injured left hand. But while the thumb has made progress from the avulsion fracture Suarez suffered at Texas, he’ll still have to race with a brace on it for now.

“It’s not 100 percent,” he said. “I can use the front palm of my hand very well, but when it’s time to push, my thumb is not quite there yet.”

Suarez said he thought about trying to race without a brace this weekend, but his doctor said to wait two more weeks. The thumb no longer causes him pain inside the car (because it’s stabilized with the brace), but Suarez can’t grab the wheel the way he’s used to with the brace on.

“It’s still stiff and it’s still a little sore when I move it too much, but it’s much better than a couple weeks ago,” he said. “I’m excited to finally have a regular glove and to not wear this thing (later this month).”

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The Top Five: Breaking down the Texas race

Five thoughts after Sunday’s race at Texas Motor Speedway…

1.  Busch is back

It had only been nine races since Kyle Busch last won, which isn’t much of a drought by anyone’s standards.

But the “losing streak” (I’m putting it in quotes because it was a pretty weak slump) may have felt longer for Busch because of some frustration along the way.

A second-place finish at Homestead last year (and in the championship) was one of four runner-up results since November. For a guy who is never happy with anything but a win, finishing second that often didn’t sit well.

“Certainly being that close, it gets a little old a little faster, you know?” Busch said. “… Being as close as you are, that kind of hurts a little bit more. Especially that final one — that one that matters, that Homestead one. That’s probably the one that stings the most.”

Much of the focus this season has been on Kevin Harvick — rightfully so, since he’s been a dominant force and has three wins. But don’t overlook Busch when talking about the best team of the season so far.

His last five races (starting with Las Vegas) have resulted in the following finishes: second, second, third, second, first.

And Busch now has seven playoff points — tied for second with Martin Truex Jr. Clearly, his season is off to a much better start than in 2017, when Busch didn’t win until late July.

“We’ll just keep plugging along,” he said. “I still feel like we need to improve more and more. It feels good to be able to run as fast as we are and still have the improvements that we can make.”

2. “Our bad!”

For the most part this season, NASCAR has officiated consistently. That did not appear to be the case on Sunday, when Ryan Blaney received an uncontrolled tire penalty but Kevin Harvick did not (when the situations looked to be at least somewhat similar).

After initially defending the decision, NASCAR released a statement acknowledging the non-call was an error.

“It was a judgment call, and after conducting a post-race review of the incident, an uncontrolled tire penalty for the 4 car would have been correct,” said Scott Miller, NASCAR’s senior vice president of competition. “We missed that call.”

There’s certainly an argument to be made that NASCAR shouldn’t have waited until after the race to determine the call was incorrect. Obviously, it would be preferable to get it right in the moment (and this would have been a MUCH bigger deal if Harvick ended up winning the race).

But honestly, I can’t ever remember NASCAR coming out like this a few hours after a race and saying, “Hey, we screwed up.” So that’s good! Kudos for that. They are human, after all.

Personally, I think it reduces some of the outrage to just admit a mistake when one happens and it makes it easier to move on. In the past, officials would have doubled down on the spin and put forth a “nothing to see here!” messaging strategy.

Fans can live with the occasional error if it is acknowledged.

3. Gunning it

 In comments to reporters after the race, Harvick shredded NASCAR’s new common pit guns and called them “embarrassing for the sport,” according to NBC’s Nate Ryan.

He emphasized that point in a media center interview, saying his team has had pit gun problems in four of the seven races this season.

“We had a pathetic day two days on pit road because we can’t get pit guns that work in our pit stalls,” he said. “Today we … got ourselves a lap down because the pit guns work half the time, they don’t work half the time.  Yesterday (in the Xfinity race) we had four loose wheels because the pit guns can’t get the tires tight.

“I feel bad for the guys on pit road because they get handed just absolutely inconsistent pieces of equipment. Today it wound up costing us a race.”

As crazy as it sounds, I hadn’t been on board with dumping on the pit guns because it seemed like only one or two teams was having a problem during a race — this out of roughly 200 pit stops.

And after all, it’s the teams who asked for NASCAR to step in and regulate this (it wasn’t even on NASCAR’s radar before the teams requested it).

“We’ll continue gathering information on the pit guns’ performance like we do after every race,” NASCAR’s Miller said. “It is too early to make assumptions without all the facts. It’s also important to remember that this is a collaborative initiative with the race teams.”

But as teams continue to struggle with the guns — and have their races altered by them — it’s looking like this concept should be scrapped if pit gun maker Paoli can’t get the guns to be more reliable.

As Busch crew chief Adam Stevens pointed out, teams can’t change their strategies — they have to take tires. And when the race comes down to something that isn’t in their control, it’s an uncomfortable situation.

“Is it concerning? It is,” he said. “I think it puts a lot of doubt in the (tire) changers’ minds, probably makes them make more mistakes up and down pit road than maybe what they would have if they had more confidence in their equipment.

“You’re definitely on edge, listening for a problem, looking for a problem.”

And despite being a member of the council that worked with NASCAR to implement the common pit guns, team owner Joe Gibbs has seen enough.

“I don’t like things not in our hands,” he said. “So to be quite truthful, I’ve taken a stand on that (with NASCAR). That’s something that I hope we continue to really evaluate.”

The last thing anyone wants is to see this impact the playoffs. If the pit gun issue can’t get resolved by the middle of the summer, NASCAR should give the teams six weeks’ notice and let them use their own guns once the final 10 races begin.

4. New kids

The veteran drivers ruled once again on Sunday, going 1-2-3 (Busch-Harvick-Jamie McMurray). They’ve won all the races since Daytona, although Harvick’s average age observation got reduced slightly with Busch’s win (he turns 33 in May).

But some of the “New Kids On The Track” — who appeared on a large cartoon poster outside the garage this weekend — had pretty respectable days.

Rookies Bubba Wallace and William Byron both had top-10 finishes (Wallace battled Harvick for the free pass spot at times and Byron held off Jimmie Johnson for the same position earlier in the race).

Other names on the banner with good days included Erik Jones (fourth), Ryan Blaney (fifth) and Chase Elliott (11th).

Maybe Eddie Gossage was onto something with his idea.

“We needed that,” Wallace said on pit road after finishing eighth. “Each weekend, something happened after Daytona (when he finished second). The only thing we did was shake it off and look ahead to the next weekend.”

5. What’s next?

We still don’t have a great idea which team is best suited for the long run this season.

Stewart-Haas Racing has four wins (Harvick three, Clint Bowyer one) and the Joe Gibbs Racing/Furniture Row alliance has two (one each for Truex and Busch).

In addition, the drivers from those teams make up eight of the top 12 spots (Team Penske’s three drivers and Kyle Larson are the others).

Harvick had boldly said on Friday he was better than Truex on 1.5-mile tracks, and perhaps that was going to be the case on Sunday (before Truex blew a tire and finished last). But then Harvick got beat straight-up by Busch — they were on the same strategy and restarted on the front row together with 23 laps to go.

Anyway, the point is: We still don’t know! There hasn’t been a decisive race yet where none of the contenders had a problem on a normal track (in other words, not an abrasive surface or a superspeedway or a short track).

And now with Bristol, Richmond, Talladega and Dover coming up, it’s going to be more than a month — until Kansas — when we get another chance to see which team has best figured out the intermediate tracks.

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The Top Five: Breaking down the Atlanta race

Five thoughts after Sunday’s race at Atlanta Motor Speedway…

1. Veterans Day

The top eight finishers at Atlanta all have at least eight seasons in the Cup Series — a veteran-heavy scoring pylon led by the definitive expert on this old track.

Was it by chance all those experienced drivers found themselves finishing toward the front?

“There’s no coincidence,” Kevin Harvick said.

First of all, Harvick is simply better than other drivers at Atlanta. He understands exactly how to get around the bottom quickly and without abusing his tires — as demonstrated in leading a combined 66 percent of the laps in the Cup and Xfinity Series races.

“He can be on a tricycle and probably be that fast here,” said Joey Logano, who finished sixth.

But the other drivers in the top eight aren’t too shabby either, and it’s because they know how to race from the days when it wasn’t just hammer-down and go all-out — a finesse that can only come with experience.

“This is just the way it used to be when you had a lot of horsepower and you could spin the tires a lot,” Clint Bowyer said after finishing third. “It seems like you get on these tracks like we’ll be at next weekend (in Las Vegas) and it’s qualifying laps every single lap, and those kids will show back up.”

“Those kids” weren’t much of a factor on Sunday. Kyle Larson finished ninth and Chase Elliott was 10th after pit strategy (the same as the one Denny Hamlin and Logano used).

But the others in the top 10 — Harvick, Brad Keselowski, Bowyer, Hamlin, Martin Truex Jr., Logano and the Busch brothers — all have at least 300 Cup starts.

So despite the youthful look to the Daytona 500, it was the veterans who took over once more experience came into play.

“Talladega is in April,” Harvick said, inferring that would be the next time young drivers would dominate the running order again.

2. Fords focused

Toyota dominated the last two seasons and Chevrolet had its fearsome new Camaro body hitting the track this year, which led everyone to believe the Fords might spend 2018 playing from behind.

But then the manufacturer went out and swept the top three spots at Atlanta, taking four of the top six positions overall.

“It’s clear the Fords have an unfair advantage,” joked Hamlin, who has spent the last two years hearing all the accusations about Toyota’s edge.

Ford drivers were optimistic after their solid day, but cautiously so. Atlanta is “a unique beast” and much different from the other intermediate tracks, Logano said. Just because a driver has a good Atlanta race doesn’t mean it will translate to the other tracks.

Las Vegas “really shows where your mile-and-a-half speed is at,” he added. “Next week will be the true test to see where we’re at.”

Bowyer acknowledged he was “a little bit nervous” in the offseason after knowing the Chevrolets would be showing up with a new body and the Toyotas wouldn’t lose anything.

“But so far, so good,” he said.

3. Jimmie’s jam

What in the world? After two races, seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson is 35th in the point standings — behind even Mark Thompson and DJ Kennington, who only ran the Daytona 500. He is the lowest-ranked driver of all those who have run both Cup races so far.

That’s what happens when a driver finishes 38th and 27th in the first two weeks of the season.

So is it time to panic? Of course not. Johnson and the 48 team can win anywhere, and that’s all it will take.

Still, it has to be unsettling at the very least. Johnson didn’t run well the entire weekend and was lapped on two different occasions before spinning out and really putting his race in the craptastic category.

Another bad run at Vegas could certainly challenge the team’s morale.

4. Gunning it

It’s really quite amazing how few hiccups there have been on the pit stops so far, at least in terms of subtracting one crew member. As noted after the Clash, it doesn’t seem like much of a factor and teams are quickly adapting to the new choreography.

What has been a challenge so far? Pit guns, apparently. As reported here last October, NASCAR implemented a common pit gun for every crew this year. But as it turns out, some teams are having hiccups.

Truex crew chief Cole Pearn told NBC’s Nate Ryan and ESPN’s Bob Pockrass after the race the pit guns were “pieces of shit.” And Truex noted it certainly would be unfortunate if a faulty gun cost someone a win or a spot in the championship race.

Several teams, including Truex, Harvick and Alex Bowman appeared to have issues with them.

But is that a trend, or just a coincidence? Or are they getting blamed for pit crew members messing up?

After all, it didn’t seem like the problems were widespread.

“Mine worked, so we’re happy,” Hamlin said. “If it didn’t work, we wouldn’t be happy.”

It seems too early to judge if this is going to be an ongoing problem or not. Perhaps as the teams work through the quirks of the new gear, it won’t be as big of a deal. But if it happens again in the next few weeks and turns out to be a continuing issue, it’s going to cause some major grumblings from the drivers.

5. Rain Dance

I woke up Sunday morning absolutely convinced the race would be postponed. Even the most optimistic forecasts said there was only a 20 percent chance of getting the race started, and once the rain hit, it would sit over the track and not move until Monday afternoon.

I’ve been through plenty of rainouts before, but this one was different. Now that I’m spending my own money (money many of you gave me through Patreon to travel to races), I felt deeply disappointed and sort of sick over it.

American Airlines was asking $414 to change my flight, which was a no-go. And buying a new flight would have been in the $500 range. That meant I was going to have to go home without seeing the race after making an investment to get here.

That sucked. But even with that feeling, it’s still not the same as what many fans go through during a rainout. After all, I’m supposed to be here; this is my job. Fans who stretch the budget and spend vacation time in order to make a race and then have to leave to get back home for work, school or other obligations must feel so empty and sad when that happens.

I had a little taste of it Sunday morning, but I got lucky when the entire race unexpectedly got in, just with a two-hour delay.

If it hadn’t, at least fans at Atlanta had a “Perfect Weather Guarantee” that would have given them a ticket credit had the race been postponed and they were unable to attend.

That should be the standard at all tracks. The industry has to make it so that NASCAR’s most loyal customers don’t get burned and have nothing to show for their time and money. Because after an experience like that, who would want to come back and try it again?

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NASCAR planning to mandate standard pit gun beginning in 2018

Over the last few years, race teams have poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into developing pit guns that help gain valuable time for tire changers.

But that will change next year. Two people with knowledge of the situation told JeffGluck.com on Monday that NASCAR is planning to move to a standard pit gun — manufactured by Paoli — starting in 2018.

That means teams like Joe Gibbs Racing, which was known for its pit gun development, will lose a potential advantage next season.

When asked about the pit gun change, NASCAR issued the following statement:  “NASCAR is working on a number of initiatives to enhance both the performance and safety of our sport. One of the many competition initiatives considered is the future of pit equipment. We will provide an update on some of the initiatives at the end of the 2017 season. In the meantime, our focus remains on the exciting championship battles that are playing out across all three national series.”

NASCAR has looked for ways to remove costs from race teams, and standardizing the pit guns could potentially create more parity at the same time.

There’s also a possibility NASCAR could monitor lug nuts through the guns, because some teams have already figured out a way to get the pit guns to tell them if the tire changer properly secured a lug nut or not.

It’s unclear how NASCAR could roll out the change, but the sanctioning body could potentially pass out the pit guns at the track each week in order to prevent them from being altered.

This will be a major change for the sport’s tire changers, who can currently customize pit guns to fit their hand speed.