November 23, 2010
By Allen Madding
As the 2010 NASCAR Sprint Cup Season draws to a conclusion, looking forward one has to wonder what the 2011 season will bring.
Roush-Fenway has seemed to re-establish itself in the late part of the 2010 season with Carl Edwards winning two consecutive events after a long stretch of unnoticeable race finishes for the Roush-Fenway stables. Whatever the teams at Roush-Fenway discovered late in the 2010 season has to re-energize all of their teams heading into Daytona.
Kevin Harvick and the No. 29 Shell/Pennzoil Chevrolet team established themselves in the title hunt for the length of the 2010 season after failing to be contenders in 2009 and waged a war down to the last lap of the season fighting tooth and nail until the checkers flew.
Denny Hamlin and the No. 11 FedEx Toyota team gave Johnson his stiffest competition for a title that he has faced in five seasons. The energy and drive experienced during the 2010 Chase for the Cup has to carry over as motivation for the entire Gibbs operation heading into 2011.
Volkswagen has scheduled preliminary meetings with NASCAR to begin discussions about laying out a roadmap for the German auto manufacturer to possibly participate in American stock car racing in 2012.
Dale Earnhardt, Jr. indicated that a crew chief change is probably coming over the offseason with his No. 88 National Guard/Amp Energy team. Only this time, he says he is staying out of it and letting the Hendrick leadership figure that one out. Rumors are stirring that Hendrick might hire the services of Ray Evernham to come on the No. 88 team as a consultant to help the team navigate its way out of the sub-twenties and back into competition.
Kasey Kahne heads for surgery on both knees this week to correct a problem he has faced since childhood. He expects to be ready for tire testing mid-December at Daytona. Without the knee pain he has dealt with over the last several years, he may be even more of a factor in the 2011 season with his new Red Bull Racing team. Remember how well Hamlin performed after knee surgery?
What will become of Richard Petty Motorsports over the next three months? Will there be two RPM teams unloading at Daytona in February? Will Richard Petty be back at the helm of the organization if it still exists after New Years? Will George Gillett still have a stake in the organization by then?
Daytona’s new asphalt project is nearing completion. How will it affect racing at the World Center of Speed?
New noses will replace the “brace face” front splitter with external supports on all of the Cup Series cars. Each manufacturer has completed the NASCAR approval process with submitting their new noses, and teams have already been receiving the new noses. How will the new noses affect the balance of the Cup Series cars? What teams will figure out how to make the cars aero-balance the best -- quicker than all the other teams?
NASCAR announced the adoption of Sunoco Green E15 ethanol mixture fuel for 2011. How will it impact the teams and racing?
NASCAR has also announced that fuel injection is on the very near horizon to replace the carburetors that they currently use. Auto manufacturers abandoned carburetors ten years ago. Last word was we would see fuel injection around July in NASCAR. Wonder who will be the first team penalized for messing with the fuel injection system outside the limits of the NASCAR rule book.
This past week Brian France seemed to hint at a lot of things that NASCAR would be looking at over the off-season. Will the Chase for the Cup be revamped? Will races get shortened to cut out the lull in the middle of 500 lap events and just simply keep the excitement of the competition? Will the television broadcasts get revamped to showing more racing than commercials or even adopt the split screen commercial technology to keep the racing in front of the fans even during a commercial break?
And finally, will Jimmie Johnson and the Hendrick No. 48 Lowe’s Home Improvement Chevrolet team win their sixth consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship title or will someone else finally win the Chase for the Sprint Cup?
The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.
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