2007 NASCAR Season Wrapped Up

November 28, 2007
By Chuck Abrams

Chuck Abrams

After a long, long year of NASCAR and still hung over from a numbing Chase dominated by a couple of drivers, it is hard to remember just how the year started with so much optimism and promise for so many teams.

The year started off with a bang in the Daytona 500. Chad Knaus and other crew chiefs were tossed out for cheating. Toyota made an impact right away with Michael Waltrip’s car being held for some sort of carburetor fluid malfunction, there were some great qualifying races, we saw Stewart and Kurt Busch battle each other only to take each other out in the early going, Dale Jr. crashed out at the event everyone comes to see him win. They ended up watching Kevin Harvick and Mark Martin battle to a side-by-side finish with a melee behind them. Wow!

Then the regular season started and we should have seen it coming – Jimmie Johnson won four of the first eleven races and Jeff Gordon won three. Gordon also had half of the pole positions.

Then Casey Mears won the Coca-Cola 600 making Hendrick Motorsports nine for twelve. And it did not stop there.

Thankfully, we saw Martin Truex, Jr. Juan Pablo Montoya and Clint Bowyer get their first wins, Jamie McMurray finally got back to Victory Lane, Tony Stewart waited long enough but he won back-to-back races and three out of four in the Dog Days of summer when we expect our champion contenders to emerge. Kurt Busch sandwiched in two victories between Stewart’s run, Greg Biffle reminded us of why he started out with so much promise this year -- only to leave hearts broken with just one win late in the year.

So if you were not a Hendrick Motorsports fan, it was not a very exciting year for your favorite driver.

Dale Jr. never even got a sniff of a victory this year. After starting off the year feuding with DEI, he suffered through a rash of mechanical DNF's and announced his next journey by leaving DEI and going to drive for Hendrick Motorsports. This announcement sent his vast Red Army shopping for new merchandise for his 88 gear and will help propel Dale Jr. into a major sales frenzy in the coming year. He already makes up for nearly half of all NASCAR related merchandise sales and this will no doubt help that.

Kyle Busch continued his petulant ways and was cast off from Hendrick to drive for Joe Gibbs Racing. He now joins the rest of the Bad Boys and is nearly as desperate as Dale Jr. is for a win. Both Dale Jr. and Kyle Busch are looking to make statements in 2008 -- that they are better drivers than 2007 showed. Dale Jr. probably has the better chance at that with Gibbs converting to Toyota in 2008. But don’t count Kyle out – Gibbs will give Toyota its best chance at a win next year.

We also saw the continuation of major non-racing investors jumping into the fray that started with the Roush/Fenway merger. Evernham and Yates were two of the most respected teams to take on financial partners in the quest to join the "Have Crowd" and avoid falling behind into the "Have Not Crowd" even more. Technology is rearing its ugly head and it takes monster cash to stay on top of it. How much longer can RCR, Ganassi and other teams hold out?

And speaking of technology, the Car of Tomorrow (COT) made its debut and will run all of the races next year, not just most of them. And while many will point out that the COT produced most of the close finishes this year, I must remind you those close finishes were preceded by some awful 400 mile racing.

The COT was supposed to bring safety to the cars (which it did), end the dreaded aero push (which it did not) and put racing back into the hands of the driver (which it did not). The new cars are as aero sensitive as the older car and they did not really drive that well, especially in the turns. It is obvious that Hendrick has found a way to make its cars better than the rest of the teams. Let’s hope that learning curve gets fixed over the winter for everyone else. And let’s hope that NASCAR and Goodyear can bring a better product to the track in 2008.

And lest I forget, Roush Fenway Racing has some serious cracks showing in their veneer. Sure they got seven wins this year, two by Kenseth, three by Edwards and one each by Biffle and McMurray. But Smilin’ Carl showed his dark side with a fake “punch” at teammate Kenseth and Kenseth is losing the only crew chief he has ever had in the Cup Series. Biffle was nowhere near being a Chase contender and has to be chomping at the bit. If he is not a serious contender in 2008, look for his name to come up in the Silly Season.

And finally The Chase, which I suppose will be the Sprint Cup next year. What’s to be said? Gordon and Johnson absolutely dominated the final ten races. Gordon would have had his fifth title had it not been for Johnson’s unbelievable run. And the rest of the Chase contenders? They all submitted with a distinct whimper.

Let me know your thoughts on the year.

Drive fast, turn left and keep the shiny side up.

Feel free to send Chuck your thoughts on this and other race topics at Insider Racing News. The blog at www.turnleftracing.com is down now due to spammers. We will have that back up as soon as we can.

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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