December 14, 2011
By Chuck Abrams
At the beginning of the year, we had a conversation on RaceTalkRadio about who would have the better year after a team change – Marcos Ambrose as he left to join Petty Motorsports or Bobby Labonte, who was replacing Marcos at JTG Daugherty Racing.
Ambrose was my choice but our panel thought that Labonte would be able to bring more to JTG than Ambrose was able to.
Fast-forward to the end of the year and it is really a no-brainer. Ambrose easily outperformed Labonte, winning a Sprint Cup race and finishing 10 places ahead of Labonte in the standings.
Labonte started the season out well enough, finishing fourth in the Daytona 500, but it was almost all downhill from there. His next best finish was at Loudon in race 19, where he marked a seventh place finish. Labonte struggled with eight finishes of 30th or worse and 18 additional finishes outside the top 20. He had only two starts in the top 10. 26 races outside the top 20 is basically the full regular season outside the top 20. I call that a really bad season.
Conversely, Ambrose picked up his first Cup win in 2011 and had seven starts in the top 10. But his season was full of ups-and-downs. Ambrose also had seven finishes outside the top 30 and an additional 11 outside the top 20. That is 18 races outside the top 20 to go with 12 races that were top 10 finishes.
While neither driver is battling for a Chase position and probably won’t be in the very near future, Petty Motorsports certainly has more momentum than JTG and has a much stronger organization.
Bobby Labonte will always be a sought after driver if for nothing else than his past champions provisional. Labonte is the consummate professional but his best days are behind him.
Ambrose is certainly on the upswing and could possibly win another race in 2012, even an oval. But the competition gets tougher and tougher as you reach the top 15 drivers and he can certainly get to 17th or 18th, but getting into the top 15 will require a big improvement in finishes inside the top 15.
Ambrose is surrounded by Jeff Burton, Juan Montoya, Paul Menard, Mark Martin and others. Only 45 points separated positions 17 to 24th. To think they are all going to stand pat in 2012 is a mistake. There will be a lot of shaking up from positions 14-25 in 2012.
On the other hand, Labonte was 266 points behind Ambrose and would have needed nearly 90 points to have moved up in the standings. That’s about three positions a race. With the current point system, that’s a vast improvement needed in 2012. A lot will have to change for Labonte and JTG to affect those kind of changes.
While it is doable, it doesn’t leave a lot of room for error. And while I hate to say this, I don’t see Labonte being much higher in the points in 2012 than he was in 2011. If they cracked the top 25 I would be surprised.
Lemme know your thoughts.
Drive fast, turn left and keep the shiny side up.
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