tireball.com

Matt Kenseth found himself off pit sequence for much of Sunday’s race at Las Vegas Motorspeedway but with some luck from a caution managed a fifth place finish.

Problems began for Kenseth as he was running near the front of the field with a tire vibration. Kenseth was forced to make an unscheuled pit stop but managed to stay on the lead lap as the yellow did not wave until later in the race.

With new crew chief Todd Parrott the #17 car has moved up to fourth in the standings while starting the year off with three straight top ten finishes.

Kenseth is hoping that the success carries over to Atlanta where he has had good runs in the past and where the Roush Ford’s have been up at the front.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Drew Blickensderfer will again be a crew chief taking over for Mike Kelley as the man on the top of the pit box for the #60 car driven by Carl Edwards in the Nationwide Series.

Blickensderfer had been the crew chief for Matt Kenseth for the 2009 season when the 17 car won the first two races of the season. Following an eighth place finish at Daytona this year the driver of the 17 car asked for a change.

Blickensderfer was then replaced by Todd Parrot and put in limbo until it was announced earlier today that he would return to the Nationwide Series as the crew chief for the 60 car. The same role he held in 2008 when Carl Edwards finished second to Clint Bowyer in the point standings.

Mike Kelley will take over the role of competition driector for the Roush Fenway Nationwide efforts while Mike Beam who held that role will be elecated to sppedway specialist in the research and development department.

In other words a bunch of domino’s have been slid around the board to keep everyone happy and put them in some sort of role in which Jack Roush believes they can have success.

Blickensderfer has a lot to prove now, as anything less then the 60 car being the best of the field will lead to questions about his managing ability. Obviously the competition on the Nationwide side isn’t as tough as it is on the Sprint Cup side so Blickensderfer will need to do more then just be a top 5-10 car.

As for Matt Kenseth he will have to make the chase on the Spring Cup side and find victory lane to avoid people suspecting the problem with the team at the end of the year was the driver. Finding victory lane, making the chase and then avoiding a late season collapse are the three key ingredients in his 2010 run.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Following wins in their first two races together Matt Kenseth and Drew Blickensderfer appeared to be on the top of the sport. Roughly a year later the two have parted ways after Kenseth said that Blickensderfer and the team didn’t have good chemistry.

Todd Parrott will take over the top spot on the pit box this weekend in California. Parrott has guided drivers to 29 wins including Dale Jarrett’s 1999 Cup Championship.

Under Blickensderfer, Kenseth missed the “Chase” last year for the time time in his career. The two went to Daytona this year still together but following an eighth place finish in the event a change was made.

“The timing of the change is probably 100 percent my fault,” Kenseth said. “I know that I’ve been asked by Jack several times if there’s anything we needed to change on the team. … Jack talked to me in November and asked if I thought we were OK with everything we had going on, and I really did.

“I really felt like we needed to give Drew a full year and a full offseason. He was working on some things, trying to make it better. It’s really hard to explain the timing of the change. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not any good for anybody, really. It’s just kind of the way it went down.”

After the 2008 season, Blickensderfer was promoted from Nationwide Series crew chief to replace Chad Bolin, who remained with the No. 17 car as the team engineer. Bolin had replaced Robbie Reiser, the only Cup crew chief Kenseth had ever had and who is the organization’s competition director. According to insiders the two considered returning Reiser to the pit box but were afraid to take him out of his current managerial position.

Jack Roush has termed Parrott’s role as crew chief as “interim” because Parrott did such a good job overseeing the building of the organization’s restrictor-plate cars. He said Parrott’s experience as a championship crew chief with Robert Yates Racing and Dale Jarrett in 1999 was one of the reasons he is taking over the No. 17 team.

“I hope that I can just continue on, get the 17 car back to where it belongs in victory lane,” Parrott said.

Parrott was crew chief last year for part of the season with Bobby Labonte, whose car was operated by Yates Racing.

It’s been interesting. Knowing that Blickensderfer was removed from his spot created the why now factor. Ha

d he been removed at the end of last year everyone would have understood but you have to give kudos to Kenseth and Roush for stepping up and saying that the decisions was the drivers and that it was because the team seemed to be going through the motions.

It’s weird in a way. Kenseth entered this year with a pretty good chance to make the Chase if you asked me but now I feel he’s pretty much guaranteed himself a spot in it. It’s weird because “the Blick” wasn’t a bad crew chief, it’s just that the two seemed so alike that there weren’t many options for different ideas to get the car running better.

Without doubt Kenseth fans would have preferred to see Robbie Reiser back, but Todd Parrott is a pretty darn good pick too.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Under the hood of two of the Roush-Fenway Racing entries at Talladega will be the new FR9 engine specifically designed for NASCAR racing. In simple terms the wait for Ford Racing’s new engine has ended.

In a release on Ford Racing’s website it was confirmed that cars driven by Matt Kenseth and David Ragan at Talladega will be utilizing the new FR9 engine.

Code-named FR9, this new piece is the first purpose-built NASCAR racing engine to ever come out of Ford Motor Company. Its design has been spearheaded and developed by famed engine builder Doug Yates and Ford Racing engineer David Simon.

Brian Wolfe the director of Ford North America Motor-sports stated the enthusiasm at Ford over the new engine. “All of us are anxious to see it in competition for the first time.”

He’s not alone, as fans are wondering if Ford is again going to be a player in NASCAR. Currently the sports top three positions are occupied by Hendrick powered Chevrolets, while the fourth place car is in all essence a  satellite ran organization.

The highest ranking Ford in NASCAR’s top series is Greg Biffle who currently rests in 7th position. Of the 31 races won this season only 2 have been won by a Ford driver. Those two wins were a long time ago as Matt Kenseth won the first two races of the season.

The only question that remains to be asked if why are these engines only being used by Kenseth and Ragan. It’s an interesting enough question mainly because Biffle is 268 points out of first entering Martinsville. While the reasons aren’t stated publicly it’s likely that Ford doesn’t want anything engine related to happen to the two cars in the Chase (Biffle and Edwards) which will ask a bunch of questions going forward.

As for why Jamie McMuarray, Paul Menard and Bobby Labonte won’t be using the new engine your guess is as good as mine. If the engine was ready I would think that the guys at Ford would want to get as many laps on the new engines to see what they could do in an actual race. Considering that none of these drivers are competing for the right to be in the Top 35. It’s also possible that none of these drivers could be with Ford next season, with the exception of Menard whose contract situation is a bit mucky right now.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Matt Kenseth is the only Ford driver to score a win this season. Kenseth, a former series Champion, won the first two races of the season at Daytona and California.

As luck would have it this weeks race is in California and despite starting 18th on the grid for Sunday’s race many see Kenseth as a spolier.

The reasoning is that in 15 career starts at Auto Club Speedway Kenseth has 3 career wins and an average finish of 9th. Kenseth also has 11 top 10’s at the track which is the most of any driver in the series. All this despite Kenseth has an average starting spot of 22.7.

Only Jimmie Johnson (6.2) and Carl Edwards (6.7)  have a better average finish then Kenseth. Johnson and Jeff Gordon (3 wins) are the only other drivers to win at the track more then once.

After starting the season with wins in the first two events 2009 has been a tough year for Kenseth and his crew. It marked the first time since the beginning of the Chase format that the #17 car failed to make the Chase. Regardless of what happens in the remaining seven races this season will mark the first time Kenseth has finished outside of 12th in the points. Last season’s 11th place points finish ended a six year run of 10th or better.

Popularity: 53% [?]

Matt Kenseth snapped a 56 race win less streak when be crossed the line Saturday night at Bristol Motor Speedway. Starting from the pole Kenseth was unstoppable all night. The win was the tenth of his career and first at Bristol. In total he led 415 of 500 laps and the win placed him on the heels of qualifying for the Race for the Chase.

Jeff Burton who had not won since 2001 finished second. When asked after the race Burton seemed happy that his friend Kenseth had found his way to victory lane.

Kenseth wasn’t the only driver who gained ground on the playoff hunt. With a sixth place finish Jeff Gordon found him self back in the top ten in points. Gordon entered the night twelfth in points. Jamie McMurray entered the race clinging to tenth in the standings but struggled with rear end damage and a flat tire that resulted in a twenty-sixth place finish.

How close as the standings? With McMurrary’s struggles he fell from tenth to twelfth. Entering the night McMurray knew he needed a good finish but found trouble and now finds himself twelve points behind tenth place Jeff Gordon. Matt Kenseth is one point ahead of McMurray and Elliott Sadler can’t be counted out as he is only thirty-four points out of tenth himself.

Dale Jarrett fell from eleventh in the points all the way to fourteenth and is pretty much out. Jarrett got bumped early in the race and spun around courtesy of Ryan Newman. Jarrett could of still had a good finish as the damage was minimal but instead decided to return the favor to Newman. As Newman went to pass, Jarrett took a sharp turn resulting in both cars wrecking into the wall. Kevin Harvick who still had slim playoff hopes alive crashed into Newman thus ending his chances.

Harvick was so mad that he pouted in his motor coach after the accident. NASCAR would penalized Jarrett two laps for rough driving. Harvick eventually did return after repairs were made and finished the race but it would take more then a miracle to move back into the hunt. When asked if he was angry that Jarrett’s actions had ruined his playoff chances Harvick sarcastically but truthfully said “We don’t deserve to be in the Chase anyway.”

Jarrett refused comment after the race and left with his wife. Ryan Newman trying to avoid too much blame spoke “Mine was unintentional and his was intentional and that’s all I’m saying,”

With two races left it’s any ones guess who will be in the final ten. The top seven drivers all seem pretty safe but eighth place driver Carl Edwards is only 83 points ahead of Elliott Sadler who is thirteenth. Considering Kenseth was 160 points back of Edwards who was ninth entering Bristol is now only 61 points behind an eighth place Edwards and only 31 points out of ninth.

Still not a fan of the playoff system
As fun as it was to watch Kenseth finally win and be on the verge of making the final ten it feels a bit bogus. While I want Kenseth to be in competing for the Cup in the final ten races it still feels unfair that drivers who are 600 or more points behind point’s leader Tony Stewart will find themselves within 45 as the final ten races approach.

Jeff Gordon, Matt Kenseth, Ryan Newman, Carl Edwards and the rest of the guys who would benefit from this are good drivers. However this is not their year. It’s quite unfair that Tony Stewart, Jimmie Johnson, Greg Biffle and Rusty Wallace who have been consistent all season will see their points and accomplishments so far this season wiped away.

Popularity: unranked [?]