When you look at this season's final results for the Sprint Cup Series, it's hard not to be a little puzzled.
You can say that three teams dominated the season, but you have to be careful how you use the word "team." Roush Fenway Racing won 11 races this year. Joe Gibbs Racing won 10 and Hendrick Motorsports won eight. That's 29 of 36 races.
But if you look at it, Carl Edwards won nine of the 11 at Roush. Kyle Busch won eight of the 10 at Gibbs. Jimmie Johnson won seven of the eight at Hendrick. So those three drivers won 24 of those 29 that their teams won. It wasn't that multicar teams dominated as much as it was that particular drivers and their teams did.
I actually have a theory about why that is.
I believe that the new car that Sprint Cup teams used this year is a big part of that. Specifically, I believe that teams haven't figured out nearly as many ways to adjust on the car and make it both comfortable for a driver and fast enough to be competitive as they had with the old car.
What that means is that a team gets the car as good as it can get it. From that point, it's up to the driver to adapt to the car. It's no longer - or at least not right now - a matter of conitnuing to work on the car to give the driver the feel he's looking for. The successful teams are the ones where the driver has been able to adapt to how the car feels when the team finds a way to make it go fast. The driver becomes the variable, not the car.
That doesn't necessarily mean that Johnson, Edwards and Busch are the best drivers. This year, though, they were able to adapt their styles better to this car. Either that, or what is best for this car is also what is best (or significantly better) for them. Maybe both.
I don't think that Hendrick, Roush or Gibbs would set things up where one team is far and away better than all of its others. I think those teams share information freely, so it's not a matter of the 48, the 99 or the 18 having big secrets.
What I believe is that the three guys who dominated this year reached a point where they decided that the new car is what it is. To make it go fast, you can't drive it the way you drove the old car and you can't keep searching for that old car's feel. You have to learn what "right" is in this car.
To me, that's another reason Johnson's third straight title is so impressive. Clearly at the start of the season Johnson was not getting along very well with the new car. He and his team tested extensively and I think Johnson learned as much about how to change himself as the team did about changing the car.
Just my theory.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
How three drivers dominated
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3 comments:
While one can say "particular multicar teams didn't dominate as much as particular drivers on those teams did," the fact remains that those drivers would not dominate were they not part of those multicar teams; also, their teammates didn't exactly get lapped; a lot of times at least one of their teammates finished in the top ten with those winners.
While the COT may have had something to do with it, we've seen duopolies like Hendrick and Roush dominate the sport since the multicar monster became the force that it has, and with the old car. True, the COT's fundamental unsoundness as a racecar hurt other teams' ability to race, but it's misleading to pin it on teams unable to figure out how to adjust on the car, because to say that is to infer a fundamental level of raceability to the COT it simply doesn't have.
It is also laughable to say the driver is the variable, because the reality is that the teams with the largest engineering efforts and the most backing from the factories (and despite a lot of media coverage, that's not dropping as much as people think it will) are the ones dominating; the engineering Hendrick, Roush, and JGR have been able to put into the COT has made them much better than what everyone else has. You're giving the drivers far too much credit for the success of those particular teams.
To say that Hendrick, Roush, and Gibbs would not set it up to where one driver is lightyears better than his teammates is a bit misleading as well - for JGR and Roush getting depth hs indeed been a goal, but Hendrick has always been notorious for being biased in favor of one or at most two of his guys - he absolutely could have spent more on his #25 car and gotten more wins out of it all these years; he never did; this bias is part of the reason for the Gary DeHart meltdown in latter 1997.
I hate the new points system If Carl Edwards didnt receive the penalty in Las Vegas Carl Edwards would be 2008 Champ Plus under the old points system Carl Edwards would be Champ. The New Play-Off system only helps the people in the last 10 races not years round. Look at Nationwide Series and the Truck Series 2 real good chase to the cup
Roger, the penalty at Las Vegas only cost Carl 10 points in the Chase. Furthermore, anytime you speculate about what would have happened under the old points system, you have to consider different strategies under the Chase skewing the results of a different points system. Applying the 08 finishes to the old points system, Edwards comes out ahead by 16 points. But if they were racing under the old points system, the 48 would not have pitted at the end of Homestead and who knows what would have happened? In my opinion, you can't say for sure what would have happened under the old system when the old system's points end up being so close. It is much easier to say Gordon would have won it in2007 than it is to say Carl would have won it in 2008. But even in 07, the 48 team's full season strategy may have been different, resulting in a championship, had they been under the old system. It is best to go by the current points system when determining a champion because that is the one in which they are all trying to finish first.
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