DEI has purchased Ginn Racing with an official announcement expected on Wednesday to unveil the four car lineup which will include Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Martin Truex, Jr., Paul Menard and Mark Martin. The merger was reported by ESPN and is expected to be formalized with an official announcement on Wednesday.
Earnhardt Jr will have a new teammate this weekend.
So now Regan Smith and Aric Almirola are being hung out to dry, at least temporarily. Regan was to drive the 14. But apparently the 14 points are going to Menard to lock him in the show. It now appears that Regan is out of a ride before he ever got to drive it. Tough luck, a smartass Sterling Marlin fan might say. Easy come easy go young gun.
But seriously. I suspect Regan will get the 14 next year at DEI and that Almirola will be sharing the 01 with Martin next year. Of course all of those plans are at least up in the air at this time.
Stephen Leicht, who drives Robert Yates Racing’s entry in the NASCAR Busch Series, won his first series race last weekend and became the first non-Nextel Cup regular to win a series race this season. Ironically, the same scenario unfolded last season when then-Busch driver David Gilliland pulled off a surprise win at Kentucky and was followed by Paul Menard’s win at The Milwaukee Mile. Until Leicht’s victory, Cup drivers had won every series race since.
“It is starting to sink in. It sets in more when I am with my team," Leicht said. "I don’t think the smiles have left their faces since we left victory lane,” said Leicht, who will look for his second consecutive win in Saturday‘s A####mp;T 250 at The Milwaukee Mile in West Allis, Wisc. (8 p.m. Eastern, ESPN2). “It is hard to describe how excited everyone is. I had to replay the end of the race a few times just to see the actual win and make sure that it was real.”
So who will it be? Marcos Ambrose? Bobby Hamilton Jr.,? Leicht again?
There are 22 Big Time Buschwackers in this Saturday's Busch Race. This is totally out of hand and destroying the series. NASCAR needs to change things soon. All this is is Cup practice. There is no semblance of a Busch race left.
Given that ####, let's see who the Busch Class points leader may be come Sunday. Marcos Ambrose is starting 12th in class and 29th overall. Can Bobby Hamilton Jr. catch him? It's very possible that Hamilton will be the number one Busch Guy come Saturday. He starts 9th in class and 26th overall.
But isn't the door wide open for someone else? It sure appears so. First in line is Shane Huffman. Huffman is third in the true Busch standings. He will start 6th in class and 20th overall.
Any other takers? Mike Wallace? Nope he qualified like #### Regan Smith? No he starts behind Huffman.
So while your watching the Nextel Cup Series Busch Series Practice Session keep in mind there is a Busch Class points race going on out there between Ambrose, Hamilton, Huffman and others. I'll give the best odds to Huffman. But I won't take your bets.
All manner of statistics can be used to show how thoroughly Chevrolet teams dominated the 2006 NASCAR Nextel Cup Series. Chevrolet won 23 of the 36 points races, the most races Chevrolet has won in one season in stock-car racing history. Chevrolets led at least 30 laps in all but one of last year's Cup races. Dodges failed to lead that many laps 21 times, and Fords fell short of that threshold 14 times. Most telling, though, might be this: Only four times all year -- never in the season's final 21 points races -- did the best Chevrolet fail to finish at least second.
What that means is that Chevrolet's teams were in the hunt week in and week out, and the fact that Jimmie Johnson, Kevin Harvick and Tony Stewart each won five races helped sustain the manufacturer's conversion rate as it won a fourth straight manufacturer's championship. On the eve of a new season, it's hard to see where the gap between Chevrolet and the rest of the field, even one including a new factor in Toyota, will change in 2007. Only one team, Robby Gordon's single-car effort, defected from Chevrolet to Ford after last season, and only one 2006 race-winning driver, Brian Vickers, left the "bow-tie brigade" to jump to Toyota. In the bargain, Chevrolet picked up Mark Martin from Ford for at least a partial schedule and replaced Vickers with Casey Mears at Hendrick Motorsports. Aside from that change in the No. 25 Chevrolets and the addition of Paul Menard in a third team at Dale Earnhardt Inc., the core teams in Chevrolet's NASCAR efforts -- Hendrick, Joe Gibbs Racing, Richard Childress Racing and DEI -- return with intact driver rosters for another shot at ruling the roost.
There are challenges. In addition to the arrival of the "car of tomorrow" for 16 races, Chevrolet teams also will be phasing in a newly approved engine package along with the Impala models that will be used in those 16 events. Still, in a year where unpredictability seems to be an overriding theme in the sport, the quality and continuity of Chevrolet's top teams makes it fully reasonable to expect another season in which Dodge, Ford and Toyota will do well to win as many races as a group as Chevrolet does on its own. Johnson's 2006 championship was the culmination of a five-year drive for his No. 48 team at Hendrick Motorsports, which now tries to become the first team to win consecutive titles since it did so in 1997-98 with Jeff Gordon.
"Last year, our guys really did a good job of staying focused on the job at hand," Johnson said of the challenge of repeating. "I think we do a good job after every practice session, qualifying session, every race, at not looking at too many outside influences. It's easy for us in some respects to stay focused. We just have that ability, and that's what our team is about." It has been more than five years since Jeff Gordon won a championship in 2001, his fourth title in seven years, and although Gordon made the Chase in the No. 24 Hendrick Chevrolet in 2006, he didn't win at least three races for the first time in 11 seasons.
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