Driver Merry-Go-Round and a Driver's Comeback
By Richard Tix
Hot Laps will be a weekly article on news in the world of NASCAR. I will write these articles any weeks where I have a thought or opinion on NASCAR news that is worth sharing. So, this could be an every week thing, or just every few weeks. Its an opinion piece, so it is open to discussion and debate and would love to here your thoughts.
It has been a few weeks since we have dove into the "Hot Laps" article. It's been a busy time and some topics I just didn't want to touch on on NBTW. This week we will dive back in. For the most part we will just get a catch up on what has been going on in the NASCAR world.
Driver Carousel
This season many crazy things have happened. A lot of these things have revolved around drivers having to switch seats in Cup cars. First Kyle Busch got injured in an XFINITY race at Daytona. Then Brian Vickers again had heath scares that took him out of a seat. Those incidents moved David Ragan into the #18, Moffitt into the #34, and then Moffitt back to the #55 and Chris Buescher into the #34.
That's not even mentioning Kurt Busch being suspended to start the season and Regan Smith filling in for him or even when Kyle Larson fainted at a autograph session and Smith filling in for him. Oh, and lets not get started on when Denny Hamlin started the race at Bristol, had a rain delay, and he couldn't get back in leaving Erik Jones in the #11.
Let's just say its been a crazy season thus far...
Well, next up Michael Waltrip will make his normal Talladega start this week in the #55, but starting next week at Kansas David Ragan will step into the #55 for MWR for the remainder of the 2015 season. That leaves the #18 open again. Erik Jones will fill in for Ragan who is filling in for Kyle Busch until Kyle comes back (if he does in 2015).
That leaves the #34 a week to week ride for the rest of 2015 until they announce a plan for a full time driver IF they keep running the car week to week. It has been a crazy start to the year and all indications show it may not end soon.
Kurt Busch's Comeback
Kurt Busch's past is well documented and it came up again this season after he sat out three races to start the year. But, I am not going to get into that right here and right now. I will not focus on what he did, didn't do, or has done in his past. What is important is that this man was pretty far down even going back to last season.
2014 was his first with SHR, but he actually had a worse season than he did in 2013 with lower funded Furniture Row. Going into the 2014 season it looked like another one of his many second chances was finally going to turn his career back around. But his rough season and then off the track issues stopped him from getting back onto of everything personally and career wise.
He got back into the car at Phoenix and seemed like the only one who had much for Harvick (other than Keselowski). He was running the same set up at Harvick and looked just as fast at times. He finished PHX with a 5th place finish and rolled that momentum into a Pole at Auto Club. The next four races (including Auto Club) he led laps in each which leads us to this past week at Richmond.
At Richmond Kurt started 3rd on the day and got out front often. He ended the day leading 291 of 400 laps (which was the most in one race in his career) and took the #41 SHR Chevy to Victory Lane. No matter how you look at Kurt Busch as a person or driver, it was a come back story after a terrible 2014 season where he averaged an 18th place finish all year long. So far in 2015, Kurt has shown that he and the #41 team have a fast cars week to week so he could be a factor down the road when the Chase rolls around.
Talladega Qualifying
This week NASCAR heads to Talladega for the season's second Superspeedway race of the season. Earlier this year (obviously) NASCAR was at Daytona for the 500, which Joey Logano won. The bigger story that week/weekend might have been the qualifying debacle. With it being the biggest race of the season and the first one of the year, when things went wrong people pointed right at the qualifying format.
At Daytona, the group qualifying format was applied which NASCAR had not done to many times at the plate tracks. Things got heated early when McDowell and Bowyer got into it early in qualifying which left a bunch of carnage behind.
So, after all was said an done, NASCAR announced a few weeks later that they would switch the format on plate tracks back to a closer format to one car on the track at a time. Teams will now make two lap passes but the next car will get on the track quicker than they did before when NASCAR also did single car runs. NASCAR is hoping this reduces the risk of wrecks when drivers are in groups at these plate tracks and still speeds it up a bit.
Talladega will be the test to see how this works after a mess at Daytona. Some liked Daytona, but others hated it. So, NASCAR listened and now I will wait and listen to see if fans opinions will have changed?
