Roberts: Pepsi 400 preview
A Chevy has won the last five Daytona races in a row dating back to 2004. When looking at the restrictor plate tracks for longer period of time, a Chevy has won 14 of the last 15 Talladega races and nine of the last 11 Daytona races. Jimmie Johnson has won the only two restrictor plate races this season.
A Hendrick Motorsports car has won three of the last five at Talladega and three of the last four at Daytona. You kind of get the picture here?
This Saturday night we get to rock-n-roll under the lights and firecrackers for a bit of Americana on the Fourth of July weekend. NASCAR, apple pie, and Chevrolet!
The Chevy’s are real good when they strap the plates on and the Hendrick boys are the best of the best Chevy has to offer.
Sure, there are a few other drivers and teams that have a shot a toppling the Hendrick gang. Teams like DEI, Gibbs, and Childress all have a legitimate shot of taking down Johnson and Jeff Gordon, and oh yeah, guess what manufacturer they drive?
Chevy comes in as a minus-300 (Bet $300 to win $100) favorite to win the race over the combined efforts of Dodge and Ford. That is an absolutely absurd number, but you couldn’t get me to take plus-220 (Bet $100 to win $220) with the underdog, so maybe it’s not too obscene of a number.
I can’t possibly take any car but a Chevy, but I’ll try my best to make a case for two Dodge’s and two Ford’s.
Leading off for the Dodge’s is Team Penske. During this year’s Daytona 500, Ryan Newman and Kurt Busch were hooked up like they were real teammates actually wanting to help each other which is something the Penske team hasn’t seen there forever thanks to Rusty Wallace. Not only did Rusty give team secrets away but he disliked just about every teammate he had because of his ego and paranoia.
Before Busch got taken out, both he and Newman were communicating well and making it tough for the top teams to hold them back. Newman held on for a 3rd place finish which was a career best for him. Busch has had all kinds of success in the plate races despite driving for Jack Roush all those years, an owner who doesn’t put much effort into his plate program which we’ll get into in a bit. Busch has yet to win a plate race yet, but I think he’s close and if you could find any odds in the 20 to 1 range it might be worth a risk.
The top team from the Ford camp in plate races is Yates Racing with the entries of Elliott Sadler and Dale Jarrett. Sadler finished 4th in the Daytona 500 and Jarrett won Ford’s last plate race with a win at Talladega last season.
Now, let’s go back to the Roush issue with their plate program. The reasoning for their lack of success at Daytona and Talladega is that they just don’t care. It’s only four races out of the year with 32 others to try and master. Roush has decided to master the mile and half cookie cutter track which take up half the NASCAR schedule and be the best there. That philosophy has been very successful, I might add. The “Cat in the Hat” went back to back with Cup Championships after years of trying to find his niche in the circuit. The more cookie cutters that came into the circuit, the better Roush got.
Roush has lucked out in a few plate races over the years at Daytona with wins by Jeff Burton and Greg Biffle, but he has never grabbed the crown jewel, the big magilla, or the cheese better known as winning the Daytona 500. All of his wins have come in the mid-summer Firecracker 400, now referred to as the Pepsi 400.
Tony Stewart won this race last season and finished 5th in the Daytona 500 this year. He’s been struggling right now, both with his health and finish positions. This could be a nice bounce back opportunity for the Home Depot team.
Childress comes with three legitimate cars that all have a chance at winning. The team is led by Kevin Harvick who has had just about every type of success in plate races except actually winning one. Jeff Burton is next in line followed by Clint Bowyer. Ironically, Bowyer was better than both his teammates in the Daytona 500 with a 6th place finish. Burton came back strong at Talladega with a 4th place run.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. gets a lot of the publicity when dealing with the plate races, but the truth is that Junior has won only twice at Daytona. He won this race in 2001. That was the first race back at Daytona since his father passed. Junior took the Daytona 500 in 2004 and hasn’t won since. It sounds like high expectations, but it’s their fault because they became so much better than everyone else. Now the DEI team is back pedaling. Junior is now competitive only because of his knowledge of the draft, not the restrictor plate engine program.
We’ll go with a Chevy again this week. We’ll take a Hendrick car and we’ll take the driver that won last week. Pepsi is his sponsor and if he were to win, it would be his 7th Daytona win.
Top 5 Finish Prediction:
1) #24 Jeff Gordon (6/1)
2) #2 Kurt Busch (20/1)
3) #20 Tony Stewart (6/1)
4) #31 Jeff Burton (25/1)
5) #38 Elliott Sadler (22/1)
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