Potomac News Blogs

With an 0-1 count, do we go for a homer with Junior again? Yup
Brian Hunsicker
Apr 30, 2008

I admit that I whiffed on the prediction that Dale Earnhardt Jr. would come up with his first win at Talladega. There’s nothing disputable about it; I called a win, he didn’t (he finished 10th), and there’s really nothing more to be said.

Now, Earnhardt comes to the site of his last win, two years ago at Richmond. There’s every reason to think he could win this weekend too:

• He has been successful at Richmond. He has three wins at the place, the most of any track outside of Talladega. He had engine troubles (shocker) at last fall’s race, relegating him to a 30th-place finish, but his worst finish in the 10 races before that had been 20th.

• His team has been successful at Richmond as of late. In 2005 and 2006, then-Hendrick driver Kyle Busch accounted for the only real success at Richmond — he had four top-five finishes in the four races in those two seasons — but since then, the rest of the organization has caught up. Jimmie Johnson swept Richmond a year ago. In the fall race in 2007, Johnson, Jeff Gordon and Busch qualified 1-2-3.

In the wider picture, one I failed to account for last week, Richmond presents a better opportunity to win than Talladega did; I was swayed by our look at the unpredictability of certain racetracks, only to find they weren’t so unpredictable after all.

But Sunday proved to be anything but predictable, with all of the ‘wow, what’s he doing here’ guys finishing in the top 10 (Juan Pablo Montoya, David Ragan, Brian Vickers, Travis Kvapil and Casey Mears). So maybe our predictability study has been shot to hell. Oh well.

At any rate, Richmond will be easier to guess. The better teams will do well there, as you might expect. The chances for the random guys to dot the top 10 are reduced compared to Talladega and Bristol.

So dare I do it again?

Yeah, I will. Junior wins this week.

• MY, HOW TIMES CHANGE: The Associated Press has a nice feature on the wire about former Formula One driver Scott Speed taking up stock cars. He’s got an ARCA win already and has fared well in forays into truck racing.

Funny, I remember a different tune when Speed was on the way up at Toro Rosso. He was the American who ran his own way and had no interest in running stock cars. His future was in open-wheel racing.

But when that future dried up, stock car racing was still an option. Now, to be fair, the AP story makes no claims that he’s in love with the sport. Who knows, perhaps he really has changed his mind and is a stock-car fan now.

Either that or getting a new job changes your outlook.

(Photo by Glenn Smith/Associated Press)

Read Less...