By Revinjim
This isn’t easy, I want to make an educated guess as to who I think will win tonight’s NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race, and, at the time this is being written, we don’t even know who three of the twenty-four entrants will be. One of those three missing drivers will be selected by your vote, while the other two will transfer in from the NASCAR Sprint Open Sprint, a forty lap event from where the top two finishers will transfer. By the way, unlike in previous years, the driver with the most votes who finishes on the lead lap of the Open will transfer, rather than the driver who merely has the most votes. That is, even if Kenny Wallace, for instance, receives the most fan votes, he won’t be eligible to transfer to the main event, because his car has been withdrawn from the qualifying race. If Michael Waltrip, for another example, fails to finish on the lead lap, he won’t make it to the main event even if he has the most votes. So, the bottom line is, we don’t have a clue as to who will be voted in.
Although any kind of accident or altercation in the Open will mean elimination from the race, as there is no point in continuing with a wrecked car. The Open is an all-or-nothing race, much like the main All Star event. So the drivers who make the top two positions, and therefore the transfer, will not necessarily be the ones in the fastest cars, but will be the drivers who drove the smartest. This makes. in my view, Brian Vickers a very good candidate to transfer in. NASCAR This Week’s Monte Dutton seems to agree:
Brian Vickers, who boldly left Hendrick Motorsports at the end of 2006, is starting to see some results from his decision to cast his lot with Toyota and Team Red Bull…read more
However, just in case he doesn’t race his way in, my vote is going for Vickers.
There are other drivers in the Open who have a good chance to race their way in. Elliott Sadler starts on the pole, and if he can take the lead early, he can keep the lead. Dave Blaney, who is a viable threat in the Open every year, is sixth on the starting grid, and two other candidates, Scott Riggs, and Travis Kvapil, start ninth and tenth, respectively. Because the race is short, starting toward the front is, needless to say, important.
Since the All Star race is a genuine “checkers or wreckers” race, as Darrell Waltrip would put it, there are many unknowns. Though we can be pretty sure that the first three twenty-five lap segments will be fairly safe and sane, the fourth and final segment will likely be full of fireworks. Every driver in the race, aside from Jeff Burton, will tell you that if it looks like he could win, and the race is coming down to the wire, he will not hesitate to move someone out of the way to do it. Otherwise, the drivers will tell you, the race is nothing more than a test session.
Kyle Busch has yet to finish an All Star race. He starts on the pole, and, though winning the race takes aggression, Busch may still have some things to learn about the kind of aggression it takes to win at the singular event. Of course, the same thing was said about the “Wild Thing” at Darlington and Talladega, and young Kyle proved us wrong.
We would expect that it would be an experienced driver, who has shown the wither-all to win in the past. Since it is the twenty fourth All Star Race, with twenty-four cars entered, and Jeff Gordon’s car number is twenty-four, it seems the numbers would favor Gordon. Indeed, if he were to win, he would be the first four-time winner of the All Star Race.
But my personal pick is Tony Stewart. Why? Because he has been doing this for nine years, and he never makes the same mistakes twice, because he is always learning. His best finish was runner-up in 1999, and he has had four top ten finishes since then, three of them being in fifth place or better. He is on track to win this one.
It wasn’t easy to research this race, especially while using a dial-up ISP, and there is a surprising lack of information on line about the history of the race. But the overview of the NASCAR All-Stars on Rev’Jim’s RantsnRaves did get finished, and here are the links to parts three and four:
Featuring Dale Jarrett, Jimmie Johnson, Matt Kenseth, Bobby Labonte, and Jamie McMurray.
Featuring Mark Martin, Casey Mears, Juan Montoya, Ryan Newman, Tony Stewart, and Martin Truex, Jr.
NASCAR This Week offers two more excellent articles previewing the all star race in “Fans Want The Big Payback,” written by our very own Ovalscream, and Monte Dutton’s study of the race itself in “All Stars, All Lights, All Camera, All Action.”
Do You NASCAR? gives us the All-Star Challenge Preview, but while you are there, you may want to read the ever popular feature “Loose in Turn 3“
Trouble in Turn 2 gives us “5 Things To Watch At The All-Star Race,” and “Friday Notes and News.”
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