Thanks for following along

Dear Friends,

Wow! What an overwhelming response this week…more than 12,000 hits on this blog. Not bad for something that didn’t exist a week ago!

From now on, you’ll be able to read my stories and columns on sbnation.com! Please bookmark it and come back often! 🙂

Talk to you all soon and hope to see you at the track!

— Jeff

Dale Earnhardt Jr. doesn’t understand the fascination with Dale Earnhardt Jr.

This blog has been moved to my new site at sbnation.com. Check it out here:

http://bit.ly/6A4eMP

Thanks for reading!

Riding with Matt Kenseth

Matt Kenseth took me for a pretty sweet ride on the road course at Charlotte Motor Speedway yesterday. A couple things stood out: 1) Look how he drove the Ford Mustang 427R around with one hand and 2) How, when he heard a caution was out, never got out of the gas.

This was a fun ride. Check it out!

The real reason for Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s 2009 pit-road struggles

Remember how surprising it was when Dale Earnhardt Jr. struggled on pit road last year? He missed his pit stall on a couple occasions and had other problems on pit stops during the early part of the season.

Pundits and fans tried to come up with explanations (“He’s not focused!” “His pit board is too small!” “He’s under too much pressure!”), but no one was quite sure of the reasoning.

On Wednesday, Earnhardt Jr. came clean: The first Daytona 500 pit-stall miss upset him enough that it got in his head, damaging his confidence on pit road.

“Missing my stall shocked the shit out of me at Daytona,” he said. “I was pretty upset. Nothing’s easy, but coming down pit road and getting in your stall is like breathing. It’s like shifting – you don’t even think it when you’re doing it, you just do it.

“It really made me start thinking about it, and I backtracked – I actually got a complex about it and became sort of something I definitely was not confident about.”

Earnhardt Jr. said he “tried to shake it off” and even came up with the idea of making a bigger pit board sign, which he called “ridiculously large-looking.”

He said then-crew chief Tony Eury Jr. asked the driver if a change in the sign would help on pit stops. Should he change the size? The colors of the numbers?

“I said, ‘Why don’t we just make this really ridiculous one because everyone’s giving us shit about it?’” Earnhardt Jr. said as surprised reporters laughed. “I did! I said, ‘Everybody’s making jokes about how I can’t get in the pit box, so let’s just make this sign and give them some more ammunition.’”

The pit road struggles set the tone for Earnhardt Jr.’s entire miserable season, in which he finished 25th in points.

“Who knew that was the straw that broke the camel’s back?” he said.

Edwards cautions against picking him to win the Sprint Cup

Last season, the majority of the media (including myself) predicted Carl Edwards would win the 2009 Sprint Cup title.

Think about that for a second: Jimmie Johnson was coming off his third consecutive championship, and most reporters picked someone else.

What were we thinking?

Edwards, meanwhile, didn’t even win a race or come close to winning the title, even though he made the Chase.

So when I asked Edwards on Tuesday whether I should pick him for a top finish in the standings again this season, he couldn’t quite offer his assurances.

“Man…” he said, thinking for a moment. “You were really good to me last year. I just don’t know, man. We’ll know after Bristol. If you’re running well then, you’re good.”

So I should wait to predict until then?

“Yeah,” Edwards advised. “You should.”

I doubt I could get away with waiting that long to make my Chase picks, but Edwards’ point was this: Sports are unpredictable, and it comes down to performance, not guesses.

That being said, Edwards was certain he would improve on last season’s results.

Why?

“Because we were so bad last year,” he said. “The things we did last year that didn’t work? We won’t do those things this year. We’ve kind of narrowed down our focus.”

Edwards said “the one thing for sure that’s going to make me faster” is an improved pit crew. The No. 99 team has shored up a couple positions, and Edwards said he can already tell a difference in pit practice.

“A guy can win a race and never pass cars on the racetrack, just pass cars on pit road,” he said. “And you can lose a race that way, too.”

The other factor is team owner Jack Roush’s continued assertion that the team has found something new and innovative that it lacked last season (Roush, in fact, has been borderline gleeful in hinting at the discovery this week).

Edwards wouldn’t get into much detail about them for obvious reasons but said he was excited.

“There’s a couple little things like that, but there’s a couple things that might be bigger things,” he said vaguely. “We’ll just have to see.”

Sounds like I should wait at least another week to make my predictions.

Stewart’s speaker blast (video)

Funny video that I moved over to SBNation.com.

You can still check it out here: http://bit.ly/6NoBCG

Harvick, Kahne master the art of mum

Kevin Harvick and Kasey Kahne knew this day was coming for the entire offseason: The crowds of reporters on the NASCAR Sprint Media Tour would ask them both about their futures beyond 2010, the year both of their contracts are set to expire.

And perhaps because they had plenty of time to prepare, neither driver cared to reveal much about their plans for 2011.

“The contract thing, it is what it is. Not gonna dwell on that,” Harvick said.

“All I ever want to do is race. All I ever want to do is win,” Kahne said. “So if I sit here and think about other things, my mind gets sidetracked. I want to really focus on what I’m doing – racing for [Richard Petty Motorsports], Budweiser, Ford.”

But will Kahne continue to race for RPM? Will Harvick stay on at Richard Childress Racing?

Despite what the drivers were willing to say, the feeling among insiders is that both will bolt after this season. It’s been widely speculated that Stewart-Haas Racing could be an ideal landing spot for one of the drivers.

So what did Kahne and Harvick have to say about leaving?

Harvick: “Look, the bottom line is Richard Childress has given me a great opportunity to be a part of this sport. The last thing you want to do is throw mud in somebody’s face and be disrespectful, so that’s my main goal this year: No matter how it all turns out, I don’t want to be disrespectful to anybody. If it ends, I want it to end peacefully; if it stays, I want it to stay peaceful.”

Kahne: “A lot of teams have showed interest, and that’s nice to know. I’m open [to staying] right now, because I don’t know exactly what we have. … I feel like it’s something I definitely need to pay attention to and not say, ‘Man, I don’t want to be here,’ because this could be a spot where I do want to be.”

Kahne, by the way, said at Homestead that he was almost certainly leaving RPM after this season. But there was no way he was going to repeat those comments Tuesday – that would set a negative tone for the entire season and ensure he’d be asked questions about his future weekly.

Not only that, but it could affect the team’s morale. Same for Harvick, though he insisted that the No. 29 crew guys were “not going to let the sideshow take over from what we need to do.”

To sum it up, the drivers said don’t know what their future holds. And if they do know, they’re not telling.

Not exactly the most compelling morning of interviews from the media tour.

Busch vs. Busch

Kyle Busch created a stir Monday afternoon when he told a herd of reporters at the NASCAR Sprint Media Tour that his brother Kurt Busch and Kurt’s new Penske Racing teammate Brad Keselowski hadn’t been working well together.

“From what I hear, he hasn’t consulted Kurt on diddly squat so far, so that doesn’t build a strong relationship from the start,” Kyle Busch said.

But that’s false, according to both his brother and Keselowski, who were asked separately later in the day.

Keselowski said he had sat down for conversations with Kurt Busch “quite a bit,” including two or three times in the past week.

“Kurt’s trying to keep all of our conversations secret, because we’re going to go beat [Kyle],” Keselowski said. “[We were] trying to understand what both of us want out of our cars, want out of our teams, figure out what it’s going to take to gel and click as teammates.”

Kurt said Keselowski had “done a great job with his questions” about the car and that working with his new teammate in the final three races of 2009 helped gain experience for the upcoming season.

Asked if he had heard Kyle’s comments that the Penske teammates weren’t working well together, Kurt shook his head and laughed.

“It’s not he-said, she-said anymore,” he said. “He’s my brother, and I can call him quicker than you can call him.”

Not completely sure what that means, but it was clear Kurt didn’t want to add to the conversation.

Sticks and stones may break bones, but name-calling from Busch bros. won’t hurt Addington

Crew chief Steve Addington apparently has some of the thickest skin imaginable.

After two years of being the target of vitriolic rants on the team radio from Kyle Busch, Addington willingly – by choice – signed up to crew chief for Kyle’s equally harsh brother Kurt.

Kurt Busch may have matured outside the car, but inside the car he can still be quite a handful when things aren’t going right.

But to hear Addington tell it, it’s no biggie.

“I listened to Kurt over the last few races scanning him, but to me, it was pretty easy,” Addington said. “I didn’t think he was that bad. I understand where they’re coming from. They’re competitive and they want to win every time they go out on the racetrack.”

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a second. Addington heard Kurt on the radio and STILL wanted to work with him at Penske Racing?

“Yeah. Yeah! It’s not that bad, guys,” he said. “From my seat, it’s cool to have a guy that’s that intense. It’s cool to have a guy who wants to win that bad. I’ve been through situations in my career of trying to light that fire, and it’s easier to calm them down than it is to light it.”

So is Addington’s skin so thick that he could brush off even the worst name-calling?

“Look, I’ve probably been called worse outside the box than what ya’ll have heard on the radios on Sunday,” he said. “That stuff doesn’t bother me and has never bothered me.”

Pat Tryson, Busch’s former crew chief, told Addington that the driver of the No. 2 car could seriously wheel it, and that it was much easier to deal with than a driver who rides around in 25^th place – no matter how much verbal abuse the crew chief takes.

“That’s the way we think,” Addington said. “What you take out of it is different.”

Addington was asked if he was wronged by Kyle Busch or Joe Gibbs Racing.

“J.D. [Gibbs] and myself have left on good terms – they did everything they said they would do for me,” he said, carefully sidestepping the question.

But he wouldn’t mind beating Kyle every week, right? Addington chuckled.

“I hope it comes down to the Daytona race between me and Kyle,” Addington said, “and we beat him.”

Sidebar: Kurt Busch explains how he went after Steve Addington.

“I was with my little brother the day news broke. We were taking a family portrait for our Christmas cards. He hung up the phone in a weird manner. He was kind of mumbling around and kicking the grass and he said, ‘Steve’s not gonna be my crew chief anymore.’ And I said, ‘Well, give me his phone number.’ That’s how fast I said it. He said, ‘Well you’re smart enough. You can find his number on your own.’ He wouldn’t give it to me. He’s always tough like that; he doesn’t make it easy. … So I called up J.D. [Gibbs] right away [and got the number].”

Keselowski may be a fighter, not a lover

I moved this blog over to sbnation.com — same stuff, just different site!

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