More thoughts on Stewart’s Sprint Cup crown

Tony Stewart’s third-career championship certainly was one for the ages. His team came to life like no other has during the Chase in the playoffs’ eight-year history. His five wins at decisive times and absolute attack on the field at Homestead will define his run, but here are some other angles to consider.

- Wins were important for Carl Edwards and Tony Stewart. Not only did Stewart’s five wins break his points tie with Edwards and hand him the Cup trophy, but Edwards’ lack thereof is more profound. Besides simply finishing one spot better in any of the 10 Chase races, Edwards’ season came down to just one pass – in May. Back at Darlington, the No. 99 lined up next to Regan Smith’s No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Chevy and Smith, who gained the lead by staying on the track with older tires, somehow held Edwards’ stout machine off to win his first career race. If Edwards, instead, had won the Southern 500, the three additional bonus points he would have carried into the Chase would have won him the championship.

- Stewart’s ending of Jimmie Johnson’s five-straight championships streak brings a new era in for some now-veteran drivers in the Cup Series. Johnson had won the championship every single year that these drivers have run full-time in Cup: Denny Hamlin, Clint Bowyer, Martin Truex Jr., Juan Pablo Montoya, David Ragan, David Reutimann, Regan Smith, A.J. Allmendinger, Marcos Ambrose, Michael McDowell, Brad Keselowski, Paul Menard, David Stremme, David Gilliland, and several others who have come and gone since 2006. That staggering list is yet another way of illustrating the half-decade dominance of the No. 48 team.

- Ah, the cure of a championship. If Stewart’s last 10 races had gone like his first 26 in 2011, his image would be considerably different. I came close to writing this article this summer “Has Stewart Hit the Jeff Gordon Plateau?”, where I would have compared Stewart’s bad luck and mediocre results to the same shortcomings that have kept Jeff Gordon from winning a championship the last decade. Instead, his gun slinging grabs for late-season wins perfectly complemented his suddenly fiery, but laid back swagger he carried during the season’s last two months. That championship win and style have helped the media especially forget Stewart’s clashes with certain press members during the season (when the going was tougher for the No. 14 team), such as during this media session before the September Richmond race, just before the start of the Chase. Stewart also ran into some offseason trouble back in January, after a scuffle with a track owner in Australia.With all the controversy that plagued former champ Kurt Busch this season, he could have used a championship as a curing elixir, don’t you think?

Zipadelli to SHR yet another horse on the crew chief carousel

Greg Zipadelli is reuniting with Tony Stewart. Stewart-Haas Racing announced Zipadelli as Competition Director this week, a position that has been vacant since the team released Bobby Hutchens earlier this year. Zipadelli vacates his crew chief position at Joe Gibbs Racing with the No. 20 Home Depot Toyota and driver Joey Logano. JGR announced Jason Ratcliff, the team’s No. 18 Nationwide Series crew chef, as “Zippy’s” replacement on the No. 20 pit box. SHR reportedly had been courting Zipadelli for a while, but JGR was reluctant to let the longest-tenured crew chief in the Sprint Cup Series out of his contract a year early. Zipadelli’s willingness to leave his longtime team may speak volumes about what many believe was a deteriorating relationship with Logano. The 21-year-old Logano has struggled in his three years in Cup, rarely putting together consistent runs of races and often complaining incessantly about his racecars. 2011 was a down year for Joe Gibbs Racing and now two of its three crew chiefs have changed.

The second displaced JGR crew chief, former No. 11 head Mike Ford, has yet to find work – and the windows for other jobs are closing. Steve Addington moved from Penske Racing to become Stewart’s new crew chief on the No. 14, championship-winning Darian Grubb moved from SHR to Ford’s old position on the No. 11, and Penske Racing filled Addington’s void by promoting Todd Gordon from its NNS No. 22 to the Cup Series No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil team. Certainly some team will scoop up Ford, who had been with JGR since 2005, but the winning race teams in need of a wrench have seemingly made their moves.

Allmendinger may be getting coal for Christmas

Richard Petty Motorsports is one of the teams actively looking at free agent Kurt Busch. One reason why the team is talking to Busch, according to published reports this past week, is because sponsor Best Buy wants a better driver. Best Buy sponsored RPM driver A.J. Allmendinger in the No. 43 Ford for most races this season, has been with RPM or the former incarnation of the team, Gillett-Evernham Motorsports, since 2008. Allmendinger had the best season of his five-year career, with 10 top 10s and a 15^th place finish in the points. But Best Buy, which has been in the Cup Series since 2006 with drivers Jeff Green, Elliott Sadler, and Allmendinger, wants more.

But even if Busch, whose bad image would clash with the fan-friendly persona of The King at RPM, does not work out a deal to drive in the No. 43, Allmendinger’s future with the team could still be in trouble. Best Buy is rumored to be negotiating with fellow-Ford team Roush Fenway Racing to become Matt Kenseth’s sponsor on the No. 17. That team is without a sponsor next season and the partnership would make sense for both parties, but would leave a semi-teammate in Allmendinger without a ride and a financially-recovered RPM scrambling to keep the famed No. 43 on the track for 2011. And how ironic would Jack Roush be if he out-negotiated RPM to take Best Buy and kept his former driver Busch from getting that ride?

Allmendinger, though, deserves a ride. He has proven himself worthy of a Cup seat the past two seasons and seems inches away from being a regular top 10 or top 12-driver. If he indeed does lose his ride, the pickin’s are slim to find another one. Front Row Motorsports and FAS Lane Racing run Fords and either Roush or RPM could negotiate a deal to put “The Dinger” in one of those cars. If not, yet another driver could fall victim to the poor economy and bad sponsor-mind-changing-timing.

Best Buy does have a history of questionable driver moves this time of year. Around Christmas in 2008, Best Buy wanted Allmendinger to replace Sadler in the No. 19 GEM Dodge. Allmendinger had been fired by Red Bull Racing and run a few late-season races for GEM in the No. 10 and the team wanted to keep him. Then-No. 19 driver Sadler had no idea about this and the team had previously blocked his move to try and defect for Richard Childress Racing late in 2008, then asked him to take a pay cut after he agreed to stay with the team, and then tried to pull this move without telling him. Sadler sued to keep his ride and remained with the team through 2010. Allmendinger drove the No. 44 Dodge in 2009, as a teammate to Sadler, then moved to the No. 43 in 2010.

Is the No. 22 Penske Dodge still up for grabs?

The answer to who would replace Kurt Busch in the No. 22 seemed to have been answered as soon as his firing. Rumors surfaced that David Ragan was on the top of the list to replace Busch, but then quotes by both sides soon indicated that Ragan had yet to interview for the ride and that the 25-year-old would interview with the team. A week after Ragan’s Penske interview and two weeks after Busch’s firing, Penske Racing has yet to announce a driver for the No. 22. A look at Penske Racing’s website had showed late last week that driver Sam Hornish Jr.’s title had been changed from “NASCAR Nationwide Series” (which he was supposed to be full-time for 2012) to “NASCAR Cup Series” and Parker Kligerman, who is slated to run full-time for Penske driver Brad Keselowski in the Camping World Truck Series in 2012, was also listed as a “NASCAR Nationwide Series” driver. Since then, Hornish Jr.’s status has been changed back to NNS. I emailed Penske Racing about the change and received no response.

This change has made many wonder if Penske Racing has drifted away from Ragan and is looking to bring Hornish Jr. back to the Cup Series, where he drove three seasons for the team from 2008-2010. That would be a bad break for Ragan, but Ragan does have an insurance ride lined up in the Phoenix Racing No. 51 Chevy, if the Penske gig falls through. The fact that Brian Vickers and David Reutimann have not been heavily rumored for any of the few open rides in NASCAR, including the No. 22, is both interesting and baffling.

Racing, a Georgia driver, country music, and Eminem?

A friend of mine is getting another shot in racing. After a four-year hiatus from racing, Georgian Trent Mayo has been down in an ARCA ride testing at Daytona International Speedway. He is slated to run the Daytona ARCA race, February 8^th’s Lucas Oil Slick Mist 200, for Carter/Eminem Motorsports. No, that is not a typo. Marshall “Eminem” Mathers co-owns an ARCA team with a veteran owner in the series, Roger Carter. The team has been slow in the testing sessions, but Eminem’s involvement in the team is certainly not one of the more vanilla partnerships in motorsports.

Mayo, 23, has a Master’s Degree in Music Business from Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA and a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and Entrepreneurship from Georgia Tech. He has been singing country music and doing gigs for years and runs his own country music label. He hopes to have a full schedule in place for the ARCA Series and still tour and sing country music on the side. The next Marty Robbins a Georgian? Maybe so.