TEXAS 1 - Wrap Up

Just may have been the race of the season for Team FNG. After hearing some crew chief notes and drivers interviews with Ryan Newman, and hearing how he and the team were not satisfied with the car going into the race. We decided to pull him from our posted lineup and slide Dale Earnhardt Jr. in for his 2nd start of the year. Obviously the move worked out well in our favor, Newman struggled all night and Junior not only improved on his car but Steve Letarte kept up with changing track conditions to keep the 88 inside the Top 10. I'm not saying Junior is a 9-start guy, but he's finally going to have value at places not named Daytona and Talladega.

Everyone knew coming in that Matt Kenseth would be a safe pick, but I don't think anyone pegged him to be the dominant pick. It was a very rare showing by Kenseth who just had the field covered from the drop of the green flag, snapping a 70+ race winless streak. We went with Carl Edwards who was the 2nd best A-Lister and led a lap, so no complaints burning another 99 start there. Surprises for me included Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Busch not being a bigger factor in the race, although they will have start value at the 1.5 mile tracks down the line. Denny Hamlin is stuck in 1st gear this season, something we predicted in the pre-season as he has never overcome the trust issues with crew chief Mike Ford after blowing the championship at Phoenix last season.

In the B-List Clint Bowyer was very impressive and proved himself once again to be a 9-start stud this season. Juan Pablo Montoya is another guy who may not be a potential race winner, but he's becoming much more consistent and is landing a lot of Top 10-15 place runs, which is all you can ask for out of the B-List, Top 5s are just gravy.

Some have said there is absolutely no value in Marcos Ambrose other than the road courses. 4th at Texas and 6th at Las Vegas begs to differ. What really impressed me was this team was able to keep up with changing track conditions from dusk into night, no easy task. Ambrose is going to have to get some consideration moving forward at the 1.5 milers.

Conversely our "miss of the week" was Red Bull Racing. We mentioned Kasey Kahne was very hit or miss at the 1.5 mile tracks, we thought he would hit, and boy did he miss. Both Kahne and Vickers were terrible all night, so much so that a damage Logano, Labonte, and Mears all out performed Vickers. This team simply could not keep up with changing track conditions.

The newest king of the "Toxic Pool" in the B-List is Mark Martin. He may make the team at Talladega, but beyond that there is absolutely no reason to start Martin at this point. The communication between Martin and McGrew is non-exsistant. Fantasy Nascar Preview Forum member "Talt" provided this insight listening to Martin's radio chatter Saturday night:

" Pit crew changed his car and made it a 5 tenths faster but was restricted to a single line. He whines about it and says after small argument, "Just put it back. I'd rather have options and drive slow". So the did and he was junk. Next pit they changed him on a compromise and didn't tell him what they did and he starts passing cars. They tell him his time and he says "What did you do to it". They tell him what they did as he running same times as leader and immediately loses 2 tenths a lap."

Although Martin has de-throned Jeff Burton in the land of do-not-start, I'm not totally convinced Burton is out of the woods yet. The team was consistent enough to put together an 11th place run, and I do like that slight bit of confidence coming into Talladega. If they can survive the plate track with the finish they deserve, then we might consider rolling out Burton starts again.

In the C-List both David Ragan and Paul Menard proved there should be no one else to consider besides these two on the 1.5 mile tracks. We went with Ragan and it paid off in spades as he collected more points than Menard thanks to Ragan leading laps early.


Depending on his remaining schedule, Trevor Bayne could be a good start-save late in the season once you burn through Ragan/Menard starts. If Bayne can stay out of trouble he does have the ability to be Top 20 material. On the flip side Regan Smith continues to disappoint, as he didn't look any better than Bobby Labonte or Casey Mears in his performance before being collected in the big wreck.




Our team this week was Edwards, Earnhardt Jr., Montoya, and Ragan, with everyone put JPM leading and 15 bonus points in qualifying nabbing us 349 points for the weekend. This moved us up 24% in the Yahoo overall rankings up to the 82nd Percentile.