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JENSEN: Can Anyone Knock Off Hendrick?
Written by: Tom Jensen   
01/06/2008
Harrisburg, N.C.
 
According to SPEEDtv.com's Tom Jensen, Roush Fenway Racing has the best shot at knocking off the dominate Hendrick Motorsports in 2008. (Robert Laberge/Getty Images for NASCAR Photo) ยป More Photos


Game on.

The 2008 NASCAR Sprint Car season more or less officially kicks off today at Daytona International Speedway, where about half the field � those who finished in the odd numbers in 2007 owner points - begins the first of two days of testing, with Wednesday reserved for a rain date. The remainder of the field, the cars that finished in even numbers in owner points, will be on the same schedule next week.

After a respite of a couple of weeks, all the teams then will head west for two more NASCAR sanctioned tests, at the 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway Jan. 28-29 and the 2-mile California Speedway Jan. 31-Feb. 1. And lest anyone thinks there really was any "off" in the off-season, rest assured that teams have been burning the midnight oil all winter and cranking out lap after lap at non-Sprint Cup tracks like Kentucky Speedway, Memphis Motorsports Park and Nashville Superspeedway.

That's as it should be. The teams will tell you that the Sprint Cup Series is more competitive than ever and there's no question whatsoever that this year, testing is more important than ever. This is the first season that NASCAR's new-generation race car will be used for the entire season, and the first time it will be run on the 1.5- and 2-mile intermediate tracks that make up nearly half the Cup schedule.

With less aerodynamic downforce and a higher center of gravity, the new car doesn't turn nearly as well as the old-generation cars, which has sent teams scurrying for solutions to improve cornering and therefore lap times. Last year, Hendrick Motorsports came to terms with the new cars much quicker than anyone else did. And although Hendrick remains the favorite to win another championship this season, presumably the field will have tightened the gap a bit.

Or will they?

Last year, Hendrick's four drivers won 18 of 36 Sprint Cup races -exactly half - as well as earning 12 poles, 57 top-five and 84 top-10 finishes. Hendrick drivers Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon not only finished 1-2 in points in 2007, they drubbed the field. During the course of the season, Johnson and Gordon won as many races as the rest of the 12-man Chase for the Nextel Cup field combined.

Over the 10-race Chase, the closest competitor Johnson and Gordon had was third-place Clint Bowyer, who finished 346 points behind Johnson and 277 behind Gordon. Nobody was even in the same zip code as the Nos. 48 and 24 Chevys last season. And with seven championships since 1995, Hendrick clearly is the gold standard in Sprint Cup racing over the last decade and a half.

This year, of course, the Hendrick stable adds NASCAR's most popular driver, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. into the
mix, replacing the lightning-fast but high-strung Kyle Busch, who has moved to Joe Gibbs Racing, where he doubtless will find Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin to be kindred spirits.

I fully expect Earnhardt to win at least one championship with Hendrick by the time his career is over, but 2008 may be a year of adjustment for him as he gets used to his new team.

Likewise, JGR's move to Toyota is probably a brilliant long-term move that will pay huge dividends down the road for both the team and the automaker. But it will take time for JGR's staff and the engineers at Toyota's TRD arm to figure out the optimal ways to work together.

To my mind, the team with the best chance of knocking off Hendrick this year appears to be Roush Fenway Racing, which enters the season with an established lineup of top-notch drivers and a wealth of talent in the engineering and crew departments.

Matt Kenseth already has one championship under his belt with Roush and was the one car in last year's Chase that consistently could keep pace with the Hendrick fleet.

Carl Edwards, of course, captured the NASCAR Nationwide Series title last year and aside from some questions about his temper and ability to play well with his fellow Roushkateers, flashed the kind of form in showed in 2005, when he nearly won the Cup title in his first full season in NASCAR's top division.

The most intriguing of the Roush drivers, though, might be Greg Biffle. Although he's missed the Chase the last two seasons, the Biff's performance improved quite a bit late in the season. Biffle had just three top-10 finishes in the first 15 races of 2007, but during the last eight races scored a victory in Kansas, runner-up finishes in Dover and Phoenix and a top-10 in Martinsville, his least favorite track. The Dover, Phoenix and Martinsville finishes all were in the new-generation car, which bodes well for this season.

Two other factors in Biffle's favor: He's in the final year of his contract, which always seems to be a good motivator, and he's already won championships in the Nationwide and Craftsman Truck Series. He knows how to race for and win titles.

So who wins the championship this season?

Well, that's why the run the races instead of just talking about them. And now that testing has begun, we'll start getting some solid ideas of where teams are at, who's hot and who's not. And we'll be keeping a close eye on it.

Keep track of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series on FOX Trax

NOTE: Get the WHY on The SPEED Report, Sundays at 7pm ET