Once again, it's time to burrow deep and get all dirtied up in the numbers concerning the Chase racers' chances at this week's track, in this case the one-mile flat "roval" (road course + oval) of the Phoenix International Raceway.
As always, I rank the 12 Chasers in order of who I think has the best chance of winning this weekend, based on their career numbers at PIR, recent momentum and how they ran there in the spring. After glancing at the digits, I have two immediate observations: (1) Last week it was amazing how many different Chasers had won at Texas, eight of the 12. This week it is amazing how few have won at Phoenix, only five of the dozen. (2) Mark Martin needs to win perhaps more this weekend than any other during his storied career, and that's exactly what he did back in April. His lifetime numbers suggest he can do it again. Unfortunately, Jimmie Johnson's résumé is even better. Current points rankings are in parentheses.
* Subway Fresh Fit 500, won by Mark Martin
** Driver Rating has been compiled by NASCAR since 2005
NASCAR numerology, Friday the 13th edition
Here on Friday the 13th, why not take a look at the most taboo of numbers and its history on the doors of NASCAR Cup Series stock cars. For a notoriously superstitious bunch, a surprisingly large number of drivers have taken their crack at the 1-3.
But don't get the impression that they've been fighting over it. They haven't. A total of 110 single- or double-digit numbers have been used in Cup competition history. (How about 110? Don't forget 00-09.) The number 13 ranks 92nd in races run with 259.
The first driver to use it was by Texan Pat Kirkwood, who ran the Langhorne Speedway in just the fourth race in NASCAR's history. The most recent has been Max Papis, who ran at Talladega two weeks ago.
They both finished 29th.
Thirteen's only win came via an Indy Car legend and it came in a race that no longer counts as an actual win, though it did then. On Feb. 22, 1963, eventual three-time Indy 500 winner Johnny Rutherford won a 40-lap Daytona 500 qualifier, the predecessor of today's Gatorade Duels, driving for legendary mechanic Smokey Yunick.
"That was the first NASCAR event I'd ever run," Lone Star J.R. recalls. "I didn't think much about the car number and I don't know why Smokey ran it, but it was a super fast little Chevy."
How Yunick didn't win another race with that car number is a total mystery, especially considering the Hall of Fame rotation he sent through its cockpit -- A.J. Foyt, Banjo Matthews, Buck Baker, Mario Andretti, Bobby Isaac, Curtis Turner, Bobby Unser and Chargin' Charlie Glotzbach.
The biggest 13-based disaster came in 1998, when Dan Marino joined forces with Bill Elliott to field a Ford for driver Jerry Nadeau and put the quarterback's jersey number on the side and colors on the hood (see it here). It lasted one race past 13 starts before an ugly public feud between Nadeau and Elliott ended in an even more public divorce.
"Why we call Richard Petty The King" fact of the week
The King started the first five Cup races ever run at Phoenix and the results were, as is the case with a lot of races in the final seasons of his career, terrible. He averaged a 27th place start and a 33rd place finish, with no laps led.
However, those struggles haven't kept the Grand Canyon State from loving His Royal Fastness.
Need proof? On Thursday afternoon the Phoenix International Raceway dropped the green flag on the Richard Petty Raceway, a karting track located just outside PIR's Gate 4. For $20, fans 16 and older can don a helmet and firesuit and slip behind the wheel of the same pro-style karts that started the careers of nearly every driver in the NASCAR garages. The karts and track will be maintained by the Richard Petty Driving Experience racing school. The 1/16-mile oval is 20 feet wide and modeled after PIR's unique layout, complete with a flagstand, tire barriers, pits and spectator zones. On Friday at 2 p.m. MT, The King himself will stop by to officially dedicate the track. So, will he be mixing it up on his namesake oval?
"Probably not," Petty said when I asked him last week. "The boss lady [wife Lynda] told me in '92 that once I got out of a racecar I had to stay out. I have up to this point -- pretty much, anyway -- so I don't think I'll be breaking her rule at Phoenix. If so, she might break something on me."
Racing with the stars
The actual Chase for the Cup may be teetering on a blowout, but the Celebrity Chase Tracker needs no such help. What is the Celebrity Chase Tracker? NASCAR's PR office recruited a roster of celebs and asked them to make their predictions on what would happen to whom during the 10 Chase events. The result has been a pretty nice little showdown between a couple of unlikely rivals.
U.S. Congressman Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., heads into the final two races of the year tied with Foreigner. As in Foreigner the rock band.
This weekend McHenry has picked Kyle Busch as the race winner and says that Mark Martin will lead all Chasers in the final finishing order, followed by Jeff Gordon, Denny Hamlin, Jimmie Johnson and Tony Stewart. Meanwhile, the 50-million-album-selling band predicts that Ryan Newman will win, followed by Tony Stewart, Gordon, Johnson, Martin and Carl Edwards.
"McHenry is a chump," a Foreigner spokesperson said when reached for comment. "We've been done with him since we heard his opinions on tort reform."
"Whatever," McHenry shot back. "They are a bunch of corporate rock sellouts. I've been over them since 'Inside Information.'"
OK, no one actually said any of that. But since Kyle Busch's visit to the WWE last week, I've become a believer in mixing in some smack-talk here and there when the time feels right.
It's too late for any of the other celebs to catch McHenry or Foreigner, but there's a nice battle for third underway between John Ondrasik, aka Five For Fighting guy, and super-chef Emeril Lagasse.
Bam.
Ryan McGee
