With two races to run, this year’s Sprint Cup championship appears to be a two-driver race between Jimmie Johnson and Matt Kenseth, but it’s not like the two are great rivals, as Richard Petty and Bobby Allison were back in the day, or even the late Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon more recently.
Defending Sprint Cup champion Brad Keselowski said that in today’s sponsor-dependent NASCAR world, rivalries aren’t to be tolerated.
“In this sport right now the business model is sponsors,” he said. “With that business model you would be a fool to alienate half of the fan base over a rivalry because half the fan base pays your bills and pays your sponsor’s bills, so indirectly they pay your bills.
“In today’s sport you can’t feud.”
He said the current scenario reminded him of a saying by the Chinese philosopher Confucius: “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” One of those would be for the object of the revenge and the other for the one seeking it.
“That is how this sport is right now,” Keselowski said. “With sponsors paying so much of the direct bill to cover the sport I think it is unrealistic to expect anything different.”
Labonte could make final start: Veteran driver Bobby Labonte is set to make his final start in his current ride, the No. 47 Toyota of JTG Daugherty Racing, this weekend at Phoenix International Raceway. Labonte, who has 21 career Sprint Cup victories and a Cup championship in 2000, has made 717 career Cup starts and has driven the No. 47 for most of the past three seasons, but he's being replaced by A.J. Allmendinger.
Labonte, who has not announced any plans for 2014, said in his team’s weekly release that he’s proud of his work to try to help the single-car No. 47 team become more competitive.
“The choice they made to go out on their own I supported,” he said. “They needed to go in that direction. The battle was still to get the team in position to go forward. We went through the trenches together to get there. At the end of the day, I was a part of the puzzle where I got to help put the pieces together where the puzzle did not fall apart.
“I always woke up everyday and put my best foot forward.”
Labonte, 49, also has 10 Nationwide Series victories and the 1991 title in that series.
Winning ways: The No. 22 Ford team of Penske Racing continued its domination of the Nationwide Series this season as it won the O'Reilly Auto Parts Challenge at Texas Motor Speedway on Saturday. It was the team's 12th win of the season and the sixth with Keselowski behind the wheel. Joey Logano has three wins in the car, A.J. Allmendinger two and Ryan Blaney one this year.
With two races remaining, team owner Roger Penske leads the owner points standings by 26 over the season-place No. 54 Toyota owned by J.D. Gibbs. That car, like the No. 22, has had several drivers, with Kyle Busch leading the team with 11 victories in the No. 54 this year.
Penske also has a chance to be a part of the Nationwide drivers championship this year. Sam Hornish Jr., driver of his No. 12 Ford, bounced back from a penalty for striking the cone at the entrance of pit road to finish third and move to within six points of series leader Austin Dillon.
Elliott wins another Truck race: Chase Elliott, who won a Camping World Truck Series race at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in September, added another trophy to his growing collection when he won the All-American 400 at Fairgrounds Speedway Nashville (Tenn.) on Saturday night.
The son of former Sprint Cup series champion Bill Elliott, now has won all four of the race generally considered to be the majors in short-track asphalt racing. Earlier he won the Winchester 400 at Winchester (Ind.) Speedway in 2011, the Snowball Derby at Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Fla., in 2011, and the World Crown 300 at his home track, Gresham Motorsports Park in Jefferson, Ga., last year.
He’s set to run his final truck race of the season this weekend at Phoenix International Raceway.
Daniel Hemric of Kannapolis, N.C., finished second to Elliott in Nashville and secured the championship of the inaugural season of the Southern Super Series, also plans to run the truck series race at Phoenix. It will be his second start, the first coming at Martinsville Speedway, where he started 16th and finished 32nd.
