It looks as if Sunday’s Sprint Cup season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway could mark the end of a major era, as far as some of NASCAR’s stars are concerned.
The Ford 400 will be the final Sprint Cup start for veteran Ken Schrader, and it could be the last for Bobby Labonte, who has not announced plans for 2014 and is losing his ride in the No. 47 Toyota. Mark Martin also said he has no immediate plans to continue racing.
Jeff Burton will make his final run in the No. 31 Chevrolet at Richard Childress Racing, but he has not revealed his plans for next season other than to say he’ll be racing somewhere. Bill Elliott hasn’t made an official retirement announcement, but he hasn’t competed in Cup since July 2012, and Terry Labonte, now a part-time competitor, indicated recently that he doesn’t plan to continue racing indefinitely.
Juan Pablo Montoya also will leave the NASCAR scene, taking a full-time Indy car ride with Roger Penske next season. Also leaving NASCAR is Travis Pastrana, an X Games and rally racer who spent the past season driving for Roush Fenway Racing in the Nationwide Series with little success.
Martin, 54, told reporters at Phoenix that he doesn’t plan to race after Homestead, where he’ll complete his stint at the wheel of the No. 14 Chevrolet normally driven by Tony Stewart, who is out with a broken leg.
“If I get through Homestead without a scratch, it will be pretty cool,” he said. “It will be one tremendous career that we did some really great things and I got out of it without paying a big price.”
Through his career, Martin has won 40 Cup races, 49 in the Nationwide Series and seven more in the Camping World Truck Series. He indicated he’ll probably do some testing and other work for Stewart-Haas Racing next year. Bobby Labonte has maintained that he’s open to more driving jobs, even if they’re in the Nationwide or truck series.
Burton said he doesn’t foresee any of the group walking away from NASCAR entirely.
“I find it hard to believe that we won’t still be around in some form or fashion,” he said.
Ironically, Schrader said he’s giving up Cup racing after 29 seasons so he can race more — in his dirt cars.
“Running 10 Cup races this year probably kept me from running another 20 dirt races,” he said. “I just want to run my dirt cars more.”
Schrader, who won four races and nearly $40 million in earnings in the Cup series alone, said he has few regrets from his Cup career, which began in 1984 at Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway in a Ford fielded by Elmo Langley.
“You always wish you could have won more,” he said. “Richard Petty has seven championships, but I’ll bet he’d like to have eight or nine.”
Johnson poised to win title: The Sprint Cup championship will be decided this weekend between points leader Jimmie Johnson and his remaining challengers, Matt Kenseth and Kevin Harvick, as the rest of the 13-driver Chase field was mathematically eliminated.
But with Johnson holding a 28-point lead over second-place Kenseth and needing to finish just 23rd to clinch his sixth title, Kenseth’s and Harvick’s more realistic hopes for the weekend are to close out the season with a race victory.
Jason Ratcliff, Kenseth’s crew chief, said as much on a teleconference Tuesday.
“I felt like we didn’t execute as well as we should have this past weekend, but we’re going to move forward and go into Homestead looking to obviously put another victory under our belt for what’s been a great season, but try to minimize mistakes and do a much better job than we have been,” he said, adding that he still hopes for a dramatic turn of events that could put him and his No. 20 team on the big stage at the end of the Ford 400. “We’re a lot further out than we hoped we would be, but again, we’re still mathematically in it.”
Ratcliff also had praise for Johnson and his No. 48 team led by crew chief Chad Knaus.
“I have a tremendous amount of respect for what Jimmie and that 48 team has been able to do and what Chad has been able to accomplish as a crew chief,” he said. “I think everyone in this sport would look at that and say that’s what we want to do.
“That’s a dynasty.”
