The first three months of racing in the Cup Series are in the books, what's done is done and recorded. Would anyone have thought that Roush Racing would come back to start the season with this much clout? With eight races in the books, Roush has taken half of them. In the meantime, Roush's nemesis, Hendrick Motorsports, has taken three of the remaining four with Richard Childress Racing picking up the single.
The Winners:
In the Roush camp the big winner is Greg Biffle, taking Texas and California early on, to start a possible roll to a shot in the chase. Carl Edwards also took Atlanta for Roush along with Kurt Busch's recent win at Phoenix.
In the Hendrick camp, Jeff Gordon leads the way with wins at Daytona and Martinsville, followed by his protégé teammate Jimmie Johnson who took the win at Las Vegas.
Kevin Harvick took the trophy for the spring event at Bristol.
The Losers:
Robby Gordon comes to mind as one of the biggest losers so far this season, with Bobby Labonte right on his heels. Labonte finally got out of his slump at Phoenix, scoring his first top ten finish of the season. Gordon has had major engine problems and openly claims to be sticking by his mentor and supporter, open wheel racing magnate John Menard, who is in his first season building Cup Series engines. When he gets the hang of it and those engines get built right, watch out! Robby Gordon will make up for lost time.
Bobby Hamilton Jr. should also be added to the list of losers; he hasn't lived up to expectations, to say the least. The Cup Series upstart may be able to count the number of Cup races he has left on one hand. If he fails to get his act together, he may be going down the road. With an average start in the low twenties and an average finish in the low thirties, it seems that PPI Motorsports could do a lot better. Hamilton set the Busch Series tracks on fire, but seems to be facing a long hard learning curve in the Cup Series cars.
| Track | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th |
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Thomas M. Sampson's NASCAR topic, please visit the Discussions page.