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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
JENSEN: Frammin’ & Bammin’
The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series will spend two consecutive weekends rocking the house old-school style...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted March 15, 2010   Charlotte, NC
SPEED.com's Editor-in-Chief Tom Jensen. (Image: SPEED)
This past off-weekend was good, but the next two ought to be even better.

After opening the 2010 season at Daytona and following it up with three straight races at intermediate tracks, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series will spend two consecutive weekends rocking the house old-school style. What I’m talking about here is good, old-fashioned, fender-bending, temper-raising short-track racing at Bristol Motor Speedway and Martinsville Speedway.

Despite being almost the same length — Bristol is 0.533 miles, Martinsville 0.526 — the two tracks couldn’t be more different. Bristol, of course, is extremely high-banked, while Martinsville is virtually flat. What the two tracks have in common is claustrophobia. Narrow racing surfaces, short tracks, tight pits, all of which make for hot tempers and hard racing. Expect to see tempers flare and drivers and crewmen angry. A lot.

For what it’s worth, I think the Carl Edwards-Brad Keselowski fight is about played out. Both of them have too much at stake to continue acting like 12 year olds and dragging their feud on and on and on.

That said, by the time we leave Martinsville, I suspect they’ll be a few other guys hating on each other in a big way, which is always entertaining. If it were up to me, we’d have five or six more short-track races on the schedule every year.

To make matters even more interesting, there are genuine wild cards at play at each track this year. At Bristol, the track has added more than 160 addition feet of SAFER barriers at the exits of Turns 2 and 4, which likely means an altered racing line for the drivers.

“We believe with these modifications, we will not only increase driver safety, but will also create a different transition at the exit of the turns,” said Jeff Byrd, BMS president and general manager in a statement announcing the changes. “While we don’t know exactly how this will impact the racing, the more confined racing area should create less elbow room and tighten up the racing groove at those points.”

Speaking of Byrd, he will miss the race this weekend because of an undisclosed medical ailment that’s forced him to take what hopefully will be a brief leave of absence. Everyone at SPEED sends their best for a speedy recovery for Byrd, one of most respected track operators in NASCAR.

At any rate, Bristol will definitely be different than it was in years past. Whether it will be better or worse, remains to be seen, but there ought to be plenty of action.

There likely will be a new variable at Martinsville as well, when the old blade spoiler returns to the back of the cars, replacing the hideous rear wing that the new-generation Cup cars have wrestled with since 2007.

Like the new SAFER barrier at Bristol, no one is exactly sure how — or how much — the wing will change the racing this season. This much, though, probably is safe to say: Some team or teams will figure out the hot setup before others do, and that well might juggle the balance of power atop the speed charts, at least temporarily.

Martinsville being the slowest oval on the circuit makes it the perfect place for the spoiler to debut, and makes it the track least affected by the change. The wing vs. spoiler differences will show up much more at faster tracks, including Talladega Superspeedway, where the wing will be tested by some 24 or so teams on Tuesday, as NASCAR looks for the right aero package for big tracks.

Add it all up, and there are a lot of unknowns, a lot of twists and turns ahead in the NASCAR Sprint Cup season. That should keep things more interesting and less predictable in the weeks ahead.

Maybe it’s that the long winter is ending, maybe it’s that there are so many questions, maybe it’s just that it’s not business as usual for NASCAR this season. Whatever the reason, I think we have some great racing ahead of us in the next few weeks.

Stay tuned. There’s plenty of fun still to come.

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEEDtv.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.

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