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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
JENSEN: The Show Must Go On
As you might well imagine, there are a lot of different takes on the current economic climate, which has been so challenging to race teams...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted January 12, 2009   Harrisburg, NC
Saturday’s Sprint Sound & Speed Presented by SunTrust fan festival in Nashville was an interesting and fun event, with a nice blend of NASCAR personalities and country music stars to kick off the 2009 Sprint Cup season.

As you might well imagine, there were a lot of different takes on the current economic climate, which has been so challenging to race teams. Here are some observations from a long day of hanging around in Nashville:

THE RACING WILL CONTINUE There is a tremendous amount of uncertainty these days, with a lot of car owner/sponsor/driver/crew chief deals being worked out at the 11th hour. But the bottom line is that regardless of who ends up where, we’ll be at Daytona in a little more than three weeks for the Budweiser Shootout and then the Gatorade Duel 150s and the Daytona 500.

Are times hard? Absolutely. But as they say in the circus, the show must go on, and the NASCAR teams are burning the midnight oil as they always do each January to make sure they are ready for the 2009 season.

Even though a lot of teams have cut back, there should be full fields this year and the racing will go on just like it did last year. The teams that were championship contenders will be back as strong as ever. Jimmie Johnson, Carl Edwards, Kyle Busch and the rest of the usual suspects at the top of the speed charts will still be fighting for race victories and the Sprint Cup championship.

If you look at the 12 drivers who made the Chase for the Sprint Cup in 2008, it would be a huge upset if fewer than eight or nine of them were back in it this year. The fact that the fields might be a little weaker from, say, 35th position on back won’t materially affect the quality of the racing.

THE DRIVERS ARE READY TO GET RACING Dale Earnhardt Jr. probably said it best on Saturday. “It's good to get back to work, get to doing something productive,” he said. “Really brings the awareness about that the year's getting ready to start, gets you excited about going to Daytona.”

One trait the drivers all shared on Saturday was their optimism about the upcoming season, which is a natural feeling this time of year.

TWO SIDES TO THE TESTING BAN NASCAR’s decision to ban official testing, which has strong support in the Sprint Cup garage, is something of a two-sided coin. For the smaller and/or poorer teams, it will save them hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. For the big teams, it will widen the gap they have over the small ones, because money they don’t spend on track testing will be funneled into computer simulation, seven-post machines, shaker rigs and other technology, widening the on-track performance gap.

“It should be an advantage for us, due to the technology and personnel we have that can simulate and guesstimate where we are and get us in the ballpark when we show up for the racetrack,” Earnhardt said.

The big teams will also have the advantage of personnel lineups that remained largely intact. Teams that went through off-season mergers and wholesale personnel changes will have a longer learning curve because of the testing ban, which again favors the powerhouse outfits.

“What I'm afraid of is that two years from now, about 2010, there will only be 11 cars that have a shot at winning,” said Ray Evernham, who led Jeff Gordon to three Sprint Cup championship before starting his own team.

SOME GUYS WILL BE LEFT OUT There’s no question that the wave of mergers, acquisitions, partnerships and last-minute deals will mean some guys will get the short end of the stick. There will be talented drivers, crew chief and crewmen still looking for work once the season begins. They’ll even be good drivers who lose their rides at the last-minute over sponsor issues.

Hopefully, this proves to be a temporary aberration and will sort itself out over the course of the season. Still, some guys who think they have full-time rides today won’t have them after Daytona. Count on it.

THIS IS A TRANSITION Yes, this is a crazy and turbulent time in NASCAR. But as I said, in three weeks, we’re going racing. And we will again in 2010, too. I can’t tell you what the NASCAR Sprint Cup universe will look like next year or the year after that or the year after that. Nobody can.

But this much I’m certain about: NASCAR will be there. Daytona will be there. And for the foreseeable future, there will be thousands of guys in race shops spending every January trying to figure out how to make their cars go fast when they get to Daytona.

And I’ll be real eager to see who’s fast once we get down there in three weeks. See you then.

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or Speed Channel

Tom Jensen is the Senior NASCAR Editor for SPEEDtv.com, the former Executive Editor of NASCAR Scene and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. He is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of SPEED,” and has appeared on television and radio shows to discuss NASCAR racing. Jensen is the President of the National Motorsports Press Association. Jensen is the 1997 National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year and has won numerous national and state awards for news reporting, columns and feature writing. The Answer Man is back at SPEEDtv.com. Tom Jensen answers your questions during every race week and looks forward to hearing from you - please e-mail it to

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