Mario won despite the xenophobes from his own team and NASCAR nearly thwarting his effort by holding him in the pits allowing his team mate a big lead. None the less, once he was finally let go, he stalked down the leaders and won the race directly against "Big Bill" France's and Ford's orders. Look at the post race victory lane pictures. Mario is there virtually alone with the race queen. No execs from Ford or team members, no one from NASCAR to celebrate a REAL dramatic win as the Pennsylvania based Italian immigrant dared to showe them good ol' boys how it was done that day and they didn't like it, not one bit. Have attitudes changed in the fake wood panel covered halls in Daytonner? BHW
Harvick wins two in a row. I think he's going to be the guy to finally beat JJ to the championship. nice runs by JPM and June Bug, too. my fantasy team didn't fare so well, thanks to Kasey Kahne and whoever punted Bobby Labonte
My 4 drivers were in the Top 11...Chas reads the rules; I watch Talladega Nights! Image Unavailable, Please Login
I think all of my drivers qualified in the top 10, which is usually a pretty good indicator of finishing position at Martinsville. usually. P.S. I'm gonna come at you like a spider monkey jacked up on Mountain Dew!
Um, no, it's not. It's true the winner usually comes from the top-10, it's nowhere near that way for the top-5 finishers. What is interesting is a lot of cars are fast, what separates a good finish from a crappy one anymore seems to be pit stop screwups, be it pitting too soon, speeding, missing lug nut, whatever, those things have killed me in almost every race this season.
track position is king at Martinsville. start up front, don't screw up, finish up front. two of my guys screwed up (three really, I had Hamlin and he went from a steady lead to finishing what, 12th or something)
If you historically look at positions 2-10, you will see it littered with guys that started anywhere from 16th to 36th. Here is my proof from today, finishing position, and (starting position): 1 (9) 2 (26) 3 (11) 4 (27) 5 (21) 6 (24) 7 (1) 8 (14) 9 (15) 10 (12) I rest my case.
That link proves absolutely nothing except to list where winners can come from. I could go research all the races and post the top-10's, but a) I don't have the time, b) we both know it would make you look silly. This contest takes a lot more than just picking the winner, from what I have seen so far the first few positions in our league are being decided basically by who we have starting on our 'C' list.
it proves that over 70% of the winners at Martinsville started in the top 10 well, I do have time, and I'm a stats nerd, so here we go- average starting position of the top 10 for Martinsville over the last ten races, going back to Fall 2006 (including both the old car and the COT, or whatever they're calling it now): 1) 9.1 2) 11.6 3) 14.6 4) 16.4 5) 12.0 6) 22.3 7) 19.4 8) 13.3 9) 13.2 10) 15.9 so, as you see....start up front, finish up front. (unless you finish 6th or 7th )
Interesting blip there in positions 6 & 7; any theories? Are those top teams/drivers that have an issue in qualifying and generally speaking 6/7th are the best they can work there way to?
that's one possibility, certain guys aren't particularly good qualifiers but great racers (Matt Kenseth comes to mind) another would be that 6th and 7th is as high as you can get on strategy/track position alone-beyond that the competition is just too strong.
btw this weekend is Texas. Dale Jr. has been on excellent form of late. Texas would be his 100th race without a win. he got his first win at Texas, in the spring race in 2000. the fix is in, folks!
Whutever; you're just trying to plant a seed to thwart the efforts of our fantasy league mates. No reminder for you! PS May the Keselowskis finish 1-2!
WTH is WRONG with you? I never questioned the WINNER's starting position, it's positions 2-10 I have been talking about all along. If you want to have a contest where we pick ONLY the winner of the race, then start up a new contest. And what is your definition of 'up front'??????????? To me, 'up front' is the first three rows - that's the first six cars. Eleventh is not 'up front' - is 'closer' to the front, but it's not 'up front'.
Serious question: WTH does 'up front' - which I said I considered the first three rows - have anything at all to do with the top-10 finishers? That's two totally different topics. You basically said people that start 'up front' usually finish 'up front', but all of your statistics show guys that finish 2-10 usually start anywhere from, what, 12 thru 32? 12-32 is not 'up front'.
I would consider "up front" for the top 10 to be the top 3rd of the grid, not the front three (or five) rows. as you can see from the data above, historically the majority of the top 10 finishers at Martinsville start better than 16th. therefore, qualifying is a fairly decent barometer of finishes in the race. not perfect, of course; that's why they run the races to make my point a bit more, I ran the same data (avg. starting position for the top 10, over the last 10 races) at Talladega, the ultimate "qualifying doesn't matter, draft your way to the front" track. as expected, you will see a pretty big difference from the Martinsville stats. 1) 13.6 2) 14.2 3) 18.3 4) 17.6 5) 16.9 6) 21.5 7) 23.4 8) 23.3 9) 22.3 10) 27.7 now if you'll excuse me, I need to go sharpen my #2 pencil and clean my pocket protector
StatsNerdIncognito, Can you crunch some numbers and confirm/refute below... ...b/c you're the one that read the rules.
LOL! I think there's a lot of truth to that, finding good value in the B and C list drivers (for instance, Paul Menard is C-list but has A-list equipment; he's done pretty well so far). some of the B-list guys should probably be A-list. the other part is picking A-list drivers and hoping they don't screw up/get taken out/have a mechanical problem. it also helps when you pick the right Kesolowski
This is nuts, you simply don't understand what I am saying, so I'm giving up, my head hurts, and there is a hole in the wall now with some blood on it.
a) Hmm, haven't I been saying this for the last month or so? There are a couple on the A list that should be on the B list, there are some on the B list that should be on the C list, and they (Yahoo) needs to make it clear ahead of time who is skipping a race (from the C list), I think a few got screwed because they didn't know someone was skipping a race. This should be fun, not WORK. There are only three servicable drivers on the C list, Menard will run out of starts pretty soon. b) that's life, it would not be any fun if who we picked never had an issue. I think everyone would simply pick Jimmy or Kyle. I never expected Harvick to win the last two races.
