There’s definitely room for improvement obviously and I’m guessing there will be some with Junior. But I’m also thinking that we’ll see improvement from some of the other guys who performed below expectations last year. RCR will likely be better as a whole. Truex will probably rebound some, I’m thinking. Probably won’t make the Chase, but has the talent and team to at least be in the hunt. McMurray might perform a little bit better now that he’s back with Ganassi and is no longer the 4th guy at Roush. I think we should see improvements from last year’s rookies, as well, in Logano and Ambrose. Keselowski looks like he could play a factor too with his talent and current team, and may be able to crack the top 20 in points.

Along with Junior, I think there’s a number of guys who could perform better than last year, and with the exection of maybe Reutimann, I’m not sure he falls in the standings to make the room for them all. Vickers, maybe? His finish to the season may mean a dip is in order. But, with him and his team’s improvements last year, I could still see him finishing somewhere in the neighborhood of 14th to 18 place or thereabouts.

16th to 20th for Junior? Save for the one year when he finished 5th, he really hasn’t performed all that great for the last five years now…12th, 16th, 19th, 25th place point finishes. And with the way last season ended with him struggling as much as he did earlier in the season, I don’t see a big reason to think a huge rebound is in his cards for this year. Rick tried making it work for Junior then too when he made the changes, and it turned out that it didn’t for whatever reason(s). Like some say, maybe Junior just doesn’t have the passion or commitment to racing anymore.