Sometimes it’s difficult to be a NASCAR fan and remain impartial while running a site like FNP. This is one of those times. I don’t try to hide it. I’m a huge Jeff Gordon fan, which is why it hurts when I say that Jeff Gordon will struggle in 2010.
With that said, let me take a minute to clarify. Jeff Gordon will not have an Earnhardt-like season and finish 25th in the points. When I say struggle, I mean expect 2010 to be more like 2008, not 2009 for Gordon.
Penske took a step in the right direction in 2009, Stewart/Haas proved they can play with the big boys and nobody expects Childress and Roush/Fenway to combine for a grand total of three wins again this season. Although each of those teams will take their best shots at the 24, 5 and 48, there is only one poised to end Hendrick Motorsports’ dominance, Joe Gibbs Racing.
Gibbs’ 1-2 punch of Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin combined to win eight races in 2009, including Hamlin’s three victories in the final 11 races. Unfortunately, Denny tore his ACL playing basketball in the off-season and has elected to have surgery after the season. Nobody is really sure how this injury will affect his performance, but I’m not ready to remove him from the list of Championship contenders in 2010.
Most of our “10 Questions for 2010” focus on NASCAR in general, but FNP is a fantasy NASCAR site, so let’s get some fantasy discussion going. For those of us that play in Yahoo formats, predicting sleepers and duds is not very important because we are able to swap out drivers each week. But for people who play in Draft Leagues, assigning the correct value to drivers before the season is crucial to fantasy NASCAR success.
First, let me preface this by saying that the terms “sleepers” and “duds” are relative to perceived value. It is certainly possible for a big sleeper to not make the Chase or for a dud to actually make the Chase. For instance, anyone who drafted Marcos Ambrose was pleasantly surprised last year, even though he only finished 18th in the points. Ambrose’s value is tied into where he was drafted, so those who grabbed him in the high 20’s or early 30’s overall were rewarded with fantastic value. Conversely, Carl Edwards made the Chase last season, but most leagues saw Cousin Carl taken with one of the first three picks in the draft. Edwards’ zero wins and seven Top 10’s were far from Top 3 value, therefore making him a dud in 2009.
It may be smarter (and more accurate) to blindfold myself, spin in a circle five times and throw a dart at a board covered in drivers’ numbers to pick a winner for this race. Unfortunately, I don’t have a dartboard and have no desire to purchase spackle, so we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.
This year’s Daytona 500 favorites include the usual suspects of Tony Stewart, Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch and Dale Earnhardt Jr.
There are a handful of drivers capable of running up front and leading the series in wins in 2010. Jimmie Johnson, Mark Martin, Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin all won at least four races last season, and Jeff Gordon and Carl Edwards have proved they have the ability to lead laps and rack up a significant number of checkered flags in a single season.
The easy answer here is Johnson, who seems like a lock to win 7-10 races each season, but all signs point to Kyle Busch as the driver poised to go on a tear in 2010.