Hendrick Motorsports has captured six of the past seven Nextel Cup races and appears to have returned to its 1990s heyday.
Denver-based Furniture Row Racing is helping prove it.
Furniture Row driver Kenny Wallace was powered by a Hendrick-built motor last weekend at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway, where he qualified a team-record sixth for the Aaron’s 499.
Wallace finished a disappointing 26th, but on the lead lap, after leading the first two Nextel Cup laps for second-year Furniture Row. Team owner Barney Visser of Cherry Hills gained two spots to 43rd in the owner standings, and has seen his single-car team qualify for five of the past seven races after missing the first two.
Furniture Row manager Joe Garone said the team’s performance at Talladega is a credit to the Hendrick restrictor-plate motor and new superspeedway specialist Gary Beverage. Beverage previously worked for Robert Yates.
“It takes the whole package, and what we had at Talladega was a better race car than what we had in Daytona,” said Garone, whose team failed to qualify for the big season opener. “What Gary brings in terms of knowledge made it a better car.”
Back to Hendrick, the magnificent team based in Charlotte, N.C. Owner Rick Hendrick won an unprecedented four consecutive Nextel Cup championships from 1995-98, with a young Jeff Gordon behind the wheel for the last three.
Gordon won his fourth title in 2001, but Hendrick drivers failed to win one in the ensuing four years. Jimmie Johnson ended the drought in November, and Hendrick’s four drivers are currently first (Gordon), fourth (Johnson), eighth (Kyle Busch) and 35th (Casey Mears) in the standings.
Busch has also won this year, and Mears, who is in his first year with the team, was looking for a top-10 at Talladega before crashing late. Johnson finished second at Talladega, capping Hendrick’s third 1-2 finish this year.
“It’s been incredible to watch our people embrace the team atmosphere and make it their own,” Hendrick general manager Marshall Carlson said in a team release. “When we launched the No. 48 team alongside the No. 24, the theme was ‘one team, two cars.”‘ Then the No. 5 and No. 25 teams came together in their own shop and it was a similar mind-set.
“What we’re seeing now, more and more, is ‘one team, four cars.”‘ That’s something everyone here has been building over time.”
Furniture Row will continue using Hendrick motors in restrictor-plate races this year. The arrangement allows Furniture Row to concentrate on building motors out of Denver for the other races.
Timeout
We interrupt this notebook to throw a debris caution, otherwise known as a NASCAR timeout. They have timeouts in other team sports, so why not in nationally televised network races?
“Hey, restarts are fun to watch,” owner/driver Michael Waltrip told Talladega reporters. “Every other sport has timeouts to regroup. NASCAR doesn’t, so cautions are our timeout.”
When debris cautions are called, only sometimes do we see something harmful on the track. When we don’t see it, we should realize that it’s the official’s way of letting everyone regroup and get excited for a bunched-field restart.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending Tony Stewart. The always angry Stewart was wrong to compare NASCAR to professional wrestling for throwing phony debris cautions, and wrong again for taking everything back and believing that NASCAR has never thrown one.
SPOTLIGHT: KYLE BUSCH
Scary thoughts
Busch, eighth in the Nextel Cup standings, had time to think about the worst upcoming part of his unsightly crash in Saturday’s Busch Series race at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway.
Busch’s car hit the wall at 190 mph and flipped onto its roof, then began barrel rolling once the car entered the backstretch grass area.
“It wasn’t too terribly bad when I was on the roof going down the straightaway, but when it headed toward the grass I planned for the worst,” Busch told The Associated Press. “I flipped my visor open and put my hands in my helmet to grab on, then I tucked down and got in the fetal position and planned for the worst.
“I just wanted to support my head as best I could for when it started flipping.”
Busch would like to see the grass area at Talladega taken out. “I would have been much happier sliding on my roof all the way,” he said.
ON THE MOVE: JAMIE McMURRAY
Making amends
McMurray, the 2003 rookie of the year who was a bust last year in his first campaign with Roush Racing, finished fifth at Talladega on Sunday to gain a series-most five spots in the standings. He jumped from 12th to seventh with his fifth top-10 finish of the season. Among five Roush Fenway drivers, McMurray is second highest in the standings, behind No. 3 Matt Kenseth.
THIS WEEK’S RACE: CROWN ROYAL PRESENTS THE JIM STEWART 400
Revving up in Richmond
When: Saturday, 5 p.m., Fox
Where: Richmond International Raceway, .75-mile oval; banking – 14 degrees (corners), 8 degrees (frontstretch), 2 degrees (backstretch)
Distance: 300 miles, 400 laps
Last year: Dale Earnhardt Jr. registered his only win of the season. Kevin Harvick captured the fall race.
Records: Qualifying – Brian Vickers (129.98 mph), May 14, 2004; race – Dale Jarrett (109.04 mph), Sept. 6, 1997
QUALITY PASSES
The following chart identifies a driver’s number of passes by a car running in the top 15 while under a green flag:
(Driver – Passes)
Jeff Burton 798
Matt Kenseth 706
Kurt Busch 699
Ryan Newman 674
Denny Hamlin 644
Jimmie Johnson 613
Kevin Harvick 587
Tony Stewart 574
Jeff Gordon 567
Greg Biffle 543
Staff writer Mike Chambers can be reached at 303-954-1357 or mchambers@denverpost.com.
