NASCAR Cup Series

Can debut race bring first-time winner?

Published Jul. 6, 2011 1:00 a.m. ET

Jeff Hammond

So we are heading to Kentucky Speedway this weekend.

I am looking for three great races at Kentucky. Thursday is the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race. Friday night brings us the Nationwide cars and then Saturday is the NASCAR Sprint Cup race.

With this being the debut Cup race at Kentucky, we obviously are looking at a first-time winner at the track. I wouldn’t be surprised, on the heels of last Saturday night's race at Daytona International Speedway, if we have a first-time Cup winner at the first-time race at Kentucky.

Paul Menard has run well at Kentucky in the other series. I think AJ Allmendinger might be another to keep your eye on. He could have a strong run up there this weekend. Looking past the first-time winners, how can you not bet on Joey Logano? This young man has won three consecutive Nationwide races from the pole.

Obviously he knows the racetrack and knows it well. He brings with him a lot of momentum at his back. He was on the pole at Sonoma and finished sixth. He won the Nationwide race at Daytona and backed that up with a third-place finish the next night in the Cup race.

You can’t put a price tag on momentum teamed up with confidence in a race track where he has been absolutely flawless. I could easily see him parlay all that into his first win of the season and that also would change the wild-card landscape for the 2011 Chase.

This new points system for 2011 has changed the dynamic of the racing we are seeing. As we tell you week after week, the days of “well we had a great points day” are becoming a thing of the past. It is all about winning. Throw into that, with these two wild-card spots, you can have an up and down season, but with a win or two, you then possibly become a player in the Chase. Your season can literally change from mediocre to awesome that quickly.

It really is no different from the other sports that have added wild-card selections to their playoff pictures. If a team gets hot at the right time, it can have a major impact on the landscape of a Super Bowl or a World Series. Now we have that in the NASCAR Sprint Cup series.

Now obviously we need to see how this first year under this format plays out, but I really think NASCAR has hit on the right combination that could equate into a run right into the championship. Obviously there is no guarantee that once you get into the Chase that you might cool down, but who knows? That’s the exciting part of this – the unknown.

So in the past when we’ve had a lull during the long, hot summer months, I think those days are gone as well. For the guys who are still in the top 20 in points and know they have no chance to make it to the top 10 in points by Richmond in September, they still have hope. Mathematically they know there are two wild-card spots out there up for grabs. I still maintain this year is starting to shape up like no other season we have ever experienced in NASCAR.

Now a more immediate wild card is the tire combination Goodyear is bringing to Kentucky. Thursday, NASCAR is opening the track for the Cup teams to test and that will go a long way in telling these teams what their car likes or dislikes with this tire combination.

A tire combination can be that one variable to change the course of a weekend. It literally can throw you a curve or make you a hero. Go back two weeks to Sonoma. No one really liked that tire combination. None of the guys we expected to be the dominant force were able to figure it out.

Yet Penske Racing and Kurt Busch were on a roll. Ask Kurt Busch and he will kick, scream and shout if Goodyear wanted to change the tire combination for Sonoma for 2012. My point is Saturday night under the lights at Kentucky Speedway might be one of those kinds of races.

If you can hit on something with your car and that tire, but the other 42 competitors don’t, well you can look like King Kong. So I am excited about this weekend. There are a lot of unknowns. What will the surprise be, because I promise you there will be one?

Everyone can guess and speculate all they want, but the reality is we just don’t know what it is yet. It’s going to be surprising and I simply can’t wait because I, for one, love surprises.