Autoweek - January 23_ 2017 magazine-pdf.org

2017 RACING PREVIEW
MONSTERS
OF THE
CUP SERIES
Expect NASCAR’s
power teams to
continue to share
the spotlight in 2017
BY AL PEARCE
A WORD OF WARNING
as NASCAR’s latest “new
era” opens next month at
Daytona International Speedway:
Almost nothing will change from
what we saw last year. The same 20 highpowered,
well-funded, personnel- and
technology-rich teams will dominate,
so much so that Gibbs-Furniture Row,
Childress, Stewart-Haas, Hendrick,
Penske and Ganassi-Sabates likely
will win all 36 races.
The series champion, top rookie
and Most Popular Driver will come from
within that group, too. An outlier or two
might crash the 16-driver Chase for the
Championship party, like Chris Buescher
did last year, but don’t expect any long
shots to advance far into the playoffs.
In today’s NASCAR, those things just
don’t happen.
From most popular to Rookie of the
Year to Sprint Cup champion, things
went mostly as expected last season.
Joe Gibbs Racing/Furniture Row Racing
won 16 races, Team Penske won seven,
Stewart-Haas Racing six, Hendrick
Motorsports five and Ganassi-Sabates one.
The only outlier was Front Row Motorsports,
which used crafty pit strategy to
win a rain-shortened race in August.
Looking forward:
Much attention will be focused on
Jimmie Johnson’s bid for an eighth championship.
NASCAR and some overhyped
media breathlessly called his 2016 title
“historic,” apparently forgetting that
Richard Petty and the late Dale Earnhardt
had seven titles decades ago. Johnson
expects to run four or five more seasons
with crew chief Chad Knaus, team owner
Rick Hendrick and Chevrolet. If they
don’t get No. 8 this year, it seems only