by Larry McReynolds

Comment

What do I mean? I don't know if Kasey Kahne was anyone's top 10 pick to win the race at Sonoma last Sunday. We simply don't have any dominant, runaway, clear-cut favorite to win every week. That's great for our sport. And I like what this season is producing.

Don't get me wrong, that is a very good thing. We've had 16 races and 10 different winners so far. And it's not just your usual cast of characters -- look at the list of marquee names who still haven't won yet: Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle, all the Childress cars, Ryan Newman and Dale Earnhardt Jr. all are still searching for their first 2009 victory. Potentially, we could have a year with 16 different race winners.

You just never know who is going to win every Sunday. But we can predict some things"

We all know that sometime, Dale Earnhardt Jr. is going to snap out of this losing streak of his. Do I see it on the very near horizon? No, I don't. That being said, he has two wild card races coming up: Daytona and Talladega. You just know that with his ability, when we go to those two tracks he becomes a clear favorite. However — and I hate to say this — if you took those two opportunities off the table, I see where he could end 2009 without any wins.

And I really think Denny Hamlin is sitting right on the edge of breaking through to Victory Lane. He runs really well at Loudon, so this weekend could be his ticket to a win. That team has been running well most of the year, too — it's just their luck that has been terrible. The list of things that have happened to Denny and his team in the last year and a half seems endless. Lately, though, their finishes are starting to reflect their performance.

I would put Ryan Newman right there with Denny. His Stewart-Haas Racing team is a brand new group that came out of the box running pretty darn well. But much like Mark Martin during the first few races of the year, Newman only had luck of the bad kind. Now that team has turned a corner, and they are solidly in the top 12 in points. That has been a great turnaround for them.

We also know that all the Richard Childress cars historically run well at Loudon. Clint Bowyer has won there. Jeff Burton has had several wins there. And Kevin Harvick runs well there, too. Unfortunately the Childress group as a whole is a little bit "off" right now.

If you remember, five or six races into the 2009 season, Bowyer's performance was probably one of the most pleasant surprises. At one point, he was all the way to second in the points. But then the wheels seemed to have fallen off. While they have started to get back on track recently, I just don't know if they have a winning car yet. They are probably closer to winning than Dale Jr. is, but not nearly as close as Denny or Ryan, in my opinion.

Casey Mears, another Childress driver, unfortunately falls into that same "off" group. Just like the other Childress cars, Mears' team is still just lacking something. The crew chief/team switch has been positive for Casey, with he and crew chief Todd Berrier seeming to complement each other pretty well. But based on performance and consistency, I just don't see that team coming at all close to winning a race.

Now, I do think Juan Pablo Montoya has a legitimate shot at winning this year. He's not quite a top five car yet, but he is a good top 10 each week. Sunday marked three consecutive top 10s for that team. They just need to ramp it up a little bit.

With Martin Truex Jr. and his team ... well, I think right now there are just too many distractions taking away their focus. I believe only a couple of weeks will pass before there's an announcement that he'll be moving to Michael Waltrip Racing in 2010. And with all that future uncertainty, I just don't know if that team can reach Victory Lane this year.

Meanwhile, Jamie McMurray and his team are showing a lot of inconsistency. They'll have one good run, and then follow that up with two bad runs. Jamie seems to be highly affected by the things going on around him. And as the season gets closer to wrapping up, the question becomes who will be the odd team out; per NASCAR rules, Jack Roush will have to reduce to four teams beginning in 2010. I think as long as there is sponsorship in place, whichever team is dropped will become part of Yates Racing — or maybe it will be named something else. But as the season keeps moving along, Jamie and David Ragan are going to be worrying about their future, and that's going to take away their focus from the remaining races.

I think Brian Vickers and his Red Bull team are awfully close to winning a race. They still needs a little more consistency to make it happen, but I think Brian has a comfort level with his team now, as he just re-signed with Red Bull. Obviously, knowing what your future holds and who you will be driving for takes a burden off any driver. Not to mention that he and crew chief Ryan Pemberton just seem to be getting better and better.

Unfortunately, Kevin Harvick is running the worst that he has in his entire Sprint Cup career. I don't know for sure, but I could maybe predict some changes coming down the road there. Who knows what might happen, but it's possible Kevin could opt to go somewhere else in 2010.

Robby Gordon is an awesome race car driver. But I just have to say that he and the No. 7 car shoot themselves in the foot every week. They gave away that race Sunday. They were well within their pit window, so why did they keep waiting? And then the caution came out. That seems to be a constant theme that plagues Robbie, when he's doing his own deal. It happens so often that you have to ask who his worst enemy is — himself?

I also don't see Bobby Labonte or Elliott Sadler close to being able to win right now. In Bobby's case, on a perfectly good day the most he and the team can muster is a top 15 finish. Robert Yates taught me many years ago that when you begin a season and the future is unknown, it becomes a distraction. That's a recurring theme this week, and I think you can see that it is also affecting Sadler and his team.

We still have 20 races to go in this 2009 season as we head to Loudon this weekend. The year is about half over, and there are a lot of people out there in our sport — whether someone behind the wheel, a crew chief or even a whole team — without knowledge of what the future holds. As we're seeing, that can seriously affect performance.