Bank Of Texas Online

Post by Christopher Harris

What in the wild world of sports is up with Mark Martin?

Right here he is. In the middle of the Chase for the Championship (he currently sits third, only 10 points out of very first). In the middle of his second retirement tour. Giving interviews left and proper that he has no desire to run Nextel Cup vehicles anymore, and that he’ll be satisfied with a element-time ride in the Craftsman Truck series. Rolling into Talladega and telling the planet that he’s parting business with Roush Racing, and will as a substitute run 22 races in the MB2 Motorsports #01 automobile, presently piloted by Joe Nemechek.

Ruh? Raggy?

Martin is, as they say, a whopping flake. He complains about his vehicle all day lengthy more than the radio, then gets out of the automobile and tells reporters, with tears in his eyes, that he loves his group, he loves the vehicle they gave him, he loves absolutely everyone. He hasn’t won a race this year, but has seven top rated-fives and 14 top-10s, and just as crucial, is the only driver in the Chase for the Championship without a DNF (he’s also the only driver in the Chase without a win). He’s been really excellent on the high-banked unrestricted 1.five-mile speedways this year (a fifth-spot finishing regular, second-best on the Smokeless Set), on which 3 of the final six races will take location. Martin jerked us about on his “Salute To You” Tour (in which he and Rusty Wallace accepted tons of retirement gifts at every single track they visited), and then jerked us all around this year, claiming his was carried out with stock cars. Oh, yeah, except the part in which MB2 decides to pay him upwards of million for up coming season.

I admit: it really is challenging to say ‘no’ to that sort of dough (even though what Martin needs with a lot more cash, I am not exactly certain). But oh the kvetching. Enough. MB2 is not a competitive group, and it seems unlikely that they’ll win races up coming year. They will be fielding three cars: Marlin and Regan Smith in the #01, Nemechek moving more than to the #13, and Sterling Marlin in the #14. You have heard of the Young Guns? Welcome to the Geezer Brigade.

Okay, yeah, confident, Martin does not want to drive the Nextel Cup circuit full-time anymore, and so he gets to preserve his toe in the water whilst generating a ton of scratch, and a loser team with a new owner gets some credibility. Fine. But oy, sufficient with the hand-wringing, Hamlet.

Anyway, right here comes Charlotte: the first of the 3 1.5-mile, substantial-banked tracks coming up in the next 4 races. Charlotte, Atlanta and Texas are all basically identical, and they routinely swap the honor of getting the fastest track in NASCAR. Jimmie Johnson has owned this location, winning four straight until finally this spring, when Kasey Kahne broke his string. Let’s take a appear at the ideal bets for this Saturday-evening occasion.

Last Week: When you are hot, you’re hot. It looked for all the world that I was going to come up empty at Talladega last weekend, but Brian Vickers came through for me, wrecking Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr. on the race’s final lap to win his initial Nextel Cup race. I had Vickers in a straight-up wager at 30-1. Woo. Hoo. Now, I also had Johnson more than Junior, and that sucks, because when their respective automobiles came to rest, Junior’s was like 4 feet ahead of J.J.’s, so I lost that one particular. But overall, it was a very good week: we netted a positive 3.67 units on 1.5 units wagered for the year, that brings us to a net beneficial 20.94 units, wagering these 1.5 units per week. We’ve also won dollars in 20 of 29 weeks.

Note: Please examine back Saturday morning for our head-to-head variety of the week, which we’ll make when the on the web books post their odds. Thanks.

Take Kasey Kahne (five-1), 1/6th unit. Kahne is the present stud on this track type. He won at Atlanta, Texas and Charlotte in the 2006 season’s first half, lending credence to the theory that the #9 group has some thing figured out in a large way at these joints. Plus, he’s not a risk in the Chase for the Championship, so there is no cause for him not to go balls-out.

Take Jimmie Johnson (five-1), 1/6th unit. And if it really is not Kahne, it is going to be Johnson. These guys are the co-favorites, it really is true, and with very good cause: Kahne has his impressive triumvirate of cookie-cutter-track victories, and Johnson has the name of this speedway stenciled on his hood. Certainly, Lowe’s has been berry, berry very good to J.J.: outside a wreck-induced 39th-place here his rookie year, he’s got a career finishing regular at Charlotte of two.56, including five wins. That is just nuts. These sorts of streaks finish, of course, but even in falling to Kahne back at the Coke 600 this summer, Johnson completed second. You have to think he’s going to be close to the front at race’s finish.

Take Dale Earnhardt Jr. (15-1), 1/6th unit. He’s in no way won at this track, it’s accurate. In truth, he truly hasn’t been extremely competitive here of late, finishing 42nd and 33rd in Charlotte in ’05, and 11th in the Coke right here in May. But the large-banked 1.5-milers, which have extended been the bane of DEI, have abruptly become a specialty. Junior took a severely damaged auto at Atlanta (on a Monday, because of a rainout) this spring, and completed third with it. He also ran to a 12th at Texas. And while the Michigan and California two-milers are not wonderful equivalents to the three tracks with which we’re concerning ourselves this week, they are downforce tracks, and Junior managed a fifth-place finish in four races on those two venues in ’06. That’s saying some thing. I’m also impressed by the simple fact that following practicing 17th, qualifying 16th, and practicing again 15th (that is consistency for you), he went out in Pleased Hour and posted the fastest lap of anybody in the race. I give him a decent chance, and at these odds, that’s okay by me.