A Biased Review

By Jason Jarrett

Most of the time I try and look at several situations during the race and stay open minded but this time I am going for the totally biased point of view. I know most of the attention is going to be placed on the driver’s and teams in the Chase during this time of year and I don’t blame the networks and other media at all. It is no different than the playoffs of any other sport: you don’t see the teams that do not make the playoffs getting hype when they are knocked out of the playoffs. I have become a big fan of the Chase format but that does not keep me from focusing on my favorite driver, although he is not in the season ending battle for the championship. DJ is my favorite, as you might have guessed, but he and Butch Hylton, and the team are still fighting for every spot they can gain.

There is a lot to be said for what they have been doing over the last several weeks. I attribute most of my thoughts on this subject to the addition of Butch Hylton to the crew chief position. And, I cannot let the fact that dad is one of the most focused guys out there slip through unnoticed. As long as I have been going to the races he has known the "game" better than most if not all. Yesterday was proof that you can still have good finishes with a lot of outside forces affecting the team. Everyone knows what is going to happen at the end of the season but Butch has done a masterful job of getting his team to rally behind him and the decisions he makes on pit road. He even takes suggestions from his driver!

I was not at the track during practice or qualifying this week so when I showed up on Sunday morning I had no idea what to expect for the race. The only racing I was able to watch was about the last 30 laps of the Busch Series race on Saturday afternoon. That race was filled with cautions from what I was able to watch.

The race started with a few quick cautions but eventually everyone got sorted out the drivers were able to make some long green flag runs. As I was watching, I could see that DJ was better on the longer runs so I was hoping for few or no cautions. The car seemed to not fall off as much as some of the other cars as they did get long runs. The UPS Ford Fusion was able to stabilize around 13^th to 18^th for most of the day depending on the length of the run. There were several times that single car cautions and quick yellows kept him from getting that long sequence but eventually it worked out.

Butch was able to get some track position on one of the cautions by getting two tires. It was also good to see that the over the wall guys were able to concentrate on changing the tires and filling the car with fuel instead of making long adjustments on their pit stops. The stops were good and that is in part to having a good handling car. It is cool to hear that confidence in everyone’s voices go up as the car moves forward.

Most of you that watched the race know all of the crazy things that happened next. Most of the Chase contenders had to do the safe thing and make a pit stop for fuel. There were a few interested things that happened as the stops began. Kahne spun coming onto pit road and I think he was out of fuel on top of that. Jimmy Johnson started down pit road and as soon as he saw Kahne spin he came back out on the track thinking that there might be a caution, which there was not. He pitted the next time by and was tagged for speeding on pit road. I am sure there were many things that I did not even see happen.

DJ is one of the best at saving fuel and Butch and the team did an excellent job getting the mileage as close as they did. The last few laps were nerve racking for me and I am sure the crew and dad were sweating it out as well. They did not have anything to lose by going for it as that was the case for several of the cars including the eventual winner, Tony Stewart. It was one of the most bizarre finishes I have ever witnessed with Tony running out on the back but with such a huge lead was able to coast across the line for the win. The second place car of Casey Mears also ran out before crossing the line not allowing him to take over the lead from Stewart. It was wild! Meanwhile DJ was still under power coming to the stripe and managed his first top five finish since last year at Talladega, where he won the race. He and the team were able to capture fourth.

What does this mean? It means DJ, Butch, and team are heading to a place that dad can get the job done. He knows the track and he knows the draft so I think he will be someone to watch as he tries to be the first driver to win on the newly repaved surface. I like seeing the team’s enthusiasm continue to increase and I believe that a win is possible if they keep putting themselves in better and better positions every week.