The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
NASCAR enjoys wild first 48 hours
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — NASCAR is off to an intriguing start and the season has barely begun.
In the first 48 hours, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Erik Jones, a pair of drivers with something to prove, grabbed the first two wins of the year. Brad Keselowski already seems at odds with teammate Joey Logano and the Busch Clash was an exhibition in how not to drive in the Daytona 500.
Kevin Harvick casually mentioned he’d signed an extension with StewartHaas Racing through 2023, a move that takes him out of contention to join Fox Sports while Jeff Gordon acknowledged on social media he is adjusting to this year’s two-man booth.
Corey LaJoie presented Rick Hendrick with a handwritten letter stating his case to replace Jimmie Johnson in the No. 48 next season, while Kyle Larson began his season as the top free agent in NASCAR without a single stress about his future.
The main event is still a week away, but NASCAR got a strong setup from its first weekend at Daytona International Speedway.
Stenhouse back in September was subdued sitting at a sports book in a Las Vegas casino. Good friends Larson and Denny Hamlin were exhausted after a day promoting the start of the playoffs, but Stenhouse had not qualified to race for the championship and had the entire day off.
“I wouldn’t have minded working today,” he said as his buddies lamented appearance after appearance.
On Monday, as those same friends scattered to enjoy two days off from Speedweeks, it was Stenhouse jumping from morning show to morning show to talk about his pole-winning run for the Daytona 500. It came on his second day driving a Chevrolet Camaro and with his small new team at JTG-Daugherty Racing.
Roughly a month after missing the playoffs, Stenhouse was dumped by Roush Fenway Racing, the team that brought him to NASCAR and where he won a pair of Xfinity Series championships. Stenhouse thought he was set for 2021, but instead he had to scramble to get the JTG seat and managed to bring crew chief Brian Pattie from Roush, along with Mike Kelley, who guided Stenhouse’s Xfinity championships.
Now the driver derisively referred to as “Wrecky Spinhouse Jr.” for his aggressive racing on superspeedways is the star of the show headed into “The Great American Race.” He believes his hand-picked JTG support system can turn the team into a legitimate contender.
“I think there’s a handful of us that feel like we have something to prove, and two of those are in my corner with me at JTG-Daugherty Racing with Mike and Brian,” Stenhouse said. “I know that I feel like I can still get the job done behind the wheel and win races like we did in the Xfinity Series. … to go to a whole brand new place, I think I’d have been lost not having them there.”
Jones is in a similar situation as the least successful driver in the Joe Gibbs Racing juggernaut. The four drivers combined for 19 wins last year, and Jones only notched one. He was eliminated in the first round of the playoffs — the only Gibbs driver not to make it to the championship finale.