Sprint Cup Series Kobalt Tools 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on March 10, 2013
Photo – Getty Images
Just six weeks ago, the start of a new season was just days away. We had a bunch of questions about the upcoming season, and after five races, we have partial answers to some of those questions. Some answers were not what we thought, but the season so far has created interest, to say the least. Our predictions were off in a good way since the racing has been better than some originally thought.
Gen 6
Going into the season, the biggest story of the season was NASCAR‘s Gen 6 car. How will the car run? What kind of racing will it produce? Well, the five races so far this season have given us a glimpse of Gen 6 racing and overall, fans are happy. Once teams and drivers figured out what they had to do to make their cars the best for each track, the racing has only improved. Taking the time figuring the car out occurred at Daytona and Phoenix, but since then the racing has been superb.
As the season progresses, we will continue to see what the Gen 6 car is all about, but the answer to our pre-season question about the Gen 6 car is it produces great racing that makes each lap exciting.
Remember all of that pre-season attention to Danica Patrick? Well, that attention has died down some since Daytona, but is still around. When she won the Daytona 500 pole, the concentration on Danica only increased. Once Daytona ended, she’s not been the main focus of NASCAR. She wrecked in Phoenix, struggled in Vegas, lapped multiple times in Bristol and stayed in the back in California. So the spotlight on her has gone down some and so has her performance level since Daytona.
Since her eighth place finish at Daytona, she has failed to finish inside the top twenty. Now the 24/7 attention she received before the season seems not at all worthy. Obviously she is a big story herself, but concentrating on something else that would be more important later in the season, would have been a better use of everyone’s time. To answer our pre-season question, Danica did exactly what we expected of her performance.
One thing that the Danica coverage overshadowed was the potential of our past champion, Brad Keselowski. Brad did receive pre-season attention, but not nearly enough as he should have with a hot streak since the green-flag dropped at Daytona. He started out the season with four straight top-fives, something that we haven’t seen in a while by our past champion. No one really expected this hot-of-a-start by Keselowski and he has already exceeded our pre-season expectations.
Five races into the season, he is already showing championship qualities and that is something that other drivers should take as a warning since Keselowski has already shown his vision for a second championship and we’re just at the Easter break now. Why we questioned how Brad would do at the beginning of the season is questionable itself since we should have just expected Brad to do extremely well.
All we have now are preliminary answers to our pre-season questions, but these partial answers serve to indicate what’s to come later this season. While some of our questions from before Daytona seem silly now, they all were legitimate thoughts about the upcoming season before going green at Daytona. A lot has changed since Daytona and we all now know a lot more about this season than we did just a few short weeks ago. 2013 is rolling forward and there’s no way of stopping what’s to come later this season. Brace yourself because the action will only heat up in the next few weeks.
