Samsung Mobile 500 Race Preview

Texas Motor Speedway -- 04/18/2010

Author: Jed Henson

Published: Wednesday Apr 14 2010 1:40pm

The Sprint Cup series has spent a month on two relatively unpredictable short tracks, but now it heads to the lightning-fast cookie-cutter track known as Texas Motor Speedway (TMS). NASCAR handicappers can rejoice because the 1.5-mile D-shaped tracks with progressive banking—i.e., TMS, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Atlanta and Homestead—offer perhaps the most predictability on the circuit. Right?

Not quite this time, unfortunately. On one hand, the series runs on these tracks nine times a year, providing a wealth of historical data (i.e., the numbers from practice, qualifying and the race each race), and generally speaking, the more data the better. Even better, we have very recent banked-cookie data from the Atlanta and Las Vegas races this spring. Finally, the 1.5-miler is big, and big tracks offer more breathing room on the track and pit road than a short track.

However, this week we will finally find out how if and how much the switch from the rear wing to the spoiler shakes up the teams' pecking order. I attended the spoiler testing session in Charlotte last month and spent a lot of time reading many spoiler-related articles. (You can find links to many in Nascapper's NASCAR News forum. At press time, they're located on pages five and six.) Overall, the consensus seemed to hold that the spoiler wouldn't have a big impact, but we really won't know until it's in play on a super high-speed track in race conditions. At Texas, the cars will top 200 mph, and that's enough wind to do the trick.

In addition, at press time it appears the Fort Worth, Texas, area will have scattered thunderstorms from Thursday through race day. That decreases race predictability because it means the track will likely undergo relatively large temperature changes between the practices, qualifying and race, and the amount of rubber on the track will likely vary a lot as well (i.e., cars rubber it in, rain washes it off, repeat).

Does this mean we should give up and wait for another week? No, it just means bettors need better odds than they would if the spoiler change and weather weren't in play.

Handicapping Texas
I've examined a range of historical data to get a feel for the likely top performers this week. First I looked at the pre-race and race data for the two 2009 Texas races, then the same data for all the banked-cookies in 2009 and 2010, and finally the data for the most recent banked-cookie races.

Jimmie Johnson tops all my historical-data charts by a good margin, and Hendrick batterymates Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin are second and third, respectively. Here's my preliminary top 10:

1. Jimmie Johnson
2. Jeff Gordon
3. Mark Martin
4. Greg Biffle
5. Kurt Busch
6. Tony Stewart
7. Kyle Busch
8. Kasey Kahne
9. Carl Edwards
10. Denny Hamlin

Stay tuned for my Race Preview Update this weekend. We should have a better handle on the spoiler's impact and the weather by then.

Jed Henson publishes the blog NASCARpredict.com. He participates in the Nascapper forums and Free NASCAR Picks Monitor under the name Tucker19.

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User	Comment
grippy	testing yet again lala
HotRodMike	Do you really think Jimmy Johnson can keep this up race after race? Something has to give, his nerve or is car are the most likely.
TrackRat	Looks like Greg Biffle was just a passing fad this year. He raced a good Chase, but just could not keep up the pace till the end.
TonySfan	Tony Stewart is still my favorite pick for this but I`d like to see Jimmie take this one. He`s really earned it. :D
racefan	Go Jimmie go! Hoping he wins this one one more time!
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