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AVONDALE, Ariz. Matt Kenseth has won at least one Cup race every year since 2001, but he hasn't won this year. Jeff Gordon has won at least two races in every season since 1994. But with two races left this year he's won none.
Kevin Harvick hasn't won this year. Neither has Mark Martin, Martin Truex Jr., Juan Pablo Montoya, Brian Vickers nor Casey Mears. There also has been no driver who has won his first Cup race in 2008.
The question going into today's Checker 500 at Phoenix International Raceway is why?
The idea that on any given Sunday as many as 20 drivers could win the race is a fallacy. Only 12 drivers have won this year and three drivers – Kyle Busch, Carl Edwards and Jimmie Johnson – have accounted for 22 of the 34 wins this year.
There are those who would argue the reason some drivers you might expect to win haven't is just how competitive things are.
“I don't ever expect to win,” said Kenseth, who will start 34th in today's race in which Johnson will start from the pole. “When we win, I'm happy about it, pleasantly surprised. …It's hard to win these days. There's a lot of competition, these cars are close to the same speed. Everything's got to go right.”
That could have something to do with why the number of winners is slightly down. Sixteen drivers won Cup races in 2007 and the number of different winners has not been lower than 13 since 1999, when only 11 drivers won.
“It's a very fine line because of the challenges that the (new car) has presented to the teams,” said Kasey Kahne, who has won twice this year. “Only certain teams have gotten it to where it drives right. On the old car, a lot of teams had it where it drove right. If there are only a couple of teams that have it where the it drives right, it's going to be awful tough to beat those guys because your car isn't driving nearly as well as their car is.”
Jeff Burton, another two-time winner, agrees the new car will have that effect at least in the short term.
“I think the longer we have the car, more people are going to have opportunity to be successful,” Burton said.
“Short term, my fear of the new car was actually less competition because anytime you do something new, some people hit it and some people don't. Long-term though, I think the (new) car has the potential to create even more opportunity for more people to win.”
Despite what some fans who long for the sport's good old days would like to believe, there is clear evidence that more cars and more drivers are capable of winning now than ever before in NASCAR's top series.
In 2001, 19 drivers won Cup races. The number was 18 the next year and 17 in 2003. From 1990 through 1999, the average number of winners per year was 11.7. Since 2000, it's 15.2.
Perhaps more to the point, from 1980 through 1989 there were 29 winning drivers. That number was the same between 1990 and 1999 – 29 winners. But since 2000, 40 drivers have been in Victory Lane.
David Reutimann and David Ragan have flashed signs they might join that club by becoming first-time winners, but that hasn't happened. Greg Biffle didn't get his first win until New Hampshire in September and Tony Stewart didn't extend his streak of having wins in all 10 of his Cup seasons until a victory at Talladega, Ala.
“You get nervous when you get three-quarters of the way through the season” without a win, Biffle said. “Some of the guys make it look so dang easy, but it is tough.”
Edwards has won the past two races as he tries to catch Johnson in the championship standings, where he trails by 106 points with two weeks left. Edwards has tied Kyle Busch for the most wins this year with eight. Johnson has six. No one else has more than two.
“The difference between wining and losing is such a slim margin that you can have a couple slip away and those might have been the only couple chances that you had for a while,” said Edwards, who suffered through a winless season three years ago.
“In 2006 we were running great but all these little things would happen. Everything has to go so perfectly to win that we just didn't get one.”
