February has ended and March is here. Ferrari will be returning to Le Mans in 2023. Supercars opened its season with a sprint event around Mount Panorama. Romain Grosjean got his first test in an IndyCar. Gene Haas opened his mouth and made himself look bad. Formula E had two solid races to open its 2021 season. Alex Lynn went airborne but is ok. The World Rally Championship made an early visit to Finland. NASCAR had two races in Homestead and this time rain did not disrupt the weekend. William Byron won the Cup race. Here is a rundown of what got me thinking.
It's Too Early to Look at the Standings
With an unlikely combination of winners and set of results in the first two races of the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season, many marveled at how the standings looked after the Daytona road course last week.
Christopher Bell was fourth after his victory on the Daytona road course. Michael McDowell and Ryan Preece were sixth and seventh after opening the season with consecutive top ten finishes. Cole Custer was 11th, despite not having a top ten finish. Bubba Wallace was 13th. Corey LaJoie and Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. rounded out the top 16.
Entering Homestead, Kyle Busch, Ryan Blaney, Alex Bowman and William Byron were all outside of playoff spots. All were race winners in 2020. Aric Almirola was 21st. Matt DiBenedetto was 37th ahead of only David Ragan and Derrike Cope. All seven drivers were playoff drivers the year before.
With a third race in the bag, McDowell is now fourth in the championship with three consecutive top ten finishes! The most top ten finishes he has had in a season was four last year. Bell is still in seventh. Austin Dillon and Preece are tied for 11th. Byron's victory lifted him up 16 positions to 13th. Bowman, Busch, Blaney, Almirola and DiBenedetto are all still on the outside. DiBenedetto is 34th in the championship, behind the likes of Jamie McMurray and Joey Gase, two drivers who had not run since the Daytona 500.
However, we have only run three races. Thirty-three remain, 23 are left in the regular season portion. Every race contributes toward the championship, but the first three races are not setting in stone what is to come for the rest of the season. The standings are due for a shakeup and there are plenty of examples of drivers who started hot and faded into the middle of the pack.
Through four races in the 2011 season, Paul Menard was fifth in the championship. He opened the season with a ninth at Daytona and a fifth at Bristol. The only drivers ahead of him in the championship were Kurt Busch, Carl Edwards, Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman. Stewart and Edwards were tied for the championship at the end of 36 races. Stewart took the hardware on tiebreaker. Newman and Busch were 11th and 12th respectively. Though Menard won the Brickyard 400, he finished the championship in 17th.
In that same 2011 season, A.J. Allmendinger was ninth in the championship after three races. He ended up 15th with one top five finish the entire season. Allmendinger was also fifth in the championship after the third and fourth races of the 2015 season. He had top ten finishes at Atlanta and Las Vegas. He ended up 22nd in the final championship with zero top five finishes and his only top ten finish after Las Vegas was a seventh in the second Pocono race.
Remember Joey Logano's 2017 season? Logano was in the top five of the championship through the first ten races of the season, but he failed inspection after his victory at Richmond and his season unraveled from there. After having six top five finishes and eight top ten finishes from the first ten races, he had four top five finishes and eight top ten finishes for the rest of the season. He missed the playoffs and ended up 17th in the championship.
At least one driver makes a notable fall. In 2018, Menard was ninth in the championship after three races, Ryan Newman was 14th and Bubba Wallace was 15th. None of those three made the playoffs. Menard dropped to 19th. Wallace dropped to 28th. Ricky Stenhouse, Jr was seventh after three races in 2019, with his best result being sixth at Las Vegas. He had two top ten finishes the rest of the season and was 23rd in the championship. Last year, Chris Buescher was 11th in the championship after three races. He ended up 21st
Jumping back to 2006, Casey Mears was fourth in the championship after three races with finishes of second, seventh and ninth. He had one top five finish and five top ten finishes in the final 33 races and ended up 14th in the championship. Clint Bowyer was seventh after three races that year and Elliott Sadler was eighth. Bowyer ended up 17th and Sadler was 22nd.
For all the drivers who started strong and fell, there are drivers who have started slow and came out on top. Kevin Harvick was outside the top ten in the championship after 13 of the first 14 races in the 2014 season. Prior to the start of the playoffs, he was in the top five of the championship after only one races, the second race of the season. He went on to win the championship.
Brad Keselowski didn't break into the top ten of the championship until after the 14th race in 2012. Keselowski didn't crack the top five until after the 22nd race and then he fell out after the 24th race. He was first or second in the championship after every race in the playoffs, ending up with the title after Homestead. Clint Bowyer was second in the championship that year. He didn't enter the top five of the championship until the Chase began.
In 2009, Jimmie Johnson's best finish through four races was ninth. He was 13th in the championship. Remind me how that turned out for Johnson? Oh, yeah, a fourth consecutive championship. Johnson was also 13th in the championship after four races the year prior to that as well
We have to let a championship breathe and not take any of the results that seriously after two or three or even four races. We shouldn't start taking anything seriously until seven or eight races are complete and even at that point we could probably wait until the midway point of the regular season.
I don't know how McDowell is having an otherworldly season now, 360 races, literally ten full NASCAR Cup seasons, into his career. I don't know if it is going to stick or if the momentum is going to run out after Las Vegas, Phoenix, Atlanta and a Bristol dirt race. I can't say for certain Kyle Busch is going to turn it around, but he is going to finish better than tenth soon. Blaney doesn't have a top ten finish yet, but he isn't going to be shut out in that department. The Penske organization has a combined two top ten finishes from its three drivers in three races. That is going to change.
The season is going to develop and 2021 is incomparable to other recent seasons. The season started with the Daytona 500 and a road course. You have to go 40 years to the last time Riverside opened the season to make such a comparison. We just had our first intermediate race and Homestead stands out on its own among the intermediate tracks. There is still a dirt race, a number of other short tracks and road courses to go until we will reach the point where we can start drawing conclusions from what the championship standings are telling us.
Let these opening races happen and don't buy what the standings tell you now as gospel.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about William Byron, but did you know...
Nyck de Vries and Sam Bird split the Formula E races from Saudi Arabia.
Ott Tänak won Arctic Rally - Finland.
Shane van Gisbergen swept the two Supercars races from Bathurst.
Myatt Snider won the NASCAR Grand National Series race from Homestead, his first career victory.
Coming Up This Weekend
NASCAR will be in Las Vegas.
Supercross opens Daytona Bike Week.
GT World Challenge America opens its season at Sonoma.
