Road-Course Ringers No Sure Bet in NASCAR

There was a time when conventional wisdom said a team's odds to win increased exponentially by putting a road-course expert -- a 'ringer' -- in the car when the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series made its two annual stops on ambidextrous road circuits.

Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart -- for starters -- have proven that wisdom wrong.

When it comes to NASCAR's marquee Cup series, a team's chances to win don't improve markedly with a traditional road course racer-for-hire. In fact, they don't improve at all.

No ringer has ever won at either this weekend's stop Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif. or at the historic Watkins Glen, N.Y. course

In fact, favorite road course sons Boris Said, Ron Fellows and Scott Pruett have only led 72 laps in a combined 47 starts at the tracks since 2000.

NASCAR regular Kyle Busch led 78 laps in one race, winning the 2008 race at Infineon -- the first half of his road course sweep that season.

For one thing, road course specialists are no more immune to losing races on fuel-mileage strategies, late-race yellows or falling victim to another's driving error than oval track regulars. And, typically, the road racers aren't in comparable equipment to those of drivers campaigning a full season.

But a larger reason is that the "oval guys" have made it a priority to step up their games on the road courses. Previous NASCAR generations tended to dismiss the importance of success on a couple of road course races during a long oval season. But the current group of Cup drivers can't afford to think like that given today's level of competition.

Not only are they slowly but surely embracing the art of road course racing, they take a certain pride in outperforming the ringers.

"I like having the opportunity to do something twice a year that we don't get a shot at doing very often,'' said Stewart, who finished as runner-up to Kasey Kahne at Infineon last year.

"I take the same amount of pride that someone like Ron Fellows or Scott Pruett does when they come into a road course race. I take that same pride in running well that they do in these cars.

"I don't look at it from the standpoint that it's a negative weekend. I look at it as a positive, that it's something we enjoy and I feel like that gives us a leg up on most of the guys we race with at these tracks."

Beyond the positive attitude, on a more practical level, today's Cup drivers test more, drive video-simulations and quite literally, have gone to school. Four-time reigning Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, who is winless on road courses, said he's tested at road courses more than any other type of track.

"In the past, I've done the Bondurant School out in Phoenix each year prior to going to the Infineon race, just to try and get toned back up and get my hands acclimated, because you normally get some blisters driving the road courses,'' said Kyle Busch, who holds the third best driver rating at Infineon since 2005.

He ranks behind only Tony Stewart and former Formula One driver Juan Pablo Montoya, who has only three starts at the track, including a win in his 2007 debut.

There have been five different winners in the last five races at Infineon. Jeff Gordon leads all drivers at the wine country road course with five victories, and he is the only driver to ever win back-to-back races, winning three in a row from 1998 through 2000. But it has been a decade now since he accomplished that feat.

And it may surprise you to know that three former USAC drivers, Stewart, Ryan Newman and Gordon, rank 1-2-3 in NASCAR's "quality passes" statistical category at Sonoma. And that five of the most successful Cup drivers, including Johnson, 2004 champ Kurt Busch, 2003 Cup champ Matt Kenseth and former Nationwide Series champions Greg Biffle and Carl Edwards, have never won on a road course.

Conversely, in 22 total road course starts, Stewart has seven wins and four runner-up finishes with a series best average finish of 7.3. As his press release for this week's race points out, the "ringers" are 0-for-21 at Sonoma and 0-for-27 at Watkins Glen. Since 2002, Stewart has finished worse than second only six times.

Fellows, a Canadian former SCCA Trans-Am Series champ and 24 Hours of LeMans winner, has four wins in 15 Nationwide road course race starts -- three of them at Watkins Glen. But since 2000, he's averaging a 24.4 finish in 17 Cup starts on road courses.

Said, a popular personality and hugely successful sports car driver, has been tapped to tutor stock car drivers on the road courses and includes the late Dale Earnhardt and Dale Earnhardt Jr. among his former pupils. But while Earnhardt went on to win on a NASCAR Cup road circuit, Said has a single top-five finish in 18 starts and is averaging a 20.8 place finish.

He'll be driving the No. 26 Air Guard Ford this week and is coming off four top-10s and one pole position in the last five races at Infineon. Joining him will be road-course specialists, P.J. Jones and Brian Simo along with Swedish driver Mattias Ekstrom and Danish-born sports car champ Jan Magnussen, who will be making their Cup debuts.

New conventional wisdom makes them long-shots.