NASCAR, NHRA head east

NASCAR and the NHRA made their winter visits to the West Coast. NASCAR will be in Georgia at Atlanta Motor Speedway this weekend after racing in Fontana and Las Vegas. The NHRA heads to Florida for the Gatornationals in Gainesville.
I'm still trying to figure out how Matt Kenseth can win the first two races of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and be third in the Cup standings.
Kenseth ended up 43rd and last at Las Vegas, barely completing one lap before having to withdraw. He was trying to become the first NASCAR driver to win the first three races of the Cup season.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever dropped out on lap one before," Kenseth said after the race in Vegas. "It’s never really easy. We didn’t even really get to race (Sunday) and we qualified bad, so it was a pretty long weekend for nothing. It’s disappointing no matter what. I’m glad we did great the last two weeks, but, really, you take it one week at a time and shift your focus to that race each and every week, so it’s always disappointing when something like that happens.”

Jeff Gordon, winless since 2007, is leading, with Clint Bowyer in second. Bowyer in second place might be the most bizarre thing about the Cup standings after three races. Seeing Michael Waltrip in the top 12 is a little surprising too. But what has Bowyer done in the first three races, except complain about his garage spot at Fontana?
Nothing against Bowyer, but it's not like he's been much of a factor in the first three races. He had a good run in Vegas, but that's about it.
As for the NHRA, Ron Capps came out as the surprise leader in the Funny Car standings. He won the first two events of the year, at Pomona and Las Vegas.
Capps said the great start to the 2009 season started in the 2008 season finale in Pomona when Ace McCulloch started overhauling his car.
"When we left Pomona, even though we ran good, he completely re-did the tune-up on the car, went back to basics, and started from scratch, redid the whole car," Capps said. "When we showed up in West Palm for our first test session, we were the quickest car every session. Then when we went to Phoenix for pre-season testing, we wanted to test a lot of things. When we rolled into Pomona, we were a little bit apprehensive but a little bit confident. We weren’t sure how the weekend was going to go. To win there, it just proved that a lot of hard work paid off."
Antron Brown is atop the Top Fuel standings. Jason Line leads the Pro Stock standings.

Kenseth's California notes

Matt Kenseth, winner of the season-opening Daytona 500, heads to Auto Club Speedway in Fontana with a strong start and ton of confidence.
But there's not much drivers can take from Daytona, where cars are run with restrictor plates, to the other tracks on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series circuit.
Fontana is where the real season starts for many of the Cup drivers, especially those with aspirations of making the Chase at the end of the season.
For the first time, the notes teams have from previous races at Fontana will be valuable. NASCAR started using the Car of Tomorrow at all tracks last year, and Kenseth said the two races the Cup drivers had at the track will give teams useful information.

“I think it’ll be pretty important," Kenseth said. "If it was any other year, I’d say they wouldn’t be that important with the other car, but since we’ve switched to this car and we ran it at every race track last year, there have been zero rules changes to the car, so we have the same exact aerodynamic package we had when we went to both races last year."

The cars and the rules haven't changed. But there are some other variables. Goodyear has a new tire and weather and track conditions could be a factor as well.
"Of course, if the tire is different there are still some variables there with track conditions and tires and stuff like that," Kenseth said, "but, basically, we rely on our notes from last time with what we do and then they try to improve on that everytime we go back.”