Monthly Archives: April 2010

In Major League Baseball, there is that ageless rivalry of the Redsox and Yankees.  Now in NASCAR it is appearing that we’re going to have something very similar to the huge rivalry in baseball.  Rick Hendrick is trying to take in all the big names of NASCAR, but just as in baseball; you can’t have them all and standing on the other side of this rivalry is Jack Roush.

This has been spurring rivalry for the last 15 years.  From what started back in the late 90s, when the 24 car was winning on a well hated consistent basis, Jack Roush has not been afraidto share his opinion on Hendrick’s dominance in the past.  Yesterday, ESPN was the first to report that Kasey Kahne had signed on with Hendrick Motorsports for the 2011 season; however, there was one issue.  Mark Martin still had one year left on his contract and it would seem at no surprise that reports sprung that Kahne would drive one season for Stewart-Haas Racing in 2011, and then move to the 5 in 12′. 

I look back at a change in the off-season.  Richard Petty Motorsports, the team that Kahne currently is part of, moved to the Ford Racing family; under a merger with Yates Racing.  While at the time it did not seem to be a deal of the same making as Stewart and Hendricks, it could possibly be on that path now.  Roush has had five teams in the sport for quite a while, and last season NASCAR forced him to shut down one of his operations and go to 4 cars. 

Roush could be taking RPM and using it as its second block as Hendrick is Stewart’s operation.  In the off-season several people from RPM moved over to RFR and teams were mixed up.  Doug Yates, who owned Yates Racing went back to being over the Roush-Yates Engine program and putting total focus on the FR9 engine for this season.  While there are a lot of fans that feel as if the Ford teams are struggling the same as they were in 2009, I have seen improvement in them.

As the Yankees and Redsox Rivalry has seen a lot of the Yankees win, just remember in the last few years the Redsox came to life and have began to pick up momentum after being quiet for a while.  Roush may have that same plan in line for this rivalry soon.

Yeah,  I know it hasn’t even happened.  Kasey Kahne supposebly signed with Hendrick Motorsports but there is an issue with the deal.  Mark Martin, surprise, surprise.  He still has one more year left on his contract and plans to retire afterwards.

So the rumor spreading around the world wide web is that Kahne will go to a third Stewart-Haas Racing team until Martin departs and opens up the 5 car for Kahne.   At the beginning of this season,  Jack Roush had to let go of one of his teams and drivers as NASCAR forced a four car policy on the teams.   Well I guess Rick Hendrick has once again learned how to get out without being noticed by the officials.  You can say what you want to people, SHR may not have the Hendrick Motorsports title but it is the same organization. 

I think a lot of people expected Kahne to make his departure fr om Richard Petty Motorsports at the end of this season.  It just didn’t seem as if he was happy where he was at.  But if Hendrick places him at SHR only to pull him back in to the 5 car the following season(2012).   It just shows that there is a monopoly going on with Hendrick adding spair teams to get more cars in the field.  If NASCAR does not catch on, we may have a full field of Hendrick Chevrolets to deal with.

Inside the problem is that there are a lot of people that knew this was coming before we even discussed it.  Rick Hendrick is no fool, and when Stewart got moved out of the Chevrolet camp, they had to come up with a way to bring him back on board.  Stewart was racing for Gibbs and Toyota and the sight was not pleasant.   Maybe it is time that Jack Roush plays the same monopoly and adds more and more cars to keep going along with Hendrick Motorsports.