Owner Hilights From The NASCAR Sprint Series 2008 Season

Here are some selected tidbits on team owner statistics from the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Season

• Ryan Newman won the season-opening Daytona 500, his first career restrictor-plate victory.

Teammate Kurt Busch finished second, giving car owner Roger Penske his first restrictor-plate victory and first 1-2 finish in 25 years of NASCAR Sprint Cup racing.


• Richard Childress Racing followed that up when RCR captured the top three finishing positions in the first Bristol race of the season: Jeff Burton, Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer, respectively.

It was the first 1-2-3 finish for a car owner since Roush Fenway racing captured the top four spots at Homestead in November 2005: Greg Biffle, Mark Martin, Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards, respectively.


• Joe Nemechek won the pole at Talladega, giving car owner Barney Visser his first-ever NASCAR Sprint Cup pole. It came in Visser’s 49th as a car owner.


• Hendrick Motorsports began competing in NASCAR Sprint Cup in 1984 and won its first race in 1986. Since then, HMS has posted at least one victory in each of its 22 seasons since and has gone past the seventh race of a season before posting its first win eight times – but only four times since 1994 (including this season). The deepest that HMS has gone into a season before scoring a win was 1992 when the first victory did not come until race No. 23.


• Dale Earnhardt Jr. won at Michigan and became the 14th different driver to win for Hendrick Motorsports.

Every full-time driver for Hendrick Motorsports since 2000 has posted at least one victory while with the organization.

If statistics hold true for next year, then we can fully expect to see a win out of Mark Martin in 2009 then!


• Marcos Ambrose posted a third-place finish driving the No. 21 Wood Brothers Ford at Watkins Glen.

That was the first top-five finish for the Wood Brothers since Ricky Rudd’s fourth at Bristol in August 2005.


• Carl Edwards posted only the second NASCAR Sprint Cup-NASCAR Nationwide Series weekend sweep at Michigan when he won both races there in August. Both came with Jack Roush as the car owner.

Mark Martin posted the first in 1993.


• Roush Fenway Racing swept the top three finishing positions at Dover-2: Greg Biffle, Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards.

It was the second 1-2-3 sweep by a car owner in 2008.



source: nascar press release