CBSSports.com's Brian De Los Santos and Pete Pistone provide analysis on three weekly racing topics.
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| Pete Pistone | Brian De Los Santos |
| Who or what would you rank as the most pleasant surprise of the 2008 racing season? |
 David Ragan made incredible strides in 2008 and seems poised to win his first career Sprint Cup race very soon. After being labeled a "dart without feathers" by Tony Stewart when he made his debut in NASCAR's top division back in 2006, the personable Ragan has steadily improved and just missed making the Chase in his second full season. Many in the garage believe next season will be his breakout year and that wins plus a spot in the playoffs are all in Ragan's future. | Easily the most pleasant surprise of the 2008 season was the end of the Champ Car-IRL feud. That bitter fight went on much too long and basically allowed NASCAR to grow unabated. But NASCAR has shown some chinks in the armor of late that a unified IndyCar may be able to take advantage of. I'd also agree with Pete that David Ragan was also quite the nice surprise. After his disastrous 2007 rookie season I questioned why he still had a ride. But something clicked in 2008 and he looks to have some staying power in the Cup ranks after all. |
| Who or what would you rank as the biggest disappointment of the 2008 racing season? |
 There are a lot of candidates for this dubious honor but I'd have to hand it to Tony Stewart. I thought once he made his decision about leaving Joe Gibbs Racing to start his own team in 2009 public, the weight would have been lifted from Smoke's shoulders and he'd go on one of his patented summer streaks into the Chase, ending his tenure at JGR on a high note. But those wins never came and, except for his controversial win over Regan Smith at Talladega, Stewart never visited victory lane all year and ended his 10 years at Gibbs with a whimper. | There are so many more disappointments than pleasant surprises. At the top of my list are Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kurt Busch and Kasey Kahne. These are supposed to be among the premier drivers of NASCAR, but didn't come close to matching the hype in 2008. Busch and Kahne can blame the shortcomings of Dodge for their failures, but what's Earnhardt Jr.'s excuse? With the move to Hendrick Motorsports, I pegged him as my preseason pick to win the title. While he started well enough and made the Chase, the bottom fell out after he ended his 76-race winless skid with a victory at Michigan. He had 11 top 10s in the first 16 races of the season. He had just five in the final 20 races and finished last in the Chase. It's safe to say that everyone involved expected better results than that. |
| Have we seen the last of the open-wheel exodus into NASCAR? |
| Many believed the open wheel invasion was going to turn out to be a "flavor of the week" trend and after the performances turned in by the former fender-less crowd in 2008, I don't expect to see many more flock to NASCAR anytime soon. Juan Pablo Montoya had a mediocre season and was nowhere near as good as he was in his rookie campaign. Dario Franchitti was the victim of the shrinking economy and went back to the IRL after sponsorship shut down his ride. Sam Hornish Jr. started the year with Kurt Busch's 2007 points and barely hung on to stay in the Top 35 and A.J. Allmendinger made strides but is out of a ride at this point. Scott Speed may still make it but I think the open wheel experiment in NASCAR is pretty much over. |  I think that chapter has finally closed. One, it proved to be a spectacular failure. It probably didn't help that many of the open-wheelers who tried to make the jump did so with struggling organizations. Or are these organizations struggling because they hired drivers with little to no stock-car experience? In any case, pretty much every organization that plucked a big-name open- wheeler rather than a driver who worked his way up the stock-car developmental ranks is in a world of hurt. Secondly, now that it is no longer splitting the pie with Champ Car, the IRL can begin to grow its product and keep its drivers happy. |
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