James: Road-course ringers pushed out by regulars

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. – Carl Edwards is the embodiment of the new-era road-course ringer. That is to say, the demise of the road-course ringer.

The Joe Gibbs Racing driver was so raw at the discipline — which encompasses two Sprint Cup races yearly, the final of the 2016 season on Sunday at Watkins Glen International — that former team owner Jack Roush employed road course specialist Boris Said to coach Edwards and other young prospects. In his brief history before his matriculation with Said bore progress, Edwards failed to complete his first Cup test lap at Watkins Glen and “there was the brush fire I started at (Virginia International Raceway),” he admitted, when he went off-course with Said in a two-seater.

Now, Edwards, a 27-race winner at NASCAR’s highest level has won on the Sonoma Raceway road course, has five top-fives and eight top-10s at Watkins Glen, and on Saturday won the pole to sweep the top starting spots at both venues this season. He’s come a long way, as has the series.

Carl Edwards wins pole for Cheez-It 355 at Watkins Glen

“My first time here, I didn’t even make it a full lap,” Edwards said. “I backed the 99 car right into the wall coming down the front straightaway. That was embarrassing. It was really embarrassing later while they were fixing my car I was talking to Casey Mears and shooting the breeze and he said, ‘You see that idiot out in that red and white car back it in the first lap that didn’t have a number on it?’ I was like, ‘Casey, that was me.’

“I also crashed the 60 Xfinity car and Brad Parrott was my crew chief and he wouldn’t unload the backup car. He said, ‘We’re going to sit for a little while.’ He’s like, ‘At the current rate we’re going to be going home in about 30 minutes if we unload it.’ I was terrible here and Boris Said helped me a ton.”

Said helped many drivers and in an odd way helped phase himself and others like him from relevance at Sonoma and Watkins Glen. Where a handful of non-oval specialists, such as Said – who will start 37th on Sunday – Ron Fellows and Scott Pruett were once considered serious enough contenders to be employed by larger teams at Sonoma and Watkins Glen, Sprint Cup regulars have become increasingly proficient at the skill. Failing to exploit any opportunity to gather points — or a victory in this iteration of Chase for the Sprint Cup qualifying — is simply foolish.

The beginning of the end of the so-called road-course ringer era coincided with Edwards' first full Sprint Cup season in 2005, when Robby Gordon finished second, Said was third and Pruett fourth. Tony Stewart won that race.

Preparation for non-oval racing has broadened in NASCAR’s under series, also. The Xfinity Series has presented three road-course races yearly since 2010 — Watkins Glen, Mid-Ohio and Road America are on the schedule in August — when there were none between 2002-04. Beginning in 2013, NASCAR reduced the minimum age for trucks series drivers to 16 for road courses and tracks less than 1.5 miles in distance, the same season it returned to a non-oval — Canadian Tire Motorsport Park — for the first time since 2000. Chase Elliott, 17 years old in 2013, Ryan Blaney, 20 in 2014, and Erik Jones, 19 in 2015, have subsequently won truck races there. Elliott and Blaney are currently Sprint Cup rookies.

Granted, Watkins Glen and Sonoma have produced unexpected winners, albeit ones who utilized their road-course backgrounds to make breakthroughs after conversions to stock-car careers. Open wheel products Juan Pablo Montoya won at Sonoma and Watkins Glen — encompassing both of his Sprint Cup wins — Marcos Ambrose won at the Glen in 2011 and 2012 before returning to race in Australia and A.J. Allmendinger leaped into the Chase with his first Cup win at Watkins Glen in 2014.

There will likely be some exceptions, but increasingly, road course racing is about the rule.