By Micah Roberts
Posted 11/19/2012 at 01:40 PM

Bettors could have had Brad Keselowski at 20-to-1 to win the NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship at the beginning of the season and 8-to-1 prior to the Chase. For 2013, bettors might be able to find odds on him to repeat at a higher number than most defending champions just because of the changes that will be occurring at Penske Racing. It’s hard enough to repeat as champ -- unless you’re Jimmie Johnson, but it’s even harder to perform well for teams changing over manufacturers and engines. Dodge took the championship and closed up their NASCAR program forcing Penske to operate with two Fords next season. They’ll run Roush-Yates engines, but the combination of a new style of car that debuts next season, and then the changes internally add to Keselowski’s difficulty of repeating. Everyone will be in the same boat with the changes, but just like we saw with Hendrick Motorsports when the Car of Tomorrow debuted, they’ll have a huge edge in technology and money over the rest of the teams. Keselowski will be pressed with questions about next season when he’s in Las Vegas at the Wynn for the NASCAR award ceremonies. He’ll be doing an hour on the NASCAR Live radio program in the Wynn sports book at 4 pm.

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By Micah Roberts
Posted 11/17/2012 at 04:56 PM

Kasey Kahne: Crew chief Kenny Francis and the #5 team will unload Hendrick Motorsports Chassis No. 5-729. Kahne has raced this car three times this season, notably scoring third-place finish at Michigan in August and a top-10 result at Charlotte in October. In eight Cup starts at Homestead, Kahne has earned one top-five finish, four top-10s and two pole positions. Kahne is the only driver with eight starts or more at Homestead to have an average starting position inside the top-10 (7.2). He enters Sunday's race with back-to-back top-10 finishes at the 1.5-mile oval. ---------------------- Matt Kenseth: will run primary chassis RK-826 at Homestead, which last ran at Kansas and won. Kenseth has an average starting position of 19.6 and an average finishing position of 17.6 at Homestead. Kenseth has achieved one win, three top-five, and five top-10 finishes at Homestead in the Cup series. Kenseth has completed 2,921 of 3,209 laps (91.0 percent) at Homestead and led for a total of 303 laps. This weekend at Homestead, Kenseth will pilot the No. 17 Best Buy Ford Fusion. ------------------------ Kevin Harvick: will pilot Chassis No.378 from the Richard Childress Racing NASCAR Sprint Cup Series stable at Homestead. The #29 Budweiser team utilized this car twice during the 2011 season at Chicagoland Speedway in September (started-30th, finished-second) and Kansas Speedway in October (started-14th, finished-sixth). Harvick drove this Chevrolet in 2012 to a sixth-place finish at Kansas Speedway in April, a 10th-place result at Michigan International Speedway in June, fifth-place finish at Atlanta Motor Speedway in September and most recently he finished 11th at Kansas Speedway in October. ----------------------- Jimmie Johnson: Chassis No. 728 serves as the primary for Johnson at Homestead. This chassis last ran at Kansas in October, finishing 9th. Also ran at both Dover races (won in June and 4th in September), Chicago in Sept, finishing 2nd and won at Indy in July. Chassis No. 720 serves as the backup and has won two races in 2012: at Texas in November and the All-Star race in May.

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