HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- Dale Earnhardt Jr. laughed when asked on pit road Friday if recent allegations in a National Enquirer story entitled "Dale Earnhardt Jr. in a death spiral" were true.
He jokingly said there was more truth in a 2004 Enquirer article that said he and drivers Jamie McMurray and Elliott Sadler were involved with "naked partying" with girls in beer-filled hot tubs during spring break in Panama City, Fla.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. was a happy man at Homestead on Friday.
"The hot tub story was kind of true," NASCAR's most popular driver said with a laugh. "Filling it up with beer, well, who hasn't done that?"
I sheepishly raised my hand.
"Even when you were in college?" he said, his voice raising a few octaves. "Holy … !"
Sorry to disappoint.
And by the way, the best part about the 2004 story, which Earnhardt pretty much shot down at the time, was that Martin Truex Jr. also was with the group but identified as Tony Stewart because that's who he told everybody he was.
Back to the current Enquirer article. Earnhardt said he considered legal action against the publication before realizing it was worded in a way "so you really can't go after it."
"I got all tore up about how we qualified at Charlotte [in October] and I got in front of you guys and really said how I feel," Earnhardt said after qualifying at Homestead-Miami Speedway. "A couple of metaphors I used such as 'end of my rope' put me in range of those guys.
"They played target practice on that. I actually researched online how many people had sued and won."
The article anonymously quoted several sources supposedly close to Earnhardt saying he had turned to "booze" to cope with what statistically is his worst season in the Sprint Cup series.
The article said he "burned through a string of girlfriends and he's still haunted by the tragic death of his legendary father."
"Dale Jr. seems almost in a death spiral," disclosed a pal in the story. "He's locked himself away from his closest friends, and he's upset all the time.
"Those closest to him are concerned about his mental health and well-being. No one wants to see him do something stupid. We've suggested that he get help, take some time off and regroup, but he won't listen."
Earnhardt again laughed off the article, refusing to call 2009 his worst season ever even though statistics -- 24th in points with no wins -- suggest otherwise.
What he means is the scrutiny he's been under for lack of performance is far less than what he went through during the family warfare with stepmother Teresa Earnhardt.
"It doesn't really bother me that much," he said of the article. "A lot of people say any publicity is good. We're [24th] in points and still relevant for the National Enquirer."
As for this season, Earnhardt said a lot of good things have happened and that he wished the year wasn't over so his team could continue to improve.
But he said confidence is what his team needs to work on the most during the offseason.
"That's where it starts," Earnhardt said. "I need to believe that they believe, and vice versa. If they get the feeling I don't believe in them, then we are done. That's the worst thing I can do. It's a two-way street between every employee on that team."
Earnhardt said some of the changes crew chief Lance McGrew has made in the structure of the team at the Concord, N.C., shop have helped.
"And we'll see hopefully some more of that as we get closer to Daytona," he said, referring to next year's opener. "He's already made some good changes and done a pretty good job of helping us improve as a team."
The Enquirer probably won't report that, though, unless McGrew fills the car with beer.
AVONDALE, Ariz. -- I digress to the debacle at Talladega Superspeedway and a comment made by Denny Hamlin after NASCAR president Mike Helton told drivers to curb their enthusiasm with bump-drafting.
"Let us race," the driver of the No. 11 said. "They gave us the car to race. Now let the drivers handle it."
I refer to that comment because the same thing needs to be said in the
Brad Keselowski-Hamlin feud.
Let 'em race. Let them handle it.
That's not going to happen. NASCAR officials, including chairman Brian France, met with Keselowski before Sunday's Sprint Cup race at Phoenix International Raceway to talk about his aggressive driving that is ticking off fellow drivers.
They believe it is in the best interest of the driver and the sport to guide the rookie driver, to teach him ways to compete without making others so mad that they want to retaliate, as Hamlin promised after Saturday's Nationwide Series race.
But that's the main problem with the sport today: It's too sanitized.
In case you missed it, Keselowski caused Hamlin to spin out, igniting a war of words from Hamlin about his getting even. It was a continuation of the feud that began in May 2008 and escalated a few months ago at Dover when Keselowski wrecked Hamlin late.
With apologies to Ron Hornaday Jr. for wrapping up a fourth Truck series title Friday night, it was the most excitement of the weekend.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
As I sarcastically Twittered on Saturday, where do you think NASCAR would be today had Cale Yarborough and the Allison brothers, Bobby and Donnie, gotten out of their cars at Daytona in 1979 and tweeted each other instead of exchanging fisticuffs?
NASCAR officials have used that clip to promote the sport for as long as I can remember. They do it because they know fans like the drama, the feuding and fighting almost as much as they do the racing. Some like it more.
We as sports writers certainly appreciate it.
What is happening between Keselowski and Hamlin is good for the sport. If they get into each other on the track, penalize them, slap them on the wrist and say they are bad boys.
But let them be bad boys.
We had a bad boy in Kyle Busch until he became sanitized. Drivers once complained about him the way they complain about Keselowski now.
You don't hear that anymore.
You may not hear much more from Keselowski and Hamlin after Sunday's meeting, although there was a certain confidence -- or maybe arrogance -- in Keselowski's voice that makes me believe he won't back off too much.
AVONDALE, Ariz. -- Between the whirling wind atop Rattlesnake Hill and the roar of the trucks circling Phoenix International Raceway below, I barely could hear the person beside me.
These words I didn't miss.
"I'm gonna make you guys pay for everything bad you've written about me," Carl Edwards said as he strapped in the seat belt of the four-wheel-drive, all-terrain vehicle.
Want a bird's-eye view of Phoenix International Raceway? Climb to the top of Rattlesnake Hill.
Unfortunately, I was one of "you guys." The other was Joe Menzer of NASCAR.com.
We were squeezed onto the back ramp made for toting gear, not two out-of-shape sportswriters who thought it would be a good idea to watch the start of the Truck series race from atop this 1,158-foot mound of rocks and cactus.
No padded seats. No seat belts. There barely was room for our combined rear ends -- no comments, please -- as our feet dangled over the edge.
Were it not for the roll bar behind our hard heads we likely would have been launched into the dessert darkness as Edwards roared at what we guesstimated was 50 mph down the bumpy, narrow path.
"Any dust getting on you guys?" Edwards shouted in a tone that was almost as scary as the ride.
I wanted to reply with something smart like, "Not as much as the dust Jimmie Johnson has left you in during the Chase."
Unable to see my legs from the knees down and understanding who was in charge, I refrained.
As we approached the end of this treacherous journey that I accepted only for the health of my fellow scribe, who had to stop and rest on a rock during the walk up, Edwards asked where we wanted to be dropped off.
In my oft-sarcastic voice, noticing a 5-foot drop to the next level of rocky path and knowing Edwards would be overly cautious with his pregnant wife in the passenger seat, I said to take a hard left.
He did.
Joe and I became closer than we ever imagined -- or wanted.
"Watch your hands," he insisted.
"Sorry," I replied as I struggled to hang on.
The move didn't go unnoticed by a security guard, who informed us such maneuvers are considered a no-no in this wasteland around the track. He asked to see Edwards' identification.
Unlike Kasey Kahne, who in 2007 was sued for assaulting a 62-year-old security guard at Homestead-Miami Speedway when he couldn't produce anything but a driver's uniform with his name on it, Edwards had his wallet.
Fortunately, the guard wasn't Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who in 2005 said "our streets are not to be used as raceways" after Kurt Busch was charged with reckless driving not far from the track.
Fortunately, the ride was over. Edwards dropped us off at the entrance to the Sprint Cup garage and then disappeared as quickly as he came.
I have to admit, the ride made me better appreciate Edwards' skills. Had Joe or I been behind the wheel at that speed on a path better suited for rattlesnakes and tumbleweed they still might be looking for body parts.
I also better appreciate Edwards' sense of humor. Not for scaring the you-know-what out of us, but for leaving a voice mail for my wife explaining how he carried me off the hill after I was bitten by a snake.
I also better appreciate the view from Rattlesnake Hill. There may be no more spectacular place to watch a race. It is comparable to viewing a Boston Red Sox game from atop the Green Monster, more awe-inspiring than standing on the start-finish line at Daytona International Speedway.
The view, particularly as we watched the sun set over the hills, was breathtaking.
The ride down took my breath as well.
Only nice things to say about Edwards from now on.
I was going to craft a funny blog about what Jimmie Johnson should be nicknamed when he wins a fourth straight Sprint Cup championship. Then I remembered it was Veterans Day. Then I remembered Marine Lance Cpl. Christopher S. Fowlkes.
Chris was 18 when I last saw him two and a half years ago. He was preparing to leave for boot camp in Parris Island, S.C. He couldn't have been happier.
Chris died on Sept. 10 from wounds suffered in an explosion while serving his country in Afghanistan.
He was only 20.
As my 16-year-old son so poignantly reminded me of his cousin, "One day I was playing volleyball with him in the backyard. The next I was going to his funeral.''
So I will forego funny for today and leave you with an Associated Press story I stumbled onto. It was among hundreds that came up about fallen veterans. It sums up why Jimmie Johnson's new nickname will have to wait until a future blog.
It sums up why Chris should be remembered on this Veterans Day ...
Christopher Fowlkes had just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq, but it wasn't too much to drive six hours so he could send off his buddy to Marine boot camp.
"His heart was just huge," said friend Cameron Snuggs. "He was my brother."
Snuggs said Fowlkes always wore his uniform with pride -- whether it was a Little League jersey, his Gaffney Indians high school uniform, Marine dress blues or camouflage.
"No one wore that Gaffney High School uniform like Chris did," Snuggs said.
Fowlkes, 20, of Gaffney, S.C., died Sept. 10 at a U.S. military hospital in Germany. He had been seriously wounded a week earlier in Helmand province, Afghanistan, when an improvised explosive detonated. He was assigned to Camp Lejeune, N.C.
The Rev. David Kite eulogized Fowlkes at his funeral.
"He gave laughter in situations that were really difficult to find humor," Kite said.
"He gave friendship to those who needed a friend."
Jessica LeMaster, who attended high school with Fowlkes, said it was clear in high school that he wanted to be a Marine. The two shared a love for University of Tennessee sports -- and LeMaster said she had borrowed a pair of basketball shorts from him some time ago.
Now, she'll keep them as something by which to remember him.
LAS VEGAS -- Richard Petty had signed about his 300th autograph at the SEMA Show on Wednesday when I informed him that Danica Patrick was close to a deal with JR Motorsports.
"To do what?" NASCAR's seven-time champion said.
I smiled and said, "To drive in the Nationwide Series."
Petty smiled back and replied, "Just being politically correct."
Another first for the King: being politically correct on the subject of women in NASCAR.
About 40 years ago Petty told a group of women from Queens College in Charlotte, N.C., that the pits at a NASCAR event "was no place for these girls."
In 2006, his opinion hadn't changed.
"I just don't think it's a sport for women," Petty told me at the time. "And so far, it's proven out. It's really not. It's good for them to come in. It gives us a lot of publicity, it gives them publicity.
"But as far as being a real true racer, making a living out of it, it's kind of tough."
Petty wasn't trying to be harsh then any more than he was trying to be harsh about IndyCar Series darling Patrick being close to finalizing a deal to drive in the Nationwide Series for JRM. He was just noting the obvious: that women have tried to make it in NASCAR's premier series many times before and failed.
His reasons are the same now that they have always been. Stock cars are heavy machines that are tough enough for 200-pound men to handle, much less for a 100-pound woman, even with power steering and all the other advanced technology.
"The deal is, this is not as easy as it looks," the Hall of Fame driver said. "And if you've had championship drivers come from that league that are struggling, then where does it leave her?"
Let's get this straight. Petty doesn't wish Patrick ill will because she is a woman. He understands more than most what Patrick would mean to the sport from a public-relations standpoint, particularly in tough economic times.
He simply doesn't believe, like many I've talked to, that Patrick can succeed in NASCAR.
But apparently she's going to try. Sources say the deal with JRM is close to done and that the goal is to put her in the ARCA event at Daytona International Speedway in February. If that goes well and officials approve, she'll make her Nationwide Series debut, then compete in another 11 or so races.
She'll have the best money can buy with Hendrick Motorsports equipment. She'll have a top sponsor with GoDaddy.com. She likely will have her IndyCar number (7).
Will that be enough for her to successfully compete, to make her a candidate for the Sprint Cup Series when her three-year deal with Andretti Green Racing in the IndyCar series ends?
"I'm going to tell her good luck," said Petty, peering under the rim of his signature cowboy hat and again flashing his famous smile.
Ryan Newman is critical of NASCAR after surviving a scary airborne crash
TALLADEGA, Ala. -- A few sights and sounds from the Sprint Cup garage at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday as a Halloween weekend gave way to a full moon:
• Most drivers were long gone when points leader Jimmie Johnson greeted crew chief Chad Knaus behind the NASCAR hauler with a hug.
"Dude, seriously!" Johnson said as they embraced.
Johnson was ecstatic because he finished sixth and all but wrapped up a fourth straight title -- he is 184 points ahead of Mark Martin with three races remaining -- despite strategy gone bad.
"Our strategy backfired," said Johnson, referring to the decision to lag around 30th much of the day. "Our strategy killed us. Our strategy didn't do us any good because there wasn't the big wreck midway through the race. What saved our butt was [Knaus'] decision to take fuel during the red flag."
OK, we get that. A lot of cars ran out of gas or had to pit for more gas after the late red flag.
But that doesn't explain why Johnson still was behind the NASCAR hauler while most drivers were on helicopters or planes headed for home.
"I came to lobby for two more spots," he said.
That's why Johnson is so good. He doesn't miss any opportunity to improve his position, in this case being moved from eighth to sixth, which he was after NASCAR unraveled everything from the last-lap crash.
"You never know," Johnson said. "Every point counts."
• Crew chief Pat Tryson was standing beside his crumpled No. 2 car that was involved in the last-lap crash when I asked what started the wreck. Having been chasing down Ryan Newman, who was involved in another wreck a few laps earlier, I missed the final lap in which Kurt Busch and the Blue Deuce were among 13 cars that wrecked.
"Go ask Brad Keselowski what happened," Tryson said of the rookie who will arrive at Penske Racing to take over the No. 12 at about the time Tryson leaves for Michael Waltrip Racing. "He … wrecks somebody every damn week."
Tryson, by the way, said there are no plans for him to step aside and begin his new job now that Busch is 312 points behind Johnson.
• Mark Martin was walking back from the infield medical center with a large turkey sandwich and an even larger smile.
"That's the first time I ever got upside down," he told former Roush Fenway Racing teammate Jeff Burton.
For the record, Martin has driven in 755 Sprint Cup races, 231 Nationwide Series races and 23 Truck Series races. That's over 1,000 races of staying right-side up. Impressive.
• Richard Petty was making his way out of the garage when I asked what he thought about AJ Allmendinger, who will drive his famed No. 43 in 2010, getting charged with driving under the influence on Thursday in Charlotte, N.C.
"Didn't you read all my quotes?" the seven-time champion and co-owner for Richard Petty Motorsports said.
"Hum, no, didn't see those," I replied.
"Cause I didn't give any," Petty said.
Subtle.
For the record, Petty said the plan to move Allmendinger from the 44 to the 43 will not change.
• A final thought from Petty, who never was a fan of restrictor-plate races at Talladega and Daytona: "When we used to run without the plates there was a few people who could run wide open. Now you put plates on them anybody can run wide open. It makes good drivers out of everyone, as far as they think."
He didn't mention names, but Sunday's winner, Jamie McMurray, has three career wins. Two are at plate races.
TALLADEGA, Ala. -- Call me crazy, but Dale Earnhardt Jr. looked like the most unexcited excited driver in the history of NASCAR during Friday's announcement that Lance McGrew had been elevated from interim to full-time crew chief.
Junior said all the right things, how he and McGrew had developed a close relationship and had the team headed in the right direction despite the lack of results.
Earnhardt said he was excited at least three or four times.
He just didn't look excited. He looked more like the groom at a shotgun wedding with an almost deer-in-the-headlights expression, as he spent most of the press conference staring straight ahead.
Maybe he was focused on the upcoming first practice at Talladega Superspeedway. Maybe he got a bad can of Amp that drained his energy instead of spiking it.
Maybe some girl had just broken his heart or he was worried about being recognized in his Halloween costume.
I'm not the only one who noticed it. Several colleagues agreed something was missing.
Lance McGrew got the "interim" tag taken off his crew chief title. He'll be back in 2010.
Earnhardt had the kind of serious look we would have expected from points leader Jimmie Johnson, who has more to lose Sunday than anybody if he gets caught up in the so-called "big one."
The championship is Johnson's to lose. Earnhardt has nothing to lose, mired at 24th in points.
And yet Johnson was cracking jokes as though he'd already wrapped up his fourth straight title and Earnhardt looked the way one would expect him to if he were nursing a four-point lead going into the season finale.
Earnhardt seemed almost as beaten down as he did two weeks ago when he said his next full-time crew chief needed to be a dictator.
Maybe that's it. Earnhardt is that beaten down. McGrew mentioned he was surprised to see his driver so "beat down" when they were paired in June.
"I expected him to be a lot more positive and a lot more understanding of the situation, I guess you'd say," he said.
McGrew also said there's been a light in Earnhardt's eyes and a strut in his step lately that hasn't been there before.
"The steps are in place to get there," McGrew said. "I'm excited about that."
McGrew appeared excited. He smiled a few times, making a funny face when Earnhardt was asked if his crew chief could be a dictator. He talked with enthusiasm about changes he and Alan Gustafson, who works as Mark Martin's crew chief in the same building at Hendrick Motorsports, planned to improve the shop.
Getting Earnhardt to match that enthusiasm and excitement actually might be McGrew's greatest challenge. Even Earnhardt admitted the team needed an attitude adjustment, "showing up feeling like you're the team to beat or there's no reason to feel like you're a long shot."
"I can't speak for everybody on the team," Earnhardt added. "My confidence was pretty down earlier. It's gotten better. It's still nowhere near where I want it to be, but every week we seem to improve on that."
A lot of pressure comes with being the most popular driver in the garage and being with a team that is underperforming. Earnhardt shouldn't be excited about much of anything that has happened this season.
It has been a disaster, and Talladega -- where Earnhardt has six wins and once had a string of seven straight races finishing first or second -- may be his last realistic chance to win this season.
But Friday's announcement, whether it was put together to thwart rumors that HMS might consider hiring soon-to-be-former Kyle Busch crew chief Steve Addington or because the timing was right, should have been exciting.
Call me crazy, but Earnhardt just didn't look excited.
Matt Ferguson was watching a Sprint Cup race in March when he turned to his wife with what at first seemed like another one of his crazy ideas.
He wanted to sponsor a car.
Well, not just him. He wanted to devise a plan where all fans would have an opportunity to sponsor a car. So he began researching, hired an agent and developed a program.
It's called FanCar, and you can learn more about it at FanCar.com. It's really simple. For $20, fans who sign up will get their name on the car of an established team owner with a driver already in place.
The plan is to debut the FanCar in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. The owner and driver will be announced on Monday, so fans will know whom they're backing.
"This is not some start-up team," said Ferguson, a 32-year-old businessman from College Station, Texas. "This isn't their first race, and they're not a start-and-park team. We're not going to have somebody who doesn't know what they're doing or isn't respected by other drivers.
I can't tell you who it is, but he is a familiar name and is guaranteed to be in the field. Maybe you can figure it out based on which driver is looking for sponsorship in Homestead.
But if this works, Ferguson plans to have another FanCar in the 2010 Daytona 500 and as many races as he can next season. If it works really well, he'll try to sponsor two cars.
"My guarantee to the fans is 100 percent of the sponsorship dollars goes to the car and its owner," Ferguson said. "I don't take a dime. In fact, I pay all the development fees and transaction fees.
"I told my wife, 'I know we can do this.' She finally said, 'I'll let you do this one, but it'll be your birthday present for this year, next year and your Christmas, too.'"
Here's how it works: Fans register at the Web site and contribute $20. For that each fan gets his name or the name of a friend or family member on the car, a vote to decide the design of the car, a vote to decide the message on the side of the car, an e-certificate confirming he is an official sponsor and exclusive inside content about what's going on with the car.
"I don't skim off the top," Ferguson said. "It's the car owner's money -- not mine. I take nothing. It's written in the contract."
It's an interesting concept, one that quite possibly could keep a car and driver on the track that might have to be parked thanks to lack of sponsorship.
And it's nice to see somebody actually is trying to help during these difficult economic times instead of bashing everything from the car to Johnson's run at a fourth title to the Chase format.
But to succeed it'll take a lot of participation. Realistically, it will take 10,000 or more fans to make it worth an owner's expense because it costs $200,000 to $500,000 a weekend for one car.
But if NASCAR has 75 million fans as its publicity department says, 10,000 or more should be a drop in the bucket.
And if for some reason the deal falls through, fans can either get their money back or have it donated to one of four charities listed on the Web site. Ferguson says he wants none of it.
"I know times are tough," he said. "Hopefully, FanCar can generate some excitement and we'll be competing with other people for these sponsor deals in the future.
"I guess this is just what happens when a NASCAR fan teases his entrepreneurial spirit."
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Kyle Busch didn't look very intimidating standing next to Big Show and Chris Jericho as a guest host of WWE's "Monday Night Raw."
OK, he looked downright puny.
You could have stacked two of his pencil-thin bodies -- along with teammate Joey Logano, who also was a guest host -- next to Show's 7-foot, 485-pound frame and he still would have been dwarfed.
One could use the same analogy for Busch and soon-to-be-ex-crew chief Steve Addington next to three-time defending Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus.
Sure Busch and Addington have won a lot of races the past two seasons, but when it comes to being the intimidating force that Johnson and Knaus are, they're not even close.
Apparently, management at Joe Gibbs Racing felt the same way. Nothing against Addington. Twelve wins in two seasons would be cause for a contract extension for most crew chiefs. Dale Earnhardt Jr. fans would eat dirt for those numbers.
But when you're considered by many to be the most talented driver on the planet, you're measured by championships and consistency.
Addington didn't help Busch achieve that, so Dave Rogers will get a shot.
Many were surprised the move happened so quickly. They shouldn't be. You can have patience when you've got a good driver. When you've got a great one -- and 53 wins in Cup, Nationwide and Truck gives one reason to believe Busch is -- you can't waste a moment.
A crew chief who has won a title told me earlier this season that if Busch expected to win a championship he would have to get a new crew chief. He argued that Addington was solid, but not great enough to consistently turn the bad days into good days.
Looking at Busch's numbers, I can't argue. Aside from the four wins this season, he has 12 finishes of 20th or worse. They had eight a year ago when Busch won eight races and led the points going into the Chase.
Johnson has 13 in the past two seasons combined.
Consistency. That's why Addington is out and Rogers is in. That's why team president J.D. Gibbs told me on Sunday at Martinsville that Addington wouldn't be judged on these final four races, that the organization had to look at the overall picture.
That's why he didn't give Addington a vote of confidence after Busch finished fourth on Sunday.
He knew a change needed to be made, just as his dad knew when to change quarterbacks or receivers with the Washington Redskins.
He knows Busch has the talent to stand as tall in the Cup garage as Big Show does in the ring.
He knows Busch could be the Show, not just a prop for one.
MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- As four-time Sprint Cup champion Jeff Gordon left the podium in the infield media center at Martinsville Speedway on Friday he shrugged his shoulders and said "It's tough being me."
Jeff Gordon, right, was among the first to congratulate Jimmie Johnson after his teammate's victory at Lowe's Motor Speedway in May 2003.
Well, kind of.
There is some truth to it.
Had Gordon not recommended in 2001 that team owner Rick Hendrick hire Jimmie Johnson to drive the No. 48 car and work out of the same shop as his No. 24 he might have two more championships.
He would have had one for sure, after finishing second to the three-time defending Cup champion in 2007.
Gordon also might have four more wins, the number of times he's finished second to Johnson. One of those came at Martinsville Speedway, where the two square off on Sunday ranked first (Johnson) and third (Gordon) in points.
When a reporter asked Gordon what it's like to be playing second fiddle to his protégé so often, he smiled and said "It's not easy being in my shoes, is it?"
Gordon has to be careful what he says on this subject. He and Johnson are not only teammates, but good friends. He has great admiration and respect for Johnson.
And yet it has to be tough going from the top dog at Hendrick Motorsports to deputy dog.
All the accolades, wins and titles that used to go to the teacher now go to the student. Since Johnson ran his first full Cup schedule in 2002, he has 46 wins to Gordon's 24 and three titles to Gordon's none.
Even for a guy as classy as Gordon, that has to be frustrating.
"I mean, you hit on a lot of very good points that have some truth to it," said Gordon, who trails Johnson by 135 points. "I don't know if you guys watched the 'Together' documentary. I said in my interview that I think Jimmie and I are always going to be really good friends, but we might be better friends 15, 20 years from now because right now I'm a competitor, like every other competitor out there that wants to beat him."
Never was that frustration more apparent than Martinsville in 2007. Gordon was in the midst of a 23-race losing streak. He had what he believed was the fastest car.
But at Martinsville, a one-groove track, speed doesn't get you past the car in front if the driver doesn't give you room. Sometimes the only way to pass is to nudge the car out of the way.
With 39 laps remaining, Gordon was so hot that he asked Hendrick for permission to do just that.
"Boss better give me the OK 'cause that's the only way it's going to happen," Gordon radioed to Hendrick.
He never got that permission, and when he climbed out of the car with a runner-up finish he was almost red-faced mad.
"I think he knew I was his teammate, and he used that up," Gordon said at the time. "I pushed, I shoved and I did just about everything I possibly could. I don't know what else to do. I'm a little more surprised the way he raced me. We, as teammates, we usually give a little bit more room than that.
"But I know going forward how we're going to race. He's the guy to beat for the championship. He's winning races right now, and we're not."
That's as close as Gordon has come to calling Johnson out over the past eight seasons. That's as close as we've seen the frustration of being in Johnson's shadow boil over.
"Because I'm at Hendrick Motorsports and his teammate, I see everything that goes on and I'm aware of the setups and the driving styles and the data and all those things and sometimes that can make it even more frustrating when you're getting beat," Gordon said. "At the same time it makes you hungrier to want to push harder to do everything you can to go out there and beat them.
"So it's definitely affected our friendship. There's no doubt about it."
You won't see that at the track. Gordon and his team will share their setup with Johnson the same as Johnson and his team will share with Gordon. When Johnson wins, Gordon usually is one of the first to congratulate him in Victory Lane.
"I'm not going to go over and pat him on the back and say how great he is and 'I love you, man' when I really want to beat him," Gordon said. "But at the end of the day I respect him, I know the story of how he got there and I think he's a great guy and a great race car driver."
Johnson understands the frustration. He knows there are a lot of people in the garage and grandstands tired of seeing him dominate.
"I certainly hear the comments," he said. "From my standpoint, we're working so hard and we've been able to pull off some really cool things, but other people seem more confident in our abilities than I do at times.
"It makes me laugh inside when I see that, at times. But you just never know. We're out there doing all we can each week."
Gordon is doing the same, knowing the path to a fifth title for him will have to go through the man he brought into the sport. He'll take small victories, such as starting second Sunday while Johnson is back in 15th.
But it's the big victories, or lack of them, that make it tough being Gordon these days.
"That team has pushed all of us in the sport to be better, to push ourselves harder and to step up," Gordon said. "So I'm thankful for that, and I don't have any regrets about anything."
DURHAM, N.C. -- Random thoughts at midnight from my recliner/bed on the third floor of the Duke University Hospital, where my father is recovering from the first of several surgeries for kidney cancer:
• One of several ministers -- you have that when your father is a retired pastor -- visiting during this five-hour procedure began telling me about his grandson collecting book bags for needy children as part of a project to earn his Eagle Scout award. I suggested hooking him up with Tony Stewart, who has teamed with sponsor Office Depot to provide book bags for the needy around the country.
Tony Stewart is a two-time champion and a philanthropist, but that doesn't mean everybody knows his name.
"Never heard of him," the minister responded. "But if he's got book bags, I'm interested."
See, drivers aren't the only people who live in a vacuum.
• A sushi bar in the hospital diner? Seriously? Next thing you know, they'll be replacing Martinsville hot dogs for ones with real meat.
• Hospital visits often become like 500 miles at Pocono. Way too long.
• I officially have read everything on the Internet and have come to the conclusions that Lindsay Lohan did have plastic surgery and that NASCAR's Chase format doesn't need plastic surgery. Seriously, people. If we didn't have a Chase, Stewart would be 122 points ahead of Jimmie Johnson, and you'd be griping about that.
Sit back and enjoy watching Johnson's historic run at a fourth straight title. Don't wait 20 years to appreciate it. By then you won't recognize your own self in the mirror, much less Lohan.
• The nurse from Miami didn't seem to realize that the NASCAR season ends at Homestead-Miami Speedway. That's another argument for moving the finale to Las Vegas Motor Speedway and having the championship banquet the next day. Any momentum you've built is completely lost by waiting two weeks for the banquet.
• Getting around the halls of this place is about as difficult as double-file restarts at Martinsville will be. It could be the most dramatic, plot-thick race of the Chase. The half-mile, paper-clip-shaped track, in the humble opinion of this reporter, puts on the best show of any short track on the circuit.
• What do nurses have in common with debris cautions? They come around every hour or two to wake you up.
• Every time I look around this place and get the least bit depressed, I remember Richard Petty's response when asked whether he felt sorry for David Pearson after the Silver Fox drove 90 minutes in the rain not to be selected to NASCAR's inaugural Hall of Fame class.
"We went all the way to California last week and wrecked four cars," said The King, referring to a late-race incident at Auto Club Speedway that took out all four Richard Petty Motorsports cars at once. "How do you think that feels?"
Probably not too good, but it is kind of funny. And maybe a record, as a member of his organization suggested this past weekend.
• Now I know where I get my sense of humor. When the nurse asked my father whether he smoked, drank alcohol or took illegal drugs, the response was, "Now if you get into my sex life, [my son] has to leave."
• This recliner/bed is like these random thoughts are starting to become. Awkward.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Before we get to the first five selections for NASCAR's inaugural Hall of Fame class that will be named at 4 p.m. ET on Wednesday, let's get this out of the way: Tom Logano won't be on the list.
While Joey Logano celebrated his Nationwide Series win Saturday at Auto Club Speedway, daddy Tom Logano was getting reprimanded by NASCAR.
His son, Joey, may one day 20 or 30 years from now.
But Daddy Logano won't ever be there.
He also lost some votes for NASCAR's 2009 Father of the Year Award -- if there were such a thing -- after Saturday's pit road incident following the Nationwide Series race at Auto Club Speedway in California.
Let's rewind.
Greg Biffle sent Joey into the wall on Lap 50 after reportedly hinting over his in-car radio that he planned to do so. Joey received some damage, but not enough from keeping the 19-year-old phenom from winning the race.
While running down pit road toward Victory Lane, Tom, I'm told, saw Biffle's car headed to its pit stall. Instead of running past, Tom paused and made a gesture -- he gave him the finger, if you must know -- and said a few words that can't be repeated on a Web site owned by Disney.
Tom then was called to the Nationwide Series principal's office to meet with series director Joe Balash and a few Sprint Cup series officials. They took his hard card that gives him full access to the garage, which meant he had to stand in line for a single-event pass for Sunday's Cup race.
It was an inconvenience that Tom may have to deal with the rest of the season, but only an inconvenience.
I have mixed emotions about this. Having seen Little League fathers embarrass themselves countless times, my first inclination was to suggest the elder Logano be banned from a couple of races. What he did set a bad example.
But we're not dealing with 12-year-olds in Little League here. These are grown men, even if one of them still is a teenager.
And this is a family sport where family members curse and flip opponents off every weekend. You can count way past your middle finger how many times drivers flip each other off during a race, and NASCAR doesn't limit their access.
That Biffle reportedly said he was going to put Joey into the wall, apparently still miffed that Joey smashed in his fender a week earlier at Kansas, is the bigger issue.
If Brad Keselowski is warned for driving too aggressively against Juan Pablo Montoya in a Cup race as he was at Kansas two weeks ago, then a premeditated shot at another driver should warrant some sort of punishment, don't you think?
I'm not condoning what Tom did, but as a father I can imagine the anger he felt after thinking another driver purposely put his son in harm's way. It had only been a couple of weeks since he saw Joey roll the No. 20 seven times at Dover.
That day we saw images of him on television running toward the infield medical center to check on his son as any father would. I understood how he felt then, just as I understand how he felt on Saturday.
Could he have shown better judgment? Definitely. He told team president J.D. Gibbs he "messed up." He admitted to others I have talked to that he was embarrassed.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- In the NBA, officials typically let players get away with contact in the playoffs that might be called a foul in the regular season. It's the same way in the NFL and NHL.
Officials don't want a coach, owner or anybody else claiming they influenced the outcome.
Apparently, it's not that way in NASCAR -- at least for non-Chase drivers.
Brad Keselowski received a warning from Sprint Cup officials midway through Sunday's third race of the Chase at Kansas. They apparently felt he was too aggressive racing Chase contender Juan Pablo Montoya for position and told him to be "mindful" of the situation.
NASCAR didn't have much to say when Brad Keselowski sent Carl Edwards flying at Talladega earlier this year, so what's the problem now?
Here was the explanation given a few days later: "Brad Keselowski is a young driver with limited experience as it relates to Sprint Cup Series racing. With that in mind, in NASCAR's opinion there were several instances in the early stages of a 400-mile race that he was being overly aggressive and NASCAR communicated that to his team.
"NASCAR has done that from time to time with other drivers. It had nothing to do with him racing against Chase drivers."
You can be the judge of that. A few reports after the race quoted NASCAR officials as saying they wanted Keselowski to be "aware and cognizant of who he was racing against."
Sounds as if it had everything to do with Montoya's being a Chase driver. This left many wondering whether this was NASCAR's way of making sure a non-Chaser didn't influence the outcome of the championship.
Let's hope not. If you're going to have a system that allows non-playoff drivers to compete for wins and top-10s, you can't tell them how to drive. Nobody warned Keselowski at Talladega earlier this season when he got underneath Carl Edwards and caused that horrific last-lap wreck en route to his first Cup win.
It was called a racing incident.
What Keselowski and Montoya, who has been called overaggressive more than once the past two seasons, were doing was racing. That, and nothing more, nothing less.
Montoya seemed to understand that because he didn't call out the rookie in the No. 25 Hendrick Motorsports car. Keselowski seemed to understand because he didn't change the way he raced the driver who is third in points. He almost laughed at the suggestion that he should back off.
"I thought it was kind of funny," he reportedly said after the race.
Rick Hendrick, the owner of Keselowski's car, took a more diplomatic approach, as one would expect.
"I can understand the Chase guys, that you've got a guy that's not running for the championship or points being careful," he said. "But Brad races hard, and that's what the fans come to see.
"I see both sides of it. We just kind of said, 'Hey, don't take a chance and wreck any of those guys.'"
Nobody wants to see anybody taken out of championship contention because of a mistake by a non-Chase driver -- or a Chase driver, for that matter. But it surely will happen in the Chase, just as it happened outside the Chase.
In 2007, Denny Hamlin finished 38th in the second race of the Chase at Dover because of an incident with Kyle Petty.
Kyle Busch might have won the 2009 Daytona 500 and been in the Chase had Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Brian Vickers, both a lap down, not caused a wreck that ended his day in the opener.
Nobody got a warning or even a slap on the hand for either of those incidents.
Fans, as Hendrick noted, come to see all the drivers race as hard as they can regardless of who they are or what they're running for. Unless there is a reason to believe a driver deliberately is trying to influence the outcome, let him drive.
CONCORD, N.C. -- Marcus Smith was finishing a chicken quesadilla at the Speedway Club atop Lowe's Motor Speedway on Tuesday afternoon when the conversation turned to Danica Patrick.
The president of LMS was asked what it would mean to NASCAR if the IndyCar Series darling began running a partial Nationwide Series schedule, along with a few Truck Series and perhaps ARCA events, in 2010.
Smith gave an indirect answer, saying he would love to see her do a variation of the double -- the Saturday Nationwide race and Sunday Indianapolis 500 instead of the Sprint Cup race and 500 all on Sunday -- in May at LMS.
He admitted he'd put out feelers to see if there was interest, knowing all eyes in the motorsports world would be on his track that weekend if he pulled it off.
No, Smith hasn't reached the level of the man who sat in his chair for more than 30 years before departing. H.A. "Humpy" Wheeler was considered the king of track promoters, once called a combination of P.T. Barnum, Don King and Walt Disney.
Wheeler blew more things up and pulled off more crazy stunts to put fannies in seats than anybody in the history of the sport, maybe all of sports. His motto was simple: "Keep 'em entertained and they'll keep coming back."
Smith so far has been more practical, focusing on lowering the prices of tickets, hotels and food to ease the strain on fans during tough economic times. But if he can get Patrick to do the weekend double that could be the first step in starting his own legacy.
Everybody in NASCAR wants a piece of Patrick these days. JR Motorsports has offered her the opportunity to drive a limited number of Nationwide and ARCA races around her IndyCar schedule. Michael Waltrip has offered her the opportunity to do the same, throwing in the Truck Series as an enticement.
The sport needs Patrick more than she needs it because there is no female face here and because she attracts sponsors in a world where sponsors are becoming scarce.
The promoter side of Smith understands that, which is why he's already planted seeds for the May weekend when he has a Chase race less than two weeks away.
He also understands the transition won't be easy and hopes Patrick is brought along slowly, not "set up to fail" three years down the road if she makes the jump full time to NASCAR. He knows if she can succeed it will benefit not only him but every track promoter.
Give him credit, though, for getting ahead of the game.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- The Sprint Cup cars of Jimmie Johnson and Mark Martin, which finished first and second on Sunday at Dover, were deemed "extremely close on some of the tolerances" during a postrace inspection at NASCAR's Research and Development Center.
Big deal.
Crew chiefs and now engineers have been pushing the gray areas for as long as the sport has existed. That is their job. As long as they stay within the rules, no matter how close to the tolerances, they have done nothing wrong.
Chad Knaus has been considered an innovator, and the car he put under Jimmie Johnson for the AAA 400 victory last Sunday apparently fit that bill.
NASCAR didn't penalize the two Hendrick Motorsports teams, so the cars are legal. Period.
You knew at some point a team would find a way to push tolerances in the new car, which supposedly has such a tight box that you can't push them without breaking the rules. You probably knew that it would be Johnson's crew chief, Chad Knaus.
Knaus has been referred to as one of NASCAR's greatest innovators. He's right there with his mentor, Ray Evernham, who pushed the gray area so far with Jeff Gordon's "T-Rex" car that won the 1997 All-Star race that the governing body told him not to bring it back to the track.
According to HMS officials, there has been no such mandate to the teams of Johnson and Martin this time. NASCAR's only statement has been this: "While both cars passed postrace inspection, we informed the 48 and 5 they were extremely close on some of the tolerances."
That doesn't make them cheaters, although Knaus has been called this more than his fair share of times. In 2006, he was suspended for the first four races after Johnson's car failed postqualifying inspection when a device that pushed the rear window out was discovered.
In 2007, he was suspended for six races after NASCAR found "unapproved" modifications to the fenders of the new car.
In both instances, NASCAR felt he and the team went past the line and brought down the hammer. There was no hammer this time for Knaus or Alan Gustafson, Martin's crew chief.
Not even a slap on the wrist.
"Kudos. Good job," said Evernham, now an analyst for ESPN. "Hey, that's why there are tolerances. As long as you know they didn't break the rule, they didn't break the rule. Take the limits as far as you can.
"If something is an advantage, wouldn't you go as far as you can go? In my opinion, they just did a great job. That's why those cars are winning. They're working harder at it to get an edge. If more is better, I'll take all I can get."
In this case the teams apparently found a way to offset the tail just enough to help the car stick to the track better and stay within NASCAR's rules. Unless the governing body makes it illegal, other teams surely will try it this weekend at Kansas or sometime in the near future.
That's why crew chiefs are paid the big bucks. If they sat back and did nothing, their drivers would be battling for a spot in the top 35 instead of a championship.
Yes, other crew chiefs and owners will gripe. What they should do is ask their crew chiefs why they can't find an edge.
This is almost a nonstory. It's like accusing Carl Edwards of being too close to the edge when he made that daring pass of Johnson last season at Kansas that didn't turn out so well.
He was just doing whatever he could within the rules to win a race.
DOVER, Del. -- Welcome to Talladega Superspeedway.
Oops! Make that Dover International Speedway.
Forget calling Talladega the only wild-card track in the Chase. Wild crashes can happen anywhere, at any time, as we saw on Lap 31 of Sunday's Sprint Cup race at the Monster Mile.
Joey Logano's No. 20 car flipped seven times coming off the back straightaway, dredging up images of crashes typically seen on that 2.5-mile restrictor-plate track in Alabama.
Logano walked away shaken but unscathed thanks to all the safety devices in the new car. Reed Sorenson, Martin Truex Jr. and Robby Gordon also avoided injuries even though their machines were trashed.
It could have been disastrous for Tony Stewart's hopes of a third title. The 2002 and 2005 champion inadvertently got into the back of the car he drove before this season when Logano checked up to avoid Bobby Labonte.
Stewart wound up with a hole in the front end of his car and minor damage to the right rear but was able to continue without losing a lap.
"I wish I had saw that coming," said Stewart, who led the point standings before they were reshuffled based on wins for the Chase, on the telecast. "I don't know how to say 'Sorry' enough to Joey. I don't know what happened. He just had to check up and I didn't see it coming."
Neither did Logano, who slid down into the grass and then back up onto the track in the unavoidable path of Sorenson, Gordon and Truex.
"It just really scared the heck out of me," the 19-year-old driver told a TV reporter. "I haven't seen a replay yet. I'm not sure I want to see a replay. It started rolling and I was in there like, 'Damn, please make this thing stop.'
"And it wouldn't. It just kept going and going. It goes to show how safe these cars are."
It also goes to show you that horrific accidents can happen at places other than Talladega, although that track gets most of the attention. Dover in particular is a place that can jump up and bite a driver -- or drivers -- at any time.
"We've seen a lot of really talented drivers wreck here just by themselves," Brian Vickers said earlier in the week. "There's going to be guys coming out of here that are big winners, and there's going to be guys that are probably going to come out of here big losers -- whether it's their fault or not."
Early on Sunday, Logano was the biggest loser and Stewart was the biggest winner.
"Yeah, I'm still shaking," Logano said. "I'm just happy it landed on its wheels. … It was the wildest ride I've ever been on. You can't go on a roller coaster any worse than that."
Mark Martin had already announced he would be back with Hendrick Motorsports in 2010. He will also return in 2011, with GoDaddy.com as his sponsor for both seasons.
We all like to speculate on why certain things happen. Like the fans on my Thursday chat who decided Matt Kenseth overshot his pit box in Saturday night's Sprint Cup race at Richmond on purpose to force Michael Waltrip, who appeared on numerous occasions to block the 2003 champion in his pit box, to make an extra lap.
The conspiracy theory here is that Waltrip was doing what he could to keep Kenseth out of the Chase and help fellow Toyota driver Brian Vickers get in.
Makes sense when you think about it.
So when it was announced Friday that 50-year-old Mark Martin had extended his contract with Hendrick Motorsports yet another season into 2011, I began to wonder why.
Here are a few theories:
• Martin will drive the No. 5 GoDaddy.com-sponsored car until IRL darling Danica Patrick is ready to take over. Patrick, who already has a relationship with GoDaddy.com, will drive two years in the Truck and Nationwide Series for Kevin Harvick Inc., with an assist from Tony Stewart.
In 2011, Stewart will have expanded to four teams with Kevin Harvick, who will leave Richard Childress Racing, and Kasey Kahne, who will say goodbye to Richard Petty Motorsports -- or whatever it is called by then. Stewart doesn't hold a seat open for Patrick because, quite frankly, the two-time Cup champion has a hard time keeping a woman.
Patrick will become the fourth member of HMS with Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kyle Busch. Oh, did I mention, Jeff Gordon will have retired and Busch will be brought back to drive the No. 24? OK, so that part is a bit far-fetched, but everything else could happen.
• Martin will sign his third extension with HMS, keeping him in the No. 5 GoDaddy.com car through 2012. By then Brad Keselowski's deal with Penske Motorsports will have expired and he'll return to drive the car he was meant to have before Martin signed his first extension.
Remember, Hendrick already warned fellow owners he might get Keselowski back one day.
• Martin will drive the No. 5 until his son, Matt, is married and starting a family. GoDaddy.com will change its name to GoGranddaddy.com and Martin will win his first championship at the age of 55 and retire to replace Ellen DeGeneres as a judge on "American Idol."
Hey, the guy knows music almost as well as he drives.
• Martin will drive the No. 5 through 2011, and by then another sponsor and another up-and-coming driver will be in the picture. Maybe it will be Austin Dillon, who by then will realize he's better off in HMS equipment than sticking with his granddaddy in the No. 3 at RCR.
Oh, did I mention the No. 3 would be back on the track again?
I have no evidence to suggest any of this will occur. As a friend in the sport often has said, he likes discussing scenarios with me because I think outside the box and about 70 percent of them wind up coming true.
Things haven't been going so hot for Tony Stewart in recent weeks. He ran into one of David Reutimann's crewmen on pit road Saturday at Richmond.
RICHMOND, Va. -- Tony Stewart, of all the Sprint Cup drivers, knew how Denny Hamlin felt to finally win on his home track Saturday night. The emotions that Hamlin (a native of Chesterfield, Va.) had following his victory at Richmond International Raceway must at least equal what two-time champion Stewart felt when he finally won at Indianapolis.
So I asked Stewart to put it into perspective.
"I think he's happy," he deadpanned. "Rocket science."
Four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon laughed and said, "You have to clarify things [for Newton]."
Said Stewart, "Well …"
Go figure. Stewart makes the Chase and is a smart aleck. Kyle Busch doesn't make it and is perfectly gracious, even when Brian Vickers, who has criticized him more than most lately, offered a handshake during the postrace press conference.
Interesting.
Maybe NASCAR's former bad boy finally is feeling some pressure. Maybe he was just trying to be cute, as he often is.
But the pressure is now there. Because his new team got off to such a fast start and built a commanding lead (179) before the points were reshuffled for the Chase, this has been a dream season.
Even when things went bad, such as they did at the first Pocono race -- where he wrecked his primary car in practice and went from the pole to the back of the field -- he won.
But the last four races haven't gone so well for Stewart. His average finish has been 19.5, more than double his season average of 9.1. He's led only two laps and hasn't been a threat to win.
Now the pressure is there. He starts the Chase 10 points behind Mark Martin, who made the huge leap forward because he won more races (four) during the first 26 events than anybody in the 12-driver field.
As much euphoria as Stewart has experienced -- not only because he made the Chase but also because teammate Ryan Newman made it -- he's too much of a competitor to know anything less than a title will be a disappointment.
He doesn't have to clarify that for me.
We'll see what happens. My money is on Jimmie Johnson winning a fourth straight title. His team has struggled of late, as well, but his average finish (7.38) the last three years at the 10 Chase tracks is half of Stewart's average (16.3) during that same span.
Or maybe Hamlin will win his first title. Then I can ask Stewart to compare it with how he felt when he won his first championship in 2002.
Oh, let me answer that for him. Hamlin will be happy.
As a past Sprint Cup champion, you expect to be treated with a certain amount of respect.
It appears Bobby Labonte didn't get that from Yates Racing.
Or did he?
Yes, the 2000 champion was kicked out of the No. 96 for Sunday's race at Atlanta Motor Speedway and six other races for the remainder of the season without any conversation between officials at Yates Racing and Hall of Fame Racing, which owns the car.
And yes, Labonte was kicked out in favor of a rookie, Erik Darnell, who has made only 11 Nationwide Series starts and no Cup starts.
But let's cut to the chase here. Yates really had no choice.
Hall of Fame Racing had sponsorship from Ask.com for only 29 races of the season's 36 Cup races. Northern Tool & Equipment, which sponsors Darnell's Nationwide Series car for Roush Fenway Racing, was willing to step to the plate for a few Cup races if Darnell was behind the wheel.
Not Labonte, Darnell.
So Yates had two choices. Keep Labonte in the 96 with no sponsorship for those seven races, likely meaning layoffs of more employees for a company that already has had to lay off more than its share. Or give the ride to a 26-year-old rookie with a sponsor but hardly any experience.
It's harsh, particularly if you're Labonte, who by the way hasn't won a race since 2003 and is ranked 30th in points this season.
It's also the world we live in right now.
If Paul Menard, ranked 32nd in Yates' other car, didn't have a full-time sponsor in his father's company, he might have been out on the street instead of Labonte.
But Menard did, so Labonte became the victim.
Maybe Darnell, who has finished no better than fourth in a Nationwide car, will become the next Carl Edwards. Maybe he'll be good enough to fill a spot at Yates next season when Hall of Fame Racing and Labonte go elsewhere for an alliance.
That doesn't make it any easier for Labonte to swallow.
My colleague Ryan McGee from ESPN The Magazine seems to think so. He put the three-time defending Sprint Cup champion atop his weekly rankings last week. He did this after Johnson's team blew the win at Bristol Motor Speedway with a late lug-nut issue.
His comments read, "If the champ hadn't run out of gas at Michigan [again], he would have taken over this spot one week ago."
So, Johnson's team blows consecutive wins and moves to No. 1? Really? It would be easy to argue just the opposite, that Johnson's team is making too many mistakes to be worthy of No. 1, maybe too many to win a fourth straight championship.
Look at the facts. He's run out of gas three times -- twice at Michigan and once at Pocono -- during the final laps with a chance to win. He was headed for the victory at Bristol until the mistake on pit road.
So instead of having seven wins and being a lock for the top seed once the Chase standings are reshuffled, he has only three.
Sorry, but that's not No. 1 or championship material.
"Yeah, not having mistakes is definitely something you need to do to win the championship," Johnson admitted on his weekly conference call. "I didn't know what went on at Bristol until I was back in the bus and [crew chief] Chad [Knaus] stopped by as I was changing and getting ready to leave.
"I just kept my mouth shut on the radio, and I'm glad I didn't act like a jerk or anything, because what really happened was a freak accident."
He's right about that. During a tire change, one of the lug nuts got loose and became trapped between the drive plate and stud. When the new wheel was put on, the lug nut wouldn't allow the wheel to draw all the way to the drive plate and sit flat on the wheel.
Freaky. But again, it was a mistake, just like coming up short on fuel mileage.
So instead of four additional wins, Johnson had finishes of 22nd, 13th, 33rd and eighth. Again, those aren't championship numbers.
"That's something that we just have to be prepared for, and hopefully over the off weekend we can all just get mentally prepared for what's going to go on in the Chase," Johnson said. "There's going to be challenging points whether it's your fault or not.
"And it's how you respond and come back from those things that's going to make the champion."
Exactly. And although Johnson shouldn't be No. 1 now, he has to remain the favorite to win the title. Knaus won't take fuel-mileage gambles in the Chase, and despite the lug-nut problem, Johnson rallied to finish eighth after restarting around 21st.
You also have to consider that Johnson already has led 1,235 laps this season, 960 more than points leader Tony Stewart and 343 more than his closest competitor, Kyle Busch. Heck, it's more than he had in all but three of his seven previous seasons and only 54 shy of his total in 2007, when he won his second title.
Take away the mistakes, and he would be breathing down the back of Stewart instead of 220 behind. He might even be ahead.
"I really feel this is the strongest year we've had from a technical car standpoint," Johnson said. "We have had speed in the cars since the first race. We haven't had a big drop over a long period of time.
"Yeah, you have some good races and bad races, but it's consistently the strongest performance we've had. Unfortunately, my mistakes and team mistakes and circumstances, fuel, freak deals like lug nuts like last weekend, we haven't closed on as many opportunities as we've had."
That doesn't make him No. 1 in Week 24. It also doesn't mean he won't be No. 1 after Week 36.
"Last year, we didn't have the car, but we had the luck and didn't make many mistakes and finally got the car up to speed," Johnson said. "And this year, it's been kind of the opposite.
"So as long as we pull it together here in two weeks and put down 10 good ones, we'll be fine."
Ray Evernham and new bride Erin Crocker Evernham married Wednesday night in Las Vegas.
Ray Evernham and Erin Crocker exchanged vows Wednesday night in a Las Vegas hotel in front of immediate family members and friends -- and me. I ironically witnessed the event because my wife, a close friend and associate of the couple, was asked to plan it.
Being a part of this story was a bit surreal. No, a lot surreal. Let me digress.
Three years ago, Ray was sole owner of what was then Evernham Motorsports. When he began dating Erin, his company's developmental driver, it became a story.
Ray brought that up during a Tuesday night rehearsal dinner. We laughed about it then, how he actually fingered me in the chest at a Chicago race and in very stern words suggested I shouldn't be digging into his personal life.
That's not an issue anymore. Evernham sold most of his Sprint Cup organization to Montreal Canadiens owner George Gillett. He's now an analyst for ESPN, the owner of a small dirt track near Charlotte, N.C., a part-time karaoke singer (more on that later) and the proprietor of Ray Evernham Enterprises, which includes an automotive museum and houses a stable of sprint, modified and late-model race cars.
And he's a husband.
A very happy one.
Ray and Erin aren't a soap-opera story for NASCAR anymore. Erin drives sprint cars, and in lieu of the honeymoon, she will spend the weekend racing in Knoxville, Iowa.
But on Wednesday she was a beautiful bride, proud to be walking down the aisle to the man of her dreams. Racing and all that the couple endured a few years ago were well in their rearview mirror. The loving smiles they exchanged said all anybody needed to know.
Before this gets sappy, let's get back to the karaoke singing. Ray occasionally takes the microphone from a small stage in his museum that has a restaurant designed after a 1950s diner. He loves Motown music and loves to sing it.
As he said at some point during the night, he'd rather be reincarnated as a Motown singer than win another Daytona 500.
Like most who indulge in karaoke, Ray believes he can sing. His wedding band, The Next Movement, allowed him to partake in a version of "Under the Boardwalk." The vocals were a bit pitchy, and Ray has a ways to match the band's slick arm and dance movements.
My advice to Ray: Stick to your day job.
Erin seemed to enjoy it, though. I guess love is not only blind, but also deaf.
And she is in love. They both are.
Sometimes stories have a happy ending, and this one had a very happy one.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Mr. President, you were nice enough to invite NASCAR into your home on Wednesday. You came up with a few good one-liners, like asking Jimmie Johnson not to tear up your back lawn with burnouts in his No. 48 Chevrolet.
You struggled with pronouncing the last name of crew chief Chad Knaus -- that's Johnson's crew chief in case the speechwriters didn't tell you -- but we'll let that slide since you did pay proper respect referring to Richard Petty as "King."
You proved you have a sharp eye by noticing that Johnson married up with Chandra.
You answered all that was asked on ESPN's "NASCAR Now," even though you hedged on picking a champion for this season.
But there were so many more questions that didn't get answered. I've put together this list that I hope you or one of your aides reads on ESPN.com. I know you're a busy man with the tough economy and all, but these are things the general public is entitled to have answered.
Let's not beat around the bush. No, not former President Bush. Will Dale Earnhardt Jr. win a race this season? Next season? Ever?
Did you agree with Rick Hendrick's decision to split Earnhardt and longtime crew chief Tony Eury Jr.? Was it similar to your decision to go with Joe Biden over Hillary Clinton as your vice president?
Why hasn't Carl Edwards won a race? Do you think it is part of a right-wing plot by those still upset that team owner Jack Roush brought up Pearl Harbor when Toyota entered the series?
Who do you think the best looking driver is? Kasey Kahne? Jeff Gordon? Earnhardt? You can let Mrs. Obama help with that one.
Do you think NASCAR should use rain tires on road courses? Do you think a road course should be in the Chase?
Do you think Jeremy Mayfield is guilty of using methamphetamines? What do you think of his relationship with his stepmother? Is it worse than the relationship between Earnhardt and Teresa Earnhardt?
What was your position on the beard Johnson donned the first half of the season? Have you ever had a beard?
Did you not realize that Earnhardt, Jeff Burton and Clint Bowyer don't have a spot in the Chase when you wished them good luck in this year's Chase? Ouch.
You mentioned the tens of millions of fans who follow NASCAR. Did NASCAR's public relations department not tell you there are 75 million?
Did you realize you had more Republicans on your front yard than there are in Congress now?
Would you like to see the No. 3 back on the track? No, not Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States. The No. 3 that Dale Earnhardt drove. The one that won six of The Intimidator's seven championships.
Do you think Richard Petty Motorsports should stick with Dodge or move to Toyota next season? Be careful here. Remember Dodge is one of the Big Three in Detroit.
If you struggled with Knaus, can you pronounce the name of Matt Kenseth's crew chief, Drew Blickensderfer?
What did you think of the hair of "NASCAR Now's" Marty Smith?
Do you think Earnhardt will win a race this season? I know I asked that earlier, but in case you dodged the answer, I had to ask again.
Do you think Earnhardt will win a championship during your four-year term and be invited back to the White House?
BROOKLYN, Mich. -- Carl Edwards was leaving the Sprint Cup garage late Sunday afternoon when he passed Jimmie Johnson, who lost yet another race when he ran out of gas in the final laps at Michigan International Speedway.
"I almost felt sorry for you," Edwards said with a smile. "But then I didn't."
Neither did I.
Johnson arguably is the best driver in Cup today. He has won three straight championships and has to be considered the favorite to win a fourth straight. Chad Knaus arguably is the best crew chief in the garage. He deserves much of the credit for Johnson's success.
But if they're both so great, why do they keep making stupid mistakes on fuel mileage? They've gambled and lost three times this season -- twice at Michigan and once at Pocono. They weren't even that close in two of those, with Johnson almost three laps short Sunday.
Johnson admittedly has won only one fuel-mileage race in his career and that he's not great at saving fuel.
So with those odds, you'd think they'd wise up and try something else, such as outdriving everybody else as they've done for most of the past six seasons.
This was debated with a couple of fellow scribes over an adult beverage after the race. On the surface, it seemed as though the fuel-mileage gamble was worth it for Johnson and Knaus.
They weren't in danger of missing the Chase as Mark Martin and eventual race winner Brian Vickers were if they came up short. So why not go for it? Take a chance for the win and improve your seeding in the Chase when the standings are reshuffled based on wins.
Here was the conclusion: Johnson could have won without the gamble. He could have come in for a splash of gas when Hendrick Motorsports teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. did and likely still won the race.
Earnhardt finished third with a car that was no better than 15th to 25th most of the day. Johnson had the fastest car all afternoon, leading a race-high 133 laps, including the one on which he ran out of gas.
Surely if Earnhardt could move all the way to third while the rest were conserving fuel, Johnson could have made up the entire deficit.
So what did we conclude from this? Why did Knaus feel the need to gamble on fuel and not let a superior driver and car win on its own merit?
Maybe it was ego. Johnson and Knaus have proved to be an unbeatable combination at everything but road courses and fuel mileage. Maybe they're trying to prove they're smart enough to calculate down to the last ounce of fuel.
Maybe they shouldn't.
The good news is Knaus says he wouldn't take that chance in the Chase. At least he's smart enough to realize that.
Meanwhile, I'm with Edwards. Don't feel sorry for them.
BROOKLYN, Mich. -- Jeff Gordon was irritated Friday at Michigan International Speedway. Not by the back pain that has been bothering him all season, but by the constant questions concerning how his lower back was holding up after Monday's horrific crash at Watkins Glen.
Finally, he snapped. Not his back, but his demeanor.
The four-time Sprint Cup champion told reporters to stop asking about his back, to move on to another topic. He said he was fine.
Not everyone believes that to be true. Some would suggest that the injury is more serious than Gordon lets on, that not wanting to talk about it was his way of avoiding how serious it is.
If anyone knows what Jeff Gordon is going through, it's Mark Martin, who has a history of back trouble.
Some believe the ailing back could be career-shortening.
Gordon did offer that doctors had told him that another hard lick wouldn't damage him permanently, which is good news if true. But it is clear that this isn't something that will clear up overnight or by taking a weekend off.
Mark Martin understands. The back pain he endured through the 1998 and 1999 seasons was so intense that he became a miserable man. He felt as though his life had "a restrictor plate on it that was just choking the sweet part right out."
He finally had surgery the week after the '99 season to fuse two degenerative vertebrae in his lower back. He was back in a car in January.
Today, at 50, he is a happy man, living life to its fullest. He'll start beside pole-sitter Brian Vickers on the front row for Sunday's Sprint Cup race hoping to duplicate his June victory at MIS and solidify his position in the Chase with a fifth victory.
He also empathizes with Gordon, who despite the back is third in points. Although their injuries are different, he says the pain is just as debilitating.
"It was a setback," Martin said of his injury. "It was a physical setback."
But Martin no more thought of taking a weekend off than Gordon will. He actually had one of his best seasons under the most intense pain, winning seven races and finishing second to Gordon in '98.
He sees no reason Gordon can't compete for a title with his problem.
"You might smile less, but I don't think it has any impact on performance," Martin said. "We're not trying to squat 275 pounds."
Again, Martin's problem was different. The most comfortable place for him was the car because of the way the seat hugged his body and the heat produced in the seat. It was almost like a massage.
Gordon, who earlier this year had a facet block to relieve the pain, still has spasms in the car. There are times, like the spring race at Bristol, where the pain was so severe that he admitted it could shorten his career.
"I can't race like that for long periods of time," he said at the time.
Martin understands that as well. He's talked to Gordon about the pain. He's offered the best advice he can.
"You just have to grit it out," he said.
Martin gritted it out because he loves to compete more than anything. That's why, at an age that sees most drivers fishing or playing golf, he's working harder than ever to stay in shape so he can keep up with young guns such as Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards.
He's doing a good job of that, too. If the Chase field were reshuffled today, he'd jump from 11th in points to first because he has a series-leading four wins.
Gordon loves to compete as well, but not to the point that he wants to do this at 50. He wants to spend more time with his wife and daughter and pursue other opportunities outside of racing.
With longtime sponsor DuPont looking to take a lesser role and perhaps get out of the sport, the back problem may speed up the retirement process. Gordon is 38 now, and the consensus is that he likely won't race past 40.
But for now he wants to win another title, and back pain won't stop him from giving his all to do that. It definitely won't get him to take a weekend off.
"I was worse at the beginning of the year than I am now, and I had the whole offseason," he said with a laugh. "So no, I haven't considered it."
Martin felt the same way in '98 and '99. At times he barely could walk from his hauler to his car, but he would have driven in a full body cast rather than skip an event.
So Martin drove on, just as Gordon will drive on. Some might argue the safety improvements of the new car should ease any concern of further damage. Martin doesn't buy that.
"I don't really feel safer in this car, not really," he said. "You have to understand you get injured by weird, freaky deals."
Martin does agree with Gordon that all the technology designed to protect the head and shoulders -- the HANS (head and neck support) and carbon seat -- after Dale Earnhardt's 2001 death puts more strain on the lower back in hard crashes.
He admittedly was made nervous by the pain he felt after a hard crash on the sixth lap at Talladega earlier this year.
"I'm not sure what all is going on there," he said.
He's not totally sure what all is going on with Gordon's back, either. As he likes to remind us, he's not a physician.
"All I know is his [back] isn't requiring fusion, based on what he's told me," he said.
But Martin is living proof that Gordon can compete for a title despite the pain, and that if he gets through these back issues and decides to extend his career well into his 40s, he can.
Meanwhile, as Martin said, he might smile a little less.
You make the call about why Dale Earnhardt Jr. went on the attack against NASCAR and the Sprint Cup car on Friday at Michigan International Speedway.
NASCAR's most popular driver, a title that may be in doubt with Tony Stewart's souvenir sales pushing him for weekend supremacy, called for stock car racing's governing body to let its car evolve more freely.
He said the racing was so poor before double-file restarts were implemented in June that "95 percent of the race wasn't worth the price of the ticket."
Some might say Earnhardt was making excuses for a dreadful season that has him 25th in points with only three top-10s. Stewart, who leads the point standings, said he was pleased with the way his car has been handling.
Jeff Gordon somewhat sided with his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, admitting things could be done to make the car handle better in traffic and produce more passing up front.
That helped Earnhardt's argument. It's hard to say he's making excuses when a four-time Sprint Cup champion is in your camp.
But nobody was as outspoken as Earnhardt. He called for the media to examine the issue and for drivers to be more vocal about it. And he did it at the track where, in June 2008, NASCAR held a town hall-type meeting with drivers encouraging all to be less critical of the car.
NASCAR, for the record, has said it plans only small tweaks to the car for fear of setting teams back competitively and financially with major changes.
"What I'm getting at is I think we need to open our eyes a little bit," Earnhardt said. "Everyone. NASCAR could probably be a little more urgent in improving our product, where the ultimate result is great, exciting racing that the fans will enjoy, that the drivers enjoy, so everyone is happy."
In Earnhardt's defense, representatives from General Motors, Ford and Toyota agreed earlier in the week that they'd like to see the car racier at the front. But when a manufacturer speaks, only a few people outside the NASCAR hauler seem to listen.
When Earnhardt speaks, everybody's ears perk up.
"I'm not trying to start a crusade against nobody or cause nobody any problems," Earnhardt said. "I think the drivers, myself included, we would all work together with NASCAR to do this. I'm just trying to remind everyone of the optimal goal and prize for us is to have better racing.
"Even when things are good, we shouldn't rest on any success we may be having. We're not really where we want to be, I don't think, as a sport. We need to do things to excite corporate America and excite the fans. We need to be proactive immediately to make that happen."
Understood. At the same time Earnhardt needs to figure out how to drive the new car just as Stewart and Gordon and others battling for a spot in the Chase have.
If he's still complaining about the car, then he will take "excuse" out of the equation and perhaps more people will listen.
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- A spectator wearing a bright yellow T-shirt yelled as sophomore wide receiver Martavious Odoms broke free over the middle, not far from the big "M" in the middle of the University of Michigan football practice field.
Junior quarterback Nick Sheridan saw the same thing and threw a perfect strike that Odoms snared and ran into the end zone.
The spectator, now hugging the sideline, raised both arms into the air.
"Touchdown!" he said.
Brad Keselowski may not know what Sprint Cup organization he's going to drive for next season, but he knows a lot about football. He spits out terms such as containment, pancake and cover-2 as fast as he turns laps in his Nationwide and Cup cars.
Keselowski in particular knows a lot about Michigan football. He grew up about 100 miles away in Rochester, Mich., cheering for the Wolverines, although he's yet to see a game in person.
"I'm a college football expert," said Keselowski, who gave up football in middle school to become a driver. "I'm really good."
A trip to the UM practice was a good break for the 25-year-old, about to embark on the biggest decision of his life. He apparently has more options for next season than the nine wins he predicts for the Wolverines, a prediction which makes him somewhat of a homer since seven is more realistic.
"I've gotten calls from teams I never thought would call, established teams that are looking for a change," said Keselowski, who will drive in the Cup and Nationwide races this weekend at Michigan International Speedway. "That kind of caught me off guard. I feel like I'm in good shape."
Keselowski said in May, shortly after taking the checkered flag at Talladega Superspeedway for his first Cup win, that he wanted to drive for Hendrick Motorsports or a team affiliated with HMS.
Those options have dwindled over the past few months. Hendrick has a full stable since announcing Mark Martin will drive the No. 5 in 2010. Dale Earnhardt Jr. says JR Motorsports, for which Keselowski drives in the Nationwide Series, likely would not move up to Cup.
And Tony Stewart says he doesn't anticipate adding a third team at Stewart-Haas Racing.
That seemingly leaves James Finch and HMS-supported Phoenix Racing, for which Keselowski drove at Talladega, as the lone option on that front.
Or does it?
"I wouldn't say there is only one option [to stay with Hendrick]," said Keselowski, who plans to host laid-off auto workers before Saturday's Nationwide race. "There are some things you guys don't know that I can't talk about."
He was not referring to the University of Michigan-sponsored car with a big "M" on the hood that he joked about earlier.
"It's a strange year for sure with the situation Kevin [Harvick] is going through," said Keselowski, referring to Harvick reportedly wanting out of his final year with Richard Childress Racing. "It's really hard to tell what rides are available and which aren't.
"There are a few positions that are going to switch that you aren't anticipating will switch. It's really interesting."
It's also something Keselowski doesn't care to share at the moment. He will say he hopes to stay in the No. 88 at JR Motorsports "for a long time," which seemingly would rule out going to Penske Racing. You can't drive a Chevrolet in the Nationwide Series and a Dodge in Cup.
But getting more out of Keselowski is tougher than getting a prediction for the college football season from Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez, who by the way liked the nine-win prediction.
"It's a very complicated situation," Keselowski said. "I'd be lying if I told you I understood all the situations, because I don't. When I commit, left, right, middle or whatever, it will all happen at once."
Left? Middle? Right? Sounds more like football talk. Everybody knows drivers only know left -- except twice a year when they run road courses.
"I would like to think if I had some opportunities I could have done something at this level," Keselowsk said as he watched a spectacular sideline catch. "I would like to think I could play safety. I've got a little height on me. I'm not extremely fast, but I would be a hard hitter."
But he doesn't like it enough that he would trade the hits he takes now for gridiron glory.
"The thing about football, you take a hit every day," Keselowski said. "The stock cars hit you harder, but there is so much more in football. I'll take my one every month than five every day."
And he'll take a full-time Cup ride as soon as he decides which is best.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- There I was on Wednesday afternoon, standing among several hundred people on the corner of Trade and Tryon streets with an index finger in each ear.
We all looked pretty silly, especially the father bent over a stroller with fingers poked into the tiny ears of his infant son. Or daughter. I'm really not sure.
It was like we all were waiting for a bomb to drop. At least that was the first thing that came to mind after watching the 1970 movie "Tora! Tora! Tora!" from the treadmill earlier that morning.
In a way, we were. NHRA star Doug Herbert was about to fire up his Top Fuel dragster.
We were warned it would be loud, more so than the ear-popping sound that comes out of a Sprint Cup car if you happen to be standing too close in the garage.
So we waited. And waited. And waited.
Finally, the engine fired. It was loud, but not nearly as loud as I anticipated. I was about ready to risk life and limb by removing my fingers when the real explosion came.
Herbert revved the engine, sending flames and exhaust so far out the side of the chrome pipes that it dried the sweat spots on my shirt. And yes, I jumped. I nearly landed in the arms of an innocent woman walking behind me.
Tough job, but somebody has to do it.
Apparently, this is the reaction you get when burning nitromethane. No, not the stuff suspended Cup driver Jeremy Mayfield has been accused of taking. That is methamphetamine.
Nitromethane, according to my Google search, is "a slightly viscous, high polar liquid commonly used as a solvent in a variety of industrial applications."
It also is used as a racing fuel for dragsters.
And it is viscous.
Cup driver Jeff Burton, one of the celebrities invited to this event promoting the September NHRA race at the zMax Dragway at Lowe's Motor Speedway and the Chase race at LMS, was smarter than the rest of us. As soon as somebody mentioned Herbert was moving toward the dragster he moved far away.
"I've been around a few of those before to know better," he said.
I should have known to hang with Burton. He's a veteran, although a fan did throw him for a bit of a loop earlier by asking if he could get back into the top three in points this season.
Had Burton been Tony Stewart he would have given a smart-aleck answer or maybe made a noise louder than Herbert's dragster. Instead, he was polite, doing his best to tell the fan that his chances of being in the top three were about as good as beating Herbert's dragster to the end of Trade Street in his No. 31 stock car.
Here's the math: Burton is 17th in points. He is 688 points out of third place. His only chance at getting to third is to be among the top 12 who make the Chase, which means making up 262 points over the next five weeks before the field is set.
Burton is smart enough to know that won't happen, just as he is smart enough to know where to stand when a dragster is fired up.
Note to LMS officials: Next time you hold such event, please pass out earplugs.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Pink feather boa, grits and a lot of figs.
Bossman told me not to worry about racing this past weekend, to forget about the Jeremy Mayfield soap opera, sponsor woes and what will happen to Kevin Harvick during the silly season. You know, re-energize.
So I took him at his word, figuring I'd skip Sunday's Sprint Cup race at Pocono entirely and see if the world stopped spinning. Naturally the race was postponed until Monday because of rain, which means no escaping 500 of the most boring miles you'll witness even if it does mean watching from the couch.
But for two days racing was the farthest thing from my mind, as the pink boa, grits and figs might indicate.
Curious what that all means? Let's start with the pink boa, which also included a pink wig, which by now must make you wonder if this idea of getting away from racing was such a good idea.
The alarm went off earlier than normal for a Saturday morning. My wife had agreed to promote a fundraiser for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation in Davidson, N.C., so we packed up Ernie the dog and headed North on I-77.
Ernie and David Newton savor a hard-earned win in the Wildest Outfit category in the Think Pink Dog Show in Davidson, N.C.
Yes, the dog, not me, is connected to the pink boa and wig. Whew! Be patient. We'll get to that.
The event was the brainchild of 10-year-old Ally Miller, the daughter of Wanda Miller, the president and general manager of the Speedway Club at Lowe's Motor Speedway, which apparently won't be named that after this season because of sponsor woes. OK, so I can't get completely away from racing.
Ally began organizing what became the first annual Think Pink Dog Show when she learned that her best friend's mom, Nancy Brown, was in treatment for breast cancer. She did everything including knock on the door of the Davidson mayor for help to corral sponsors for donations.
At the age of 10 my idea of fundraising was collecting empty soft drink cans for enough money to buy candy. Ally raised more than $1,100, which far exceeded her goal of $500.
Oh, the pink boa and wig. That was the brainchild of my wife, who decided our big, black, German shepherd/Labrador would look hot in a pink boa and wig she had in her closet. Don't ask. And yes, he looked ridiculous.
One of the judges was Doug Herbert. Perhaps it was fitting that a drag racing star picked a dog dressed in drag for the Wildest Outfit Winner.
Ernie is in therapy now, but that's another story for another weekend away from racing. On to grits. Actually, it was "Grits the Musical."
This was the brainchild of Erica McGee, the wife of ESPN The Magazines writer Ryan McGee. Yes, another racing connection.
Erica, who is prettier and more talented than her husband, adapted Deborah Ford's novel "Grits: Friends Are Forevah" into a musical that is a must-see if you're a woman from the South -- or the husband of one.
Grits is short for "Girls Raised In The South" in case you were wondering. It made me wonder what the male counterpart could be. I came up with Butts -- "Boys Understand The True South" -- starring Larry the Cable Guy and Jeff Foxworthy. We'll see.
Back to "Grits the Musical." It reminded me of NASCAR. Stay with me here. What I mean is there are stars in the lower series who could be just as successful in the Sprint Cup Series with the right backing. Erica and her three co-stars fall into that category. They were amazing.
Now for the figs. I'll keep this one short. It was a Newton reunion. To be born into this family means you inherit the nickname Fig. My dad was the president this year, which made him the Big Fig. Enough said, other than the only thing to outnumber Newtons at the picnic were gnats.
That sparked another idea for a musical -- "Gnats," or "Girls Not About The South."
You're already thinking I need to get back to the track, or at least do something manly such as watching a "Die Hard" marathon.
You might be right. We'll see if I have enough energy after napping -- I mean evaluating -- through 500 miles at Pocono.
INDIANAPOLIS -- Kevin Harvick sat on a stack of tires outside his garage stall at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Saturday willing to talk about what has been the most frustrating season of his Sprint Cup career.
He was not ready to commit to driving for Richard Childress Racing next season.
Despite a contract and sponsorship that runs through 2010 and a statement by owner Richard Childress that he expects both deals to be honored, Harvick went out of his way to be noncommittal.
What did we learn from Kevin Harvick's trackside interview Saturday at Indy? Not much.
Here's a snapshot of how the interview went:
• What are your plans for the future?
"Right now we're focused on this week. We have a good car this weekend and the focus is on this weekend's race.''
• You talked to Childress this past week. What kind of conclusion did you guys come to?
"Our focus is we brought a new car here and everything has gone well since we unloaded it. Our focus is to do what we need to do on the track and go from there.''
• Childress says you two are all good for next season. Is that correct?
"I think everybody has talked.''
• Have you asked out of your contract?
"We're focused on this weekend.''
• Do you want to be at RCR in the future?
"Right now we're here to race and do what we need to do from a driver's standpoint. Everybody is working well together. … Right now I'm the driver of the Shell Pennzoil No. 29 RCR Chevrolet. That's my job and that's what I intend to focus on. All the rest of that stuff will take care of itself.''
• Will you be at RCR next year?
"All of us drivers and crew chiefs, we're not going to drag this thing through the mud. We're going to put our heads down and make it as good as we can.''
• I know you're not happy with the performance of the team, but are you happy with RCR?
"That's the same question, just a different way of asking it. We're all focused on a week-to-week basis on what we need to do at the racetrack. Nothing has changed from that point."
• You easily could say you'll be back next season. Why not?
"I told you, we're here to race this weekend and do the best we can, and we'll continue to do that on a week-to-week basis.''
This doesn't sound like a driver committed to the future of RCR. This sounds like what sources said last week is a driver who wants out of his deal to go somewhere else.
He reportedly is interested in moving to Stewart-Haas Racing and joining Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman, two of his closest friends in the garage. It makes sense in a lot of ways. Harvick would join one of the top organizations. Stewart would get the benefit of Harvick's Nationwide Series program.
If Harvick doesn't want out, this could be his way of trying to force Childress to elevate the performance of the entire organization, which has no driver in the Chase hunt after putting three in the past two seasons.
He has been known to play mind games. Maybe as much as Dale Earnhardt, the driver he replaced in 2001.
Harvick obviously is frustrated with his Cup teams. He doesn't appear to think swapping out longtime crew chief Todd Berrier was the reason for his struggles.
How this all turns out is anybody's guess. Remember, a year ago Stewart went months saying he hadn't asked out of his contract at Joe Gibbs Racing. Look at him now.
All we know for sure is that Harvick is focused on this weekend. He said it more ways than we could ask questions.
"Richard and I, no matter what happens in the end, Richard and I will always be friends,'' Harvick said. "We have gone through a lot of good times and hopefully we'll go through a lot of great times together as we go forward.''
INDIANAPOLIS -- The Gleaners Food Bank off East 16th Street is in a rundown building more than 100 years old. The latest quote to repair the roof is more than the value of the 380,000-square-foot structure through which about 21 million tons of food move each year.
The buildings and houses around this area called Center City scream of poverty.
This is a side of the city that hosts Sunday's Sprint Cup race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a side I'd never seen before Thursday, seemingly another world from the scenic area on the canal where my hotel sits less than 3 miles away.
Fittingly, it is here Kyle Busch revealed a side of himself I'd never seen.
Others saw it, too.
Busch ventured into this area to help promote the "Bar Hunger" program that his primary sponsor, Snickers, uses to raise awareness for Feeding America. He didn't come with the attitude or bad-boy image we often see on race day.
He came because he wanted to, for the same reason his foundation became so involved in the St. John's home that provides housing and structure to children in need.
"To tell you the truth, I didn't know what to expect," said Pamela Altmeyer, one of the directors of this facility.
Altmeyer never met Busch before Thursday. Her impression of the 23-year-old was that of most who watch him on television -- "young and hotheaded."
By the end of the hour visit she was his No. 1 fan.
"I would be proud to have that young man for a son," she said.
It took only the few moments required to brief Busch on what happens at Gleaners for her to come to this realization.
"He realized it," Altmeyer said. "He got it. And he's got a passionate streak that makes him good for this campaign. It's important to him to help."
Busch's passion comes out in a different way at the track. If he doesn't win or if something goes wrong that denies him a chance to win, he'll often disappear into the motor coach lot without talking to reporters. Some fans call him "Cryle," and he gets two to three times as many boos as cheers during prerace introductions.
But that's Busch the competitor, the one willing to make moves many drivers wouldn't consider because he wants to win so badly. It's not the real Busch, the one who jumped to his feet with duct tape when Altmeyer needed help putting a "Bar None" that had fallen back on the wall.
"He obviously has a very thoughtful and strategic side," she said.
And he's a fast learner. He quoted me statistics about the program -- from the 20 counties this one supports to the 460 different charities it helps -- as effortlessly as he calculates lap times and what they mean.
For the record, the Feeding America program is part of the nation's largest hunger relief charity, providing food for more than 25 million Americans at risk of hunger through food banks such as this.
"You don't know those things until you hear them," Busch said.
And you don't really know Busch just from watching the television or chasing him down in the garage seeking comment as I did earlier this month following his last-lap crash at Daytona International Speedway.
Yes, I've picked on him about these things before. He became quite upset a few months ago when I suggested he shouldn't have competed in a NASCAR East/West Camping World Series race at Iowa Speedway because he was above that. He reminded me he did it for charity. He called me a name that many might agree was fitting.
That's why I ventured into a side of Indianapolis I'd never been to see a side of the driver I'd never seen. Just like Altmeyer, I was impressed. That there weren't a ton of fans invited to watch, making this a production to promote Busch's image more than what it really was all about, impressed me even more.
"I don't care how many people get to see it," Busch said, with a touch of the tone I've become familiar with. "This is me, something that is more in tune to who I am. Yeah, it's a Mars production and a Snickers deal, but they asked me 'What appearances do you want to do?' and this is one I wanted to do."
I'm sure I'll again write something Busch doesn't like sometime in the near future, and I'm sure he'll call me a name again as well. That's OK.
But I'm glad I got to see this side of him. So was Altmeyer, who wasn't a Busch fan before the visit.
"No," she said. "But I'll be rooting for him on Sunday."
The start of Friday night's Nationwide Series race at Daytona International Speedway was 20 minutes from the green flag when Jeffrey Earnhardt, his sister clinging to his neck, approached Dale Earnhardt Jr. on pit road.
Dale Jr. exchanged handshakes with his nephew and a high five with his niece, both the children of Kerry Earnhardt, who qualified on the same row with Junior.
Everybody seemed to get along well.
Then I started to wonder: Will they all be so cordial when it's time to decide who presents the late Dale Earnhardt when he, if the voting goes as expected, is inducted into NASCAR's first Hall of Fame class in May?
Everybody takes for granted that the seven-time champion will be among the five named later this year.
Nobody should take for granted the presenter.
Some might argue it should be Earnhardt's wife, Teresa, the co-owner of Earnhardt Ganassi Racing and owner of Dale Earnhardt Inc. She and Earnhardt started DEI together, so they were partners in business as well as life.
Some might argue it should be Dale Jr. His father took great pride in getting him into the Sprint Cup Series at DEI. But Teresa surely will have a say in the presenter and, based on the relationship between those two when Junior left DEI two years ago, it might be tough putting those issues aside.
My pick would be Richard Childress. Earnhardt won six of his seven titles in the No. 3 at Richard Childress Racing, and the man in black shared a bond with his owner like few others.
The hope would be that Teresa and her stepson show a united front and make this the special day it should be.
This, after all, won't be about them. It will be about the man they both loved and admired.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- NASCAR chairman Brian France and Dale Earnhardt Jr., arguably the two highest-profile figures in the Sprint Cup Series, visited the media center at Daytona International Speedway on Friday.
Both are dealing with an image problem.
France's image problem is the sport's image. Television ratings and attendance are down; manufacturers and sponsors are pulling back; and the court battle with Jeremy Mayfield over his failed drug test is getting just as much attention as the actual races -- or more.
Heck, France spent most of his 35-minute news conference talking about Mayfield and defending NASCAR's testing program.
Earnhardt's image also is under fire. He's buried at 19th in the points standings. His fans are somewhat disgruntled, and points leader Tony Stewart is challenging his popularity in terms of souvenir sales.
But if he miraculously turned around what he admits has been a disappointing season, he indirectly could help solve France's problem. When the sport's most popular driver is having a good season, ratings and attendance rise and there's a general sense that all is well.
So NASCAR and France need Earnhardt to succeed. They need him to make the Chase.
That would give France a break from the negative attention, kind of like the same-day death of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett gave South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford a break from negative attention about his affair.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. would like to see things heat up for him on the track.
OK, maybe that's a bad example.
But you get the point. France and NASCAR need Earnhardt to step up -- now.
Unfortunately, fixing Earnhardt's problems are no easier than convincing Sanford he needs to stop talking. Junior won't make the Chase unless the six drivers between him and the top 12 have a major collapse over the next nine weeks.
And even then he'd have to, as he said, "top-10 'em to death" to erase a 285-point deficit.
Considering Earnhardt has only three top-10s in the first 17 events, none of them since Lance McGrew replaced Tony Eury Jr. as his crew chief, that's not likely.
Earnhardt knows this. He already has adjusted his goals. Instead of winning races and challenging for that elusive title, he wants to win a race or two and improve.
"At the end of the year, when you're done racing at Homestead, what kind of feeling do you want to have?" he said. "The one I want to have is we fixed it, that we have something we feel good about, that we can work on and get our stuff ready for next year."
Earnhardt believes he's moving in that direction, even though the results -- 12, 27, 14, 26, 13 -- since McGrew took over don't necessarily support that. He was excited about racing into the top three last week at New Hampshire.
"The team has got a great attitude and it seems to get better with each run," Earnhardt said. "It seems to show a little more promise. Everybody is working so hard.
"We obviously, once we get back to where we want to be, will appreciate that much more than we probably did in the past. … It's been a trying time, and our team was really low. Just knowing where we were and how I felt two months ago is a big difference to us."
In other words, he still has a long way to go to improve his team and his image.
Kyle Busch was the target of some finger-pointing Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, which is nothing new since he is a lightning rod for a lot of things.
But give Busch credit. He stood up and took the blame.
In case you missed it, there was an eight-car pileup on a Lap 175 restart. It began with Dale Earnhardt Jr. spinning his tires, holding up the rest of the field.
"While I was in the care center I saw the replay and it looked like the 18 [Busch] was just completely impatient -- very normal," Vickers said. "Just hooked the 1 [Truex] in the right rear and turned him in front of the field.
"If you wreck somebody on the straightaway, you kind of should be black-flagged for it, but that's NASCAR's call, not my call. That's the second week in a row that stupidity has cost us a race, and it's frustrating."
Truex concurred.
"I was just, you know, staying in line doing what I could to get going, and obviously you can't pass before the start-finish line," he said. "I guess Kyle just decided he didn't want to lift, so I was just an innocent victim today.
"Kyle just lost his head like he usually does when something bad happens. He decided he wasn't going to lift, he was going to turn me on the straightaway for no good reason at all."
It's been a while since Busch has been called overaggressive. He has avoided, for the most part, taking chances to the point of recklessness, a clear sign he has matured greatly as a driver.
So if we're going to rip him for leaving the track without speaking to reporters or for taking potshots at Earnhardt and his former crew chief, Tony Eury Jr., he deserves kudos for hanging around to admit he made a mistake that cost several drivers contending for the Chase valuable points.
Maybe the Shrub is becoming a tree.
"Unfortunately, I have to apologize to all those guys on that restart," Busch said. "I got into Martin and I hate it for him and Jeff Burton and those guys. It was just hard racing on a restart.
"It looked like the 88 spun his tires a little bit. I went to the middle to go for a lane and these double-file restarts everything is so tight anyways and I just got into the 1 a little bit there and got him sideways."
The best way to deflect criticism is to meet it head-on.
"Danica, I think she's got the talent and everything, but I don't think she knows what she's getting into," he told reporters Friday before rain washed out qualifying at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Montoya can speak to this better than most. The former Indianapolis 500 champion left Formula One three years ago to pursue a career in the Sprint Cup Series.
He's won on a road course, which came as no surprise since he is one of the best road course drivers in the country. He hasn't won on an oval and hasn't qualified for the Chase, although he is 12th with 10 races remaining before the 12-driver playoff field is set.
"They're so different to drive," said Montoya, explaining the difference between a stock car and Indy car. "It's not the same feeling. When you drive an open-wheel car on an oval you have the grip, you turn the wheel and it turns, you get on it and it goes and you get on the brakes and it stops.
"This it goes more with the momentum," he said of stock cars. "You've got to give time to the car and you've got to get used to the feeling that you've got to go fast when the car doesn't feel right. With time actually it becomes kind of normal."
But again, it takes time.
And Patrick's credentials aren't nearly what Montoya's were when he made the jump. He is the only driver to win the open wheel CART title, the Indianapolis 500 and 24 Hours of Daytona -- all on his first attempt.
He won numerous other races and titles in open wheel.
In Cup he finished 20th in points as a rookie and 25th in 2008. He has only one win and five top-5s in 89 races and has led only 51 laps.
Patrick has finished no better than fifth in points since joining the IndyCar Series in 2005, and she has only one win in 71 races.
But her contract with Andretti Green is over after this season and she insists she's looking at NASCAR, although many such as myself believe she's using the sport for leverage to get more money out of the IRL.
There has been speculation that she will join Chip Ganassi, the co-owner of Montoya's Cup team, in the IRL.
If she passes on that or other IRL offers for Cup, where she's made it clear she'd want to be with a top organization right away, it likely will take a few years in the Nationwide Series as well as the Cup series to help her adjust to stock cars.
If she makes the move, there's no guarantee she'll succeed even though sponsors would line up for the opportunity to partner with her. Dario Franchitti was gone from Cup within a year due to lack of sponsorship at Ganassi Racing. Sam Hornish Jr. is 26th in points for Penske Racing after a couple of years in NASCAR's premier series.
Both won Indianapolis 500s.
Patrick has not.
The NASCAR path, if she chooses it, will not be easy.
"If she comes, I'm sure she can do it, but it doesn't matter if you come to a winning team or anything," Montoya said. "It's going to take time."
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Kurt Busch and Jimmie Johnson could have taken shots at each other following Sunday's Sprint Cup race at Infineon Raceway. Busch may have had every right to take a swing at the three-time defending champion after he clipped him on Lap 90 and sent him straight into the tire barrier in the ess turns to ruin a top-5 day.
Instead, they talked it out and shook hands.
That won't spike television ratings or increase Web site hits. It won't have people talking by the watercooler all week long as they would have had this been Kyle Busch and Dale Earnhardt Jr.
It was downright boring, to be honest.
But it was the right way to resolve their issues even if this isn't a gentleman's game like golf.
Johnson went directly to Busch after the race to apologize. He didn't wait to text or call him, which some drivers do. That only gives the anger time to fester.
He simply walked over to Busch's hauler before changing into street clothes and explained what happened.
"It was just a racing deal, nothing more," Johnson said.
We've seen racing deals turn into outright shouting matches in the past. We've seen them turn into fisticuffs.
Five or six years ago, Busch may have let his temper get the best of him and done something stupid.
We may have been waiting for a fine.
But the drivers worked it out and that was the end of it.
"He hit the curb and just launched into us," Busch said. "It was just two champion drivers going after the same spot."
Busch went on to salvage 15th. Johnson finished fourth.
It won't linger until next week at New Hampshire, where Busch is the defending champion.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- I left Knoxville, Tenn., at 11:45 a.m. on Sunday, stopped for lunch about an hour out, took a wrong turn that cost me 10 minutes and approached Asheville, N.C., at about the time the Sprint Cup race at Michigan International Speedway started at 2:16 p.m.
By the time I reached the outlet mall in Gaffney, S.C., for a shop-'n'-go for my son, 121 of the 200 laps were in the books. Before I reached the outskirts of Charlotte, N.C., they were well into the postrace interviews.
That's my kind of race. Less than three hours.
Long enough to get me through a short drive, but not so long that dust starts settling on my keyboard, as was the case a week earlier at Pocono.
Yes, I like shorter races. So do many drivers.
I suspect the fans, judging by the comments on ESPN.com's live chat during the 24 hours of Pocono, do as well.
"Don't get me started on time frames of races," Jeff Gordon said after the Michigan race. "Eighty percent of them are way too long."
Exactly.
If NASCAR wants to make another format change instead of tweaking the car, then shortening races is the place to start. Anything over three hours, with the exception of the Coca-Cola 600, is too long.
It's a formula that has worked very well for the NFL. Frankly, I don't understand how college football gets away with some of those four-hour marathons.
People have a more limited attention span than they did 20 years ago. They definitely have more entertainment options to choose from.
So why make them choose?
Shorten the races. We shouldn't be subjected to five-hour shows any more than we should be subjected to five-hour rounds of golf.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Sam Bass figures the Gibson Les Paul custom guitar awarded to the winner of the Nationwide Series race in Nashville, Tenn., is worth about $25,000, considering the initial cost of the instrument and the 140 hours of work he spent turning it into a piece of art.
OK, so Busch didn't have to pay for the first one. The track did. And Bass won't charge $25,000 each for replicas of the trophy that was named one of the best in all of sports by Sports Illustrated.
But it still was a pretty costly smash.
A pretty cool one, too.
It may be unpopular to say Busch's celebration was cool. Bass thought it was anything but, saying he felt "shock, hurt, disappointment and surprise" to see his artwork destroyed in 30 seconds after he spent six to eight weeks creating it.
"Contrary to reports that were floated out there, I had no advance knowledge that was going to happen," Bass said. "So while I am watching it happen, I'm stunned and amazed just like anybody else was in Victory Lane. They couldn't believe what they were seeing.
"I don't care who you are -- that's got to hurt a little bit because you have something invested in it."
Bass' feelings are understandable. Nobody wants to see something he created destroyed.
He had a right to be angry, just as Busch had a right to be angry after seeing a few of his artful performances this season turn into disappointing losses because of a bad pit stop or a flat tire.
Bass' feelings aside, the celebration still was cool. Busch showed pure emotion and fulfilled a promise he made to his team a year ago that if he ever won at Nashville -- a track that until Saturday had denied him victory -- he would break the guitar and give each a piece of it.
In an era when drivers are so vanilla, that was refreshing.
Some say it was disrespectful to Bass and all he invested in the piece. Busch told Bass that wasn't the case when the two posed for a Victory Lane picture with the guitar. Bass took him at his word for it and agreed to make two more guitars.
Case closed.
Yet some want to vilify Busch for his act. They say it's another sign of his immaturity. Fellow Sprint Cup driver Carl Edwards said he wouldn't do that, that he has too much respect to do so.
That is his choice.
But you can't tell drivers to show their personality, as fans seem to want, then tell them they showed it in the wrong way. Next thing you know, NASCAR will be making rules against celebrating in Victory Lane the way college football has outlawed celebrating in the end zone.
Let 'em have fun. Let 'em show emotion.
It's good for the sport. Had Busch not smashed the guitar, nobody would be talking about the race.
And remember, there was a time when drivers occasionally sold their trophies for money to race the next weekend or simply to put food on the table. Was that disrespectful?
"I understand why he did what he did after promising to his crew how he would go about doing it," Bass said. "But it was hard to watch, for sure. It's a piece of artwork. That is not a cheap guitar by any sense of the imagination. That guitar is worthy of any of the greatest guitar players ever."
The replicas he'll make for Busch will be just as good.
"I'm not going to turn in anything that is not my best work," Bass said. "At least I know now he appreciates how much time and energy goes into it. Forty-two other drivers in that field might have handled things differently, but what's done is done.
"We'll go on and make the best of it. I'm always going to take the high road. Kyle says no disrespect to me. I'm going to take him at his word."
Dale Earnhardt Jr. hasn't had a good season on the track, but he made the most profound statement of the year last month when asked about Jeremy Mayfield's indefinite suspension for violating NASCAR's substance abuse policy.
"Don't do drugs. Don't do stupid stuff," he said. "It's stupid to do it anyways, regardless if you're driving race cars or not. It's a dumb idea. Just don't be ignorant."
Nothing else really needs to be said. We have known for weeks that Mayfield was suspended, according to court documents, for taking an amphetamine that NASCAR attorney Paul Hendrick called a "dangerous, illegal, banned substance."
We got more specific Tuesday, calling the illegal substance methamphetamine.
It could have been crack cocaine or marijuana. It doesn't really matter.
It is illegal. There is no defense against that.
Unless Mayfield's attorneys can prove the test was tainted and that the driver hasn't taken drugs, his career is over. No major sponsor will touch a driver proved to have taken illegal drugs, and without sponsorship it's nearly impossible to get on the track.
That is why Mayfield has no choice but to challenge NASCAR. Going through the rehabilitation process mandated for readmittance basically is an admission of guilt.
With that stigma at the age of 40, unless Mayfield strikes oil on his North Carolina farm he'll never have the financial backing to put a competitive car -- or maybe any car -- on the track.
So he's fighting.
How this will turn out is up to the court. Mayfield's attorneys would like the entire test thrown out, arguing that the "B" sample was tested at the same laboratory as the "A" sample, and that goes against federal employee drug testing guidelines.
NASCAR will argue it is not a federal institution and that it was perfectly within its rights to test at the same laboratory. That the NFL and Olympic guidelines are the same can't hurt.
More importantly, they will argue that a driver with an illegal substance in his system shouldn't be allowed to compete.
Duh!
So what have we really learned over the past 24 hours? Not much. Drivers are no more willing to rush to judgment now than they were a month ago. Most are waiting for the legal system to run its course before making bold statements.
Do they want to be on a track with somebody taking an illegal substance? No more than any of us want to drive down the interstate with somebody on drugs or alcohol.
Did they suspect Mayfield was on drugs? No. And some aren't even sure it's fair to say he was until this is settled.
"Let me put it this way," Carl Edwards said Wednesday in a conference call. "I never have been racing people that are incapable of racing at this level. Most of the time I feel like I'm the idiot out there, like I'm in somebody's way or I have been screwing up.
"I always have looked up to these people in racing, Jeremy included. I never have gotten out of the car and said, 'Man, that guy is dangerous. Something is crazy here.' "
That NASCAR now has a legitimate system in place to catch somebody on drugs is the real story here. Under the old system of testing for reasonable suspicion, this likely would have slipped through the cracks.
Nobody suspected Mayfield was guilty of anything until he took a random drug test in Richmond that turned up positive.
And even that's not a guarantee in NASCAR or any sport. Suppose Mayfield hadn't been randomly selected?
"When you go in for surgery you don't know if the doctor cutting you open has some sort of personal problem," Edwards said. "That's life. All you can do is the best you can. I don't know what Jeremy did. I have no clue.
"Nobody would say it's all right to race on the track with somebody that is impaired. NASCAR is trying to do their best, and I feel good about it."
That being said, the federal judge who some time later this month will be asked to grant Mayfield a temporary restraining order allowing him back on the track until the case has been solved has no choice but to say no.
As long as there's any question a driver is guilty of taking an illegal drug, he shouldn't be allowed on the track.
"Either one of two things has happened," Edwards said. "Either he was into meth or he wasn't. If he was, then he's got a bigger problem than they think and we should try to help him out.
If he didn't use any meth, we sure the hell should not be talking about it. It's certainly destructive to somebody's life and public image."
LONG POND, Pa. -- Crew chief Chad Knaus was fuming 105 laps into Sunday's Sprint Cup race at Pocono Raceway. His driver had been sent to the rear of the lead-lap cars for pitting when pit road was closed under caution, and he'd just learned why the yellow flag came out.
"Caught for debris in 2," Knaus shouted to driver Jimmie Johnson over his in-car radio. "That's f---ing horse----, Darby."
He was sending a message to Sprint Cup series director John Darby, suggesting the debris caution that came out as his driver approached pit road could have been at least delayed with Johnson trapped and no way to avoid the penalty.
His displeasure remained as Johnson was asked to pull over and allow the four cars ahead of the leader at the tail of the lead lap be waved around him, as is mandated under the new double-file restart, making its debut.
"All those crazy bastards that got the wave-around, watch them!" Knaus told Johnson, restarting in 28th after being one of the top three cars in the first half of the race.
That little drama aside, double-file restarts with all the leaders up front got off without a glitch. None of the anticipated problems that came up in the drivers' meeting that lasted 20 minutes longer than normal to answer questions ever surfaced.
Race director David Hoots and the rest of his staff managed the restarts as smoothly as they did under the old system, when lead cars started single file on the outside and lapped cars single file on the inside.
Most of the drivers seemed happy with the format that NASCAR mandated because of the excitement it generated in the Sprint All-Star race. Leaders liked it because they got to race against leaders on restarts instead of lapped cars.
Those waved around liked it because they didn't have to race leaders to stay on the lead lap.
"It did make it nice," winner Tony Stewart said. "It was the perfect place to try it, and it's something the fans are going to enjoy in the future."
Carl Edwards, who finished second, made one suggestion that made sense: Let the leader start in a row by himself, a reward for being up front, then double-file restart everybody behind him.
"Other than that, I thought it was great," he said. "It was fun. It made for exciting racing. so I think that NASCAR is moving in the right direction."
Maybe NASCAR, which seems to have an open ear these days, will listen if enough agree.
Some were better on the restarts than others. Jeff Gordon admittedly struggled with it.
"Boy, I tell you, it killed us," he said. "Aero-wise, my car was good in clean air. … It was a handful with the dirty air."
Johnson didn't recommend any tweaks to the restarts, but he did have a suggestion for how to help avoid being trapped on pit road when the caution comes out.
"I couldn't see a flagman or lights or anything, so hopefully they can look into a little better light system at each of the tracks," he said. "There is a very small single light that's way out from the inside. We need to relook at those things at all these racetracks that help the guys that are pitting."
LONG POND, Pa. -- The camera angle shown on the television in the Pocono Raceway media center Saturday was focused on the hood of Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s car as it circled the track during the second practice.
It was almost as though we were in the driver's seat.
Watch out! Loose in Turn 2.
Oh no! Squirrelly coming off Turn 3.
Yes, a few kinks remain to be worked out. Earnhardt was 20th in the final practice for Sunday's Sprint Cup race. His Hendrick Motorsports teammates were fifth (Jimmie Johnson), 15th (Mark Martin) and 17th (Jeff Gordon).
Team owner Rick Hendrick was impressed by how Dale Earnhardt Jr., left, and Lance McGrew, right, communicated Sunday at Dover.
In the first practice, Johnson, Martin and Gordon were in the top 12, with Johnson pacing the field and Gordon fifth. Earnhardt was 17th.
So sticking crew chief Lance McGrew on the pit box and throwing tons of engineering support at the No. 88 team won't make NASCAR's most popular driver an instant contender for wins.
Earnhardt's still the slowest among the Hendrick drivers.
But there are signs that this relationship is working, and this really is the first true test. McGrew was thrown onto the pit box at the last minute a week ago at Dover because Brad Keselowski, the driver he was scheduled to work with, didn't make the field.
He didn't have a real hand in the setup at the shop or spend the week prepping for the race, as he has for Pocono.
That Earnhardt finished 12th at Dover -- the first time he'd been better than 27th in a month -- was somewhat of a victory considering all that.
The radio conversation between Earnhardt and McGrew was so calm that one would have thought it was Johnson and Chad Knaus. There was no screaming or yelling, as often was the case with former crew chief Tony Eury Jr. on the other end of the headset, although Earnhardt wasn't happy with a few of McGrew's changes.
All has been calm at Pocono as well. Earnhardt actually was happy with the way his car improved, picking up five spots on the final run with traffic keeping him from going faster.
McGrew is working hard to make his driver happy. One almost had to jog to keep up with him as he made his way from debriefing his driver in the 88 hauler to a debriefing with the rest of the HMS teams in the motor coach lot.
"We're not 100 percent where we need to be," McGrew said. "It's challenging every day. It's challenging to keep up. But I definitely feel a whole lot better about it than I did last week at Dover."
Remember, he inherited a team that is 18th in points, not in the top 12 like the other HMS drivers -- No. 2 Gordon, No. 3 Johnson and No. 12 Martin. He inherited a team that has led laps in only three of 13 events. Johnson has led a lap in all but two events.
And it's been only a week.
"Yeah, a whole week," McGrew said with a smile. "I really haven't had any big surprises. More than anything else it's just getting used to knowing Dale's lingo and him getting used to mine.
"Communication-wise, I feel everything is going well."
Communication arguably was the No. 1 problem between Earnhardt and Eury. They often went at each other over the in-car radio like brothers -- or cousins, which they are.
There was a feeling in the garage that Earnhardt didn't give Eury all the information needed to improve the car. There was a feeling that things often were out of control.
There's no doubt McGrew is in charge here.
It has to be that way for this to work. It has proved more than effective with Johnson and Knaus, judging by their three straight titles.
Johnson said the times he tried to solve the problem instead of describing the problem only created tension.
"I'd rather one person be in control," he said. "That way you work through your problems faster and just describe what you feel."
The person you feel bad for in all of this is Eury. He was pushed out of a job he loved because he couldn't, for whatever reason, help Earnhardt live up to the fan expectations.
He was shifted to development and testing for Johnson's team. He certainly would rather be here in the thick of competition, but he's not complaining.
And Johnson said the initial test with Eury was great.
"In some respects it's probably nice to have the pressure off," Johnson said. "So I think he might have been relieved and also at the same time kind of bummed out.
"I was trying to talk him into coming to [Pocono], but I don't think he's ready to do that yet. Hopefully, we'll get him to the track sometime soon."
Meanwhile, McGrew is the new man in the hot seat. He's the one feeling the pressure that Eury has dealt with for more than a decade.
So far all has gone well, but again, it's been only a week.
There's a lot more to learn about this relationship than what we saw from a Saturday practice on the media center television.
CONCORD, N.C. -- We all feel bad for Carl Long. He lost his appeal of the 200-point, $200,000 fine and 12-week suspension handed down by NASCAR because the engine he used in the preliminary to the All-Star race didn't meet specifications.
We know he can't afford it.
We know this could end his racing career.
We know it doesn't sound fair.
I hate to sound harsh, but too bad.
It doesn't matter if his name was Carl Long or Carl Edwards: NASCAR had no choice but to come down heavy, and the appeal committee had no choice but to uphold the ruling.
If the governing body starts basing fines on where a driver is in the standings or by the size of his bank account, then we'll have even more problems.
Next time a Hendrick Motorsports team is fined you'll have owner Rick Hendrick arguing it was too harsh because his dealerships didn't sell as many cars the previous month. Or Roush Fenway Racing owner Jack Roush will say 200 points is OK for a guy like Jimmie Johnson, who earns that every week or two, but not for David Ragan, who sometimes takes four weeks to reach that number.
This has to be black-and-white.
NASCAR and the appeal committee have to wear blinders. It doesn't matter whether the violation was intentional or accidental. Intent can't be an issue because we'll be tied up in court all the time trying to prove it.
Long, judging by his comments, is taking this personally. He blasted NASCAR chairman Brian France and president Mike Helton, basically accusing them of not caring, unlike those who ran the sport before them.
He failed to mention cheating was rampant years ago, when teams that bent the rules the best had a decided advantage over guys who played fairly.
NASCAR has made a concerted effort to eliminate cheating, and the lack of multiple major violations until this one is evidence that it is working. Money aside, this ultimately should give drivers like Long a better chance to compete with super teams such as HMS.
It's unfortunate Long was caught in this web, but to put all the blame on NASCAR and the system is wrong. France and Helton didn't make the mistake, honest or not, of bringing an illegal engine to the track.
Long did.
And it doesn't matter whether it was 0.17 of an inch off as Long claimed or 17 inches, it's still illegal.
Yes, that is black-and-white.
It's a shame, particularly for Long. Nobody likes the fact this happened to him -- I doubt even NASCAR.
CONCORD, N.C. -- I'm not sure which was louder on Thursday morning, the dog barking on my back porch or the roar from Junior Nation after it was announced that Tony Eury Jr. no longer was the crew chief for NASCAR's most popular driver.
The decision team owner Rick Hendrick made was to improve the performance of Dale Earnhardt Jr., who is 19th in points and all but assured of not making the Chase.
In reality, it was good for the entire sport.
NASCAR needs Earnhardt running up front, winning races and competing for titles. Chairman Brian France directly blamed Earnhardt's 2007 struggles for declining television ratings.
"It would have helped if he would have been competitive,'' he said at the time. "He didn't win an event and he certainly didn't make our playoffs. And that's unhelpful if you're trying to build ratings.''
Earnhardt wasn't competitive again this year, so a change had to be made for the betterment of Hendrick Motorsports and NASCAR.
By no means do I blame Eury for this shipwreck, but many of you do. The more the team struggled the more fans turned on Earnhardt, which meant they turned from the sport.
NASCAR has been concerned for some time about the sliding television ratings and attendance. The governing body held a meeting with team owners and drivers on Tuesday to discuss everything from improving the new car to shortening race weekends and races.
What Hendrick did on Thursday could bring faster results.
Earnhardt is NASCAR's Tiger Woods. When he does well ratings go up, more fans attend races and buy T-shirts.
He wasn't doing well with Eury and it had to stop.
The outpouring of comments on ESPN.com from Tuesday's story that Hendrick was considering a change alone showed that fans wanted this. Here are a few of your comments following today's official announcement:
• RLChapel -- "It is about time! I felt Tony Jr. should have been replaced years ago when Dale Jr. was still at DEI. In practically every race, when their car was not handling good, they rarely ever made it better. Only when the car was perfect immediately off the trailer has he done well. Dale Jr. has proved he is a very good race car driver. Not as good as his dad, but still pretty good.''
• Awesomespoon -- "... Well [Junior] is to NASCAR is what gas is to a car. Without him right now [they're] done. Most NASCAR fans have been getting pissed with the sport for years now taking races away from good tracks and taking it to places that suck and it being a huge flop. If [Junior] left NASCAR, the effects would be huge. Not as bad as golf, but it would be down there with soccer.''
• Baseballman387 -- "FINALLY!!!!!!! Now let's see what happens.''
Not all of you like Junior, but most of you talk about him and look to see where he finishes. Now you'll look even harder to see if the new crew chief makes a difference.
The dog is now quiet.
The roar of Junior Nation and all of NASCAR continues to ring in my ears.
CONCORD, N.C. -- Speedway Motorsports Inc. chairman Bruton Smith knows a thing or two about the attorney representing Sprint Cup driver Jeremy Mayfield, who was suspended indefinitely for violating the substance-abuse policy.
"Bill Diehl is a junkyard dog," Smith said Saturday at Lowe's Motor Speedway. "I don't mean that other than he is a tough lawyer, a brilliant man."
A local magazine named Diehl one of the 10 scariest people in Charlotte. He has been involved in arguably more high-profile cases in the state of North Carolina than anybody.
He successfully defended former Charlotte Hornets owner George Shinn in a nationally televised sexual assault case. He defended ex-Carolina Panthers wide receiver Rae Carruth, who was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, in his custody and child-support case.
Diehl also defended Smith in his 1990 divorce that reportedly cost his client $19.4 million in alimony.
But Diehl wins a lot more than he loses.
"There'll be a lot of people if he [files suit for Mayfield] that'll get tired of depositions," Smith said. "I've seen Bill Diehl conduct a deposition. He's tough and he's mean. He's a junkyard dog."
Mayfield contends that his positive test was the result of combining a prescription and an over-the-counter drug, a charge the doctor who runs NASCAR's testing denied.
NASCAR chairman Brian France said the substance Mayfield tested positive for was a "serious infraction," defining "serious" as a recreational or performance-enhancing drug. A performance-enhancing drug since has been ruled out.
The likely scenario is that Diehl, who can't file before Tuesday because Monday is a holiday, will attempt to discredit either Dr. David Black or the way the test was administered.
Smith hopes it doesn't come to that.
"We don't need this lawsuit in our sport, but it appears it's going to happen," he said. "It would be a lot better if it didn't happen. Maybe if NASCAR made a few changes there wouldn't be a lawsuit."
Smith doesn't have a real opinion on who is right. His main contention regards NASCAR's keeping the identity of the substance a secret.
"NASCAR, in my opinion, should come forth and say what this substance is," he said. "Why do we want all this secrecy behind it?"
Smith, one of the most opinionated people in NASCAR, had a few thoughts on several other issues.
• On former LMS president H.A. "Humpy" Wheeler's not being invited to the 50th anniversary of the track after a bitter parting with Smith last year:
"I was better to Humpy than any person in my life," he said. "I was better to him than even my brother."
Smith didn't seem bothered that Wheeler will spend Sunday at the Indianapolis 500, but he did seem bothered that Wheeler has the public sympathy over the breakup.
Asked whether the relationship was beyond repair, Smith said: "I would never say never. Maybe some day there might be an apology in place. I made Humpy a lot of money. Humpy's net worth is about $26 million. I'm very proud of that."
• On NASCAR's most popular driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr., being in a winless slump and 18th in points: "Rick [Hendrick] is working with him. You'll see him improving. I think he's tired of some of the bad press he's getting. I think he'll change. I think you'll see Dale start winning some races."
• On the 12-week suspension for Carl Long and the $200,000 fine for Long's crew chief that NASCAR issued after the engine Long used in last weekend's preliminary to the All-Star Race was found to be too big:
"The fine is ridiculous," Smith said. "Why would you fine this guy $200,000 for this engine that is just a little bit over? I've got to believe Brian [France] did not make that decision."
Long, who has not qualified for a Cup points race since 2006, is appealing the penalty.
"When NASCAR does something that is so far out, like we mentioned with Carl Long, I think NASCAR loses a lot of fans when that happens," Smith said. "That is something you don't think would happen in this country. It's too dictatorial. It's not good.
"We don't need to be making enemies. We need to be making friends. We need to be fan-friendly."
CONCORD, N.C. -- Tiger Woods doesn't dip into the Hooter's Tour between majors. Derek Jeter doesn't spend off days knocking balls out of the park for the New York Yankees' minor-league clubs. Kobe Bryant doesn't put on a show for the Los Angeles D-Fenders on a travel day.
Kyle Busch shouldn't have been in the Camping World Series East-West combination race he won Sunday at Iowa Speedway.
No full-time Sprint Cup driver should be.
Ever.
I've heard all the arguments for it. He draws a big crowd and increases exposure for the sport. He gives the young guys who dream of making it to the top level a chance to gauge their talent against the best.
He also takes money out of the pockets of those struggling to advance. He steals the headlines from youngsters such as Brian Ickler (second), David Mayhew (third) and Jeffrey Earnhardt (fourth).
Busch doesn't need the headlines. He gets enough winning everything in the Cup, Nationwide and Truck series.
He doesn't need the money, either. He already has earned more than $2.3 million in Cup winnings alone this year.
The Camping World Series is a circuit for developmental drivers. If Busch wants to help increase crowds and awareness, he can show up and sign autographs for an hour. Or promise to watch the race from the stands with a fan.
To compete is like shooting fish in a barrel for a driver of his talent.
It's like pitting Woods against a field of junior golfers. Jeter versus some minor-league pitcher who hasn't developed a curveball. Bryant against a team of kids who didn't get drafted.
This isn't Busch's fault, although he shouldn't feel the need to lower himself to this level. This is NASCAR's fault for allowing it to happen -- for the third straight year.
Kasey Kahne finished second last year and Kevin Harvick did the same in 2007 when current Cup rookie Joey Logano won at the age of 16. It's a good gimmick for the track, but it does little for the betterment of the sport.
It's bad enough Cup drivers dominate the Nationwide Series and, to a degree, the Truck Series when Busch competes.
CONCORD, N.C. -- We are gathered at Lowe's Motor Speedway for the Sprint All-Star Race. Actor Kevin Costner is here jamming with his band. Montgomery Gentry is here doing its thing. Some hot new country music artist named Jessie James is here trying to get more exposure.
It's a festive mood.
A bit humid, but festive.
Unfortunately, we have spent much of the weekend talking about Jeremy Mayfield's indefinite suspension from NASCAR because of a failed drug test.
Mayfield insists the positive test was the result of combining an over-the-counter drug for allergies with a prescription drug. NASCAR disagrees.
This standoff could be resolved easily. Mayfield has the document sent to him by NASCAR outlining the results of the test. All he has to do is make that public and, if the drug is what he says it is, his case will be heard.
I doubt we'll ever see that document.
As Dale Earnhardt Jr. said in his own special way, this isn't rocket science.
"Don't do anything stupid and you won't get caught," he said. "That's ridiculous. Nobody deserves anything, no lists, nothing. Don't do drugs. Don't do stupid stuff.
"Everybody wants to know what the hell Jeremy did. That's his business and NASCAR's business and they'll handle it. Don't take drugs. It's stupid to do anyways. Regardless if you drive race cars or not, it's a dumb idea. Don't be ignorant."
This may be the smartest thing NASCAR's most popular driver has said. It's definitely a nice break from why he and crew chief Tony Eury Jr. seemingly can't communicate.
So point taken.
It's time to focus on the track and other dramas that certainly will come out of this no-holds-barred race.
Some idiot made a friendly wager before the season that 18-year-old Joey Logano would finish in the top 15 of the final Sprint Cup standings. No alcohol or drugs were involved. It was just a gut feeling, one you have before the engines roar for the first time.
So I'm going to lose.
The kid is 30th after 11 races.
But Logano, as Mark Martin said before his former protégé was old enough to get a driver's license, is the real deal.
It's looking more and more like owner Joe Gibbs, left, got the right guy in Joey Logano to drive the No. 20 car.
If you weren't convinced before Saturday night's race at Darlington Raceway, you should have been afterwards.
Most rookies leave the 1.366-mile track with cars looking like they've been in a demolition derby. They hit the wall so many times that the Darlington Stripe appears to be part of the paint scheme.
Logano finished ninth, the first time a rookie has been in the top 10 there since Denny Hamlin in 2006. He also led a season-high 19 laps on a track most call the toughest on the circuit. For a while he looked so strong it appeared he could actually win.
He was so good that Tony Stewart, the former driver of the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing car, was impressed. So was five-time Darlington winner Cale Yarborough, who took Logano for a few laps around the track a few weeks ago.
In a few years, maybe by the end of this year, we're all going to see exactly what Martin meant when he said Logano was ready for Cup -- at the age of 15.
"I am high on Joey Logano because I am absolutely, 100 percent positive, without a doubt that he can be one of the greatest that ever raced in NASCAR," Martin said at the time. "I'm positive. There's no doubt in my mind."
We all got a glimpse of that potential on Saturday. Logano handled the tricky corners at the egg-shaped track like a seasoned veteran.
Logano looked anything but seasoned through the first seven races. He had an average finish of 30.2 and was teetering on being out of the top 35 guaranteed to make the field.
He struggled so much that a rumor emerged that he could be replaced by Martin Truex Jr., who of course would have had to get out of his contract with Earnhardt Ganassi Racing.
There was nothing to that rumor. JGR invested way too much in Logano to give up on him after seven races.
His past three starts have shown the talent everybody knew he had. He finished ninth at Talladega, 19th at Richmond and ninth at Darlington.
Over the past four races his average finish is 14.5. Teammate Kyle Busch, who has three wins and has been proclaimed the next Dale Earnhardt by some, has averaged 19.2 over that same span.
OK, so maybe Logano won't finish the season in the top 15. Maybe I was an idiot to think he could before the season.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Darlington Raceway president Chris Browning did a good thing bringing the Southern 500 back even though it won't be on its traditional Labor Day weekend.
Having grown up in South Carolina, NASCAR just doesn't seem right without it.
Now if somebody could find a way to bring back rivalries.
The sport needs some.
We tried to make Kyle Busch and Dale Earnhardt Jr. into a rivalry. That isn't working. It's not really a rivalry when one driver wins all the time and the other doesn't.
Even with the powerful Junior Nation behind it -- and have you noticed a few cracks in the seal? -- the future doesn't look bright.
Kyle versus big brother Kurt would be a doozy. They were trading wins there for a while this season and both are high in the points. But as much as they don't always agree on things Kurt is too nice these days to fuel anything big.
Kyle versus Jimmie Johnson would be ideal. Johnson is the reigning king of the sport with three straight titles, and no matter how many races Busch wins in the top three series he can't be compared to the sport's all-time greats until he wins a few titles.
That Johnson is from Hendrick Motorsports helps, too. Busch has a chip on his shoulder when it comes to the organization that let him go to sign Earnhardt. Johnson doesn't mind taking a poke at the 24-year-old every once in a while, either.
The problem here is the same with brother Kurt. Johnson's just too nice to really mix it up the way rivalries were when the Southern 500 was one of the top traditions in NASCAR behind the Daytona 500.
Jeff Gordon versus Kyle Busch would be fun as well. He has the HMS ties and is a threat to win most weeks, but fans love to boo him almost as much as they do Shrub. You can't have a great rivalry when the fans hate both drivers.
Lets' see. What about Carl Edwards? Now there's a guy Busch could love to hate. It would be the Evil Empire versus Mr. Congeniality. They were heating it up toward the end of last season, but to have a good rivalry both parties have to sustain winning. Edwards just hasn't had it this season.
The Southern 500 would be a good place to start it. We need excitement like the 1982 race when Cale Yarborough, Petty, Dale Earnhardt, Bill Elliott and Buddy Baker finished one through five. Or the '68 race when it came down to Yarborough and Pearson.
We need the drivers to show real disdain for each other like the Packers and Bears, the Lakers and Celtics, the Yankees and Red Sox.
It doesn't have to be Busch versus anybody. It can be Gordon versus A.J. Allmendinger for all I care.
We just need a good rivalry so fans can take sides and stir things up a bit.
Maybe that's impossible in this vanilla world.
But if they can bring back the Southern 500, even on Mother's Day weekend instead of Labor Day, maybe there is hope.
RICHMOND, Va. -- The official NASCAR Sprint Cup stats say this is the first time Kurt Busch has led the point standings since the Las Vegas race on March 13, 2005.
There needs to be an asterisk by it.
Jimmie Johnson left Las Vegas Motor Speedway with the lead that day. He won the race to take a 15-point lead over Busch, who finished third.
Johnson led on the 14th, as well.
Then on the 15th, NASCAR docked Johnson 25 points and suspended crew chief Chad Knaus for two races because the car failed to meet the minimum height requirement in postrace inspection.
That vaulted Busch into the lead by 10.
Now for an even tougher trivia question: When was the last time the No. 2 Miller car was first in points without Busch behind the wheel? You have to dig much deeper for that answer, all the way back to May 2, 1998.
That's the day before the season's 10th race at California Speedway. Rusty Wallace had the lead over Jeremy Mayfield going in, but finished 34th with an engine problem to fall to fourth.
For a while, it looked as though the car never would make it back to the top. Busch finished 16th, seventh and 18th in his first three seasons with Penske Racing. He had only four wins after collecting 14 in his previous four seasons at Roush Fenway Racing.
The program was so far down last season that many forgot how good the 2004 champion was -- or is. Six top-10s in the first nine races, including a win, have been a good reminder.
"When I switched to Penske, I didn't understand how much rebuilding that we were going to be going through when they let over 120 people go during the season between '05 and '06," Busch said Friday at Richmond International Raceway. "We won at Bristol right away, but after that, we definitely were on the quiet side of things.
"Then we switched to the COT, which I felt that we really shot ourselves in the foot. Roger [Penske] was gung ho for the car and thought it would help our program. I looked at it as it would only make us go backwards for a while until we figured it out."
They've figured it out. Busch has shown the consistency he used to win the first Chase. That has to make the folks at Chrysler, which filed for bankruptcy Thursday, smile.
Their poster boy has to make them smile, regardless. He's a walking billboard for the company, pushing the product better than a showroom salesman.
He has backed his words by purchasing three Chrysler products -- a Durango, Jeep Wrangler and Challenger -- in the past few months.
"I'm doing what I can to help move some Dodge products and keep people on the assembly line," he said.
Busch has donated the SRT8 Challenger with a one-of-a-kind paint scheme for a lottery that will help raise money for his foundation to donate to the Victory Junction Gang Camp. He'll sell $100 tickets through the summer, with the winner selected Sept. 30.
He hopes to be leading the points then, as well.
The last time he was in this position, it lasted only a week.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Let me preface this by saying thank goodness nobody seriously was injured Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway.
But NASCAR needed the drama.
Television ratings and attendance were down. Dale Earnhardt Jr. wasn't winning and people were growing tired of debating whether he needed a crew chief change to the point they were making stuff up. Kyle Busch wasn't doing anything spectacular or ticking anybody off.
People needed something to wake them up.
Carl Edwards' car going airborne, landing on the hood of Ryan Newman's car, flying into the catch fence and injuring seven fans in the stands -- all coming off the final turn of the final lap to give part-time driver Brad Keselowski the victory -- certainly did that.
Heck, it made the "Today" show.
All of a sudden everybody is talking NASCAR. Drivers are complaining that the track is either unsafe or not good for the sport. Edwards went so far as to say the governing body would allow this type of racing to go on until somebody was killed.
Fans are a combination wowed by the spectacular video footage of the crash and captivated by all the controversy around it.
Some media members are calling for the track to be blown up and rebuilt from scratch.
Good stuff, huh?
Those who say otherwise either don't care about racing or are lying. NASCAR was built on drama, controversy and risk. It's what captivated America to start watching beyond the borders of the South in 1979. That's the year that Cale Yarborough and the Allison brothers brawled after the Daytona 500, if you're too young to remember.
Without the drama all you would have is cars going around in circles. Maybe that's a bit simplified, but you know what I mean. People like big crashes. It's one reason Talladega typically has one of the largest audiences of the season.
It's the same reason people used to love Bristol before the track was resurfaced and turned it into a half-mile California Speedway.
Lowe's Motor Speedway certainly didn't hesitate to take advantage of the Dega drama. Officials on Monday put a limited number of $14 tickets on sale for the May All-Star race and Coca-Cola 600 in recognition of the 14-car pileup at the start of Sunday's race.
That was a bit tacky if you ask me, and NASCAR's Jim Hunter wouldn't dignify a question about it with an answer. Good for him.
But people bought the tickets. And many will go to LMS, particularly for the All-Star race, hoping for a couple of big wrecks. They don't promote it as no-holds-barred racing for nothing.
At least they didn't have a special $7 special for the seven people who were injured in the crash. Or a 99 cent special because it was the No. 99 car of Edwards that flew into the fence.
Drama. It's what people love. It's why they watch "Desperate Housewives" and "American Idol."
It's why neither NASCAR nor Talladega officials will consider for a second blowing up the 2.66-mile track in the middle of Nowhere, Ala., and starting over. And they shouldn't.
Danger is a big part of the sport's appeal, a part that in many ways has been lost with all of the safety initiatives. There used to be a sense of risk, from drivers and spectators, every time the green flag flew. People would hold their breath when a car flipped seven times and landed on its hood, wondering if the driver survived.
For the most part, the excitement generated by that risk is all but gone.
CONCORD, N.C. -- Denny Hamlin laid on the gas of the Toyota Camry Hybrid pace car as he exited Turn 4 of Lowe's Motor Speedway. With his left hand on the steering wheel and his head turned toward the front-seat passenger, the speedometer crept past 110 mph.
HHP Images
Denny Hamlin was passing out thrills at Lowe's Motor Speedway, even if one passenger was about to pass out.
Whooooosh!
A big gust of wind coming from the infield caught the left side of the car. If you were a sailor, you'd have been smiling. If you were a passenger, you were screaming.
The car came within a foot of the wall, although it appeared much closer from where I was sitting in the backseat. Hamlin reached over and grabbed the wheel with both hands, admitting without losing his devilish smile that even he was caught off guard.
"What if you'd hit the wall?" the front-seat passenger asked.
Hamlin laughed and said, "They've got a backup."
This was supposed to be a casual ride around the 1.5-mile track to give reporters a close-up look at the first hybrid pace car to lead the field to the start-finish line in a Sprint Cup race, at the May 24 Coca-Cola 600.
It turned into a thrill ride.
Drivers tend to do that when they have the upper hand on the media, instead of the other way around. The front-seat passenger had been through enough harrowing rides with drivers that she was prepared to bail on this one until a friend of Hamlin's and I agreed to tag along.
Her fear only egged Hamlin on.
"I'm not looking," she said, her head nearly between her legs as we headed into Turn 1.
"That's OK," Hamlin said. "I'm not looking either."
The scare didn't slow the 2006 rookie of the year. He moved the car closer to the wall driving down the backstretch, then played chicken with a pair of orange cones on the bottom of the track between Turns 3 and 4.
"Stop it!" she yelled.
That didn't work. As Hamlin approached the backstretch a second time, he attempted to slam on the brakes and send the car into a spin. Unfortunately -- or fortunately -- something in the antilock brakes prevented him from doing this, saving us all from losing our lunch.
Asked from the backseat if he could go faster, Hamlin said he could, were it not for fear of blowing the right front tire.
"I don't have a lot of luck with right fronts," he said, referring to the blown tire that sent him into Turn 4 at Las Vegas earlier this year.
One last game of chicken with the cones and a semi-squeal of a stop on pit road, and the ride was over.
Fear aside, the ride was quiet and smooth, just what Hamlin looks for in a street car. He was impressed with the pickup speed, which had to be there for NASCAR to consider it as a pace car. It doesn't do much good if the car can't go from zero to 100 in a hurry in order to get in front of the field when a caution comes out.
Ed Laukes, the corporate manager for Toyota's motorsports marketing, wouldn't be surprised if hybrid technology isn't used competitively on the track in the distant future.
Hamlin hopes not. Nothing against saving gas, but he likes the noise. This car is so quiet, you're not aware the engine is running when you mash the start button.
"I'd prefer the stock car only for the reason that I know, as a fan, when I used to sit in the stands, how exciting it was to hear the engines roar," Hamlin said. "The start of the engines, the ground kind of shakes. You're just not going to get that with a hybrid."
The only thing shaking on this day were the passengers, particularly the one in the front seat.
"It's tough to get you guys to understand and experience what we feel every week," Hamlin said. "You don't feel the g-forces like we do, and [these] speeds are obviously a lot less. So we do everything we can to push these cars to the limit to try to give you guys a feel for what we do, and get a respect for what we do.
"You run close enough to the wall, you get people's eyes to open a little bit."
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- NASCAR will deny there is such a thing as the "Junior Rules" -- one set of standards for Dale Earnhardt Jr. and another for the rest of the Sprint Cup garage.
But there is that perception among fans, competitors and even a few in the media.
Saturday night's race at Phoenix International Raceway did nothing to dispel it.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. has his fans, but he seems to be gaining some detractors among his peers.
Earnhardt, apparently upset by his late-race fade and having been sent into the wall by Casey Mears, spun out Mears on the cool-down lap following his 31st-place finish, which dropped Earnhardt to 19th in points. Mears responded by giving Earnhardt a bump on his way to pit road.
Neither was called to the hauler, and NASCAR officials said they don't plan to review the incident.
That's fine. Nobody was hurt or put in real danger by the incident.
Here's NASCAR's problem: Last season Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards were placed on probation for bumping into each other during the cool-down lap following the August race at Bristol.
In 2006, Edwards was fined $20,000 and placed on probation for hitting Earnhardt's car on the cool-down lap following a Nationwide Series race at Michigan.
In 2004, Jamie McMurray was fined $10,000 and placed on probation for making deliberate contact with Matt Kenseth's car following a race at Bristol.
There are other examples, but this is enough to demonstrate a precedent for postrace incidents. By not calling Earnhardt to the hauler, or at least reviewing the incident, there appears to be a double standard when it comes to NASCAR's most popular driver.
Mears doesn't deny he accidentally got into the side of Earnhardt on lap 300 of 312 when he "wheel-hopped his car getting into the corner." He also made it clear Earnhardt intentionally got into him on the cool-down lap.
"I guess he was a little bent out of shape about it, because he spun me out after the checkered flag," Mears said.
This isn't the first time this season that Earnhardt has appeared to get the benefit of the doubt. In the opener at Daytona, he caused a huge wreck that impacted the outcome when he got into the back of Brian Vickers' car after being forced below the yellow line.
A day earlier, Jason Leffler was held for five laps in the Nationwide Series for making a similar move that NASCAR ruled as "aggressive driving."
Vickers wondered publicly why one was penalized and the other wasn't. NASCAR's director of competition, Robin Pemberton, simply said it was two guys racing hard. "You could say it's a mistake. Guys were just being very aggressive."
You make the call.
Other competitors also have indicated Earnhardt gets breaks. You could hear sarcasm dripping from Busch's tongue at Bristol when NASCAR called caution for debris, putting Earnhardt back on the lead lap.
"Eighty-eight, lucky dog," he said with a laugh over his car radio. "Hahahahaha."
I'm not willing to say there's favoritism at work here, but there is enough ammunition for Oliver Stone to consider another conspiracy-theory movie.
There is little doubt about Earnhardt's intent at Phoenix. That NASCAR has a history of placing drivers on probation for such incidents leaves the governing body vulnerable.
That, to paraphrase one fan's e-mail, is all I'm sayin'.
CORNELIUS, N.C. -- The Monday afternoon competition meeting at Michael Waltrip Racing was 10 minutes old after the March 22 Sprint Cup race at Bristol Motor Speedway race when David Reutimann walked in.
"I text him and said, 'I'm glad to see "The Franchise" could show up," recalled team owner Michael Waltrip. "He texted me back and wrote, 'That freaking Aussie is already after my title.' "
In case you missed it, Reutimann jokingly dubbed himself "The Franchise" of MWR a few days before the Bristol race during a conversation with general manager Ty Norris. He came up with the idea after the Carolina Panthers put the franchise tag on Pro Bowl defensive end Julius Peppers, guaranteeing him a one-year, $16.7 million deal.
Before the name could spread far, the Aussie, teammate Marcos Ambrose, finished 10th at Bristol, two spots ahead of Reutimann.
That didn't put an end to the nickname. Reutimann's team painted "The Franchise" above the door of the No. 00 where the driver's name typically goes. The name spread throughout the television world when Reutimann won the pole at Texas last weekend.
Next thing you know everybody in the garage was calling him that, much like they call Kyle Busch "Shrub" or "Rowdy."
"That's so not me, but it's funny because I like to go up into the office upstairs and throw my feet up on the desk and maybe throw my weight around, too," Reutimann said.
Actually, it's totally Reutimann, at least according to Norris.
"David is absolutely the funniest human being in this building, including Michael," Norris said. "But no one knows it because he just kind of hides it."
If he's funnier than Waltrip, he must be a hoot.
The tag actually fits, because Reutimann is the franchise of MWR. He is 11th in points after seven races and a legitimate contender for the Chase, something nobody at the organization could say during its first two seasons.
"We all said David is better than we are, and it's true," Norris said.
Seeing Reutimann's confidence grow on and off the track is refreshing. He's come a long way from two years ago when he missed the May race at Lowe's Motor Speedway with Burger King on his car for the first time.
"It took a couple of days for us to find him," Norris said. "He thought he would never get a chance to do this again and the sponsor wouldn't want him. He was just in a really bad mental state."
Burger King did leave after that season. Perhaps the fast-food chain should have been more patient.
"It's been an incredible transition to watch him grow from a guy who was not even able to look up and talk to you and look you in the eye to a guy that now walks in the garage and says 'I have a shot at winning every week,' " Norris said.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- President Obama has told Hachette Filipacchi Media to cease operations of Car and Driver magazine if the company wants to receive any governmental aid for its other publications, according to a statement released by the White House.
Yes, this is an April Fools' joke.
But many likely wish it were true after the prank the magazine played Wednesday, which was in poor taste and downright tacky under the current economic climate.
In case you missed it, the magazine published a story that said, "The White House announced today that GM and Chrysler must cease participation in NASCAR at the end of the 2009 season if they hope to receive any additional financial aid from the government."
The magazine also said NASCAR was exploring options, including bringing in other manufacturers to replace Chevrolet and Dodge. Hyundai was mentioned as a candidate.
After much heat, the magazine pulled the story from its Web site and issued an apology.
Too late. The prank already wasted the valuable time of people from NASCAR, GM and Chrysler who have spent the past year dealing with catastrophic layoffs and financial ruin during this time of crisis in the automotive industry.
This is not a time to make jokes about something so serious -- even on April Fools' Day.
Besides that, this wasn't even funny.
NASCAR officials wanted the media to ignore the prank, saying the publicity would only give the magazine the exposure it wanted. But the editors shouldn't get off that easy. Perhaps the joke should be turned on them. Perhaps we should consider boycotting the magazine for a month.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- OK, who kidnapped Tony Stewart and what do we have to pay to get him back?
The Stewart I listened to for more than 30 minutes on a Tuesday afternoon conference call sounded like the voice of the two-time Sprint Cup champion, but was much too calm, much too content, much too practical to really be him.
Ryan Newman is on the rise heading to Texas Motor Speedway, and that makes boss Tony Stewart happy.
There was no shot at Goodyear, no questioning of NASCAR, no controversial statements or comments that could be taken in or out of context the wrong way.
He sounded like an … owner.
Oops. Forgot. He is.
And a pretty good one from what we've seen so far. In six weeks he has turned an organization that had absolutely no chance of winning a race, much less a title, into a legitimate contender for both.
Sunday's third-place finish at Martinsville was higher than any in the eight-year history of Haas CNC Racing before it became Stewart-Haas Racing this season. Johnny Sauter finished fifth at Richmond in 2007, but no other Haas driver scratched the top five.
In fact, Haas drivers had only 14 top-10s in 284 races, only one all of last season. Stewart and teammate Ryan Newman already have six, including two at Martinsville.
I'm not sure Haas CNC ever had two drivers in the top 10 in one race.
It also can't go without mention that Stewart is ranked seventh in points and Newman 18th. No Haas driver finished in the top 20 and I'm pretty sure there wasn't one in the top 10 after six events.
No wonder Stewart was in such a good mood. But he's not getting cocky. He's not scrambling to find sponsorships for a third or fourth team, even though that was the goal of the organization before he came on board.
He wants to make sure he and Newman can contend for wins and championships before considering expansion.
"I don't know that it'll happen for next year," Stewart said. "Right now, I want to make sure I give Ryan and I the best opportunity to run for a championship. Until we have that I don't know that diluting into a three- or four-car operation is the best thing right now."
Nobody ever said Stewart was stupid. But perhaps this ownership thing is good for him. He admitted there have been times when he would have left Martinsville mad after a third-place finish. As an owner he understands success isn't always measured in wins, although that contradicts the way he thinks as a driver.
To realize that in six weeks he's competed on almost even terms with Hendrick Motorsports, Roush Fenway Racing and even his former organization, Joe Gibbs Racing, has been almost humbling.
"Success isn't just necessarily measured by wins," Stewart said. "It's measuring yourself against the competition. … A win is more of an individual feeling. Being a car owner helped put that in perspective."
Maybe this is the new improved Stewart. Maybe all those hauler lectures from former team owner Joe Gibbs about how to talk to the media are sinking in.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- If you don't understand the power of the NFL, you will after you read this piece.
Owners at the NFL's league meetings this past week discussed lengthening the regular season by a few games, likely by the 2011 season. That means the Super Bowl would be pushed deeper into February than normal, likely falling on the date of the 2012 Daytona 500.
Want proof the NFL rules the roost? Just remember the Terrell Owens saga.
That means the 500, NASCAR's Super Bowl event, would have to move.
Sponsors certainly don't want a Super Bowl-Daytona 500 doubleheader, especially Sprint, which plays a big role in the NFL and owns the title name for NASCAR's premier series. Television partners certainly don't want it because that would kill ratings and make selling ads for the 500 even tougher than it was this past season.
NASCAR doesn't want the events to coincide because of all of the above.
And if you think the number of media attending the 500 and other NASCAR events has shrunk, wait until you see the 500 trying to go head-to-head with the biggest annual sporting event in the country.
There may be more media covering the NFL meetings than the 500.
To those who wonder whether the NFL would adjust its schedule, perhaps starting its regular season in mid-August to alleviate such a conflict, get real. The NFL has 10 times the audience of NASCAR, and NASCAR is promoted as the second-most-viewed sport on television.
When a colleague thought Terrell Owens' release by the Dallas Cowboys was overblown, I tried to tell him that he hasn't been paying attention. I later noted the Owens news story on ESPN.com had almost 7,000 comments within a few hours.
That's no knock on NASCAR's most popular driver, who garners 10 times the attention of any other driver. It just shows the power of the NFL.
Here's my suggestion: If the NFL lengthens its season, NASCAR should shorten its season and start it later. Cut the season back to 34 or even 32 races. Cut Speedweeks at Daytona from two weeks to one. Run the Budweiser Shootout on Wednesday, the qualifying races on Thursday and the big show on Sunday.
Take advantage of this situation and do what fans and even some drivers have been asking for.
The season already is too long.
In a dream world, the NASCAR season would end when the NFL season starts anyway. But that's another story for another time.
This is about the power of the NFL, and when it comes to Super Bowls, there isn't room for two on the same day.
BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Forget the debate about whether Kyle Busch is better than Dale Earnhardt Jr. Stop worrying about whether Earnhardt and crew chief Tony Eury Jr. belong together.
Let's talk about the biggest story in the first five races of the Sprint Cup season:
The early returns say Red Bull Racing made a mistake in releasing Allmendinger in favor of the former Formula One driver. Not just a little mistake. A big one.
Bigger than Hendrick Motorsports letting go of Busch to sign Earnhardt. At least in that situation both sides won. Joe Gibbs Racing has 10 wins courtesy of Busch. HMS has a lot of publicity and sponsor dollars thanks to Earnhardt.
Red Bull has little to show for choosing Speed over Allmendinger. Speed ranks 36th in owner points, meaning he isn't guaranteed a spot in the field for Sunday's race at Martinsville Speedway. One slip in qualifying and he could dig a hole so deep he'll never get in the top 35.
Allmendinger is 16th in points with Richard Petty Motorsports. He finished third in the Daytona 500 after having to qualify his way in, and has finished 17th and 16th the past two weeks at Atlanta and Bristol.
But before we jump the gun and call the case closed, Red Bull loses, don't forget Allmendinger's early struggles. He failed to make his first four races in 2007 and didn't qualify for 19 of 36 events.
He finished 43rd in points that season, and 2008 wasn't much better. He finished 36th in the final standings, failing to make the first three races before being replaced temporarily by Mike Skinner.
Allmendinger didn't start to show potential until midway through the season, when he put together a handful of top-15 finishes. By then, executives of Austria-based Red Bull were developing Speed through the ARCA, Nationwide and Truck Series after their huge investment in his F1 career failed. He actually had a victory and nine top-10s in the Truck series. There was promise.
Allmendinger didn't really turn heads until he was released and went to Gillett Evernham Motorsports (now RPM) for the season's final five races. He had four finishes between 11th and 16th and outperformed veteran Elliott Sadler, to the point that Allmendinger was slated to drive the No. 19 Dodge until Sadler threatened legal action.
In those races, Speed had only one finish better than 30th -- 16th in the finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
But it wasn't as if Red Bull simply cast Allmendinger aside. The team wanted to give him a one-year deal and put him in a third car. Allmendinger wanted more long-term security, and thought he could get it before the economy shrank opportunities due to lack of sponsorship.
Red Bull had little choice, short of casting Speed aside, but to let Allmendinger go.
And don't forget: Allmendinger still doesn't have sponsorship for a full season, although four more races have been added to what was a nine-race schedule -- the first eight races and the July Daytona race -- to keep him running in hopes that money will come in.
So this isn't a slam dunk win for RPM over Red Bull. Speed deserves time to grow into the position just as Allmendinger has.
There's also no question Allmendinger has been a big early-season story.
"All the love is about AJ," RPM vice president of competition Robbie Loomis said earlier this week. "He's got a great personality and has tons of energy. I love the fact that he's finished 17th at Atlanta and he's like, 'Man, I wish that we could have gotten more out of the car. It was really good.'
"You love that passion and drive and fire in a driver, and I think he's going to be somebody."
We know where Loomis stands in this debate. He was looking at Allmendinger before Petty Enterprises merged with GEM. Red Bull's other driver, Brian Vickers, has maybe a better perspective.
"For me to say it was the right decision, the wrong decision, now, just because of five races and one is higher in points than the other, would probably be irresponsible," he said, admitting he didn't know either driver well at the time the decision was made.
Yes, it would be irresponsible. Let's give this one time to develop.
Now you can go back to talking about Earnhardt and Busch and Earnhardt and Eury.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Many of you are wondering why Kyle Busch took a shot at Dale Earnhardt Jr. following Sunday's victory at Bristol Motor Speedway.
It's simple.
Because he can.
To be fair, Busch was placed in a position to take the shot when asked first about being compared to the elder Earnhardt and then about how his souvenir sales are picking up.
"We all know who is No. 1 and forever will be," Busch responded, referring to souvenir king Earnhardt Jr. "To me, I go out there to win races, to be No. 1 on the racetrack. That's where I feel like I win, where my benefit is.
"For me, I don't think I would enjoy having the most fans out there. I actually like the way I am, the role I portray. There's probably too much pressure on one guy's shoulders who doesn't seem to win very often."
There's the zinger. There's the shot fired across the bow of Earnhardt Nation.
But was it bragging or simply saying the facts? Busch insists he's not much of a bragger. He didn't even know who Dizzy Dean was or that he coined the phrase, "It ain't bragging if you can back it up."
But he likes the phrase. And that takes us back to why he can take a shot at NASCAR's most popular driver.
Because he can.
One could argue the opposite, noting Earnhardt has 18 wins, including a Daytona 500 victory, to Busch's 14. But that's a bit skewed because Earnhardt is 34 years old and Busch is 23.
If you want to compare the two, look at their numbers since Busch was released from Hendrick Motorsports to make room for Earnhardt in 2008. They aren't even close.
Busch has 10 wins. Earnhardt has one.
Busch has 20 top-5s. Earnhardt has 10.
Busch has led 2,190 laps. Earnhardt has led 897.
The only statistic in which Earnhardt leads Busch is most popular driver awards. He won last year to give him six for his career, and he'll likely win again this year. Busch has none and won't be a candidate for one any time soon, judging by the boos he heard before and after Sunday's race.
A reader asked whether Busch takes shots at Earnhardt because he is jealous. I can't get inside Busch's head, so I won't speculate. But you can't blame him if there's resentment.
Rick Hendrick might have made the move because knew he could get Earnhardt. Or he might have done it because he simply tired of Busch's attitude, which often ticked off sponsors and caused friction within the organization. Either way, Busch lost his job at the sport's top organization. The driver who replaced him was Earnhardt, and that made Earnhardt the enemy.
That Earnhardt continues to draw more media attention than anybody in the Sprint Cup garage while Busch wins more than anybody in the garage only adds fuel to the fire.
NASCAR chairman Brian France even admits the sport benefits more when Earnhardt does well. That leads conspiracy theorists to say the governing body gives Earnhardt breaks whenever possible.
You could hear the sarcasm in Busch's voice on Lap 320 of Sunday's race when Earnhardt received the "lucky dog" because he was the first car a lap down when the mysterious debris caution came out, so he got to start on the lead lap afterward.
There was a tad of sarcasm last season after a late run-in between the two for the lead at Richmond left Earnhardt 15th and Busch second.
"No, there's not been any death threats," Busch said a few days later. "That would be ludicrous, I guess. Maybe they're out there. I haven't seen them. I hope my well-being is safe in this deal. Since Junior ended up OK, then hopefully I can end up OK."
Ah, you have to love it.
Busch couldn't say those things -- OK, maybe he could -- if he weren't winning so often. How can Earnhardt respond? Hey, dude, I sell more T-shirts than you.
Earnhardt's lone edge is in popularity. He owns about 30 percent of the market in souvenir sales. Nobody can touch him.
Because of that popularity, if you're an owner starting a new team, you'd have to weigh the benefits of attracting sponsors and other monies against winning races.
If you're Busch, only one thing matters -- winning.
Right now, he owns that market.
Or, if you want to take a shot, he owns Earnhardt.
BRISTOL, Tenn. -- I just watched the television highlights of Sunday's Cup race at Bristol Motor Speedway. It took less than a minute. They showed Mark Martin leading the first lap, Joey Logano blowing a motor to force a green-white-checkered finish and Kyle Busch cruising to the victory.
It was an exciting day for Busch.
It was another Bristol snoozer for the rest of us.
I am starting to agree with the fans. It's time to go back to the configuration before the track was resurfaced two years ago. It's time to go back to the beating and banging -- and, yes, wrecks -- that made Bristol one of the most anticipated races of the season.
"Bulldoze it down and build it back the way it was," one reader said. "What a joke."
It's not that simple. The new car has something to do with the racing because drivers can't so easily spin out a competitor.
But the new surface has opened up several lanes that make the bump-and-wreck move unnecessary.
This looked like a race at California, minus a mile and a half of track. Busch led 378 of 502 laps. Jimmie Johnson led another 88. Sure, there was a lot of passing -- back in the field.
The most heated moment at a track where heated moments used to come seemingly on every other lap came when Juan Pablo Montoya spun out Jamie McMurray after McMurray got into him. NASCAR warned Montoya and that was that.
The most heated exchange after the race came from Dale Earnhardt Jr. And it was directed at the media, not another driver.
"Well, to be honest with you, it's not that hard to stay positive until you get around the media," NASCAR's most popular driver said with a laugh after finishing 14th. "I mean, you guys have to take a little responsibility for being so hard on everybody, and some people are going to argue that you are just calling out to the reality of a situation.
"But we're trying to work hard and trying to do our job, and that's what we do every week. Somebody seems to think we still belong here, and so we keep showing up."
That's not quite the same as Ward Burton tossing his heel pads into the cockpit of Earnhardt's car after Earnhardt spun him out battling for 12th in 2002. Or Rusty Wallace slamming a water bottle against the head of Earnhardt's dad after the elder Earnhardt slammed him into the wall in 1995.
It's not the same as the "Intimidator" sending Terry Labonte into a spin on the final lap to capture the 1999 Bristol race.
Jeff Burton once asked, after I suggested a race at Bristol was boring, if wrecks and hot tempers made the race more exciting. My response: "Hell, yeah!"
The sport needs mayhem a few times each season to break up the monotony of the 1.5-mile tracks.
It doesn't need a highlight clip like the one I just watched.
BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Members of Kyle Busch's pit crew were laughing and smiling as they worked on the No. 18 car early Sunday morning. If they were scarred by their driver's comment at the end of Saturday's Nationwide Series race, they didn't show it.
Busch, 23, should have won that race. He led a race-high 156 laps and was out front when he entered pit road for his final stop on Lap 254.
But a crew member let the right rear tire that was pushed to the wall get away, and Busch was penalized for leaving the pit box before it could be retrieved. He rallied to finish sixth but wasn't happy with that.
OK, he was furious. Steaming.
Instead of leaving his car on pit road where everybody else did, Busch parked it in Turn 3 and headed for the escape tunnel without talking to crew members, reporters … anybody. His last words over the in-car radio were a sharp "y'all suck" to his crew, followed by "get my clothes from the hauler."
Justified or not, the words didn't need to be shared with anybody listening to a scanner. A year ago, teammate Denny Hamlin took a shot at the engine department of Joe Gibbs Racing after a blown engine at Michigan dropped him to 12th in the Cup point standings.
That, crew chief Mike Ford said, made for a long week with "some double throwdown and not-so-friendly meetings."
"The next couple of weeks were very difficult," he said.
Most of the guys who heard Busch's comment were the same ones who service his car on Sundays. Crew chief Steve Addington isn't worried about repercussions, saying that if you take those things personally, "you're in the wrong business."
Addington added that the person who let the tire away wasn't part of the Cup over-the-wall team. Not that it matters.
"You've got to take it with a grain of salt," he said. "It's the heat of battle. It's part of it. Kyle's not the only driver I've worked for that has raised Cain about his car."
He won't be the last, either, but there has to be a better way of showing frustration than taking it out on the guys who bust their butts for you.
Hamlin learned. He and Ford credit the Michigan moment as huge for the driver's maturity.
BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Upon further review, Formula One drivers apparently don't think this winner-take-all system for determining the F1 champion is such a good idea.
If they tried that in NASCAR there would be a revolt.
You could find more support in the Sprint Cup garage at Bristol Motor Speedway for AIG employees who received million-dollar bonuses than you could for a point system in which the driver with the most wins takes the title.
"It's wrong," Kyle Busch said. "It needs to be based on consistency. Right now it's not the perfect scenario, but it's a good enough scenario where its consistency in the last 10 [races].
"To me for a whole season of wins … I would have finished second in points last year, but to me I don't think it's right."
"I am not a big fan of them saying just whoever wins the most races," he said. "I do think they need to change the points system a little bit, though. It needs to award a little bit more for first.
"I like what we have right now where it pays more points to win. You can really make up a lot of points or spread yourself out from your competitors when you win."
Ditto, said Jeff Burton.
"I like the fact that you have to show consistency," he said.
The list of naysayers went on and on. Dale Earnhardt Jr. basically abstained, knowing whatever he said could stir controversy.
"I would like it no more or no less than what we've got," he said. "I don't want to make any controversy. I like what we've got, but if they want to do that, I would support them 100 percent."
Bottom line: It'll never happen in NASCAR.
And it shouldn't.
That doesn't mean wins shouldn't carry more weight. I'd like to see winners get 20 bonus points instead of 10.
And at the end of the season, how about rewarding the wins leader an additional 100 points? That certainly could make things more interesting. It would have vaulted Carl Edwards from 69 behind champion Jimmie Johnson last season to 31 ahead.
"If you determine your champion just based on wins you're taking a huge gamble of having the wrong champion," Edwards said. "If one guy wins one race and runs 20th in the rest of them and another guy finishes second in every single race, that's not the right guy for the champion.
"At the end of the year you have to say the champion is the guy who ran the best through the season. We kind of have to stay away from messing with the points too much."
But what fun is that?
David Newton covers NASCAR for ESPN.com. He can be reached at dnewtonespn@aol.com.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- March Madness is under way and we're all glued to the television set or radio for arguably the best tournament in all of sports.
Maybe NASCAR should take a close look at this. Instead of a 10-race Chase, take the top 12 drivers and create a four-race playoff. Instead of 400- and 500-mile snorefests, we could have exciting heat races.
Let's take last year's Chase drivers and set the pairings for the first round at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where we would all like to spend another race weekend:
We'll run six 50-lap heats, which would be 300 laps, more than enough to keep the track promoter and fans that camped out all weekend happy. The winners advance to Phoenix, or wherever you want to go next. After Vegas I'm not so picky, but I do want Darlington in one round.
I'm going to go with Busch, Edwards, Gordon (gotta have an upset or two), Earnhardt, Biffle and Stewart. Any arguments?
Second-round pairings for 75-lap heat races would be No. 1 Busch vs. No. 10 Gordon, No. 2 Edwards vs. No. 8 Biffle, and No. 4 Earnhardt vs. No. 6 Stewart. The top seed always plays the lowest seed available, if you're questioning the pairings.
My winners: Gordon, Edwards and Earnhardt.
Edwards gets a bye because he's the highest seed remaining, and because we started with 12 teams it doesn't work out to have two semifinals. In a year, we'll expand the field to make it work better.
So it's No. 4 Earnhardt vs. No. 10 Gordon. Three 50-lap heat races with a best-of-three format.
Gordon wins the first. Earnhardt takes the next two to advance.
Championship matchup: No. 2 Edwards vs. No. 4 Earnhardt.
They meet at Daytona International Speedway for the title because I believe the final ought to be at NASCAR's Super Bowl of racing. We'll schedule five 50-lap heats with a best-of-five format.
Edwards takes the first. Earnhardt the second and third. Edwards cruises in the fourth.
And the winner is … Earnhardt, who slingshots past Edwards on the final turn and takes the checkered.
That's for all of you Earnhardt fans who think I don't like your driver.
It's also the only way Earnhardt will win a title.
I'd actually like to create a field of 64 for next season, seeding past and current drivers into four brackets: short tracks, superspeedways, intermediate tracks and road courses. We'd have four No. 1 seeds, perhaps Richard Petty, David Pearson, Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon.
We would have you pick the winners to advance each week until we have two to decide the best driver of all time.
Anybody on board?
Or are you all watching basketball as I am?
David Newton covers NASCAR for ESPN.com. He can be reached at dnewtonespn@aol.com.
CONCORD, N.C. -- Marcos Ambrose brought a driver's helmet and a fireman's helmet and jacket to Wednesday's tire test at Lowe's Motor Speedway to announce a fundraiser he'll kick off this weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway.
No, he's not raising money for crew member Jimmy Watts, who will start serving his four-race suspension this week.
Ambrose believes NASCAR made the right call penalizing his gasman for chasing a runaway tire into the infield at Atlanta Motor Speedway. I agree with Ambrose. The incident forced the governing body to call a caution in the middle of green-flag pit stops, leaving more than half the field at least a lap down.
Watts also put his safety and perhaps the safety of others in danger.
"The penalty was a good one," Ambrose said. "You can't have guys running on pit lane. Jimmy is a great guy. He went on instinct. You can't blame the guy for that. He just went on reaction, and it was the wrong reaction.
"He needs to set an example for others not to do the same."
More than anything, Ambrose is glad NASCAR didn't dock his team points or pass out a monetary fine.
"We're a brand-new team, and we're doing everything we can … to survive out there," said Ambrose, whose JTG Daugherty team is 28th in owner points. "We've got a good package together as far as sponsors are concerned, but we don't have money to waste. It was a good decision all around. NASCAR made the right call."
Ambrose said he knew something had gone awry when he saw 14,000 flashbulbs go off in his pits.
Can't slide anything past him.
"I didn't know if I had run over somebody or our tire rolled into somebody else's pit lane," he said. "It was a disaster."
But back to the helmets and jacket. Ambrose plans to have every driver at Bristol sign them, then to auction them off to raise money to help with the recovery from disastrous bushfires in his native Australia.
The hope is to raise enough to purchase a new 3000-liter four-wheel drive water tanker for the Yarra Glen Volunteer Fire Brigade.
Here's a thought: Let Watts roll a tire from Charlotte to Bristol, Tenn., and have fans donate $1 or more for every mile.
CONCORD, N.C. -- Smoke poured around the black curtain. The room darkened with the exception of a single spotlight. Music from "2001: A Space Odyssey" blared from speakers.
Ric Flair, left, mugged for cameras with actor Mickey Rourke at the premiere of the film "The Wrestler."
No, Ric Flair.
"Woooooo!"
Lowe's Motor Speedway, in an attempt to add flare to the 25th running of the Sprint All-Star Race, has added Charlotte's best-known Flair to the team.
The 16-time World Wrestling heavyweight champion, affectionately known as "Nature Boy," will serve as the honorary race director.
Wooooo! Wooooo!
In keeping with the wrestling theme the track unveiled a giant event card featuring the face of Sprint Cup drivers on the bodies of the sport's all-time greats. That alone is worth the price of admission for the May 16 event.
The featured match in what is dubbed "a night of fractured fenders and shattered dreams" actually is a rematch from a fight that occurred in the LMS Nationwide Series garage before the October race.
Kevin "Happy" Harvick versus "Cousin" Carl Edwards.
Are you ready to rumble?
"Might be some air-brushing there," Harvick said as he looked at the buff body below his headshot.
On the undercard there was Dale "The People's Choice" Junior versus Tony "Smoke" Stewart, and Kyle "Rowdy" Busch versus "Just About Anybody."
"Everybody wants to run Kyle off the road," Flair said.
Get ready to rumble at the All-Star Race ... er, Slugfest ... May 16 at Lowe's Motor Speedway.
Harvick took a shot at Busch as well. Noting he was the only driver without a wrestler's body below his mug, he said, "They didn't find any body to put on that."
LMS president Marcus Smith had no reservations about pairing NASCAR with wrestling, although it's been done by many before with negative connotations.
Flair said that's unfair, saying "you can't ever denounce NASCAR by connecting it to our sport."
If NASCAR were truly like wrestling, which has been accused of scripting the outcome of matches, wouldn't Earnhardt win every weekend?
Flair laughed.
Bringing Flair to the event definitely will up the intensity. His famous "Wooooo!" will be heard throughout the night, from the drivers' meeting to prerace introductions.
His only question: What took promoters so long to ask?
"Finally," he said. "The Nature Boy has been here 35 years. ... Obviously, bringing me into the mix means they're turning up the momentum."
Smith said there will be a few twists to the race format, which last season was four 20-lap segments, but he wouldn't elaborate. Perhaps they should put Flair behind the wheel.
No, Flair will come off the top off a rope with a chair in hand, but he wants nothing to do with coming off Turn 4 at close to 200 mph.
But Flair does plan to offer fighting tips, starting with how drivers should take their helmets off before they start swinging. And he issued a challenge to Harvick to hit as many cars as possible.
"Unfortunately, that probably wouldn't be the first time," deadpanned Harvick, who had a folding chair in hand when he emerged from behind the black curtain.
Flair actually seemed to flinch when Harvick appeared. Perhaps that's because he'd seen the pictures of Harvick and Edwards tussling on top of Harvick's Nationwide car.
"I just noticed the tension," he said of the expression on Harvick's face during Round 1 of Happy versus Cousin. "There has to be a lot of tension. One bad move and you're upside down and dead."
OK, so that may be a bit overstated.
But isn't everything in wrestling?
DARLINGTON, S.C. -- An 18-year-old kid wearing a T-shirt stood on the wooden platform just off of Turn 1 at Darlington Raceway.
Vroom! Denny Hamlin's car blew past and the kid's head turned, watching how it exited the corner and entered Turn 2, avoiding the wall that drivers brush more than perhaps any other in the Sprint Cup Series.
Vroom! Elliott Sadler's car sailed past and the kid's head turned again, looking for whatever tips he could on getting around NASCAR's oldest superspeedway.
"Just checking things out, watching and seeing if I can learn something," the kid said. "It's only a couple of hours from home. Not a big deal."
The kid was Joey Logano. This was how he spent a sun-splashed, 80-degree Wednesday afternoon on what is an off week for Sprint Cup drivers unless you're one of the four invited to this Goodyear tire test at Darlington.
He's never driven a race car around the 1.366-mile facility many say is the toughest on the circuit because of its unusual egg shape. His only experience on the rough surface came a few minutes earlier when Hamlin, his teammate at Joe Gibbs Racing, took him for a spin in a rental car.
"That was scary enough," Logano said. "Don't sit on the right-hand side with a race car driver driving."
Many drivers will tell you that testing makes little difference in their Sunday performance. Not Logano. He would have benefited greatly from experience on a track that he's never circled until the Friday practice and qualifying session.
"Vegas was the same way," Logano said. "My first lap was in the pace truck 10 minutes before we go out and practice. How else are we supposed to do it?"
The first four races haven't gone exactly how Logano hoped or many predicted for one described as a phenom. He crashed and finished last in his debut at the Daytona 500. He finished 26th at California, 13th at Vegas and 30th at Atlanta -- the latter with a little nudge from the driver he replaced in the No. 20 Home Depot car.
"I don't know what he was trying to do there," Logano said of the late-race tap from Tony Stewart, who drove the car to two titles the past 10 years before going out on his own. "I haven't figured that out yet."
Logano hasn't figured a lot out. He's far from lived up to the preseason hype, ranked 33rd in driver and owner points. One slipup at next week's race at Bristol Motor Speedway and he could wind up out of the top 35 guaranteed a starting spot the following week at Martinsville.
"Yeah, man, of course you think about it," Logano said. "You don't want to think about it. You've got to go out and race."
That's why Logano was at Darlington instead of doing what most 18-year-olds do with a week off. He wants to soak up as much as he can to improve as fast as he can.
He even tossed his helmet and fire suit into the passenger seat of his Toyota FJ Cruiser just in case he was allowed a real lap around the track.
"You never know," he said. "You always keep your helmet and suit in the car no matter what."
And no, Logano didn't take a spin around the track in his Cruiser.
"I don't think the FJ will handle good around this track," he said.
But Logano believes he'll see marked improvement in the handling of his race car the deeper he gets into the season. He believes the next two races will be easier because aerodynamics that frustrated him at some of the larger tracks won't be a factor.
But for the rest of the week he'll go back to being an 18-year-old with a week off, although he's not entirely sure what to do.
"It's going to get cold and rainy and I'm pissed off about that, dude," he said. "I wanted to go to Myrtle Beach."
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Few outside of close family members and friends knew who Jimmy Watts was on Sunday.
Until he chased a tire into the infield grass at Atlanta Motor Speedway, that is.
Outside of the crew that set up Kurt Busch's winning car, nobody had a bigger impact on the race than Watts, a crew member for Marcos Ambrose's No. 47. His decision to go after the runaway tire with cars circling the 1.54-mile track at close to 200 mph forced NASCAR to throw a caution on Lap 67 in the middle of green-flag pit stops.
The dunderhead move put almost half the field, including several drivers who had cars capable of winning, one or two laps down. At one point after the incident there were only nine cars on the lead lap.
"Maybe he's new," said reigning Daytona 500 winner Matt Kenseth, who rallied from a lap down to finish 12th. "Maybe he hasn't seen us drive, but we tend to wreck a lot. I wouldn't want to be out in the middle of the grass."
Leave it to NASCAR's driest wit to give us comic relief. The moment was so bizarre that I nearly fell out of my hammock listening to the PRN broadcast from my backyard, which for the record also was in the grass but out of harm's way.
But this was a serious issue and NASCAR made the right move throwing the yellow flag. Watts would have been directly in harm's way had one of the cars barreling off of Turn 4 lost control.
A tragic accident is the last thing NASCAR needs during these tough economic times.
The governing body also did the right thing by suspending Watts for the rest of the afternoon. Further penalties could come later in the week, according to officials.
Fortunately, nobody was hurt. Unfortunately, the incident may have spoiled a better finish than the one we got. Casey Mears, who went two laps down, felt he might have been a factor.
"We had a top-five car," he said.
He finished 16th.
Besides having the fastest car all day, Busch was one of the lucky ones. He hadn't pitted and came out of this mess with only a handful of cars to beat.
Busch's crew chief, Pat Tryson, watched the incident closely. Had it been one of his guys, he said, "I'd have had to come off the top of the box. We know better than that. I'm sure that person is going to learn."
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- I was ready to blog that this could be the last spring race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, that Speedway Motorsports Inc. chairman Bruton Smith could take that date and give it to Kentucky Motor Speedway to fulfill his latest promise of having a Sprint Cup race there by 2010.
Always good with the fans, the fans are being good to Dale Earnhardt Jr. on a social networking site.
Then I got sidetracked by Facebook.
Not just Facebook, but a picture inviting me or anyone else who is interested to join "Fans of Dale Earnhardt Jr." Hey, I've given NASCAR's most popular driver a hard time about his rough start, so I figured it was time to show a little love.
What immediately struck me was the number of people posted as fans. A whopping 26,925. That may be more than actually come to Sunday's race at Atlanta, but that's another blog.
I know Junior Nation is strong, but I wanted to know how strong. So I looked for sites of other drivers.
By no means is this a scientific survey. There are numerous fan clubs for each of the drivers. But none came within 25,000 fans of Earnhardt's.
So I read on. I wondered what Earnhardt fans were saying with their driver mired in 29th place in the points standings heading into Sunday's race at Atlanta.
Here are a few samples:
• "I am going to the race this Sunday in Atlanta and was wondering if people were still wearing their #8 shirts and stuff? I have one from two years ago and was wondering if that'd be cool to wear his old stuff? I hope that I get the chance to see him after the race at the airport and that he wins!"
• "He really needs to be more aggressive. Kyle the Idiot Busch [helped her with the spelling on this] will keep driving away from everyone … Jr. needs to drive like he did in Daytona!!! All the fans down here in little Cape Breton would love to see it.!!!"
• "I think [in] the Daytona race I saw Dale Jr.'s father come out in him and I like seeing him race a lot more aggressive. So who cares what other people said bout it. GOOD JOB DALE JR."
Since I began this blog, three more fans have joined the group. That's more than comprise the entire membership of "Fans of Ken Schrader."
So I tried something else to get focused on my original premise that Atlanta is going to lose a race. I clicked on "Fans of Atlanta Motor Speedway."
Another Dale Earnhardt Jr. fan club came up. There are 489 members here.
Then I simply punched in "Atlanta Motor Speedway." Ah, success. Ooh, 26 members. No wonder the track is going to lose a date.
David Newton, an award-winning NASCAR writer, began as a national motorsports columnist at ESPN.com in December 2006. Prior to joining ESPN.com, Newton served as the lead writer for NASCAR.com.
Newton previously covered NASCAR, the Carolina Panthers, Clemson University and University of South Carolina athletics for The State in Columbia, S.C., from 1984 to 2006. He also served as a correspondent for Sports Illustrated, and covered seven Super Bowls, dozens of college bowl games, five Masters, two U.S. Opens, two men's Final Fours, one women's Final Four and every major race on the NASCAR circuit.
The 1981 Wofford College graduate has won numerous state and national press association awards, including second-place national honors for his coverage of University of South Carolina football from the Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE) in 1992 and the award for excellence in news reporting from the South Carolina State Press Association in 2002. He has also broken major national stories, including the Carolina Panthers' steroid scandal in 2004.
David Newton
