It's hard to argue against racing for a win

I just wanted to expand a little bit on something I wrote in my postrace "Observations" from the race Sunday at New Hampshire.

NASCAR must have been thrilled to hear Denny Hamlin and his crew chief, Mike Ford, talk after their victory about how they've decided to take gambles to get wins between now and the start of the Chase for the Nextel Cup.

That's precisely the attitude NASCAR wanted to foster with the changes it made to the format this year. They wanted drivers who're comfortably in position to qualify for the 10-race playoff to have something to shoot for in the run-up to the Chase, and that's what it appears they've done.

Hamlin and Ford went on and on about how they wanted to get the 10 bonus points for a win that they'll be awarded once the Chase begins. They want to get more, too, over the next nine weeks. They know that if the Chase started today (which it doesn't), Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon would each have 5,040 points while Hamlin would have only 5,010.

That's 30 points to make up in the Chase, and 30 points is 30 points. If Hamlin can win a couple of more races, he'd chop away at that deficit.

I still don't agree with making the first 26 races worth, in effect, 10 points more than the playoff races are worth. I still strongly believe that if you win in the final 10 you ought to get MORE for that than you do in the first 26.

But if the new format has Gordon, Hamlin, Johnson and anybody else thinking about taking more chances to win rather than believing a second- or third-place finish is just as good as a victory, then I am all for that.

To penalize or not to penalize ...

There will be a lot of talk this week about what penalties Brian Vickers, Kyle Busch and Johnny Sauter should get for failing inspections after competing this week.

Vickers failed inspection after Friday's qualifying and his time was disallowed. That knocked him out of Sunday's race, and I don't expect his team to get any more of a penalty than that.

NASCAR actually said as much Friday.

Busch and Sauter had their cars chosen, at random, for postrace inspection Sunday. NASCAR also picked Robby Gordon's car and it passed, but Busch and Sauter were too low on the left-front corner.

Some fans will want them to face the same 100-point, $100,000 and six-week suspensions that Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson got. If you're going to crack down on car of tomorrow violations, shouldn't the penalties at least be the same, especially since Busch and Sauter actually competed in the race with their cars out of compliance when the other three didn't?

That's an interesting point, and quite frankly it's hard for me to argue against that. But that's not likely to be what NASCAR is going to do. It's likely going to say that these violations were the result of any "tampering" or other attempts at manipulation, but rather came from wear and tear on the cars in the event. The cars were high enough in pre-race inspections, but too low after the race. Unless some kind of intentional manipulation is found, which doesn't seem likely, what NASCAR does in this case, I think, will provide the precedent for future "unintentional" violations of this nature.

Remember, I'm not saying I necessarily agree with that. I am just telling you that's likely to be what happens.