A record evening for crews and volume

I guess I am supposed to label this as a "spoiler" since the Pit Crew Challenge won't come on television until 9 p.m. on Speed, about the time the event will actually be ending live.

No, I am not going to tell you who won because it's not yet 5 p.m. as I am writing this. We've just completed the "seeding round," in which the top eight teams in the points as of March 10 (Why March 10? Who knows?) did a stop to determine how they'll be seeded for the second round.

They get first-round byes.

The individual champions of this event might already be deteremined, since the eight teams in the seeding round have already had their members post their times at the individual stations.

The doors don't open to fans for another hour or so. Why did they do the seeding round two hours before the rest of the competition starts at 7? Again, I have no clue.

There's a house band. So we've got that going for us. So far they've been quite awful. I don't imagine they're going to improve much over the next two hours. They're certainly LOUD, and I've been told that the first rule of bands is if you can't be good you should certainly be LOUD.

There are about 75 people here who're not actually competitors. Don't know why, I think they're "customers" of Sprint in some significant way.

I can tell you that the record for a stop in this event has already been broken.

Ryan Newman's team had the record at 23.35 seconds in last year's quarterfinal but Jimmie Johnson's team did better than that in the seeding round at a time somewhat faster than that.

I can't tell you what that actual time was because not only are the fans not here yet but the people who're running the timing and results for the media aren't set up yet, either. But it was pretty darn fast, I'll tell you that.

I wish I could give you the feel of the electricity on the floor itself. But I am not allowed down there. Television only on the event level.

Them and the house band.