What is it about night racing?

Night racing brings out the beast in race car drivers. At least, that’s what Lowe’s Motor Speedway president H.A. "Humpy" Wheeler believes.
"Night brings out an intensity in athletes you simply don't get during the day," Wheeler said. "Possibly this goes back to primitive man whose greater alertness at night often meant life or death.
"Animal behavior is certainly different in the dark. Sharks, tigers, lions and other big cats hunt primarily at night. Ask anyone who has ever hooked a big shark at night if it wasn't a great deal scarier than the same hookup in the daytime."
Leave it to Wheeler to equate racing in the Bank of America 500 at his track to caveman survival and late-night shark fishing.
Saturday night’s race is the only Chase for the Nextel Cup race that will be run completely at night, so Wheeler has spent the past couple of weeks trying to quantify what that means.
He’s right, based on every conversation I’ve ever had with a NASCAR driver, about at least one thing.
"I believe drivers can actually see and focus better on properly lit tracks," Wheeler said. "The lights here produce about 120 foot-candles of light on every part of the racing surface. Many high school baseball or football fields only produce 40 to 60 foot candles. And with the light concentrated on the racing surface, everything in the background is blacked out and the driver's eyes can focus on the surface itself."
Drivers also will tell you that one thing they really struggle with when it comes to night races is the actual waiting around part.
"On most race days, you're used to getting up at a certain time, eating at a certain time, you go check out the car," said Dr. Bill Thierfelder, a sports performance psychologist and former athlete who’s now president of Belmont Abbey College. "You have your normal flow of what you do and then it's race time and it all sequences together.
"Sometimes when a race is at night and, in a sense delayed, it can be a little challenging for an athlete because you feel like you're waiting."
Jimmie Johnson leads this year’s Chase drivers with five night victories in 36 starts – all at LMS – over the past five years. In that span, Matt Kenseth has the most top-10s at night, with 24, followed by Dale Earnhardt Jr. with 22. Both have 14 top fives, with Kenseth winning three times and Earnhardt Jr. twice. Denny Hamlin and Jeff Burton are the only two Chase drivers who don’t have night wins.

Jeff Burton and the keys to Talladega survival

I was talking to Jeff Burton about Talladega the other day and he said something that I thought made a whole lot of sense.
"There's probably going to be at least one big wreck that takes out some cars in a race at Talladega," Burton said. "You understand that going in.
"The only thing you can do is try to control what you can control. The cars don't start the wrecks there. The drivers do. So the first thing you have to do when thinking about a race there is to try not to start the wreck."
Burton is not naive. He knows as well as you or I do that wrecks happen at Talladega because cars get into situations there they don't get into at any other track -- even Daytona. But the reality is, as Burton said, those cars don't get into those impossible situations by themselves. Drivers put them there. There might come a point when a wreck is inevitable, but until that point is reached it's still in the driver's hands.
Burton said the key to survival at Talladega is developing a full, realistic understanding of what your car is capable of doing and not asking it to do anything more than that.
This, of course, is insanely difficult to do. You see cars coming from the back to the front in a lap or two and know that if you get in the right line with the right momentum, you could do that, too. But the fact is that even though racing at Talladega looks like a high-speed lottery, there are cars that are better than some others and some drivers who're better at restrictor-plate racing than others.
Get a good driver in a good car and he can set the tone for what's happening behind him. The rest of the cars are reacting to moves that guy (or the handful of drivers who might be in the same position) makes.
That explains why it seems that sometimes at Talladega a driver will "settle" for staying behind one or two guys all day. You have to know what you and your car is capable of, and the trouble most often starts when somebody goes past either of those lines.

Qualifying vs. guarantees and don't expect too much from Chase 'tweaks'

A few thoughts from a slacker missing a second straight Chase weekend. (Why am I missing Kansas? My daughter’s about to have her first child and I am on standby alert):

It sounds like a good plan to let the fastest 43 drivers make each week’s race, doing away with any kind of provisionals.
But that’s a really, really bad idea.
If the No. 8 car blows a tire in Turn 2 of its qualifying lap and doesn’t post a speed, how do you tell the ticket buyers who show up on Sunday that Dale Earnhardt Jr. won’t be racing? Or Jeff Gordon, or whoever your favorite driver is?
Tracks sell tickets weeks and months in advance. There’s an implied promise that the sport’s top stars are going to be competing. That’s one of NASCAR’s selling points, that all of the "best of the best" are going to be there at one time.
Now a driver could get hurt and miss a race or something, but there’s no control over that. Otherwise, your stars have to race and there needs to be a reasonable way to make that happen. It’s reasonable to ask a team to be in the top 35 (it’d be 30 if I ran things) to have that protection, but the protection has to be there.

I am afraid that a lot of people have unreasonably high expectations about changes that NASCAR might make to the Chase for the Nextel Cup format after this year.
I’ll be stunned if sweeping alterations are made. Remember, the word Brian France used in July when he changes would be considered was "tweaks."
I’ve proposed my own revamping of the system and so have many others, but that’s not what is being looked at. It’s not going to be a wholesale alteration.
There seems to be a consensus that winning a race should be worth more points. But it’s not going to 50 more, it’s going to be more like 10 additional points for a win.
The window to make the Chase might grow from 400 points behind first after 26 races to 500 points, but that’s not that big of a change either and even that might not happen.
I will be less surprised, but still surprised, if the number of automatic qualifiers grows beyond 10. As for any kind of "wild card" to let in a driver who’s won races and yet isn’t in the top 10 at the Chase cutoff, I think that idea intrigues NASCAR. But I also think they’re worried about how to write a rule that doesn’t wind up biting them in some kind of unforeseen, quirky way.

I keep coming back to the idea of double-file restarts for lead-lap cars and wondering why NASCAR doesn’t do it.
Keep the free pass for a lapped car on each yellow, but all lap-down cars start behind the cars on the lead lap. The leader can choose whether to start on the inside or the outside. Second chooses whether to start alongside the leader or right behind him. Third then chooses and so on. With 25 (maybe even 50) laps to go, all restarts are single-file.

As discussed earlier, anybody who believes the test of Indy Racing League cars at Daytona this week was just at test to see if the IRL could test there is beyond naïve.
Some of the speculation was that the IRL might be looking at a Labor Day weekend date for a race there next year or, more likely, in 2008. There’s also the weekend between the Rolex 24 and the start of Speedweeks for NASCAR, but that’s also Super Bowl weekend and I think the Sunday afternoon of Labor Day weekend is a better idea.
One reason that might not happen? An IRL race at Daytona that afternoon might be a lot more interesting to watch than that night’s Nextel Cup race from California.

I don’t know A.J. Allmendinger at all, but you had to be impressed by what he did in his Truck Series debut at New Hampshire.
With him and Juan Montoya both in the field for Friday’s Automobile Racing Club of America race at Talladega, there will be a lot more media hanging around for that event than there otherwise would be.
I could be completely wrong about this, but I just believe Allmendinger is pulling a "Danica" with this whole flirtation with NASCAR. By every indication, he’s an incredibly talented driver and I don’t doubt that he might make it in stock cars given time and the right team. But he doesn’t have a contract with anybody in ChampCar, and using NASCAR as a lever certainly helped Danica Patrick maximize her earning potential.
We’ll see.

Don't care how often they say them, the TV guys have got these wrong

Four terms used on NASCAR broadcasts that are either wrong, misleading or just plain stupid:
1. Mulligan – A golf term misused to describe the concept that a driver in the Chase for the Nextel Cup can afford one bad race and still contend for the title.
When you use a mulligan in golf, you do is hit a second shot because you didn’t like the first one. If the second shot is better, you play it as if the first one never happened.
You can’t do that in NASCAR. You don’t get to run that bad race over again and take the better of the two finishes. What happens in the Chase is actually the EXACT OPPOSITE of a mulligan.
If you have a bad race, you’re stuck with those results and you have to make sure you do everything better in the other races.
In golf, the equivalent would be accepting the bad first shot and trying to salvage a good score with the rest of your shots.
In other words, it would be NOT hitting a mulligan.
2. Happy Hour – The outdated nickname for the final practice.
When the term was first coined, it made sense. On Saturday in a normal week with a Sunday afternoon race, you’d have second-round qualifying on Saturday morning. Then, as the Busch race or whatever was happening in the midday, teams would change their cars over to race trim.
The final practice would then be held in the late afternoon. When it was over, it’d usually be about 4 or 5 p.m. and time for sportswriters to end work for the day and head to the bar for “happy hour,” back in the day before some sportswriters realized you eventually have to graduate from college at some point in your life.
Now, the race practices are almost always held Saturday morning and are over with before noon.
If you’re drinking before noon on a Saturday and you’re not at a college football tailgate party, you might want to think about how “happy” you really are.
3. “There’s a $1 million bonus for finishing 11th in the final Nextel Cup standings.” – No. No. No. No. No!
That’s wrong. No matter how many times somebody says it, it’s wrong.
The 11th-place finisher in the standings is assured of making a minimum of $1 million from the Nextel Cup points fund.
The “bonus” for 11th is the difference between what 11th would normally pay and $1 million, and it usually comes out to around $200,000-$250,000. That’s a nice piece of change, but $1 million is not added to the amount that driver would have won anyway, which is what would have to happen if it actually was a $1 million bonus.
4. Silly season – Another term coined by a sportswriter or 12 that has outlived its accuracy.
Years ago, the season would end just after Halloween and nobody would give much of a dang about racing until at least late January when things started gearing up for Speedweeks at Daytona.
Some of the guys who covered racing got most of that time off work, and spent it doing as little as they could get by with. (God love them for that, because it’d be great if things still worked that way.)
Whenever a driver or a team had any kind of announcement to make about his future, if it was a big enough deal these writers had to come out of the duck blind or off the golf course long enough to write about it. And they thought that was pretty silly.
There’s nothing “silly” about teams losing sponsors and potentially having to shut its doors, putting people out of jobs.
There’s nothing “silly” about drivers making decisions that could ultimately make or break their careers.
What is “silly” about it is that some of us who cover the sport act like when we’re chasing down the speculation and rumors about what might be going on. But that doesn’t make the term “silly season” any less ridiculous.

Key pieces still missing in the Speed Channel report-NASCAR denial puzzle

I really don’t have anything new to add to the earlier posting about the Speed report on the purported wheel issue with the 29 and/or 31 cars from Sunday’s race at New Hampshire.
I met with Hunter Nickell, executive vice president and general manager of Speed, and David Harris, its manager of media relations, as we had previously planned.
We talked about a lot of things, but first we talked about Bob Dilner’s report Sunday night and the reaction to it since.
Nickell and I go way back. When I was still working on the copy desk at The Observer and writing about TV/Radio sports on the side, he was at SportSouth and we dealt with each other regularly. He’s a straight-up guy, based on everything I know, and after talking to him I believe he’s backing his reporter and his story because he believes it was based on solid information that was professionally checked before being reported.
At the same time, I cannot sit here and say I believe that NASCAR and Richard Childress Racing and the people who carry the team’s wheels to the track and the tire guys at Goodyear who mount tires on those wheels are all part of some grand conspiracy to cover up something the 29 and/or 31 teams might be doing.
The denials that you’ve all heard, too, from NASCAR and from RCR, could not be stronger and more definitive.
So what we have here is a puzzle, and I think we’re still missing some key pieces.
The truth is we may never find them. I seriously doubt that Dilner is going to tell anybody exactly who his sources were – I wouldn’t.
I will bet you a bunch of money that Dilner has gone back to those sources since all of this blew up Monday and said, “OK, did I get it right?” And if they had said no, you’d know it by now.
The folks at Speed like Bob’s work and they want to keep developing his talents and on-air skills, and he knows that if he’s wrong on this and doesn’t fess up he’s in for a world of professional hurt.
Friday will be a busy day at Dover. I won’t be there, but Jim Utter and David Scott will be for The Observer and ThatsRacin.com to find out if any of missing pieces to this thing show up.
I’ll be as eager to hear what’s said and done up there Friday as all of you guys will.

Dilner's report, NASCAR's denial could come up in visit at Speed Channel

I am going over to Charlotte later today to see the folks at the Speed Channel, and I imagine there will be lots of conversation about what happened after Sunday’s race at New Hampshire.
My visit doesn’t stem from that incident – in fact, I had to cancel it a couple of weeks ago after my trip from hell to California and back and we’ve just now found a time to reschedule it. But the timing winds up being pretty good.
Just to review, several hours after the Sylvania 300 on Sunday, Speed’s Bob Dilner went on the air with a report that NASCAR had taking a close look at the wheels off race-winner Kevin Harvick’s car and those from his teammate Jeff Burton’s car.
Dilner reported that the wheels had been milled in a manner that would allow air to bleed from the tires as air pressure built up in them. He was very specific in his report, saying that a 0.003-inch slot had been laser-cut into the rim. Dilner also reported that NASCAR would take no punitive action against the Richard Childress Racing teams, but that the teams had been told not to bring wheels with that modification back to the track.
But on Monday, NASCAR officials said Dilner’s story was wrong. Spokesman Jim Hunter’s actual term was that it was "one reporter’s unsubstantiated fantasy."
Hunter said NASCAR did not have any issues with the 31 and 29 cars and that the team was not told it couldn’t bring anything back to the track. The team denied any wrongdoing as well, but Speed continues to stand by its reporter and his story.
So what really happened?
Well, everything that I know for sure I just told you.
Before even going to see the Speed folks, I will tell you this. I believe that Bob Dilner believes his story was accurate.
As a viewer, Dilner gets on my nerves with his incessant preening before the camera, and he moves his hands and arms around so much that if you gave him an orange flashlight he’d look like a guy parking planes at the airport. But he does work hard and he does have sources in the garage. His information on this story is very detailed, so for that reason and so many other obvious ones, too, it’s hard to believe he just made it up.
But I’ve also talked with several people connected with RCR who swear they did nothing to alter the wheels on their cars. Obviously, they have a stake in this. But their denials are very specific, too, in ways that are hard to immediately pick apart.
One thing that is certain is that NASCAR is paying very close attention to tires, tire valves and wheels to check for teams playing games. On Monday, Hunter said NASCAR has been checking for ways to bleed air for about four months. At a race earlier this month, I personally heard John Darby come over the scanner and tell an official to check the tires on one team’s car after a run. That team’s crew chief came over the radio and told his driver, "They think we’ve got bleeders. That’s funny."
Maybe what happened Sunday night is that NASCAR thought it had found something and the officials and inspectors started talking about what they might be looking at, and some of that talk made its way to Dilner. Then, after a closer look, the officials realized nothing was amiss, and that word didn’t get to the reporter before the story aired.
Maybe I will know more when I get back from Speed’s headquarters later today. I will let you all know if I do.

If you can download songs, what if you could ...

I finally got around to buying one of those MP3 players that I see everybody with on all of these airplanes that I find myself on in this job.
It found it interesting as I assembled the music I wanted to put into the little thing. I suppose just about everyone considers his or her musical interests to be an eclectic mixture of styles, but when you transport tracks from the Black Crowes onto your personal portable stash and then notice that The Carpenters are next it’s hard not to wonder about yourself.
(For the record, not that you care, but far and away the two most heavily represented artists in my Ipod are the Eagles and Willie Nelson.)
Anyway, the process got me thinking in a way that sports columnists often think. I am sure I’m not the first person to have this idea, but if you could load your favorite sports memories – if somehow you could have access to anything you’ve ever seen – onto something you could carry around with you, what would you include?
I imagine it’d be a fairly eclectic mix for just about every one. Here, off the top of my head, are some of the things I’d like to have on my sports Ipod.

The final 20 laps of the 1998 Daytona 500, along with the immediate aftermath when winner Dale Earnhardt rode down pit road being greeted by every crew in the sport.

The final three innings of the 1975 World Series game where Carlton Fisk hit the game-winning home run for Boston and “waved” it fair.

The back nine on Sunday of the 1986 Masters, with Jack Nicklaus storming to an incredible victory.

The second half of the Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and Carolina Panthers, even though the Panthers lost. Great football between two teams that were flat getting it done.

The final 15 laps of the fall Talladega race in 2000, Dale Earnhardt’s final Nextel Cup victory with the black No. 3 rallying from 18th to first over the final five laps.

The last five minutes of the 1982 and 1983 NCAA basketball championship games, with North Carolina beating Georgetown in ’82 and N.C. State topping Houston the following year in Jim Valvano’s improbable run.

Franz Klammer’s Olympic downhill run to the gold medal in 1976. Until you’ve seen it, don’t tell me you’ve ever seen the most exciting two minutes in sports.

Five minutes of footage from Chris Evert’s tennis career, when she was about 20 years old, and five minutes of Maria Sharapova in last week’s U.S. Open final. Just for comparison.

The entire 1992 Hooters 500 from Atlanta Motor Speedway, with Alan Kulwicki, Bill Elliott and Davey Allison battling for the championship and Richard Petty bidding farewell to his driving career. (Heck, I guess I’d have to have that one on DVD.)

The final three minutes of the U.S. hockey team’s win over the Soviet Union in the 1980 Olympics.

Secretariat beating the field by about a half-mile in the Belmont Stakes to win the 1973 Triple Crown.

The final five laps of the 2003 Dodge Dealers 500 from Darlington Raceway, which ended with Kurt Busch and Ricky Craven battling side-by-side for the victory.

OK, I know this sounds nuts, but I’d have two sunsets that I saw in there. First, there was one I saw at Fenway Park one night. It had been cloudy all day but a front was clearing out and just about 30 minutes before the sun went down it got under the edge of the clouds. We were sitting down the right-field line, looking back at home plate with the sun behind the grandstands. Just awesome.
The second was at Phoenix International Raceway in October 1998, the day Rusty Wallace won a rain-shortened race in the desert. After the race had been called and the track was clearing out, the same thing happened. The sun got under the cloud line and the colors were incredible.
After the race, a couple had arranged to get married on the start-finish line. As they were exchanging vows, I swear that a rainbow formed that had one end behind the grandstands and the other about 20 feet behind where the wedding was taking place.
How about you? What would you put on your sports Ipod? Leave your list here or e-mail it to me at dpoole@charlotteobserver.com. I might have some space leftover on mine.

Planes, pains and automobiles

I swear, as the great Dave Barry once said, I am not making any of this up:
Thursday, Aug 31 – 4:30 a.m. (Eastern time) My alarm goes off. Thursday, Aug. 31 – 5:45 a.m. (Eastern) I arrive at Charlotte’s airport to catch a 7:30 a.m. flight to Atlanta. I won’t name the airline. But it rhymes with “Melta.”
Thursday, Aug. 31 – 6:05 a.m. (Eastern) After making it through security and walking to the gate, I notice that the airline is now posting an 8 a.m. departure for my flight. The crew got in late the night before and needed additional time for required rest. I consider the new posted departure time an opening point in negotiations.
Thursday, Aug. 31 – 8 a.m. (Eastern) We board the flight for Atlanta. About 15 to 20 other people on the plane to Atlanta are scheduled to go on to Ontario, Calif., on the same 9:49 a.m. connecting flight I am booked on.
Thursday, Aug. 31 – 8:30 a.m. (Eastern) After sitting on the runway for a few minutes because of rain south of the airport and a ground stop in Atlanta due to heavy air traffic, we take off.
Thursday, Aug. 31 – 9:40 a.m. (Eastern) After several minutes of being “vectored” to fit us into incoming traffic, we are allowed to land in Atlanta.
Thursday, Aug. 31 – 9:55 a.m. (Eastern) After taxiing almost a complete lap around the Atlanta runways, our flight arrives at Gate A6. Upon deplaning, the monitor shows our connection to Ontario had been delayed until 10 a.m. But beside that time the word “CLOSED” appears. There is no agent from the airline there to answer any questions. We scurry to what I am now calling the “customer abuse” desk in the middle of the concourse. We’re told our flight, leaving from Gate B36, is already closed and we can’t get there in time to make it. Despite the fact that this will severely inconvenience about 20 passengers (another word you might consider using would be “customers”), nothing can be done.
Thursday, Aug. 31 – 10 a.m. (Eastern) I am told that I have been rebooked on the next non-stop from Atlanta to Ontario, with a scheduled departure of 5:07 p.m. – seven hours from now. There are other options, like flying to Los Angeles or connecting through other cities, but most of them require changing rental car arrangements and still getting to Ontario in the late afternoon.
I’ve been given a first-class seat on the rebooked flight, so I decide to stay on it.
Thursday, Aug. 31 – 10:15 a.m. (Eastern) I go to the airline’s lounge – rhymes with Clown Room – to wait out my unexpected layover. I set up my computer, pay $10 for internet access and spend the day doing work that I needed to do anyway.
Thursday, Aug. 31 – 4:15 p.m. (Eastern) I pack up my stuff in the lounge and walk to the gate for my 5:07 departure. Upon arrival, I notice there is no plane at the gate and that the “adjusted” departure time is now 5:35 p.m. Again, I consider this the start of negotiations.
Thursday, Aug. 31 – 6:p.m. (Eastern) The departure time is now listed for 6:10 p.m. But since we’re standing inside the terminal still, I am not optimistic.
Thursday, Aug. 31 – 6:30 p.m. (Eastern) I board the flight and take my seat. It’s 1D, a window.
Thursday, Aug. 31 – 6:33 p.m. (Eastern) The person in seat 2D takes his seat. His name, apparently, is Justin. He’s about 5, I would guess. His mother and baby sister are sharing 2C, with Dad across the aisle in 2B.
Thursday, Aug. 31 – 6:34 p.m. (Eastern) Justin starts kicking the back of my seat.
Thursday, Aug. 31 – 6:39 p.m. (Eastern) Justin begins to multitask. While continuing to kick the seat, he discovers that his baby sister is amused if he says “Num, num, num, num, num” to her. In fact, she repeats it to him and then cackles. It’s very cute.
Thursday, Aug. 31 – 6:43 p.m. (Eastern) The “num, num” game officially stops being cute. Nonetheless, it continues. As does the seat kicking.
Thursday, Aug. 31 – 7 p.m. (Eastern) The flight takes off.
Thursday, Aug. 31 – 7:15 p.m. (Eastern) Justin breaks out the video game he’ll use to keep himself occupied. Apparently, the button that controls the volume is broken.
Thursday, Aug. 31 – 7:15 p.m. (Pacific) Justin’s sister begins screaming, apparently testing her lungs and vocal chords. They appear to be in perfect working order.
Thursday, Aug. 31 – 8:15 p.m. (Pacific) The baby sister nods off, but Justin’s feet are still kicking that seat.
Thursday, Aug. 31 – 8:30 p.m. (Pacific) The flight lands in Ontario.
Thursday, Aug. 31 – 8:40 p.m. (Pacific) Upon arrival at baggage claim, I discover my bags are already there. While I was unable to make the 10 a.m. connection in Atlanta, my luggage did.
We now fast forward to Sunday, Sept. 3.
Sunday, Sept. 3 – 11:50 p.m. (Pacific) I leave California Speedway.
Monday, Sept. 4 – 12:03 a.m. (Pacific) I top off the gas tank in the rental car.
Monday, Sept. 4 – 12:15 a.m. (Pacific) I arrive at the Hampton Inn at Ontario Mills Mall, go to my room and finish the work that must be done for the Tuesday paper before my morning flight home.
Monday, Sept. 4 – 2:23 a.m. (Pacific) I retire for the “evening.”
Monday. Sept. 4 – 4:15 a.m. (Pacific) My alarm sounds. Monday,
Sept. 4 – 5:05 a.m. (Pacific) I return the rental car and catch the shuttle bus to the airport.
Monday, Sept. 4 – 7 a.m. (Pacific) My flight from Ontario to Atlanta, remarkably, leaves on time.
Monday, Sept. 4 – 1:45 p.m. (Eastern) The flight arrives 15 minutes early in Atlanta. While that is great, it only extends the five-hour layover for which I was already scheduled.
Monday, Sept. 4 – 7:15 p.m. (Eastern) My flight from Atlanta to Charlotte departs on time.
Monday, Sept. 4 – 8:30 p.m. (Eastern) The flight lands at Charlotte, on time.
Monday, Sept. 4 – 8:40 p.m. (Eastern) At baggage claim, I once again discover that my luggage made an earlier flight that I was told I couldn’t get on. This is the sixth straight trip on this airline in which myself and my luggage have not arrived on the same airplane.
Monday, Sept. 4 – 8:44 p.m. (Eastern) My wife, Katy, calls to say she is on the way to the airport to pick me up. She expects to arrive in 15 minutes.
Monday, Sept. 4 – 8:51 p.m. (Eastern) Katy calls the cell phone again. Slight delay. It seems someone turning left across the road she was on and didn’t see Katy – who’s driving my old beat-up 1993 Ford Thunderbird because her car is in the shop getting an ailing transmission repaired. There’s been a collision. Katy is OK, but she clipped the other car, then jumped a median and then a curb. The car, in which the odometer quit working at 125,487 miles about a year ago, is toast.
Monday, Sept. 4 – 8:56 p.m. (Eastern) I quickly arrange for a rental car and catch the bus go get it.
Monday, Sept. 4 – 9:05 p.m. (Eastern) I get to the scene of the accident. Not pretty, but thank goodness everyone is OK.
onday, Sept. 4 – 9:06 p.m. (Eastern) It starts to rain.
Monday, Sept. 4 – 9:07 p.m. (Eastern) It starts to pour.
Monday, Sept. 4 – 9:10 p.m. (Eastern) It’s still pouring, but it no longer matters. You can only get so wet.
Monday, Sept. 4 – 9:30 p.m. (Eastern) The flatbed arrives to haul my car away. I retrieve a few items from it. It’s still pouring.
Monday, Sept. 4 – 10 p.m. (Eastern) We’re about a half-mile from our house, and we notice that it hasn’t rained a drop.

NASCAR's destruction of a Labor Day tradition? Borderline criminal

I some know people get awfully tired of hearing about this, but the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series is an entire country away from where it ought to be for Sunday's race.
The only place where the circuit should be on Labor Day weekend is Darlington, S.C. It was an idiotic decision to end that tradition and nothing that's happened in the three years since that happened has done anything to indicated otherwise.
There's simply nothing special about being at California Speedway for Sunday night's Sony HD 500. It's just another race at another track.
Southern California could not care less whether the second Cup date here is this weekend or sometime in November, although if it were later in the year it might not be a THOUSAND degrees here.
I know it's hot in South Carolina this time of the year, and with the humidity it might be more uncomfortable there. But Darlington had traditions dating to 1950, for goodness sake, on its side.
In 1950 they were still building ships on this site, I guess.
NASCAR wants to be part of the Southern California scene, desperately. It wants this track to be a roaring success, but it's not.
The crowd for the season's second race here in Februray was pitiful. There figures to be more people here Sunday, and there will probably be more here than there would be if Darlington sold all of its seats.
Nobody is saying that California Speedway shouldn't have two dates each year. Well, actually, if the fans in this region continue showing their indifference to this track that might be something worth considering.
You wouldn't want to bet, for instance, that Las Vegas couldn't sell more tickets for two races than this track has been able to.
But that's an argument for another day.
The point here is that there are some things you don't mess with. The Southern 500 was one of the most significant races on the NASCAR schedule for generations, and the fact that International Speedway Corp. let its tradition waste away is borderline criminal.
I've heard that some of the people connected with the race that does survive at Darlington, now held on the Saturday before Mother's Day, are toying with the idea of naming that race something like the Dodge Southern 500. That would be an absolute travesty, and anybody with a soul who covers that race would have to hold their noses to type that in as the name of race held on any other weekend but this one.
Darlington has done a good job in the past couple of years selling tickets for that race, and if given a choice for one date a year the track might pick May over September. I think that's sad, too.
Run the Southern 500 at 6 p.m. on the Sunday night of Labor Day weekend and spend the kind of money needed to turn Darlington into a modern, up-to-date facility and you'd have a ticket that fans ought to be clamoring for.
This is almost certainly a lost cause, but you can fight a losing battle and still be on the right side.

Does anyone want to win, or just watch their back?

Bristol was benign, there’s no other way to put it. And I think those who’ve decided to blame that on the Chase are at least partly right.
What we’re beginning to learn, I think, is that every year things are going to be different. A few weeks ago, everybody from about third to 14th was piled on top of one another in the standings. It seemed like it could be wild coming down the stretch to Richmond when the Chase field was determined.
But some things happened at Indianapolis and Watkins Glen and gaps started to open up. All of a sudden, the top 10 going into Saturday night’s Sharpie 500 looked at their situations and said, “As long as we don’t do something stupid, we’ll be all right.”
Now that’s not the kind of thinking that leads to all-out racing. And if the Chase caused that then the Chase takes the blame. I do believe some of the guys in that mess between fourth and 10th were “playing defense” at Bristol, and I don’t blame them because given the system that exists that’s the smart thing to do.
You can’t blame teams for doing what they have to do to get into the Chase. They’re playing the system. The problem is, therefore, the system. Specifically, the problem is still the same as it always was. It’s the points system. Winning has to be worth significantly more than it is now or the problem is not going to go away. The Chase hasn’t really changed that.
The Chase is creating some of the problem, though, because more people have to pay attention to points now. If we were under the old system now only Jimmie Johnson and Matt Kenseth would be thinking about and answering questions about points now. Under the Chase, though, you’ve got eight (nine, counting Kasey Kahne) that for the next two weeks have to make every decision in light of where they stand in the points.
Now if the things that pushed everybody apart hadn’t happened in the weeks leading up to Bristol, the tone of that race would have been different. If there still had been 12 guys really in contention for eight spots, it would have been less possible to play things conservatively. Some years, as long as the points system stays the way it is, Bristol is going to be run under those circumstances. Some years it won’t.
I don’t think the track has anything to do with it, although it’s true that Bristol’s surface has about had it. It appears that they’re going to resurface it next year, most likely between the spring and fall races, and NASCAR will use the car of tomorrow there next season, too. That means we don’t really have any idea what we can expect from Bristol’s Cup races in 2007.
I don’t know what NASCAR’s going to do to “tweak” the points system, but I don’t think it’s going to be any kind of major overhaul. It may make winning worth about 10 points more than it is now, which is a baby step in the right direction but a step nonetheless. Maybe if NASCAR awarded a “wild card” Chase spot to the driver outside the top 10 with the most victories, as one fan suggested recently to me in an e-mail, that would be another step. But it’s not one that I see the sport taking.
Again, if it were up to me I would set up a system that makes it highly difficult to make the Chase without winning a race and impossible to win the championship without winning at least one of the Chase races. It can be done that way, and it should be done that way.

NASCAR's 'spin doctors' have those in Washington covered

If anybody thinks Washington, D.C., is the only place where people practice the art of "spin," they’re not paying much attention to NASCAR fans.
I’ve been laughing hysterically all weekend at the various chat rooms and message boards that I like to check out. They’re replete with apologists insisting that Dale Earnhardt Jr. did nothing wrong in Saturday’s Busch Series race at Michigan.
"THAT’S RACIN’" someone averred on the forum on the site I work for that bears the same name. "Junior had no choice," read another one.
Had no choice? Sure he had a choice.
He could have chosen to wreck Carl Edwards or he could have chosen not to wreck him. That’s a choice. Maybe he wouldn’t have won the race if he’d chosen the latter, but he certainly had a choice. As long as there’s an accelerator AND a brake pedal in a race car, the driver has a choice in a situation like that.
I was laughing, too, at all of the commentators who talked about Edwards’ car "getting loose" in front of Earnhardt Jr.
OK, let’s say perfectly stable is zero percent loose and spinning into the wall is 100 percent loose. What percentage, on that scale, was Edwards’ Ford at the precise moment Earnhardt Jr. "had no choice" but to hit Edwards? Maybe 5 percent? Maybe 10?
OK, then what’s the allowable limit? What percent loose does a guy need to be before it’s OK to knock him out of the way?
Here’s what I suspect. I suspect most of the fans I’ve been chuckling at all weekend would give you very different answers to that question depending upon whose car is getting turned and whose car is doing the turning.
Remember back when Jeff Gordon knocked Matt Kenseth out of the way to win at Chicago? I asked the question back then whether views on that incident would be different if it had been Earnhardt Jr. doing the knocking. I suspected, strongly, the answer was yes and this weekend pretty much proved that right.
For the record, my view on the whole deal is that deciding what he’s willing to do to try to win a race is a decision every driver has to make for himself. There are all kinds of sliding scales involved in that decision-making process. How much does NASCAR let you get away with (and the answer there pretty much seems to be anything goes in the last few laps)? How much can you do and still be able to live with yourself? How much are you willing to lay down as the baseline for how you want other drivers to treat you?
I don’t drive race cars. I can’t tell you whether a driver hits another guy on purpose or by accident. I can ask the parties involved afterward and almost always come up with the same answers.
"I didn’t mean to wreck him," the hitter says.
"Nobody ever means to wreck anybody," the hittee says.
Lest the Earnhardt Jr. fans flip out on me, I will say that Edwards didn’t exactly bathe himself in glory with his reaction to the bump. He had no business using his car as a weapon in retaliation after the incident. I actually don’t have a problem with Edwards going to find Earnhardt Jr. after the race to express his displeasure. Earnhardt Jr. said something about how it’s bad form for a driver to come into another driver’s victory lane, but that’s where Earnhardt Jr. was – and where Edwards felt like he had a right to be.
I don’t really have a dog in this fight. I think Edwards and Earnhardt Jr. are both excellent drivers and their long-term success is important to the sport. I also have no doubt those two guys will work things out pretty quickly between themselves.
But I do want point out how hypocritical the fans are who want it both ways.
Your favorite driver is good enough to avoid multicar pileups or make split-second decisions running inches away from other cars at 180 mph. At the same time, he’s not good enough to keep from ramming into the rear end of a car in front him when doing that would greatly suit his purposes?
Please.

Listen - carefully this time - to what Mark Martin is saying

It amazes me how people don’t pay attention to what they hear and, subsequently, what they write.
I wasn’t at Michigan International Speedway this weekend, but I did read a lot of the stuff that came out of there. Time after time, I read about Mark Martin "waffling" on his plans for the future in Nextel Cup racing or about how he was "changing his mind, again" about coming back in 2006.
Look, I’ve talked to Mark Martin to a significant degree about this subject maybe a dozen times over the past two seasons. Never, ever, in any of those conversations has Martin ever said anything about "retiring" from Nextel Cup.
Let’s back up a year. Early in the 2005 season, he had every intention of making that his final full-time season in Cup. But situations involving Roush Racing played out in a way that meant car owner Jack Roush asked Martin for another year.
Martin agreed to come back for 2006, reluctantly. He didn’t do it because he wanted money from a second "farewell" tour. He didn’t do it because he knew he’d miss the attention paid to a Nextel Cup driver. He did it because Roush, his longtime friend and somebody with whom Martin has gone to racing war with year after year, asked him to.
As much Martin respects and cares about Roush, his return for this season was not an easy decision for him to make. That’s because he knew some people would regard it as going back on his word about ’05 being his last full Cup season. Martin’s word means something to him, but in the end his loyalty to Roush won out.
This year, people keep talking about how Todd Kluever isn’t ready to take over in the No. 6 Fords next year. For that reason, many of these folks assume Martin will come back in that car again in 2007. It might happen. Roush talked Martin back into the car this year. But that’s not what Martin says he wants to do.
For as long as he’s been talking about the end of his full-time Cup career, though, Martin has been quick to correct anybody who uses the word "retirement." He has consistently said that he would be available to run Cup races if, say, another Roush driver got injured and need a fill-in driver. Martin has also said he’d love to run a number of Cup races, 12 or so, held in conjunction with Truck Series races provided the right kind of deal – from both a sponsorship and potential performance standpoint – could be put together.
That’s is precisely what Martin is saying now, too. He pointed out last week at Watkins Glen that if Kluever does drive the No. 6 next year, that likely means Martin can’t drive for Roush Racing in those select races next year. That fact complicates the scenario, but it doesn’t mean that Martin is "waffling" on anything.
Mark Martin shoots about as straight anybody you’ll ever find inside the gates of a NASCAR track. People simply just need to listen to him a little more carefully.

Mayfield sounded sincerely excited at Daytona back in January

I think we’ve discussed the whole issue of whether I have a "favorite" driver or not before, but in case I am wrong I’ll begin here with a quick review.
I pull for the best story. Good stories sell newspapers and get people to look at thatsracin.com, which is pretty much the whole point of what I do. They also make this job easier, and after the kind of day I had Monday getting back from Rochester, N.Y., to Charlotte (thanks a pants-load, Delta) anything that makes it easier is fine by me.
Having said that, I am a human being (despite what some of you might think!), so there are some guys you wind up developing better relationships with than others.
One of the guys that I’ve really come to enjoy talking to a great deal over the years is Jeremy Mayfield. I think he’s a good guy and a good racer, and it’s always nice to see somebody like that have success.
In January of this year at Daytona testing, I walked up to Jeremy in the garage and asked him if he was OK with the changes that car owner Ray Evernham had made to his No. 19 Dodge team.
Not only was he OK with it, Mayfield said, he was enthusiastic about it. He told me I’d be wrong, dead wrong, if I didn’t predict his team would make the Chase this year.
"I’ve got a better race team right now than I had last year," Mayfield said at Daytona in a news conference after he and I had talked. "…Look at average finishes, average starts, laps completed. We didn’t lead the most laps. We made the top 10 running like that. If we made the top 10 last year running like that, what’s going to happen this year if we get just a little bit better? That’s where we’re at.
"I understand what David said. Yeah, we switched teams and a lot of people are different, and this, that or another, but from my point of view it’s as good or better as it’s ever been. The 9 and 19 are closer than they’ve ever been. They’re working together. They’re helping each other. Our cars are the same. It’s a tight-knit group right now. …I know we’re quiet and don’t say a whole lot, but Ray Evernham and Dodge and myself and everybody on the 9 and 19 and 10 car, we’re going to win races and we’re going to be in the top 10 in points.
"I told David I just didn’t want to make him look bad. I’ve done it two years in a row and I can do it again. I’d hate to see you (speaking about me) picking odds at Vegas. If you worked out there you’d be in big trouble. I’m just joking, but I’m trying to make a point. We’re a better race team and this year we’ll show you."
Now, Jeremy is saying that he didn’t have any say-so in the changes that were made to his team late last year and that didn’t say anything bad about it earlier this year because he knew it wouldn’t do any good.
One thing about this job is that all I can do is go talk to people and ask them about what’s happening. Sometimes you know people are talking in code, but Mayfield seemed sincere in January and I bought it.
Maybe I was naïve, but I though he was really excited about his team and its chances. Or maybe he really was excited, and then got slapped with cold reality when the season started and things started to not work.
Mayfield’s fans are really upset right now at what’s happened to their driver at Evernham Motorsports. I get that. But when Mayfield spoke up at Chicagoland, questioning Evernham’s commitment to the team, he had to know there would be consequences from that. Mayfield says he wasn’t trying to get Evernham to cut him loose, that Evernham had already suggested Jeremy might want to check out his options before that. Whether that’s true or not, Mayfield is now out of the 19 car and free to look for another ride. It didn’t play out, perhaps, exactly the way he wanted it to, but in hindsight it has played out exactly like it was destined to do from way back in January, when all of that optimism was at best misguided and, at worst, delusional.

Tim Richmond: Without a doubt, one of NASCAR's best on a road course

Seventeen years ago today, Rusty Wallace won the Winston Cup race here at Watkins Glen International.
Early that morning, from his hospital room in West Palm Beach, Fla., Tim Richmond called his mother, Evelyn.
Evelyn Richmond had spent more than year sitting day by day by the side of her ailing son, whom she loved so dearly. She was sleeping when Tim called and told her that he wanted her to come to the hospital so he could talk to her.
Evelyn hung up the phone and dialed the number back. Tim didn’t answer, but one of his nurses did. Evelyn was told that Tim had gone back to sleep and that when he probably wouldn’t even remember calling his mom when he woke back up.
Evelyn decided that she’d wait until daylight to make her daily trip to the hospital to sit by her son’s bed.
About an hour later, Tim Richmond passed away.
Evelyn was haunted by her decision not to come when Tim asked her to, but nobody who knew how much of her energy, her very life itself, she gave to her son would ever blame her in any way.
By that morning, about 20 months after Richmond first learned that he had AIDS, the family knew the end was coming. It was, in many ways, ironic that the NASCAR world was in upstate New York when the sad day came.
Three years earlier, Tim Richmond had one of the greatest days of his life at Watkins Glen International. On Aug. 10, 1986, the Winston Cup circuit returned to this historic road course to race for the first time since 1965, and Richmond scored a victory during a streak that made him the biggest story in the sport that summer.
In the previous seven races, Richmond had won three times and finished second three more. He and crew chief Harry Hyde had finally figured out how to communicate with each other and their No. 25 Chevrolet was suddenly scary fast.
When Richmond won the pole here, it was the ninth straight time he’d started in the top 10. He’d extend that streak to 20 races by season’s end, and in the final 27 races of that year he started in the first two rows 22 times.
Richmond won The Budweiser at the Glen that year, beating Darrell Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt to the finish line. Afterward, he and Hyde and the team retired to the bar at the nearby Seneca Lodge to celebrate, reviving a tradition that had long been part of racing at this historic venue.
When Richmond won the Southern 500 at Darlington and the next race at Richmond later that year, he’d won six times and finished second four times in a remarkable 12-race stretch.
But at the end of that year, after fighting several bouts with what he thought was a bad cold or the flu, Richmond learned he had something far more serious. The world was just beginning to understand AIDS, and the diagnosis at that time was still considered a virtual death sentence.
Richmond missed the first half of the 1987 season, recovering from pneumonia that had led to his actual diagnosis. He won his first two points races back, at Pocono and Riverside, but by August of that year he was fighting the physical, medical and emotional battles that came with his illness.
When he showed up late for the drivers’ meeting at Watkins Glen on the morning of Aug. 9, some of his fellow drivers felt he was in no condition to race. The race was rained out that day, however, and Richmond ran all 90 laps and finished 10th in the race on Monday.
The next weekend at Michigan, Richmond nearly slept through his turn at qualifying and left the race early with a blown engine. He drove the No. 25 car straight to the garage and was gone to his motor home by the time most of his team got there.
He never raced in another NASCAR event.
Tim Richmond would have been 51 years old. He might have won a couple of championships. He almost certainly would have cemented his place in the sport’s history as one of its most talented and most popular drivers. He very well might have moved on to a career in Hollywood, something he always wanted to do. Maybe he would have found a wife and had a son who’d be growing up to be as charismatic and as talented as his famous father.
No one who ever saw Richmond race anywhere will ever forget seeing what he could do with a race car. And for certain, nobody who ever saw him run a road course, here or at Riverside, will ever doubt that they got to see one of the best at that discipline to ever compete in NASCAR.

It’s time for Bill Weber to stop bringing up the Hendrick plane crash when Johnson is about to do something special

I know for a fact that NASCAR fans sometimes see exactly what they want to see, especially when it comes to television coverage.
Over the years I’ve received dozens of e-mails from folks who watch and/or listen to the same broadcasts I do but who see and/or hear something completely different. They’re convinced, for instance, that one network favors a particular driver or group of drivers over another.
Drivers complain, too.
Remember Kyle Busch after he won at New Hampshire, getting in a shot at TNT because he hadn’t been interviewed after the previous couple of races?
Sunday at Indianapolis, I had my radar up about how NBC was going to marry its return to the NFL fold with the first NASCAR race it had broadcast in what will be the final season of its deal for racing.
I used to write about sports on TV and radio on a regular basis before taking this job in 1997, so I’m a little predisposed to pay attention to such matters anyway.
I think I am smart enough to know that a certain amount of cross-promotion is not only inevitable, but perfectly legitimate. One of the great things for NASCAR about being on Fox and NBC since 2001, in fact, is that NASCAR coverage gets promoted in entertainment shows and other sports coverage on those networks.
It struck me, though, that NBC went to a promo/preview of the Hall of Fame Game from Canton, Ohio, right after Jimmie Johnson’s victory lane interview following the Allstate 400. And I wrote a comment about it that appeared in the Charlotte Observer and on thatsracin.com.
On thatsracin.com, a headline said that NBC showed no replays of the last lap incidents during Sunday’s race. That’s not right, and it was my fault for implying that in what I wrote so that the person writing the headline drew that conclusion.
I was still in the Indianapolis airport Monday afternoon when my cell phone rang. It was Dick Ebersol, the man behind the success of NBC Sports for so long, calling to talk about what I’d written.
Now I can be a pretty stubborn son of a gun when I am arguing with somebody who I am convinced doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But it has been my experience with people like Ebersol and his counterpart at Fox, David Hill that I can count on them knowing what they’re saying when it comes to something that’s aired on their network.
Ebersol had been in Ohio for Sunday night’s preseason game between Oakland and Philadelphia and he wanted to give me his side of the story.
He’d been in the truck at Canton when the NASCAR race ended, he said, and decided immediately to extend the postrace coverage from the planned 15 minutes to 20 minutes.
"They had a lot of stuff to cover,” Ebersol said.
He read off a list of people who were interviewed before Johnson made it to victory lane, and then ticked off those who made it on camera after the football promo. He said analysts Benny Parsons and Wally Dallenbach spent three minutes reviewing replays of the last-lap incidents. And he told me that in 21 minutes of postrace coverage, there was only one 30-second commercial (a Chevrolet spot congratulating Johnson).
In what I wrote after the race, I suggested NBC would use NASCAR coverage later this year to hype its return to the NFL. Ebersol told me that he and NASCAR have talked about how much cross-promotion there will be and vowed that it will be a two-way street – that NASCAR will continue to get promoted on NBC’s other programming just as it has through the first five years of the six-year deal that ends this year.
Ebersol was direct, but as he has been every time I’ve spoken to him in this job or my former role as a sports TV/radio columnist, he could not have been nicer. He disagreed with what I wrote, and he wanted to tell me why he thought I was wrong, but he did it the way I wish I could do it when I feel that way about something.
I still don’t think NBC had a great day at the races on Sunday. I like Bill Weber, both as a person and a broadcaster, but it’s time for him to stop bringing up the 2004 crash of a Hendrick Motorsports team plane when Johnson is about to do something special.
I like Wally Dallenbach and Benny Parsons a great deal, too, and I know there were replays of the last-lap crashes. But when the broadcast went off I still didn’t have a good idea of what had happened and why, so I reckon the fans at home didn’t, either.
But just about every time I go back and read one of my stories about a race, I think of three or four things I should have done a better job of explaining or describing. And people aren’t reading that story as I am writing it, either. Television doesn’t have a backspace key, and sometimes it’s too easy to forget that.
I know race fans pretty well, I think, and I know that this fall if NBC runs NFL scores across the screen during races some of those fans will scream bloody murder. But I also know what NBC is paying for NFL rights, too, and I know I’d probably make some of the same decisions that Ebersol and his people will make if I were in their shoes.
At least, I hope I’d be smart enough to.

Catching up as we head to Indianapolis

Catching up as we pack up to head to Indianapolis:

You almost have to catch yourself after you hear news like we heard last week that Benny Parsons has lung cancer. Parsons is such a genuinely nice human being, your immediate reaction is, “Man, why does that have to happen to a guy like Benny?” Then, you realize that what you’re almost saying is that somebody else “deserves” to have to fight the fight Parsons is fighting, and that’s not what you mean, either.
I talked to Parsons the day he went through his first treatment and he was amazingly upbeat. I talked to Bill Weber over the weekend, too, and he was saying that if good wishes and a good attitude have anything to do with it, nobody’s got a better chance of winning this fight than BP does.
I think that’s about right.

From where things stand right now, it looks like Robert Yates Racing will send Stephen Leicht and David Gilliand out to race in the Nextel Cup Series next year. They’ll have new crew chiefs and, it would stand to reason, a lot of new crew members backing them since RYR seems to be starting from a clean sheet of paper.
One thing the Chase for the Nextel Cup format has done is that it has changed the NASCAR calendar. If you’re not in the Chase, the 2007 season begins in mid-September at New Hampshire. You get what you can get this year, but once you’ve missed the cut you’re really already working on next year.
But it would not be a simple thing for the Yates team to take Dale Jarrett and Elliott Sadler out later this year and put next year’s drivers in place to give them a head start on 2007.
For one thing, Leicht and Gilliand have each already run a Cup race this year. Leicht will try to make another race this week at Indianapolis. If they’re going to run for rookie of the year next year, they can’t run more than seven races this season.
There are sponsor issues, too. Remember, UPS is going with Jarrett to Michael Waltrip Racing. UPS wants to be on the track and most likely wants that to happen with Jarrett. It’s entirely possible that Yates could put Leicht in a handful of races in a third team car down at the end of the year, but don’t look for him to drive in Jarrett’s place.
If, as expected, M&M’s stays with Yates and backs Gilliland, it’s possible Sadler could go ahead and go where he’s going to go if the situation with whatever team he’s going to works out as well. But Yates also has a Busch car that can be used to get the new guys some seat time, too.

There are supposedly more than 200,000 seats at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and I am pretty sure that there’s not one from which a fan can see the whole race track. The best word to describe the historic venue, from a physical standpoint, is vast.
But I tell fans all the time that they owe it to themselves to see a race there at least once in their lives. If they built Fenway Park today, it’d have wider seats and aisles and about half the seats would be turned a little so they actually point to where you want to be looking. But that’s not the point of seeing a Red Sox game there. If you’re a sports fan, you have to get to Fenway at least once in your life.
That’s the exact same thing about Indy. On race day, the frontstretch is a canyon of humanity.
A racer with any kind of soul has to get goose bumps when he walks out of Gasoline Alley onto pit road for the start.
IndyCars are always going to be better suited to race there than the wider, heavier stock cars.
But NASCAR is richer, far richer, because it goes once each year to one of the true cathedrals of American sport.
It’s a honor to drive through the tunnel, and I look forward to doing that later this week.

Open-wheel racing retains Danica Patrick, but there's still work to do

I hope the folks who run open-wheel racing in this country don’t really believe that anything that’s happened in the past few weeks means they’ve turned the corner in getting their part of the sport back to any significant level of national relevance.
That’s not to say the news hasn’t been good lately for those guys. Danica Patrick’s announcement this week that she’ll move to Andretti Green Racing but stay in the IndyCar Series after her contract with the Rahal-Letterman team runs out at the end of this season had to bring a collective sigh of relief from the IRL brass.
Patrick, like it or not, is The Franchise in open-wheel right now. I know she hasn’t won even one race, but if she’d decided to come to NASCAR to try to do that it would have been a public relations blow that the IRL might not have been able to survive.
There never really seemed to be a whole lot of chance that was going to happen, of course.
Patrick’s purposely public flirtation with stock cars was a transparent bluff aimed at raising the stakes on a new deal in IndyCars, but sometimes in poker even when you know someone is bluffing you can’t afford to call.
Patrick is smart enough to understand that at some point she has to win, and by joining AGR she has at least given herself the chance to do that.
It appears that her teammates next year will be Tony Kanaan, who won the most recent IRL event, and Marco Andretti, a third-generation driver whose runner-up finish in the Indianapolis 500 this year also gave open-wheel racing a boost. While the teams owned by Roger Penske and Chip Ganassi have dominated in the IndyCar Series so far this year, AGR is competitive enough that Patrick should at least go into every race next year knowing she can at least hope to keep up.
Patrick’s decision to keep trying to win IndyCar races and, in specific, the Indianapolis 500, sustains some of the momentum that open-wheel racing got out of Sam Hornish’s dramatic victory over Andretti at Indianapolis in May.
Like Patrick and Andretti, Hornish is another exceptionally talented American driver who needs to be part of the long-term growth in that discipline. So, too, is A.J. Allmendinger, the 24-year-old Californian who won three straight races after switching to a new team in the Champ Car World Series.
No sport in this country will ever flourish for any period of time without American-born stars.
That might not be the way some folks think it ought to be, but that doesn’t change the fact that’s how it is.
So all that has happened this summer amounts to a nice move in the right direction for open-wheel racing in the U.S. But the primary flaw in its ultimate revival still must be addressed.
As long as Patrick, Hornish and Andretti race in one series and Allmendinger competes in another, nothing is really repaired.
Open-wheel racing in America is fundamentally flawed as long as the IRL and ChampCar insist on living separate lives. It’s like a house with a faulty foundation. It doesn’t matter how nice the paint job is or how beautifully the yard is landscaped, you still have to fix the real problem.

Viewers have every right to demand more, but only so much is going to happen

I found myself listening to the guys on XM Radio's NASCAR channel Thursday night when they were talking about the "side by side" deal ESPN and ABC use on their IndyCar Series telecasts.
Specifically, they were addressing a story in the Long Island (N.Y.) Press about whether the format, in which commercials share the screen with a video image of what's happening on the track, might ever be used in NASCAR telecasts when ABC/ESPN resumes broadcasting stock-car events next year.
The specific sticking point was a quote from NASCAR managing director of corporate communications Ramsey Poston.
"We've looked at a lot of options to enhance the fan/viewer experience but feel that a split-screen presentation of ads and racing serves neither the fan nor advertiser," Poston said.
This comment, of course, was drawing hoots from fans and the hosts of the show alike. Fans' interests would certainly served by splitting the screen, as they would if race telecasts had no commercials at all.
Normally, it wouldn't bother me a bit to let Poston twist in the wind a little on this one. It's not that I don't like him, but he and I sometimes find ourselves with competing interests as he and I both try to do our jobs.
But I can't do it in this case. Poston didn't choose his words well. When I talked to him on the phone on Friday he said he realized after reading his comments he came off sounding like he was trying to speak for the fans more than he'd intended to do.
In clarifying his position, Poston said that NASCAR has looked at what ABC/ESPN does with the split screen and doesn't think that it does justice either to the race coverage or to advertisers.
And he's right.
You're hearing the commercial sound, and the only thing that can be said for the small view of the race is that it's better than nothing. But only barely.
Advertisers, meanwhile, are paying far more for commercial time on NASCAR races than they are on IRL broadcasts. NASCAR has a big-time TV deal, while the IRL basically sells the Indianapolis 500 to ABC and throws the rest of its series in with the deal.
It also should be pointed out that "side-by-side" certainly hasn't been a television ratings bonanza for the IRL, either. If an advertiser buys a full-page ad in The Charlotte Observer, he gets a full page. If an advertiser pays the going rate for a spot on a NASCAR telecast, that company ought to get what it's paying for as well.
It might be a more popular view to say otherwise, but it'd be hypocritical. I don't blame NASCAR fans for wanting to see races without commercials. I don't blame fans for complaining when restarts are missed or commercials get backed up and the coverage of races gets choppy.
I frequently get e-mails from fans who've timed commercials or written down how many laps of racing they see in a certain period of a telecast. I tell them time and time again that the commercial load in a NASCAR telecast isn't significantly larger than what you see in a night of prime-time shows.
Those shows have natural breaks, but NASCAR races do not. Commercials just seem more intrusive in the race broadcasts.
I heard Ken Schanzer of NBC Sports say once that NASCAR is the "best covered" sport on television because of all the places the networks can take cameras. I think he's absolutely right.
If something happens on a commercial, it's quickly replayed from 12 different angles. Fans don't miss much, if anything.
Fans want more than they'll ever get because that's natural. They never want to miss a pass or a pit stop or a restart. They always want to see 15 or 20 drivers interviewed in the postrace, and sometimes time simply doesn't allow that.
A fan's favorite driver can never be shown enough and the driver he hates most is always going to be shown too much.
That's how fans are. There are some fans out there who would be willing to pay to watch races commercial free, but not enough of them to make that a viable commercial entity.
So as long as advertisers are paying the bills - and they're very, very big bills - commercials are going to be part of NASCAR telecasts.

NHRA fans just like their drivers fast

Congratulations to J.R. Todd for becoming the first African-American driver to win in the National Hot Rod Association’s top fuel division over the weekend.
Actually, I should say it this way. Congratulations to Todd for getting his first top fuel victory, and congratulations to the NHRA for having a big jump on other American racing series when it comes to diversity.
Melanie Troxel is in the running for the top fuel championship this year and there are several female drivers competing at drag racing’s top level, too. Shirley Muldowney was winning races in the NHRA before a lot of current competitors were born. And it’s nice that fans of drag racing don’t seem to care too much about what color or gender the driver is, just whether he or she can get down the track really, really fast.

Speaking of drag racing, I meant to mention “Driving Force” before it debuted Monday night on the A&E cable network. The show is about John Force, the Funny Car driving legend, and his relationship with his daughters who are all, to one degree or another, involved in the sport as well.
Force is, well, he’s John Force. He’s a little bit of Elvis Pressley, a little bit of Evel Knievel and a little bit of Robin Williams all kind of mashed up into one. Force talks like he races, wide open, but he never hits the chute.
When I first heard that they were going to make a television series about Force and his family, my reaction was, “And people thought Ozzy Osbourne was nuts.”

Barney Hall might be as far away, personality-wise, from John Force as is possible. Hall, the voice of NASCAR on Motor Racing Network, is absolutely the nicest man in racing. There are a lot of good people in the sport, but I promise you there is nobody who’s a better human being than Barney Hall.
I went to Barney one day and asked him if he’d let me write a book about all he’s seen and done since he started working races more than 40 years ago. He said that was a fine idea, but that Ben White had already beaten me to the draw.
So I owe Ben White one. No, actually, Ben’s too nice of a guy to be mad at either. Ben and Barney finally got around to writing their book and it’s out now. “Barney Hall’s Tales from Trackside” is a great, great read. The story about how Barney learned to fly his own airplane, the story about how he got arrested trying to go to work at Daytona one day and the story about the legendary Chris Economacki correcting Ken Squier’s grammar on the air one day are among my favorites.
Pick it up. You’ll be glad you did.

Warning! Road-weary motorsports writer unloading ahead

OK, fair warning right up front. I have been spending a lot of time on the road lately, and I’m getting pretty cranky about it. Don’t say you have not been warned.

The two guys signing on the Applebee’s commercials? I hope they hitch a ride with the “Can you hear me now?” guy and drive off a cliff.

Something is going on with me and hotel maids. (No, gutter minds, not that.) Their newsletter must have a whole section about me or something.
Earlier this year, on a Sunday morning, one knocked on my door at 7:30 wanting to clean the room. At least she knocked. Last weekend near Chicagoland Speedway, the maid used her pass key to come into the room on both Sunday and Monday mornings without bothering.
Look, I know this sounds petty. But when I am in a hotel room, that’s my space. I put my stuff in the bathroom where I want it. The maids need to leave it alone. Again, in the same hotel in Illinois, they had this little lap desk thing in the room. It’s lovely, but I don’t use it. So I sort found a hole for it beside the TV cabinet. Every day, the maid kept putting it right back on the bed. Why? They do that, but if ice has melted in the ice bucket they don’t DARE pour that water out.

Just because the airlines say you can use your cell phone as long as the plane is parked at the gate, that doesn’t mean you have to. Nor is it a rule that you have to turn it back on as soon as the wheels touch the ground.
There are people who are important enough that they need to be in contact with the world as much as possible. These folks, however, almost always have assistants and aides who take care of that for them.
You, almost certainly, are not that big of a deal. That sales call you’re yelling into your phone about while the rest of us are trying to find an extra inch or leg room? It can wait. A decade ago very, very few people had cell phones and the world kept going.

Having said that, I like my Blackberry. I think it’s silly when people say Blackberry users are “addicted.” It’s a tool. I check my e-mail from more places now than I used to be able to, but that’s the point. If I go to the hardware store and buy a hammer, it’s because I need a hammer to drive nails with. Ask me after the fact if I find I am driving more nails than I did before I had a hammer, I am most likely going to say yes.
That’s not my point, though. I like almost everything about the Blackberry, but it has two absolutely horrible design flaws. The button you touch to answer a call is actually a little wheel.
If you don’t manage to push it directly in and turn the wheel every so slightly downward, the option you’re choosing changes from “Answer” to “Ignore.” And then, the button to end a call is right below that wheel – and right where you put your hand to hold the thing to actually talk on a call.
It’s not as maddening as the Applebee’s guys. But it’s close.

I absolutely agree that people who get in the passing lane and go slower than the speed limit are annoying. But I submit they’re not anywhere near as bad as people who go 25 miles per hour over the speed limit and act like you’re in their way. Don’t hand me this “I am just going with the flow of traffic,” either. If you’re changing lanes every 100 yards that’s not about being in any kind of flow. That’s you being a dimwit.
If you constantly find yourself uncomfortably close to the rear bumper of the car in front of you, you’re the menace.

Cruise control? You’ve got it but you do not HAVE to use it. If the speed limit is 65 and you’ve got your cruise control set on 80, you do not know HOW to use it.

Your mother should have taught you a couple of things that she apparently overlooked.
First, when the door of an elevator opens (and this applies to a bus or a tram or anything remotely resembling that) the people coming off have the right-of-way. Let them come off before you try to get on.
Second, if you’re part of a group of people waiting for a bus (or a tram or a taxi or a subway or anything remotely resembling that) even if people aren’t standing in one the principles of a line still apply. If the rental car bus (or the airport parking bus or the little train that takes you from one part of the airport to another or anything remotely resembling that) just happens to stop directly in front of where you’re standing, the person who has been waiting the longest still has the right to get on first.
As that noted philosopher George Costanza once said, “We’re living in a society, here, people!”

That sign that says “No parking?” Yes, that does mean you, too.

Bump, bump...who's there?

I hesitate to even offer an opinion about what happened on Lap 264 of Sunday’s USG 400 at Chicagoland Speedway.
Because Jeff Gordon was involved, a great many fans automatically have an unalterable position on the incident. Gordon haters think it was dirty pool. Gordon’s fans think it was either just a racing incident or justified payback for what happened earlier this year at Bristol.
Matt Kenseth’s fans, meanwhile, are obviously upset. Kenseth said he’d probably have run out of gas anyway, and it looked like Gordon would likely be fast enough to make the pass before the checkered flag even if Kenseth kept going. But that doesn’t ease the frustration of seeing your favorite driver’s car being spun out while running in the lead with only a few laps left.
I don’t really have a dog in the fight, aside from the fact that it gave us all something to write about and argue about after the race.
I never have thought that NASCAR can – or should – try to officiate all of the contact out of stock-car racing. Rubbin’, after all, is racin.’
But what always has fascinated me is the situational officiating involved in the sport. Everything seems to depend on who’s involved or when something happens. And in that regard, NASCAR’s not all that different from any other sport.
In basketball, a foul should be a foul. But the same contact called in the first five minutes of a big game is not necessarily going to be called in the final five minutes, and everybody understands that.
Have you ever noticed how rarely you see holding called on an offensive lineman if an NFL or big-time college team is driving for a late touchdown? I have. On the other hand, a defensive back gets a little more leeway on contact sometimes when it’s late in a close game.
I have been covering NASCAR for 10 seasons now, full-time, and I don’t think I can ever remember a car contending for a victory being called for a pit-road speeding penalty on his final stop.
One of these days, I would love to see NASCAR hand out to the media a printout of what its new computers that supposedly measure pit road speeds showed for every car on every trip down pit road. But I am not going to hold my breath waiting to see that data.
Which brings us to what happened Sunday.
I honestly believe that if Gordon had done the same thing to Kenseth on Lap 50 of a race at Daytona or Talladega, NASCAR would have given Gordon a “rough driving” penalty. And if it was something that should have drawn a penalty in those circumstances, then it should have been met with some kind of sanction on Sunday.
Having said that, though, haven’t a lot of drivers throughout the sport’s history made a name for themselves by showing how much they wanted to win by driving “tough” in similar circumstances throughout their careers?
Gordon talked after Sunday’s incident about being hungry for wins and about how Kenseth should have expected what happened, especially given what happened with Kenseth bumping Gordon late in the race at Bristol earlier this year. He also hinted that he still owes Tony Stewart one, from an incident last year between those two, and that if Stewart sees Gordon coming in a similar situation he’d better “be ready.”
If you closed your eyes, that sounded a whole lot like a fellow named Earnhardt used to sound after he’d shown how hungry he was to win.

Chasing a better title format

Two guys I like and respect very much, Terry Blount of the Dallas Morning News and Dave DeSpain of Speed Channel, have weighed in with their opinions about what tweaks NASCAR should make to the Chase for the Nextel Cup in 2007.
If you missed it late last week, NASCAR chairman Brian France said some changes in the format are likely after this year, which will be the third under the current plan.
I am sure other guys have expressed their opinions, too. But Blount and DeSpain each brought up something I wanted to address.
We’ll start with Blount.
One of the things NASCAR apparently wants to do is increase the chance that more than 10 drivers might qualify for the Chase in a given year. They could, of course, simply say the top 12 or top 15 gets into the “playoffs,” but for some reason it seems NASCAR would rather have the number “float.”
There’s talk of widening the window in which a team would make the Chase from within 400 points of first to within 500 or even 600. I’d prefer 500, because I want to see good teams miss the Chase, which is what makes the season’s first 26 races worthwhile.
Blount’s idea is to make it so any driver who wins one of the first 26 races makes for the Chase. I might could be talked into that if you added one codicil – any driver who runs in ALL 26 of those races and wins one of them makes the Chase.
No disrespect to Boris Said, because it would be a wonderful story if it happens, but if Said wins at Watkins Glen next month that doesn’t mean he should get a shot at winning the championship. Last year, Kasey Kahne won at Richmond in May but his team did not perform to a level where that win should have given him a berth in the Chase.
I think Blount would settle for a version of the 500-point idea I’ve been pushing for two years.
Give a driver a 500-point bonus for his first win in the regular season. Not for every win, mind you, just the first one. Every driver who wins a race gets that bonus, so if more than 10 win during the first 26 races it then becomes a matter of consistency among those winners. A 500-point bonus, conversely, would not be enough to get a part-time team into the Chase.
During the Chase, reset the counter so that a driver gets the bonus again for winning one of those 10 races. The championship contenders know that to win the title they have to win a Chase race, and drivers not in the Chase could go a long way toward finishing 11th or moving up in the final standings by stealing one of those wins away.
People freak out when I suggest a 500-point bonus, but the number doesn’t matter as long as it’s enough to make winning the most important thing toward making the Chase. If only 10 full-time drivers win during the first 26 races, I agree with Blount that those should be the 10 guys with a shot at the championship.
DeSpain believes that NASCAR has grown to a point where it needs to expand.
He advocates dividing into two “leagues” for the first 25 races, with one league running on Saturday and the other on Sunday. Then, the top 10 or 15 from each league moves into the championship series.
I just think it’s fairly well established that dividing your sport is not the way to go. If open-wheel racing cobbled together a season-ending five-race playoff between the best from the IndyCar Series and the best from ChampCar, would that be better than having all of the good drivers and all of the good teams racing on the same track’s all season long? I don’t think so, and I don’t see how having Jeff Gordon and Carl Edwards and Matt Kenseth at one track and having Dale Earnhardt Jr., Tony Stewart and Jimmie Johnson at another on the same weekend helps NASCAR.
Another smart guy, Jeff Burton, said over the weekend at Daytona that NASCAR might think about putting 15 guys in a Chase with 15 races to go, then cutting it to 10 with 10 to go and five with five to go like a true playoff. That’s better than the two leagues idea, I think.

The starting point of reference
The motorsports media breathed a collective sigh of relief this week when http://www.racing-reference.com/ got back online.
It was down Sunday, and the first thing I thought of was that NASCAR had somehow managed to find a way to shut it down. I am a little embarrassed to admit that, since my first thought SHOULD have been, “Gee, I hope Alan Boodman is OK.”
Boodman is the guy who put the site together, and I did call to check on when I got back from California. When he got back to me he said he was fine but there had been a problem with his webhost’s server.
Whatever that means.
If you’re a NASCAR fan and you’ve never seen this website, I urge you to take a look at it. I don’t owe Boodman any money and he’s not paying me to give him a plug. Best I can tell, he doesn’t make money on the site anyhow.
I ran across it a couple of years ago doing research for my book on Tim Richmond when I was trying to find a definitive source for Richmond’s Busch Series records statistics.
The more I looked at it, the more interesting it was. It’s a database of EVERY Nextel Cup, Busch, Truck and International Race of Champions race. You can look up any driver’s career record. You can look up records by car owner. By season. By track. You can check a driver’s record at any track.
Go to the “driver vs. driver” section and type in the names of any two drivers in history. Within a second, you’ll know how many times they raced against each other what their comparative results were in those races.
For example, Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson have both been in 163 races. Johnson has won 21 of them and Gordon 16. Johnson has finished ahead of Gordon 89 times and behind Gordon 74 times in those races.
You can also go to the “driver rankings” page and get a list of, say, the drivers who’ve been running at the finish of the most races from 1996 until right now. Mark Martin tops that list, at 479 races, followed by Dale Jarrett, Ken Schrader and Sterling Marlin.
Now why would you want to know such a thing? Well, who knows? But if you did, it’s there.
I’ve been using http://www.racing-reference.com/ for a couple of years now and have almost become its press agent. I’ve showed it to dozens of my colleagues and they use it now, too. Once you figure out what all is there, it’s incredibly easy to use and so far I haven’t found a single error on it.
Boodman lives in Pennsylvania and worked with databases for a living. He got interested in NASCAR and decided he wanted to do this, so he started building his records with history books and other such information.
If you’re really a fan, you should check it out. You can thank me later.

F1 -- The soccer of motorsports

Since we’re about to head toward the traditional Fourth of July weekend’s visit to Daytona, it seems that a few words about how Americans like their sports are in order.
We’ll use Formula One major domo Bernie Ecclestone’s words in a recent article in The Times of London as a jumping-off point. If you didn’t see what His Bernieness said, here’s a quick review.
“It does not matter to Formula One if there is no grand prix in the U.S.,” Ecclestone said. “What do we get from America? Aggravation, that’s about all. If you say ‘good morning’ over there and it’s five past 12, you end up with a lawsuit.”
That’s an outstanding line, but after the ridiculous debacle that was the 2005 U.S. Grand Prix at Indianapolis – in which just six cars actually raced following after a dispute over tires and safety and politics and egos and fun stuff like that – you would think Ecclestone would be a little less strident.
The contract for the U.S. Grand Prix is up after next weekend’s event, and Ecclestone appears to be in no mood to give the folks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway any kind of break on the $20 million price tag for hosting an F1 event.
“Why do we need to worry so much about America?” Ecclestone said. “America has never really taken to open-wheel racing. We have never got any sponsors out there. The television has never taken off. We have more viewers in Malta than over there.”
Clearly, Malta could beat our red, white and blue backsides in soccer (more on that in a minute), but if Ecclestone really doesn’t think the U.S. market is more important to his sport than Malta, then he’s just a dolt.
Having said that, I believe that the United States needs F1 no more than Ecclestone feels F1 needs us. The F1 series is, without any question, the world’s most popular motorsports series. But until is has at least one competitive American driver, it’s just not going to matter much in this country.
American sports fans pull for Americans. It’s not any more complicated than that.
That’s why the World Cup soccer tournament is the biggest thing in the world but struggles to find traction here.
This just in – on an international level we stink at soccer. Ghana knocked us out of the World Cup the other day.
Ghana!
That county has a total population of about 21 million people. There are nearly that many people in Texas. Are you telling me that a team of the best players in ANY sport from all of the other 49 states – even football – shouldn’t be able to beat a team of the best players from Texas? I know Ghana’s very best athletes all play soccer, while our best athletes are getting rich in other sports. But how can we get beat in anything that matters by Ghana?
We did, though. And that’s why no matter how much ESPN tries to hype it and no matter how much the “experts” try to force the World Cup down our collective throats, this country is not going to care about international soccer until we can beat people at it. I’m not saying that’s how it ought to be. But I am saying that’s how it is.
That gets us back to F1.
I know that American Scott Speed has a ride this year and will be competing next weekend at Indy. But until Speed and his team move way up the competitive ladder – or until Dale Earnhardt Jr. decides he wants to go F1 racing – nobody in this country is going to get terribly excited about that series.
Whether it races at Indianapolis or in Malta.

Is it next year yet?

It’s about time for the 2007 Nextel Cup schedule to become the object of much speculation among NASCAR beat writers.
What happens is that a few tracks start sending out ticket renewal forms to fans and word starts to leak out about what’s going to happen when. People then start trying to fill in the blanks from there and before you know it all kind of rumors are going around.
What has apparently set things off this year is a ticket letter that folks have gotten from New Hampshire International Speedway indicating that next year’s July race there will be held on July 1.
That’s two weekends earlier than this year. More significantly, it’s in the slot where the Pepsi 400 has traditionally been run – the weekend before July 4th.
To let you in on how some minds work, there are those who’re leaping to the conclusion that means a huge shakeup in the schedule is coming, one that might include moving the summer Daytona race back into the Chase somewhere.
That could happen, I guess, but it seems to me that it’s more about the calendar than anything else.
Daytona’s summer race is barely a July race this year – it’s on July 1. Most people who get time off for that holiday will still be working that Friday night – their vacation would be the next week. Next year, the Saturday night that weekend would be June 30. That’s not July. Daytona would rather have July 7 as its Pepsi 400 date, so it would in effect move back a week. That’d push Chicagoland back a week, too. But then you’d get right back on the same routine as this year with Pocono on July 22 and a open date on July 29.
One important thing to do when looking ahead at 2007 is to remember that Easter is always a factor. Next year, it falls on April 8, one weekend earlier than this year. You always have to fit Texas and Martinsville around that date. This year Martinsville was on April 2 and Texas on April 9. Things could stay in that order in 2007, but it’s also possible that Texas might be April 1 and Martinsville April 15.
The Daytona 500 will be on Feb. 18, but there is a question about what happens after that. The past two years it has been California-off weekend-Las Vegas with the Busch Series in Mexico that off week. But if the Busch Series goes to Montreal, as is expected, will it also go to Mexico City again? If it doesn’t, will that early off weekend for Cup be moved to later in the season somehow?
If I had to bet right now, I’d say things stay like they are. California on Feb. 25, off week, then Las Vegas on March 11 followed by Atlanta, then Bristol. Then you’d have either Texas or Martinsville, then Easter, then Texas or Martinsville followed by Phoenix and Talladega. Richmond would be May 5, then Darlington May 12, followed by the all-star race and Coca-Cola 600 to round out May.
Dover, Pocono, Michigan, Infineon, New Hampshire, Daytona, Chicagoland and Pocono would then come before the week off at the end of July – is that where the Montreal Busch race might go? Then back to the same schedule order we have now.
Kentucky wants a Cup date and Bruton Smith wants a second date for Las Vegas, too. Unless a track or two is sold, though, it’ll surprise me if either gets what it wants.
I don’t disagree completely with those who say too many tracks have two dates. If you were starting the Cup Series right now, not as many tracks would have a second date. You’d go to Kentucky, and maybe to Nashville or Gateway or the new track in Iowa. And you’d leave room for tracks down the road in Washington state and New York.
Here’s how. You’d set up a 26- or 27-race “regular season” and give each track one points race. Then, you’d have the 10 Chase races and you’d let each track bid on how much it’s willing to pay in terms of total purse for the right to host one of those events. No track gets more than one of those final 10.

Mears, Vickers just doing what they need to do

It often amazes me how people react to things.
Just about everybody seems to believe that Casey Mears is going to wind up driving the No. 25 Chevrolets for Hendrick Motorsports next year, and that certainly jibes with everything I’m hearing, too. The rumor mill also has Brian Vickers, who’s getting out of that ride, going over to Team Red Bull to drive a Toyota.
The basic reactions to both presumed moves have me a little puzzled.
For starters, there seems to be a little bit of a backlash against Mears in some circles because a couple of weeks ago he was saying that he was trying to work out a way to stay with Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates. And now, as soon as a job comes open at Hendrick Motorsports, he’s changing that tune.
Well, I wasn’t party to his negotiations and, in fact, I’ve yet to actually speak to Mears myself since all of this happened. But what, exactly, is he supposed to have done that’s wrong?
Mears has a contract with Ganassi that’s up at season’s end. The reality that is NASCAR these days is that any driver whose contract is up can’t wait much longer than this far into the final year of his deal to get something locked down for his future. So Mears has undoubtedly been talking to other people in addition to Ganassi to make sure he does what he has every right to do – find the best possible opportunity for himself to succeed at the Nextel Cup level.
If he said a few weeks ago that his first option was to stay where he is, maybe that was before somebody at Hendrick passed the word that a slot could be coming open.
Or, perhaps, Mears didn’t want to say anything about having that possibility in mind because he didn’t want to put Vickers and his team in the rumor mill jackpot. That’s precisely what would have happened, of course, if Mears had even hinted that he might be looking at moving to Rick Hendrick’s team.
I do feel for Donnie Wingo, the crew chief on the No. 42 Dodge team who lost Jamie McMurray last year and now will lose Mears after this season. That’s tough sledding for a crew chief and his guys, to keep having to adjust to a new driver.
But let’s be honest about all of this. Last year at Watkins Glen, I watched Mears sit through a press conference where it was announced that he was going to be shuffled to a fourth team that Ganassi planned to begin and be asked to start the 2006 season without having the points he’d amassed in the No. 41 Dodges.
Remember that? McMurray was still going to be in the 42, David Stremme had the 40 and Reed Sorenson the 41. Mears was going to be shuffled to a car sponsored by Home 123. That all changed when Ganassi agreed to let McMurray go to Roush Racing for this year, but Mears wasn’t exactly treated like he was the pick of the litter.
Hey, I don’t blame Ganassi for doing what he needed to do, just like I don’t blame Mears for doing the same thing.
No, Mears has not won a Cup race yet. He probably would have at Homestead last year had it not been for a phantom debris caution from NASCAR, but that stuff happens.
Vickers hasn’t won in a Cup car yet, either. But that doesn’t mean Team Red Bull or any other team looking at him should ignore the fact that Vickers is still young and has a lot of ability. If he drives a Toyota in 2007 and beyond, it may take a couple more years for him to get that win, who knows. And it may never happen.
Personally, I think the Toyota teams are going to get ripped by some fans no matter what they do. What if Team Red Bull went out and “stole” a top-name driver with a bunch of wins on his resume from an existing team? That’d be another example of Toyota trying to “ruin” the sport, wouldn’t it? But if the Toyota teams hire drivers who haven’t had tons of Cup-level success, some critics are going to talk about how they’re giving ridiculous money to drivers who haven’t done enough to deserve it.
There is not a “driver shortage” in NASCAR right now. There is, however, an imagination shortage. There are few obvious choices to fill the various openings that exist or will exist in the Cup ranks. In the absence of these, fans and media perceive that mean good choices don’t exist.
But they do. And the owners who successfully navigate their way through the changes that are coming are the ones who’ll be successful down the road. That’s going to involve having the ability to recognize potential and provide opportunities for that to take root and grow.

-30-

It's more than a numbers game to some of us

I absolutely plead guilty to being too fascinated by numbers. It goes way back.
My relatives tell me, and it certainly fits in with the way I remember things, that I pretty much taught myself how to do division by figuring baseball batting averages.
I vividly remember when I was about 8 having one of those "eureka" moments when I finally grasped how a pitcher's earned run average was determined.
Statistics in sports have always been interesting to me. It's difficult to compare eras in sports, but statistics are often the best - and always the most dispassionate - way to try.
So about two-thirds through Sunday's Neighborhood 400 at Dover International Speedway, Jeff Burton was leading and I looked up how many races it had been since his most recent victory. I knew it was around 150, and the actual number was 160.
If Burton won, it would have made a good chart to list the most number of races between two wins in a Cup driver's career.
But that's not a list that, as far as I could tell at the time, anybody had handy.
Never fear, I said to myself, I can figure this out before the race is over. Back a few years ago, I wanted to know how old the top winners in the sport were when they won their races. So I spent a pretty good while making a list of people who'd won 20 or more races, looking up their birthdays and the dates of races, then doing a spreadsheet of how old they were at the time of each win.
By the time I was done, I realized that I was well on my way to having a list of ALL of the races in Cup history. So that winter, between the end of one season and the beginning of the next, I finished that list off.
It's on a spreadsheet in my laptop (backed up on discs and flash drives six ways to Sunday) and it has the number of the race, the race date, the track name, the track site, the winning driver, the driver's birthday, his age at that win and the car owner's name.
Off that list, I can create lists of wins by driver, by track, by owner and by age.
And with the list by driver, Sunday at Dover I started going down the list looking for big gaps between victories by the same driver.
About the time that Burton no longer had the lead, I thought I had a pretty good handle on the list. The complicating factor was that there were some really big gaps that are misleading.
There is, for instance, a span of 417 races between Paul Goldsmith victories on the Daytona beach course in 1958 and on the Daytona International Speedway track in 1966. But Goldsmith actually ran in only 24 of those 418. So it was a little too complicated to have any shot at getting right on the fly like that.
Had Burton won, or even Jamie McMurray, who could have broken a 124-race drought of his own, it would have been something I would have spent time Sunday night figuring up for a Tuesday follow story. But once it was on my mind, there's no way I could walk away from it.
My friend Monte Dutton, who covers NASCAR for the Gaston (N.C) Gazette, rightly accuses me of being a "wonk" when it comes to such things. So, after getting back home Monday, I sat down with my list of races and found what I think to be the list of long streaks between wins.
Goldsmith's 417-race streak is the longest in terms of the total number of races held, but in terms of races started between victories the longest all-time streak is held by...somebody whose name will appear at the top of a chart you'll be able to find in the Charlotte Observer and on thatsracin.com when Burton or McMurray or anybody else with more than 100 wins between their most recent victories goes to victory lane.
Hey, I might be obsessed and therefore compelled to do all that research But I ain't stupid enough to give it away for free.