Absolute control is absolutely the NASCAR way

DOVER, Del. – There are two guiding principles one must always keep in mind when dealing with NASCAR on any significant issue.

Rule No. 1 is that whenever possible NASCAR finds a way for somebody else to pick up the tab.

Any program or initiative where a team, a manufacturer or a sponsor can be cornered into paying the bills has an infinitely better chance of being implemented than one where NASCAR has to write a check.

Rule No. 2 is that NASCAR loves and maniacally defends its control over the sport. It is only slightly less likely to spend its own money than it is to let anything – even a black-and-white rule in its own rulebook – dictate how it handles a given situation.

NASCAR always likes to leave itself wiggle room.

The latter rule is clearly in play in regard to changes to NASCAR’s substance abuse policy announced here Saturday morning.

The new policy goes into effect for the 2009 season. All drivers in the Cup, Nationwide and Truck Series as well as all NASCAR officials will be drug tested before the start of next season. Additionally, team owners must verify that they’ve had all licensed crew members tested by a certified lab before the new season begins.

Drivers, over-the-wall crew members and officials will thereafter be subjected to random testing. At least two drivers, two over-the-wall crew members and two officials will be tested per series per race weekend. So if all three series are running on a given weekend, a minimum of 18 tests will be administered.

The NASCAR policy is that the misuse or abuse of any drug is prohibited. NASCAR’s press release Saturday said, “This means that a violation of the policy can be triggered with the use of any drug or medication if NASCAR believes it has been abused or misused.”

Of course, that also means that NASCAR has the discretion to decide that a positive test for any drug doesn’t necessarily constitute that abuse or misuse.

That’s where the control principle kicks in.

Take the case involving Ron Hornaday that surfaced last week. If Hornaday had tested positive for use of the testosterone cream he obtained, he would have had to tell NASCAR why he was using it. If the medication were on a black-and-white banned list, the circumstances wouldn’t have mattered. But with the discretion allowed, NASCAR would have been able to weigh the situation before ruling.

But shouldn’t there be at least some kind of list of substances that are absolutely banned, no matter the circumstances? There’s no circumstance under which a positive for cocaine or heroin, for instance, should leave any room for discretion. Why not just simply ban them as part of an official policy?

The answer is that NASCAR would rather not face any absolutes, even ones that would appear to be mindlessly obvious. It’s just not how NASCAR likes to operate.

The same thing can be said for the penalty phase. A first offense calls for immediate suspension with “detailed criteria” for consideration of reinstatement. Those criteria, however, are not delineated publicly.

NASCAR can handle each penalty phase on an individual basis. Is that just being smart, or does it give NASCAR the room to play favorites? That’s the kind of skepticism NASCAR is perfectly willing to deal with rather than cede any more control.

The one absolute is that a third offense results in an automatic lifetime ban, and it’s hard for anybody to argue that in a sport as dangerous as this one a “three-strikes” rule is a bad idea.

There is s a lot of good in the new plan. NASCAR will pay for all of the testing except for the preseason crew tests and the testing will be done through an outside agency. Random testing is a lot better than the old “with cause” standard, as long as the randomness of who gets picked for testing is fairly administered.

Comfort level should be a secondary consideration

A couple of things, only tangentially related.

Can we all just agree to stop listening to car owners who tell us they’re “close” to signing a new sponsor for their NASCAR teams?

Look around you, folks. The companies that might be candidates to come into the Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Truck series and bringing millions of dollars with them are far more likely these days to be looking to the government for “sponsorship” to keep them from going belly-up.

These are harrowing times, economically speaking. Unless the criminals in the oil industry decide to come up off some of the billions they’re socking away, it’s hard to imagine anybody writing a $20 million check if that company has not already been of a mind to.

What does that mean for racing?

Teams that want to add cars to their fleets might have to spend more time trying to shore up the deals they’ve already got. Tracks may have to slow down ambitious improvement hopes. It might even mean that a team can’t buy the latest and greatest testing or research and development gizmo just because the team down the street has one.

The truth, though, is that there’s room in the sport for more financially responsible business practices. Maybe teams won’t go somewhere every week to test a car and maybe they’ll discover that they never really had to. Maybe rather than lay people off or cut back on what’s spent to make a car actually go fast, some teams might ask a crew chief or – God forbid – a driver make do in a hotel room and not a $750,000 motor home.

The scary thing for the sport, as a whole, is how all of this is going to impact the people who really pay the bills. Fans have already started having to make tough decisions that are showing up in the form of empty seats in the grandstands. That puts even more pressure than there already was on NASCAR to get the racing right and make its sport something that’s hard for fans not to come see.

That’s sort of where my second point for the day comes in.

There’s been a lot of talk in the past few weeks stemming from what drivers and crew chiefs and car owners have said over their radios. Clips of spirited conversations are played over and over again and talked about on television and radio shows until the topic gets completely worn out.

You can say that race teams should know that people are listening to everything they say. That’s true, but if the driver and crew chief have to start “editing” themselves because they’re worried about what somebody might think of them and their relationship doesn’t that change they way they do their jobs?

It’s gotten to the point that, all things being equal, if I owned a race team I would be thinking about scrambling my team’s communications so people can’t listen in. The problem with that, though, is that NASCAR has packaged the access to those communications as part of the fan experience. The sport can’t afford, literally and figuratively, to allow that to be taken away from the fans.

Imagine how much controversy there would be after a Duke-North Carolina basketball game if fans had access to everything being said in the respective teams’ huddles. If you heard an NFL defensive coach talking to his players when they were down 21-0 in the second quarter, do you think what you hear would be suitable for mixed company?

But NASCAR fans hear all of that and would howl if you took it away. NASCAR and companies it does business with get significant revenue from that access – things like DirecTV’s Hot Pass and Sirius radio’s Driver 2 Crew channels as well as Sprint’s FanView and all of the scanners that are bought or rented at the track.

I think race teams are just going to have to learn to deal with the blowback that sometimes comes with having people listening in as they do their work, the same way that everyone is going to have to learn to do business in the new reality that exists in this economy. It might not be comfortable to do either, but it sure looks necessary.

John Force should be in the show on Sunday

CONCORD - John Force said he's sorry.

"I would like to just say I am sorry," Force said Saturday after failing to qualify for eliminations at the inaugural National Hot Rod Association Carolina Nationals at zMax Dragway @ Concord.

"I apologize to Bruton Smith and to the NHRA fans, because when they give you an arena like this - the greatest facility in the history of our sport - that brings in all these people and I don't get to be a part of it."

Saturday was a big day for drag racing. The capacity of Smith's new $60 million facility is listed at 30,000 and it was a sellout. Smith had workers cut openings in a fence in front of the east grandstand so he could sell more standing room tickets, and there were - conservatively - 35,000 on the property.

Sunday will be a big day, too. And Force said he'll still be part of it.

Three other cars owned by his team did make the Funny Car field. Ashley Force, Robert Hight and Mike Neff will race. Force will be here, too. He'll ride his scooter hither and yon and stop to sign as many autographs as he can. But he won't be in his 8,000-horsepower car, and that hurts him.

It also hurts the sport.

Force made no excuses. He said he has been struggling this year and the facts bear that out. He's now failed to make four races, more than he's ever missed before. He's missed two straight. He hadn't missed two straight in one season since 1979 and last missed two in a row overall in the final race of 1981 and the first race of 1982. He's only failed to qualify 16 times in 513 tries.

"We got off on our tune-up," Force said. "But I believe in our people."

Force is 59. He's won a record 126 races and a record 14 championships. The west grandstand at this new track is named in his honor. He's done nearly as much for drag racing as the sport has done for him, and that's saying a lot.

I think that should mean something. I think he should be racing Sunday. NASCAR takes grief for exempting the top 35 in points and setting up provisionals for former champioins, but those rules put stock car racing's stars in the show every week. Fans know when they buy tickets that Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart are going to compete.

Sunday's show will be a good one, but it should have Force in it.

"I don't make the rules," he said. "They're fair for everybody. I am too old to cry. I will go home and closet cry. But I am the one who's out here and I need to put it in the show. ...The show will be better next week when I am in it."

Force said he feels bad because racing here in the heart of NASCAR country is big for the NHRA.

"In my life I've handled everything," Force said. "But this hurts. ...I've fought my life to catch up to the NASCAR boys and I sure ain't helping. I'm not doing my part of the job.

"But we'll fix it. ...We'll take our whipping. It's real easy to be a champion when you're winning.

Ron Capps saw Force at the end of the track when Force was officially out of the show.

"It's hard to feel sorry for a guy who has won that many championships," Capps said. "But I feel bad for him."

Don't, Force said.

"This will only make me stronger," he said. "When Dale Earnhardt wasn't winning, he worked harder. And that's what we will do."

John Force has a hill to climb again

CONCORD – John Force is down to his last chance at the Carolina Nationals at zMax Dragway @ Concord.

Force ran 4.153 seconds in Saturday’s third qualifying run, but he got bumped out of the top 16 when Bob Tasca III ran 4.119 seconds during the Funny Car round.

Tony Pedergon is actually on the bump spot at No. 16 with an elapsed time of 4.134 seconds. Force will at least have to go faster than that to make the show in the final round later today.
Pedregon is second in the Countdown to 1 championship playoff, so he’ll be trying to hold on to his spot as the afternoon progresses.

It’s hot and humid at the new track, making conditions difficult. It’s only going to get hotter, too, but there are some puffy white clouds in the sky and depending on how they come over the sun things could still shake up.

Nothing changed atop the qualifying order in Funny Car, with Jack Beckman easily holding onto the top spot.

Tony Schumacher, meanwhile, will race on Sunday. There never was really much drama about that since there are only 17 Top Fuel cars trying for the 16 spots in eliminations, but Schumacher made a pass at 3.879 seconds in Saturday’s third qualifying run he didn't officially have a spot.

Even though Schumacher got down the track just before noon on Saturday, it wasn't without adventure. As he crossed the finish line Schumacher ejected smoke, fluid and perhaps parts from the engine in his dragster. That led to a lengthy track clean-up just as the nitro session got under way.

There's other drama shaping up for this afternoon's final session in other classes.

Angelle Sampey, a three-time champion in Pro Stock Motorcycle, ran 7.826 seconds on her first run Saturday and that has here 17th. If she can't improve on that, she'll fail to qualify for a National Hot Rod Association event for the first time in her career. She's made eliminations in all 178 of the races she's entered so far.

Matt Smith stayed No. 1 in Pro Stock Motorcycle after Round 3. Joe Desantis, Angie McBride, Shawn Gann and Valerie Thompson got slots 13 through 16 with their first runs Saturday.

In Pro Stock, Richie Stevens blasted from outside the top 12 all the way up to No. 3 with his run at 6.685 seconds in Round 3. Allen Johnson ran 6.696 seconds to move up to No. 5 and Rob Mansfield moved in at No. 6. Kurt Johnson and Jeg Coughlin remain 1-2 off runs they made Friday evening.

Qualifying order after three rounds

Pro Stock Motorcycle

1. Matt Smith, 6.952 seconds (192.08 mph); 2. Chris Rivas, 6.968 seconds (191.19 mph); 3. Eddie Krawiec, 6.981 seconds (192.30 mph); 4. Andrew Hines, 7.007 seconds (191.24); 5. Steve Johnson, 7.029 seconds (192.22 mph); 6. Chip Ellis, 7.036 seconds (191.19 mph); 7. Karen Stoffer, 7.037 seconds (189.71 mph); 8. Craig Treble, 7.044 seconds (191.02 mph); 9. Hector Arana, 7.044 seconds (188.89 mph); 10. Wes Wells, 7.072 seconds (189.68 mph); 11. Junior Pippin, 7.098 seconds (184.47 mph); 12. Matt Guidera, 7.102 seconds (184.42 mph); 13. Joe Desantis, 7.114 seconds (190.19 mph); 14. Angie McBride, 7.166 seconds (183.89 mph); 15. Shawn Gann, 7.197 seconds (181.86 mph); 16. Valerie Thompson, 7.291 seconds (178.80 mph).

Pro Stock

1. Kurt Johnson, 6.680 seconds (206.42 mph); 2. Jeg Coughlin, 6.684 seconds (206.26 mph); 3. Richie Stevens, 6.685 seconds (206.54 mph); 4. Warren Johnson, 6.694 seconds (208.01 mph); 5. Allen Johnson, 6.896 seconds (206.29 mph); 6. Rob Mansfield, 6.697 seconds (207.50 mph); 7. Greg Anderson, 6.697 seconds (207.11 mph); 8. Dave Connolly, 6.697 seconds (207.02 mph); 9. Mike Edwards, 6.700 seconds (205.63 mph); 10. Justin Humphreys, 6.703 seconds (206.57 mph); 11. Jason Line, 6.706 seconds (206.89 mph); 12. Steve Spiess, 6.710 seconds (205.85); 13.. V Gaines, 6.711 seconds (205.82 mph); 14. Jim Yates, 6.712 seconds (205.16 mph); 15. Greg Stanfield, 6.714 seconds (205.51 mph); 16. Vinnie Deceglie, 6.715 seconds (205.69 mph).

Top Fuel

1. Larry Dixon, 3.846 seconds (310.20 mph); 2. Cory McClenathan, 3.863 seconds (312.13 seconds); 3. Antron Brown, 3.865 seconds (311.20 mph); 4. Hillary Will, 3.869 seconds (315.12 mph); 5. Doug Herbert, 3.870 seconds (311.49 mph); 6. Doug Kalitta, 3.872 seconds (309.77 mph); 7. Brandon Bernstein, 3.875 seconds (309.49 mph); 8. David Grubnic, 3.876 seconds (311.92 mph); 9. Tony Schumacher, 3.879 seconds (306.19 mph); 10. J.R. Todd, 3.883 seconds (312.93 mph); 11. Rod Fuller, 3,889 seconds (304.60 mph); 12. Bob Vandergriff Jr., 3.898 seconds (306.95 mph); 13. Troy Buff, 3.923 seconds (303.50 mph); 14. Clay Millican, 3.931 seconds (305.77 mph); 15. Doug Foley, 3.975 seconds (302.55 mph); 16. Morgan Lucas, 4.022 seconds (299.53 mph).

Funny Car

1. Frank Hawley, 4.072 seconds (307.16 mph); 2. Robert Hight, 4.072 seconds (300.33 mph); 3. Del Worsham 4.074 seconds (304.12 mph); 4. Ashley Force, 4.075 seconds (307.02); 5. Cruz Pedrgeon, 4.087 seconds (303.43 mph); 6. Jim Head, 4.087 seconds (303.43 mph); 7. Melanie Troxel, 4.100 seconds (303.57 mph); 8. Mike Neff, 4.104 seconds (304.46 mph); 9. Gary Densham 4.108 seconds (296.18 mph); 10. Ron Capps, 4.117 seconds (299.73 mph); 11. Jack Beckman, 4.118 (300.86 mph); 12. Bob Tasca III, 4.119 (299.66 mph); 13. Tim Wilkerson, 4.121 seconds (300.60 mph); 14. Gary Scelzi, 4.123 seconds (301.67 mph); 15. Jeff Arend, 4.131 (304.19); 16. Tony Pedregon, 4.134 seconds (299.40).

Brandon Bernstein atop the NHRA chart so far

Brandon Bernstein is the fastest man in North Carolina after one round of qualifying at the Carolinas Nationals.

Bernstein ran 3.880 seconds at 313.80 mph in the opening run in Top Fuel to take the provisional No. 1 spot. Another round of qualifying is scheduled to begin around 6 p.m.

Tony Schumacher, who has won a record 11 Top Fuel events this year and comes into the National Hot Rod Association’s Countdown to 1 playoff as the top seed, is seventh fastest after one round.

Mike Neff was the first man to go 300 mph at the new track, but he is not be the answer to the trivia question as to who was the first to top that mark. That’s because the first person to top 300 mph was a woman.

Melanie Troxel ran 300.46 mph at the top end of her first Funny Car pass in Friday’s first round of qualifying for the Carolinas Nationals.

Troxel’s elapsed time of 4.162 seconds stood up as the third best in Funny Car, behind only the daughter-father pair of Ashley Force and John Force.

Ashley ran 4.116 seconds to bump her dad, the 14-time Funny Car champion, who ran 4.147 seconds.

First-round qualifying results

Top Fuel

Brandon Bernstein, 3.880.
Cory McClenethan, 3.903.
Larry Dixon, 3.910.
Hillary Will, 3.927.
Rod Fuller, 3.933.
Doug Kalitta, 3.936.
Tony Schumacher, 3.937.
Troy Buff, 3.937.
Doug Foley, 3.954
Clay Millican, 3.980
Morgan Lucas, 3.984
Bob Vandergriff, 4.008
Doug Herbert, 4.088.
J.R. Todd, 4.089
David Grubnic, 4.169
Antron Brown, 4.835.

Funny Car

Ashley Force, 4.116
John Force, 4.147.
Melanie Troxel, 4.162
Mike Neff, 4.165
Ron Capps, 4.170
Jim Head, 4.176
Jeff Arend, 4.177
Tony Pedregon, 4.180
Del Worsham, 4.188
Jack Beckman, 4.206
Robert Hight, 4.212
Tim Wilkerson, 4.125.
Cruz Pedregon, 4.216
Gary Scelzi, 4.219
Bob Tasca III, 4.243
Gary Densham, 4.250
Tommy Johnson Jr., 4.261
Matt Hagan, 4.410
Bob Gilbertson, 5.137
Jerry Tolliver, 6.313
Tony Bartone, 7.012
Frank Hawley, 7.589

Pro stock

Greg Anderson, 6.697
Dave Connolly 6.698.
Kurt Johnson, 6.700
Justin Humphreys, 6.703.
Jason Line, 6.709
Jeg Coughlin Jr., 6.711
V. Gaines, 6.711
Greg Stanfield, 6.716.
Rob Mansfield, 6.723
Vinnie Deceglie, 6.723
Tom Hammonds, 6.724
Rickie Jones, 6.725
Warren Johnson, 6.732.
Jim Yates, 6.732
Johnny Gray, 6.732
Mike Edwards, 6.734.
Steve Spiess, 6.744
Richie Stevens, 6.747
John Nobile, 6.755
Max Naylor, 6.765
Larry Morgan, 6.769
Bob Danza, 6.858
Jim Cunningham, 6.902
John Gaydock, 6.945
Allen Johnson, 7.070
Ron Krisher, did not start

Pro stock motorcycle

Matt Smith, 6.952
Chris Rivas, 6.968
Eddie Krawiec, 6.981
Andrew Hines, 7.007
Steve Johnson, 7.032
Chip Ellis, 7.036
Craig Treble, 7.044
Karen Stoffer, 7.077
Matt Guidera, 7.102.
Junior Pippin, 7.114
Angelle Sampey, 7.123.
Hector Arana, 7.157.
Wes Wells, 7.182.
Valerie Thompson, 7.220
Joe Desantis, 7.246
Shawn Gann, 7.322.
Darin McCurdy, 7.397
Angie McBride, 9.201.

Carolinas cars and drivers doing well so far

So far so good for the local guys in qualifying for the Carolinas Nationals at zMax Dragway @ Concord.

Matt Smith, who is from King, N.C., topped the first round qualifying in Pro Stock Motorcycle while Greg Anderson, whose team is based in Mooresville, was quickest in Pro Stock.

Smith ran 6.952 seconds to top Chris Rivas, Eddie Krawiec, Andrew Hines and Steve Johnson in the top five.

Anderson, in the final pair of Pro Stock qualifying, ran 6.697 seconds to bump Dave Connolly off the pole. Connolly ran 6.698 seconds. Kurt Johnson, Justin Humphreys and Jason Line rounded out the top five.

Speedway Motorsports Inc. chairman Bruton Smith spoke to the crowd gathered for the first day of professional qualifying just after the top 10 drivers in Funny Car and Top Fuel were introduced to the crowd before their first run.

“Look at all these fans in the John Force Grandstand!” Smith said. “John, is it OK for these fans to sit in your grandstand?”

The West Grandstand at the new track are named for Force, the 14-time Funny Car champion.

“I hope I don’t have to make the payments on it,” Force said. “When we look at this stadium, we’re like little kids. Stadiums like this are the future of drag racing.”

Here are the first-round qualifying results for Pro Stock Motorcycle and Pro Stock.
at the Carolinas Nationals at zMax Dragway @ Concord

Pro stock motorcycle

Matt Smith, 6.952
Chris Rivas, 6.968
Eddie Krawiec, 6.981
Andrew Hines, 7.007
Steve Johnson, 7.032
Chip Ellis, 7.036
Craig Treble, 7.044
Karen Stoffer, 7.077
Matt Guidera, 7.102.
Junior Pippin, 7.114
Angelle Sampey, 7.123.
Hector Arana, 7.157.
Wes Wells, 7.182.
Valerie Thompson, 7.220
Joe Desantis, 7.246
Shawn Gann, 7.322.
Darin McCurdy, 7.397
Angie McBride, 9.201.

Pro stock
Greg Anderson, 6.697
Dave Connolly 6.698.
Kurt Johnson, 6.700
Justin Humphreys, 6.703.
Jason Line, 6.709
Jeg Coughlin Jr., 6.711
V. Gaines, 6.711
Greg Stanfield, 6.716.
Rob Mansfield, 6.723
Vinnie Deceglie, 6.723
Tom Hammonds, 6.724
Rickie Jones, 6.725
Warren Johnson, 6.732.
Jim Yates, 6.732
Johnny Gray, 6.732
Mike Edwards, 6.734.
Steve Spiess, 6.744
Richie Stevens, 6.747
John Nobile, 6.755
Max Naylor, 6.765
Larry Morgan, 6.769
Bob Danza, 6.858
Jim Cunningham, 6.902
John Gaydock, 6.945
Allen Johnson, 7.070
Ron Krisher, did not start.

NASCAR drug policy and NHRA drag racing

Sorry, I know I haven’t blogged in a week. Been kind of busy.

* * *

I don’t want to just completely blow off this thing with Truck Series driver Ron Hornaday and steroids, first reported by ESPN the Magazine this week.

NASCAR said Friday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway that Hornaday will not face any sanctions because Hornaday’s use of testosterone cream is considered a “personal medical issue.”

Hornaday was having some issues and trying to figure out what was wrong. At the urging of Kevin and DeLana Harvick he visited another doctor, who diagnosed him with having Grave’s disease. Since he’s been getting treatment for that his health has improved.

NASCAR’s Jim Hunter said “Our substance abuse experts have told us the prescription Ron Hornaday used did not enhance his performance or impair his judgment.”

The only troubling thing about this is that the reason it came up in the first place is that Hornaday got this cream from a clinic in Florida whose owners have pleaded guilty to criminal charges stemming from online sales of prescription drugs.

According to the ESPN the Magazine story, Hornaday gave a blood sample to a nurse who came to his home and never saw the doctor before getting a prescription for the testosterone cream. He did not, apparently, go to a doctor who NASCAR or the Harivcks knew about and deal with his medical issues through what would seem to be proper channels.

When you’re not well and not sure what’s going on, it’s easy to get frustrated and it’s easy to be talked into trying anything that might work. That is why NASCAR needs to have a better policy about how it supervises its competitors in terms of medical conditions and the use of drugs, prescription or otherwise.

* * *

Thursday night was a remarkable night at the Speedway Club.

Doug Herbert, the Top Fuel dragster driver whose team is based in Lincolnton, had the first big fund-raising event for his BRAKES (Be Responsible and Keep Everyone Safe) organization that promotes safe driving by younger drivers.

Herbert started BRAKES after his sons, James and Jon, died in an auto crash in January. James was driving too fast and swerving through traffic when he caused that crash, and his father has never ducked that fact. He has, in fact, used it to steel his determination to try to keep it from happening to other teens and leave other grieving parents, like Doug, behind.

After dinner, Barry Dodson talked about the loss of his two kids, Trey and Tia, and the bond he’s formed with Herbert over their shared tragedies.

After that, some of Herbert’s buddies came to the stage to tell stories. About two hours later, while everybody’s ribs were still hurting from laughter, they held an auction.

Here’s who came to help Herbert – Kenny Bernstein, David Grubnic, Tony Schumacher, Gary Scelzi, Cory McClenathan, Del Worsham, Steve Johnson and – put your hands together for your headliner, folks! – John Force.

The whole program was touching, moving and poignant. Herbert had to go home feeling like he had more friends that he could possibly count. But Force was just off the charts. He did 20-25 minutes off the cuff and it was like watching Robin Williams at the height of his stand-up prowess.

Force was here, then he was there. He was on this topic, then on this tangent. He would interrupt himself in the middle of a story, stop, start another story, interrupt that one, start a third story, stop, finish the second story, go back, finish the third story and then jump right back and finish the first story.

And it was all funny.

A lot of money was raised for BRAKES. If you’d like to help, go to putonthebrakes.com and find out how.

* * *

The first round of pro qualifying for the Carolinas Nationals is about to start at the new zMax Dragway @ Concord. It’s hot and it’s only going to get hotter as the weekend goes along. It will be interesting to see how these guys adapt to this new track. Drag racing fans in this area have been waiting a long time to see what’s about to happen. I will try to get back later for a quick update between the day’s two scheduled pro sessions.

Postponing and then running a pair of races on the same day is not the easy way out

RICHMOND - It's just before noon on Saturday as I write this, and yes, it's pouring rain.

At least here, though, that's pretty much all Tropical Storm Hanna is - rain. But I do believe NASCAR made the right call Friday in pushing both the Sprint Cup and Nationwide series races here back to Sunday.

It could stop raining sometime this afternoon, and if it does somebody will say NASCAR over-reacted in pulling the plug so early. But that will be 20-20 hindsight.

Even if there are no downed power lines or is no major flooding in the area, there might have been. At 5 p.m. Friday when this call was made, nobody could be sure how bad the storm was going to be here. This is one of those times where if you're going to miss, you have to miss on the side of being to cautious.

NASCAR doesn't want to run on Sunday this weekend, not with the NFL season kicking off. The Cup race was supposed to be on ABC network television Saturday night, but ABC has the IndyCar Series finale scheduled for Sunday afternoon and couldn't just swap it to cable without a whole lot of contractural hassle. So the Cup race will be on ESPN opposite the 1 p.m. NFL games on Fox and CBS. That's going to cause some issues with companies who bought ads at Saturday night, prime-time network rates.

So this was not a decision NASCAR jumped at. Even though it has run two series on the same day before, including at Auto Club Speedway in California earlier this year, that's not the easiest thing in the world to do. But in this case it's the right thing.

If the rain stopped by 2 or 3 o'clock today, the track certainly could be dry in time for an 8 p.m. Cup start. But Virginia state and Henrico county officials have been busy all night and all day making sure the people who live in this state and this county are getting what they need to deal with a potentially dangerous storm. Asking them to do that and to do what they need to do to make a NASCAR race come off at the track Saturday night was just too much.

The Truck Series race from St. Louis comes on this afternoon, so race fans can get their fix. We'll just sit here watching it rain and go to the track for a rare Richmond day race tomorrow.

Everybody might not be happy, but at least we're all above water. So far, at least.

TrackBite and barbecue and top names

INDIANAPOLIS -- There's good news and bad news from the U.S. Naitonals drag race, the last event before the National Hot Rod Association makes its inaugural visit to zMAX Dragway @ Concord.

The good news is that I was able to find a VERY respectable barbecue sandwich for sale on the concession midway here. Laugh if you will, but the propsect of finding decent barbecue this far north can be daunting.

The bad news is that I asked the folks who run the deal if they'd be in Concord in a couple of weeks. They said no. Surely somebody in the Carolinas will step in and fill that void.

* * *

It's just after 3 as I write this and there's one more round of pro qualifying to go. The big news there is that John Force is still not in the top 16 in Funny Car, which means if he doesn't go faster than 4.208 seconds in the final run he's going to fail to qualify for the NHRA's biggest race for a second straight year. (Here's the 4:50 pm update -- Force will NOT be in the show on Monday. He broke during his run in the final funny car qualifying round.)

One of Force's daughters, Courtney, has made elminations in Top Alcohol, but Brittany, another young Force, did not make the top 16. Ashley Force is safely in the field for Monday's eliminations, but John beat her in Sunday morning's first round of the U.S. Smokeless Showdown.

John's final qualifying run later Sunday will also be a semifinal matchup with Tim Wilkerson in the Showdown. It's entirely possible that Force could beat Wilkerson to move into the Showdown final but not go fast enough to make the top 16 in the overall event. That'd mean he'd run for a win in the Showdown at the end of today's program and then be done for the weekend.

People who hate NASCAR's top 35 rule point to the NHRA's cut-and-dried qualifying as an example of why letting the fastest 43 race each week - with no provisionals of any kind - would work. If John Force can be sent home from a drag race, why can't a Jeff Gordon or a Dale Earnhardt Jr. miss a Cup show?

I've said it before and I still believe it. I think NASCAR is right and the NHRA is wrong on this one. It doesn't do anybody any good for John Force not to be racing in the year's biggest event if he's healthy and able to go. The same goes for a driver like Tony Schumacher, the four-time defending top fuel champion who wasn't in the Top Ffuel top 16 until he put up a solid number Sunday morning.

* * *

My new mission in life is to find out what's in something called TrackBite.

In trying to get ready for the first drag race at the new place in North Carolina, I am trying to ask questions about things that make me curious figuring that people who read what I write about drag racing in the next few weeks might have the same questions.

So I am watching the NHRA folks swarm over the race track here before rounds for the pro classes, scraping up bits of rubber with tiny shovels and smearing all sorts of goo here and there trying to make the track sticky. A big part of this track preparation, I've been told, is this substance called VHT TrackBite Traction Concentrate.

OK, so what's in it?

Nobody seems to know. Or, if they know, they're not telling.

The internet tells me that it's made by Bazell Race Fuels, a company based in Ohio. It is, and I quote, "a unique formula that is designed to create adhesion between rubber, asphalt, and concrete. ...It stays tacky for weeks and won't run off, even in heavy rains. Most of all, it won't harm your track, it actually seals and protects the asphalt."

And, supposedly, it's biodegradable.

I promise I will keep digging on this important story.

The sites and sounds and more at the U.S. Nationals

INDIANAPOLIS – I am at O’Reilly Raceway Park in Indianapolis this weekend for the U.S. Nationals, the biggest National Hot Rod Association drag race of the season.

I’m here because the NHRA makes its first visit to the new zMAX Dragway @ Concord in a couple of weeks and I am trying to both learn enough about drag racing to cover it properly and talk to some of the folks here for stories I’ll be writing before the Carolinas Nationals.

I walked around for a long time Friday and then again on Saturday morning. When I wasn’t talking to people like John Force, Tony Schumacher and Greg Anderson, I’ve been just trying to get a feel for this whole deal.

I keep going back into my mind to one of the first conversations I ever had with one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, Fox Sports chairman David Hill. Somehow we started talking about America’s infatuation with the automobile.

Hill is from Australia, but he has a remarkable understanding of what the car means in our culture. We talked about how getting a car and the legal right to drive it changes an American’s life on a very basic level. When you can get in the car and just go somewhere, that gives you control over your life in a way that cannot be overstated.

And if America is in love with the automobile, then this is Valentine’s Day.

There are, literally, hundreds of cars here to go down the drag strip in one class or competition or another. One sheet I saw Friday listed 778 entries for that day’s qualifying runs. I don’t know if all of them ever got to the starting line, much less the finish line, but I know it seems like there were 7,780 trucks and trailers and flatbeds and haulers and other conveyances parked all around this drag strip to get the cars that did show up here.

Over in the pro pits, Don Schumacher’s mega-team had something like a dozen big-dollar transporters on hand to support all of its cars. Way out in the sportsman pits, dozens upon dozens of people were crawling around on the ground and diving into their engines working, at their own level, with as much passion on trying to win as every professional team on the property.

There’s a big buzz in the NHRA garage about the upcoming visit to the Charlotte area. People who’ve seen the $60 million facility they’ll be racing at have told people who haven’t seen it how nice it’s going to be. One driver told me Saturday that he thinks that by next year – not 10 years from now, but by next year – the Carolina Nationals could be considered as important to do well at as these U.S. Nationals.

That may be a little much – this is the sport’s Daytona 500 – but I think the NHRA is going to really enjoy its first race at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.

One thing I think fans in the Carolinas are going to love about drag racing is how accessible the drivers are.

Several times each day, most drivers will walk over to the ropes of their work areas and stand talking to and signing autographs for fans. You can stand close enough to see the crews piecing the cars together and, when the engines are being warmed up, you can get a face full of nitro fumes. The back of my throat may be burning for days.

The big news this weekend so far has been that Alan Johnson, the crew chief for four-time defending Top Fuel champion Tony Schumacher, is leaving Don Schumacher Racing at season’s end to start his a team that will have one Top Fuel car and one Funny Car in 2009. Alan Johnson Racing will operate in partnership with Al-Anabi Racing, which is owned by His Highness Sheikh Khalid Bin Hamad Al Thani of the nation of Qatar.

Translated to NASCAR terms, this would be very much like Chad Knaus of Jimmie Johnson’s team starting a Sprint Cup operation with backing from the prince of an Arab nation. Needless to say, if that happened in NASCAR I’d be writing more than two paragraphs in a blog about it.

Friday night, the first car that went down the track in Funny Car qualifying was the one owned by Conrad (Connie) Kalitta. Jeff Arend was driving it, but the name above the door still was “SCOTT.” It was the first time Kalitta’s team had brought a Funny Car back to a race since Connie’s son, Scott, was killed in a crash at a race in Englishtown, N.J., earlier this year.

It was a truly moving moment, especially when Arend made a good, solid pass down the track.

Saturday afternoon, during a round of Super Gas or Super Alcohol or Super Comp or Super Something (I told you I was just learning this), somehow a foam block on the center line at the finish line got knocked out of the way. This left the electric eye beams in both lanes that turn the clock off at the end of the track staring right at each other, basically messing up the whole timing system.

So one entire round of one class and part of round in another class had to be wiped out and rescheduled for later in the day. The NHRA reshuffled the schedule and everybody just dealt with it as best they could.

In NASCAR, that kind of snafu would have ignited hours or arguments and discussions at the track and days of speculation about grand conspiracies afterward. Lots of people would have been convinced NASCAR did it on purpose to help – or to hurt – Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Fair for one guy ought to be fair for the other

Saturday night's Sharpie 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway certainly gives NASCAR Nation plenty to talk about until next weekend, huh?

As I mentioned briefly in what I wrote for the Observer on Monday, don't ask me to tell what's right and what's wrong when it comes to the "ettiquette" of bumping a guy to take the lead from him on a short-track.

Here's what I do know about it, though.

• It doesn't seem right to me for fans to be critical of one driver for bumping others and then say he gets what he deserves when he gets bumped. If you don't like Kyle Busch because you think he knocks people out of the way too often, then what you're telling me you don't like is the bumping and not the guy doing it. OK, then, if Busch gets bumped isn't he as much of the victim as somebody that he bumps? If it's the bumping that's wrong, then it's wrong no matter who does it, right?

• I know there's a difference between bumping somebody and wrecking somebody. That's obvious. But don't tell me you're surprised Busch got mad Saturday night when Carl Edwards hit him and moved him up the track. You might just feel that it's part of short-track racing, but surely you understand WHY Busch was angry. He'd led 415 straight laps but didn't win the race. You have to let him have a little room to be bummed about that, don't you?

• I will say this. Over the course of a short-track race bumps just like the one Edwards gave Busch happen 100 times or more around the track somewhere in the field. Some you see, some you don't. Some cause wrecks. Some cause guys to get mad and wreck the guy who bumped him. But they happen everywhere. The one we'll be talking about all week, though, happened for the lead with 30 laps to go. Just because it's more prominent, shouldn't it fall under the same rules of the racing road as any bump happening anywhere in the field? Or are the rules different when it comes to first and second?

• Give Edwards credit for not pulling the old "Man, I am so sorry that happened" routine. Like it or not, Edwards told the truth. You have to like that.

• I don't think NASCAR will penalize anybody for the post-race stuff. Busch got called to the NASCAR hauler, but Edwards did not. Still, it should be at least pointed out that this kind of stuff is dangerous. Busch bumped Edwards about 20 feet from a line of cars heading to the garage/pit area. Edwards turned right back into Busch in retaliation. If one of those cars jerks in an unexpected direction during all of that, somebody could have been hit who wasn't part of the deal. I don't like drivers using their cars as weapons, period.

• All of that having been said, you have to at least admit that this is exactly why Bristol is the phenomenon it is. You may not think it's fair or sportsmanlike or whatever, but they jam 160,000 or so in there because there's a reasonable expectation that something memorable and controversial is going to happen. And on a fairly regular basis, it does.

Some quick thoughts on a Saturday at Bristol

BRISTOL, Tenn. - A few quick notes as the crowd gathers for tonight's Sharpie 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway:

* * *

On the way back to the hotel in Johnson City last night, I passed a store with a lighted signboard that read:

BEER
BAIT
LOTTERY

Sometimes you can say a lot with just a few words.

* * *

Not for nothing, but there's a can of White Rain hair spray in the men's bathroom in the press box. I hope they didn't think this was the TV booth by mistake.

* * *

They keep saying that cockroaches will be the only thing that survives a nuclear holocaust. I disagree. I think golf carts will make it, too. Even if you destroyed 95 percent of the ones that are swarming around this place there'd still be enough rolling to make it look like an anthill.

* * *

So I am watching the Olympics the other night and they show the gold-medal race for BMX bicycles. Americans got the silver and the bronze, but the gold went to somebody from Latvia.

Latvia?

How in goodness name is anybody from Latvia the best BMX bike racer in the world? There are 20 kids at every park in the United States, driving down steps and jumping over sidewalks, who should be able to wax the best rider there has ever even been in Latvia.

* * *

Have you seen the deal where the guy from Cuba who got disqualified from a taekwondo match in the Olympics kicked the referee who made that call right in the face? Just hauled off and put a Bruce Lee right on the ref's chops. If Cuba has a World Wide Wrestling equivalent, that guy's gonna get rich.

* * *

Paula Deen was here Friday, serving as the grand marhsal for the Nationwide race. Deen's story is a great one and she's my kind of cook. But I am telling you that if Paula had seen the fried chicken the track's caterers had the nerve to serve for dinner that night she would have had a stroke.

* * *

Seriously, how many engineers did it take and how long did they have to work to develop hotel pillows that are precisely too thin to use one at a time but entirely too thick to use in a stack of two?

* * *

Have I mentioned that I truly do hate The Wave?

Childress likely has a big points play up his sleeve

BRISTOL, Tenn. - We had us an interesting little news conference here at Bristol a little while ago, with Richard Childress announcing that Casey Mears will join his team as a driver in 2009.

The twist, which had been rumored in the past 10 days or so, is that Mears will NOT be driving the No. 33 car that will be added to the Richard Childress Racing fleet next season. Mears, instead, will go into the No. 07 car sponsored by Jack Daniels.

Clint Bowyer, who got that car and that team into the Chase last year and is trying to make it back there this year, will be moving to the new car sponsored by General Mills, which is moving to RCR from Petty Enterprises next year.

What's more, the points that Bowyer earns this year will stay with the 07 next year and that means it's Mears who'll be protected for the first five races of 2009 - inside the top 35 in points and therefore not in danger of missing a race.

Childress, though, hinted that Bowyer might not have to run without a net. He said the team has been looking into some things and is "working on some stuff" that might keep Bowyer from being exposed to miss a race if he crashes on a qualifying lap or rain interferes in the season's first five weeks.

Don't ask me what that means. The way NASCAR has allowed people to play fast and loose with owner points in the past few years I suppose anything is possible.

I know this much. RCR has four primary sponsors - Caterpillar for Jeff Burton, Shell for Kevin Harvick, General Mills for Bowyer and Jack Daniel's for Mears. Is there another Chevrolet team that has more teams than it has sponsors right now, perhaps a team with which Childress is already sharing an engine-building venture?

Dale Earnhardt Inc. has four cars right now, but I am not sure even DEI's officials could make the case they've got four full sponorships lined up for 2009.

Could Childress "buy" one of the DEI teams and harvest the owner points for the team Bowyer will be with next year?

And you thought this stuff was almost over with.

In accepting responsibility, Gibbs makes the right call

If you are a fan of Joe Gibbs Racing, you should be proud of that team today.

Here's what team owner and founder Joe Gibbs said Wednesday after NASCAR announced penalties against his team for their cheating - and that's precisely what it was -at Saturday's Nationwide Series race at Michigan.

"We want to apologize to NASCAR, all of our partners, all of our families at JGR and all of our fans. ... A poor decision was made by some key members of our organization, and 100 percent of the blame rests with us. ...We take full responsibility."

It wasn't NASCAR's fault. It wasn't the media's fault. It didn't have anything to do with how many teams might have cheated in the past or with how many might cheat in the future.

We did it, Gibbs said. We shouldn't have, but we did and we take all the blame.

Seven members of the Gibbs team were suspended indefinitely by NASCAR. You would assume that means longer than six races, which has been the standard suspension of late, but indefinite means we don't know how long that means.

Gibbs, though, said that regardless of what NASCAR means, the team will suspend those involved, including crew chief Jason Ratcliff of the No. 18 team and Dave Rogers of the No. 20 team, for at least the remainder of this season. The team will also impose additional fines, above the $50,000 fine levied by NASCAR, on those involved and will make those people pay those fines.

Ratcliff and Rogers were among those suspended Wednesday. So were the car chiefs (Dorian Thorsen on the 18 and Richard Bray from the 20) and engine tuners (Michael Johnson from the 18 and Dan Bajek from the 20). The seventh person suspended was Toby Bigelow, a crew member on the No. 18 team.

We don't know all about who did what or who knew about what was being done, but we know that Gibbs and his team are holding those seven people accountable. And It's about damn time a team in stock car racing showed it knows what that word means.

I've had fans tell me this wasn't cheating because the shims weren't in the car during the race, so it didn't have any impact on the performance of the cars. That's completely idiotic.

Brad Keselowski said it right when he said that by using the shims to try to fool NASCAR's dyno tests, the JGR culprits were trying to cheat for the rest of this year and the first part of next year - until such time as NASCAR does another dyno test on Nationwide cars.

When NASCAR ordered Toyota teams to use a carburetor spacer with smaller holes to let air in, cutting them by about 15 horsepower, it surprised nobody that Toyota teams and officials objected to that decision.

But that's NASCAR's call. Once it was made, the fact that somebody at JGR disagreed with it or tried to hide the fact they'd worked their way around it wasn't justified.

Even if an official makes an obviously poor call, no participant in any sport is thereby justified in proceeding as though the call wasn't made. If the Green Bay Packers don't like a holding call, they can't ignore the penalty and snap the ball anywhere they want to on the field, can they?

You can't choose what portion of the rules you want to play by, not if you want to play with any honor or integrity. In dealing with this situation the way it has, Joe Gibbs Racing has showed that it has honor and integrity and it should be applauded for that.

What's so disheartening about stock car racing sometimes is that there are people who'll still say that the only thing JGR did wrong was get caught.

The culture in NASCAR that glorifies those who break the rules sickens me, and it always has.

You can be an innovator and not be a cheater. Thousands of dedicated racers have developed ways to go faster in this sport's history and they've done it the right way. They're the ones who should be praised and honored, not those who're constantly looking for shortcuts.

Cheating is another way of saying you don't have the ability to do things the right way and still be a success.

Cheating is a way of saying that you want to win, but only the easy way. You don't want to win badly enough and can't do your job well enough to do it fair and square.

Cheating is a cowardly, selfish act. It's taking responsibility for it and taking steps to keep it from happening again, as JGR has done in this case, that takes courage.

NASCAR has yet another chance to send a message on cheating

Why would somebody who works for Joe Gibbs Racing stoop to sticking magnets on the bottom of the accelerators of the No. 18 and No. 20 Nationwide Series cars, hoping to keep NASCAR from getting a true reading on horsepower test when the engine was put on the chassis dyno after Saturday's race at Michigan?

I don't know.

And I don't care.

The magnets, which acted like door stops to keep the throttle from being opened 100 percent, were there. Joe Gibbs Racing is responsible for everything that's in or on its race cars. Under NASCAR rules, the crew chief is held responsible for the actions of his team.

So when NASCAR lowers the penalty boom on the teams next week, crew chief Jason Ratcliff on the No. 18 and Dave Rogers on the No. 20 should be suspended for the rest of the season.

NASCAR can and most likely will fine the team and deduct points, and that's entirely proper. But there has to be a clear message sent for such a blatant effort to subvert NASCAR's efforts to keep the racing fair.

I know some people think NASCAR was wrong to take horsepower away from Toyota's Nationwide Series teams a few weeks ago. Maybe you can construe that, if you're so inclined, into some justification for somebody at JGR to try to fudge the numbers with NASCAR testing cars again after Saturday's race.

But now that they've been caught - and because the same thing was done on two cars let's, please, not have anybody say this was simply some kind of mistake - whoever did this has placed a cloud over everything the Gibbs Nationwide teams have done this year.

Fair or not, that's reality.

Some people will go so far as to say it taints what Gibbs cars have done in Cup racing, but I don't buy that. The engine package is different between the two series. But if you are predisposed to believe that cheating happens, what happened after Saturday's race indicates that at least somebody who works at JGR is willing to break the rules to get ahead. (And no, before you say it, nobody was "bending" the rules here.

This was cheating, pure and simple.) That's not something any team should want to be associated with.

Do I think Ratcliff and/or Rogers had anything to do with how or why this was done?

I don't know.

And I don't care.

It does not matter. The rule is they're responsible. If J.D. Gibbs, the team's president, wants to fire somebody who admits to being responsible for this that's fine. From the NASCAR perspective, though, Ratcliff and Rogers are the responsible parties. They need to pay the price and NASCAR needs to make an example of them.

I am SO tired of hearing that "if you're not cheating, you're not trying."

No, if you're cheating, you're cheating.

When gadgets go wrong

With me, it’s always something.

Before you start, what follows is not whining. It’s not really complaining, although my run of luck is something I’d just as soon see end.

I guess it started at Indianapolis. I was riding down the street, talking to Sirius NASCAR Radio executive producer Daniel Norwood on my Blackberry. I said something and Daniel didn’t answer. I said something else and he said, “Hello?” I kept talking, he couldn’t hear me.

Dropped calls happen, but this was odd. I could hear him. I was actually on a headset, since I was driving, so I took it out and dialed him back. Same thing. I could hear him but he couldn’t hear me.

I was on the way to the hotel to check in, and when I got there the room wasn’t ready. So I looked up the location of the nearest Sprint store and took it over there. The guy took it apart while I waited for like 30 minutes. “Yep,” he said when he was done. “It’s broken.”

So I let the Sprint folks at the race track look at it. They said my Blackberry was toast and swapped it out with a new one. They transferred all my contacts over and everything, but until I could get it to the folks in my office I couldn’t get e-mails on it through my Observer account. A Blackberry without e-mail is a cell phone, but there you go.

Then there was my car. I had to get a state inspection the other day and there were four light bulbs – a headlamp, the third brake light and two lights on either side of my license plate – not working.

They were all replaced and the car passed inspection. But the next night when it got dark, some of the perimeter lights that stay on when you turn the car off until you can get inside came on and stayed on. I mean stayed on. We came home in my wife’s car and I thought someone was waiting for us in the driveway. It was my car.

Now this had happened once before. I took some of the fuses out so my battery wouldn’t die and when I took it to be looked at it stopped doing it. And it hadn’t done it for weeks, a couple of months actually. But it’s back and for three days this week it sat in my yard with about 10 fuses pulled out and laid in the driver’s seat.

I put them back in today and the lights worked fine. So I couldn’t go get it checked. Tonight, my lights are flickering on and off as I write this. I’m through with the fuses and the battery in my 1998 Olds Aurora is – I swear – located under the bench of the back seat in a place you can’t get to with an act of Congress. If the car’s dead in the morning I may just shoot it – or me. One of us needs relief.

I also discovered that somehow in my recent move I have lost my iPod. It may be here in an unpacked box, but I can’t locate it. OK, I needed an excuse to get a fancier one anyhow. And it came.

So when I went to put my music library on it I had to reclaim that out of old files on my wife’s desktop. I decided to back up my songs to CDs, and spent much of last weekend doing that and then putting them on my laptop.

So naturally, I killed my laptop on Monday.

It started with something stupid that I did. I spilled some soda into the keyboard and fried the hard drive. Yes, I am an idiot. But I paid for the warranty and they sent me a new hard drive. I reinstalled the operating system and all the stuff I could, and got a very nice person from Dell tech support who did a lot of things I never could have figured out how to do. I thought I had it back on the road to recovery.

Until today.

First, I had to take it to the office to get some Observer software put on it so I can link to the system there. While they were at it they put the e-mail on the Blackberry, too. So I brought the laptop home and tonight the little touchpad thing stopped working. The thing that allows you to move the cursor around? Kaput. I went to Wal-Mart at 9:30 to buy a mouse and it seems to be working as I write this.

So by morning I could have a car with a dead battery, a laptop that I can move the cursor on, a cell phone that might dial Tibet on its own and an iPod that interferes with air traffic controllers.

Saturday’s job? Hooking the TV in my office at the new house to cable.

Cover your ears, folks.

NASCAR suit a messy tangle of cultural and legal issues

There has been a run of stories in the past few days about the $225 million lawsuit filed against NASCAR by former Nationwide Series official Mauricia Grant, capped off by Sunday morning’s issue of ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” series on the topic.

Late last week, NASCAR used the media to unleash a campaign to discredit Grant by dredging up some legal issues she faced in years before she was employed by NASCAR. It was a shameful tactic, suggesting that since NASCAR couldn’t go at Grant on the substance of what she claims happened to her while working there the company needed a diversionary tactic.

Let’s deal with that first and move on. Even if we assume that Grant did everything NASCAR says she did to the worst possible degree, that does not change by one molecule the level to which she is protected, by law, against discrimination and harassment on the job. It is not more acceptable to discriminate against or to harass a “bad” person than it is a “good” one, no matter who is drawing the lines between who’s bad and who’s good.

On Friday, then, NASCAR filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York a 29-page document outlining its defense in Grant’s suit. In rough outline, NASCAR says that Grant was habitually tardy for car pools leaving to take her and fellow officials to work at the track.

It says she was fired because of her on-the-job actions and performance and not because she complained about the way she was being treated by the fellow officials she named in her suit. In fact, NASCAR continues to contend that Grant never complained about that treatment to her superiors, as is required by NASCAR’s internal policies.

Then on Sunday morning’s 30-minute “Outside the Lines,” ESPN interviewed Grant along with three men – two of them black and the third from Mexico – as well as two former female employees. They all spoke about the culture that exists inside the garage and about the way women and people of color have to act to survive in that culture.

“I think minorities have adapted to NASCAR,” said Chris Justice, one of the black men interviewed on the ESPN show. “I don’t think NASCAR has adapted to minorities.”

OK, so after all of that where do we stand?

Grant’s lawsuit is a legal issue. The crux of that suit is whether, as her employer, NASCAR treated her fairly within the boundaries of the law and its own policies.

Does NASCAR have a clear policy regarding discrimination and harassment? NASCAR says it does, and I have personally seen documentation that shows that Grant was among the NASCAR officials who attended two training sessions, in January 2006 and January 2007, regarding those matters.

The existence of the policy alone, however, is not enough. It must be enforced and enforced fairly.

Grant says that it took her so long to finally complain about the treatment she was getting because she was afraid that the act of complaining would make her a target for retribution, a fear she contends was eventually realized.

On “Outside the Lines” Sunday morning, others echoed those same fears. The policy is no good if the culture makes it taboo to use it.

So the legal issues are entwined with the cultural ones. It’s hard to separate cleanly the “ways” of the NASCAR garage from the legal ramifications of this issue, and in some ways those two things can never be totally separated. That’s why diversity is so important.

Justice, one of the black men interviewed Sunday by ESPN, said he was working one day when he heard a fellow employee, who was white, refer to the way something was accomplished by using the term “nigger-rigging.” That phrase means to temporarily or haphazardly rig something only to the point where it works, with the inference being that it’s not worth the time or effort (or that the time isn’t available) to do it “right.”

Justice said that when he looked at the person who uttered the phrase, the white employee realized he’d used an offensive term and apologized.

If you have different people from different backgrounds working together side-by-side, eventually the kind of ignorance and prejudice that led to the very existence of that term will break down. But progress on that front can be glacial, and as an employer it is part of your job to make sure that, first, your workplace is diverse enough for the process to begin and, second, that the process takes place in a professional atmosphere.

Look, I didn’t just fall off a turnip truck. I’ve worked in some absolutely toxic environments in my life.

When I was still in high school I spent my summer days defending myself because the “boss” was a friend of the family who’d helped me get the summer job. I was “the boss’s boy” and “college boy” because I planned to get an education.

Because I didn’t yet have a couple of dozen stories of wild sexual escapades to share with my co-workers (who had hundreds of them, true or not), I was called just about every synonym for “gay” that you can think of.

Over the years I’ve been in some conversations that were held in what I felt to be all in good fun that involved jokes and sarcasm about racial and sexual stereotypes. So have a lot of you. So have a lot of people who work in racing.

The existence of that reality, in life as well as in NASCAR, means that whenever this moves from the personal level to a legal level it’s a messy thing.

Part of NASCAR’s defense in the Grant suit is that it was Grant, herself, who came up with the phrase “colored people’s time” to explain away why she was sometimes late for a car pool ride. Instead of laughing at that and perpetuating it, though, what her NASCAR supervisor(s) should have done right then is cut that off and say he or she didn’t want to hear it again, from Grant or anybody else.

Grant’s suit against NASCAR details several instances where fellow employees showed or threatened to show Grant private parts of their anatomy. Some of this allegedly happened away from the track at hotels where NASCAR officials were staying together and sharing meals or other refreshments in each others’ company.

You might argue this was not during “on-the-clock” time, but still. If a situation develops where anybody deems it appropriate to unzip his pants to make his point, somebody needs to step up and question the propriety of the proceedings.

I can say with a great degree of certainty that some NASCAR employees have been treated, are being treated and have treated each other improperly as human beings. But the courts don’t have clear jurisdiction on that. The courts do, however, have a say in how companies treat their employees.

There are laws, there are rules and there are policies that the courts help define and administer.

Mauricia Grant’s lawsuit is about that, and ultimately that’s what will be ruled upon. As for the rest of it, no verdict or no settlement is going to change the fact that people sometimes just don’t treat each other well.

We’ll never fix that, entirely, but surely that doesn’t mean we ought to stop trying.

The road course debate rages on

Every time NASCAR takes its show to a road course, like the one the guys will be racing on this weekend at Watkins Glen, N.Y., I get lectured.

People start telling me how great road-course racing is, how fans love it and how it's actually far, far superior to the kind of racing you see on oval tracks.

Every year, I have the same reaction.

What are you talking about?

Look, I don't like to see stock cars racing on road courses because I don't think they're very good at it. But if you like to see Cup cars on road courses then more power to you. We'll just disagree on that one.

But how can anyone argue that road course racing is preferred by fans in this country, much less by fans of NASCAR? Where's the first shred of evidence of that?

Did NASCAR become popular because it runs two road course races each year? No. In fact, NASCAR's explosion in popularity came almost specficially because it was an oval track series.

If you don't think there's a difference between the two disciplines, think about the split in the open-wheel racing world that just this year has come to and end. The Indy Racing League was built around the idea that American race fans prefer ovals, and even though the IRL has had some success with the occasional street-course events, it was the racing marketplace that soundly rejected ChampCar, a series that ran primarly on road and street courses.

There are two sports-car series that run on road courses now, the Grand American and American LeMans series. Even if they put the two series together and there was one road-course series with all of the best cars and best drivers in it, would you invest your own money in backing that series in a head-to-head battle with NASCAR?

Not if you had a brain you wouldn't.

If road-course racing is so great, where's the big-time television contract for that? Why aren't the networks lining up to show drivers turning right, as though that simple act alone indiciates superior skill?

Oval-track racing is one skill. Road-course racing is another skill. Sometimes specialists in one discipline will cross over to compete in the other, and that's fine. But if one skill was so vastly superior to the other, why wouldn't somebody who excels at the harder one wipe the floor with people when they crossed over to the easier one?

That simply doesn't happen.

Nationwide drivers racing blind is inexcusable

LONG POND, Pa. - OK, I have to tell you that NASCAR now has me completely confused.

Let's go back a week to Indianapolis. Tires were wearing out in eight to 10 laps and NASCAR took the correct action to continue throwing cautions to maintain what could have become a dangerous situation.

Make no mistake, if NASCAR had let the Cup teams manage the tire issues themselves at Indy somebody would have pushed it beyond all sense of logic and reason. I can't say for sure somebody would have been hurt, but it's almost a certainty that the safety of the new race car would have been tested in at least a handful of tire-related crashes.

NASCAR chose to come down on the side of safety and took the race down to seven laps to go before turning the guys loose to race. Some fans complained about that, but it was absolutely the right thing to do.

OK, we fast forward six days.

The Nationwide Series goes to Montreal for a race on the road course there. It rains. Hard. And NASCAR turns the cars loose on rain tires, using them in a race in the Nationwide or Cup series for the first time ever.

By the time NASCAR finally called the race, it was raining so hard that people were wrecking under caution. Marcos Ambrose dominated the race but got a speeding penalty because he couldn't see the lines that told him where he had to adhere to the speed limit. Some of the cars had a windshield wiper, but other drivers had to reach outside their cars with squeegies to clean them when they could. Even if the outside was clear, many drivers couldn't see because the interior side of the windshield was fogging up.

So let me see if I understand this. It's OK to race when the people driving the cars CAN'T SEE?

You're kidding me, right?

I've never been able to understand why fans wanted to see stock cars race in the rain, especially on a road course. These cars can barely race on a dry road course, let alone one with pools of water all over it.

I tried to watch some of Saturday's Nationwide race, but I just couldn't bring myself to participate in that lunacy.

I guess it has the same kind of appeal that golf fans get when they see the pros playing in the British Open trying to hit shots into a 50 mph headwind through rain that's falling sideways. That's never appealed to me either. I know what it's like to play golf poorly - I can do that myself. I want to see these guys hitting great shots and making long putts.

When it comes to racing, I want to see guys going as fast as they can go and still stay headed in the right direction, but that has to be done within the bounds of reason. There are some fans out there who keep e-mailing me telling me that part of racing's appeal is seeing drivers risk wrecking and getting hurt, but that just seems bloodthirsty to me. Racing can be exciting and entertaining without being unnecessarily perilous.

I just think it's lunacy to put people on the race track when they have no traction with their tires and limited to no visibility. Maybe that makes me a weenie, but if it does then so be it.

Talk about tires brings out some interesting details

LONG POND, Pa. -- I had an interesting discussion today with Stu Grant, the general manager of global race tires for Goodyear, about what happened in the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard last Sunday.

Grant and Goodyear issued a statement Saturday morning explaining the steps Goodyear will take to figure out what happened to the right-rear tires in the race at Indianapolis and its plans to see that it doesn't happen again. He then came on Sirius NASCAR Radio's "Press Pass," which I co-hosted with Steve Post, to talk about that release and about last weekend.

I was having a conversation with Grant on the radio and wasn't taking notes, but some of the things he said stuck with me.

For instance, he said Goodyear has looked at what went into the tires it build for Indianapolis and found nothing out of the ordinary. Grant said Goodyear has confirmed that the compound used this year was the same as the one used last year at the Brickyard. That means nothing was mixed improperly or left out of the process. Grant said Goodyear even went so far as going to the suppliers of the elements used in the tire construction process to see if those suppliers had changed anything from a year ago. Nothing out of the ordinary was found.

So if the tire was the same, the obvious next step is to figure out what was different. The clear answer to that is the car, since this year was the first time the "car of tomorrow" was used at Indianapolis.

What Goodyear has found so far is that drivers went into Indy's four 90-degree turns in a completely different way in this new car. Grant said drivers were pitching the car into the corner and then sliding the right-rear tire as they tried to get the new car to turn.

That's important because it basically changed the direction in which the tire was going through the turn. Instead of having the contact patch of the tire riding along with the grain of the grooves in the track's diamond ground surface, the tire was basically sliding across those grooves on the diagonal. Grant said that may be why the tire was turning into a fine powder instead of coming off in the kind of small pellets that would stick to the track off the previous car.

Goodyear is working with a company with expertise in computer modeling to see if the interaction between the tire and the track can be reconstructed in a model. Potential changes to the tire could then be tested in greater detail against that same model.

How do you make the tires react differently to the track?

Well, one idea could be to add something to the tire -- a resin, perhaps -- that would be stickier as it comes off the tire.

In the bigger picture, though, the solution could be making the tires bigger or wider (or both) so that it will hold more air. In general terms, the more air in the tire the more forces it can withstand. If you make bigger tires, of course, you have to made adjustments to the race car. So before Goodyear did that it would have to work with NASCAR and the Cup teams to make that work.

The one thing fans should know is that Grant never once tried to shirk responsibility for the problems at Indy. He said it's Goodyear's job as NASCAR's tire supplier to figure out how to build tires that will work on the car that NASCAR is now using in the Cup Series, and promised that's what the company will keep trying to do.

Johnson, team appear to be 'catching up'

LONG POND, Pa. - I wrote about Jimmie Johnson for the "That's Racin' " page this week, so I didn't think I'd need to write something else about him this early in the weekend (although, I'll tell you right now that unless something major happens he's going to be my pick to win here Sunday).

But Johnson was in the media center before the Cup practice on Friday and was talking about how hard his team has been working to get "caught up" this year. That's an amazing thing to hear coming from a guy whose team has won the past two championships.

But Johnson was talking about how he and his No. 48 Chevrolet team got to Las Vegas earlier this year and were just horrible.

"We thought, 'Aw, maybe it was just a bad test,'" Johnson said, referring to a preseason test session at the Vegas track. But when he went back to race, Johnson didn't wreck but still couldn't run within two seconds of the fastest cars' speeds. He finished 29th and was never even close to being competitive.

Johnson said that after that race he and his team were still reluctant to believe they really had real, fundamental issues.

"It took three or four races before we could even admit it," he said. "It was like one of those addiction recovery things where you have to admit it first before you can deal with it."

Johnson said it wasn't that his team didn't work hard in the offseason. "We were just working in the wrong areas," Johnson said.

What's remarkable about that is it shows how tough this business is. Johnson's team has been at the absolute top of its game for the past two seasons and has been pretty darn good since the No. 48 Chevrolet was first rolled out, but still it managed to get "lost" just like any other team.

Johnson said the team tested at Pocono and figured out some things about how the new car, the bump stops and the tires need to work on big tracks like this one. It took a little while to digest all of that and put it into their race cars, but Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus seem to be back on track now.

All of those people who believe this sport is only about "going around in circles" or "rednecks turning left" don't have a clue how complicated it is and how hard these guys work.

- David Poole

Click Baldwin's spirit made him a legend

Click Baldwin lived a legendary life.

Baldwin, owner of the Carolina Harley-Davidson Buell motorcycle dealership in Gastonia, died Tuesday night from injuries he suffered when he crashed his motorcycle near Lolo, Montana.

Baldwin was riding with a group of friends from the Hamsters USA motorcycle club on the way to the 68th annual Sturgis Rally in South Dakota. As he pulled out to pass a 1999 Honda Civic the car turned left and Baldwin hit it with his 2009 Harley. He was taken to a hospital in Missoula for emergency surgery, but did not survive.

Baldwin was born in Salisbury, but he grew up in the little Gaston County town of Belmont. He, his wife, Diane, and their family built their motorcycle dealership into one of the top operations in the Southeast, and Baldwin was well known in motorcycle circles as an outstanding builder of custom bikes.

But what made the 54-year-old Baldwin truly legendary was his spirit.

He and NASCAR driver Kyle Petty were long-time friends, and Baldwin was part of the small group that helped inspire Petty's annual charity motorcycle ride across America.

"Back in 1995, he and I, along with a few other close friends, were just a group of guys that wanted to ride our motorcycles across the country," Petty said. "We found out that we could raise some money for charity while doing it and the Kyle Petty Charity Ride was born. While it had my name on it, Click was a driving force behind the ride."

Baldwin, whose actual first name was Clifton, took part in every one of the Petty rides, including one that wound up recently in Savannah, Ga. He did far more than ride in them, he helped organize them and worked tirelessly on them. He helped line up motorcycles for riders and pretty much did everything he could to make sure the rides were a success.

"Words cannot describe what Click Baldwin has meant to me, my family and the Victory Junction Gang Camp," Petty said. "There has never been a more giving human being. He was more than a friend, he was like a brother to me."

Baldwin had many friends in the NASCAR community. He sold them motorcycles and helped whenever and however he could in the causes they supported. He sponsored "poker runs" and other charity events for causes such as the Holy Angels nursery in his hometown of Belmont and gave freely of his time, his energy and his money when any of those things were needed.

Petty said it as good as anybody ever could.

"We've lost a great one," Petty said.

Race will provide answers about tire decisions

INDIANAPOLIS - Let me say a couple of quick things about the whole tire issue before today's Allstate 400 at the Brickyard gets started.

If this race turns into a debacle, NASCAR and Goodyear will have to deal with that. The story may not pan out to be a big deal at all. The track conditions may improve and the Pocono tires that have been brought in as a backup plan may not be needed.

But right now, there are two things that should be said.

Given the circumstance that exist before the green flag falls, it seems to me that NASCAR and Goodyear and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway have dealt with this about as well as they could.

They've all worked together and made a back-up plan. They've got a plan to try to make things as fair for everybody as is possible given the cards the conditions are dealing them and that's about the best they can do.

On the other hand, the question is whether enough has been done to keep the situation from developing the way it has.

It's easy to say now that NASCAR should have brought the car of tomorrow here for a full-blown test to see if the new car would create different challenges. NASCAR and Goodyear did to a tire test here, and nothing apparently jumped out at them or you'd think they would have reacted then. If 45 or 50 teams had come to test and there had been more signs of excessive tire wear, maybe things would have been different. But who knows?

In an abstract sense, you can say that NASCAR is too big of a deal to leave things like this to guesswork. And you can say that Goodyear's job is to bring a tire that works to every track. That latter is clearly more easily said than done.

Goodyear has to walk a fine line between providing tires that will last and tires that can be raced on, and sometimes that line is a moving target. To get things right here, the tire has to work for how the track is going to be at the end of today's race. That target might be missed here today.

The way things are in our world these days, people want to know who's to blame when anything goes wrong. If this were talk radio, I am sure I would have an answer on that for you - talk radio always knows who to blame. (Usually, by the way, that's the liberal media.)

But basically in this deal I think everybody what they thought they ought to do, and we're just about to find out if they got it right or not.

Officials in Kannapolis rush to defend removal of 'worn and dirty' flags

Not long after my previous blog about the “Dale Trail” banners being yanked down in Kannapolis got posted, I got an e-mail from John Cox, the president and chief executive officer of the Cabarrus Regional Partnership.

Cox sent along a copy of an e-mail sent by Kannapolis city manager Mike Legg in which Legg says banners honoring the late Dale Earnhardt aren’t coming down because David Murdock wants to show his North Carolina Research Center to some “important” visitor this weekend and doesn’t think NASCAR-themed banners are a good match for the new science research park project.

Legg called a story about the banners in The Salisbury Post and other reports about the matter “inaccurate or incomplete.” Cox sent a copy of an e-mail Legg sent to a Kannapolis citizen trying to clear things up.

“Let me assure you, the City of Kannapolis has absolutely no desire or plans to change our ongoing commitment to honoring Dale Earnhardt and his legacy,” Legg wrote. He said the city council put $25,000 in this year’s budget to enhance the plaza where a statue honoring Earnhardt stands.

Legg said that the “Dale Trail” banners were removed “because they were worn and dirty and the CVB (Cabarrus Convention and Visitors Bureau) believed that they needed a fresh look.”

Legg said there are plans to “enhance” the Dale Trail in Cabarrus County and Kannapolis.

“Thoughts are to include a driving CD taking people to all the points of interest along the Dale Trail,” he wrote. “Also thoughts are being discussed of installing attractive informational markers at key interest points (Ralph Earnhardt's grave, the D.E. Plaza, etc.). There is also the possibility or a new Dale/NASCAR banners being created to honor the sport and the legacy of Dale. This notion of the banners being removed permanently is simply false information.”

I told Cox that it seems like a convenient coincidence that the decision was made to “freshen” the banners right after emails exchanged this week about the banners in relation to Murdock’s weekend plans.

And if Earnhardt’s hometown is going to honor his memory with new banners, maybe next time Kannapolis shouldn’t let them get so “worn and dirty” they need to be taken down all at once.

Maybe the new research center can someday develop a fabric that won’t get worn and dirty as quickly and everybody will have a nice synergy to talk about.

“Even though we are certainly proud of the changes going on in the City of Kannapolis and our new and exciting future, we are in no way abandoning our history and heritage,” Legg wrote.

“On the contrary, we continue to search for ways to enhance the preservation of our past as well as improve our future.”

Duh-huh! That 'best face' has egg all over it

It looks like we've had another outbreak of idiocy.

According to The Salisbury Post, Kannapolis is taking down banners relating to the late Dale Earnhardt apparently because billionaire David Murdock is bringing an important guest to town this weekend and he wants to see the town put on "it's best face."

The rumbling is that Murdock is bringing Oprah Winfrey in to look at the North Carolina Research Center, the science research park that Murdock's company, Castle & Cooke, is developing on the site of the former Cannon Mills.

Apparently there have been some e-mails exchanged among city officials in Kannapolis and members of the Cabarrus Convention and Visitors Bureau that "Dale Trail" banners celebrating the fact that Kannapolis is the birthplace of one of NASCAR's greatest drivers doesn't jibe with the efforts to turn the city into a home for science.

You know, because anybody who likes NASCAR is stoopid.

Good grief.

First, in case you haven't noticed, there's a pretty fair concentration of smart people who work in the NASCAR shops and live in homes in Cabarrus and surrounding counties. NASCAR teams have dozens of engineers and highly trained experts in things like fluid dynamics. A brand-new, state-of-the-art, rolling road wind tunnel just opened in the county a week ago and race teams from all over the world are signing up to bring their cars here for high-tech research.

Second, if Cabarrus County wants to be the "home of science" then why doesn't it tell its hotels and restaurants not to serve those "NASCAR people" who come in not only when there are races in town but all year round to see things like the Dale Earnhardt statue that's in downtown Kannapolis.

Surely these nitwits with the up-turned noses don't want the dumbed down dollars from race fans to taint those collected from all the "smart" people who come into for Murdock's new deal.

Third, if Murdock thinks Oprah Winfrey or whoever he's bringing to town this weekend is going to make decisions about a community about what kind of banners might be hung up on the poles along the street, that's even more insulting to the intelligence of that person than it is to the good people of Kannapolis and to the good race fans who ought to feel fairly well insulted by this whole silly mess.

Confessions of a back-slidden blogger

I know I have been recalcitrant on updating the old blog this week, but I do have a legitimate excuse.

Actually, I have THE legitimate excuse.

We’re moving.

I pick that tense with significant remorse since it is an on-going enterprise. The movers, God love them, came Wednesday and stuffed so much stuff in their truck that it’s a wonder it could still roll. But we’ve still got enough leftover at the old abode that I am spending my “off” Saturday driving a significantly smaller but still rented truck filled with the stuff we’ve still got to catch up on.

Moving is like going to the dentist, only more expensive.

Why, you might ask, would we put ourselves through this? My wife’s dogs, which aren’t terribly bright to start with, are having significant difficulty figuring out the answer to that. They’ve been confused all week.

The answer is quite simple, actually. His name is Eli.

The wife, Katy, and I have a grandson who’ll turn 2 in October. He lives in Oakboro, N.C. and we lived in Gastonia. It was about a 60-mile drive, each way, to see Eli and that was just entirely too far.

We’ve picked up and traipsed off to Stanfield, which I like to tell people is located in suburban Locust. We were west of Charlotte. Now we’re east and just a smidge south.

If you go to the end of our street and hang a right, you go past Stanfield Elementary School and swing a right through downtown Stanfield. No, there are no stop lights. Stay on that road a while and it becomes – I swear – Big Lick Road. One more right and a left or two and within about 15 minutes we can be at Eli’s. Or he can be here.

Eli has his own room at the new house, and as he gets a little older I hope he uses it a lot.

He’s the quintessential little boy. He’s got one of the best climbing gears I’ve ever seen. He runs just about everywhere he goes with a little sideways gait that makes it look like he needs to have his wheels aligned and balanced. He loves tractors and says that word as well as any other word he says with the possible exception of “paw paw” (which drives Katy a little nuts, to be honest with you).

We took him over to see the Kyle Petty Charity Ride stop in Charlotte the other night and the sight of a couple hundred motorcycles was the kind of sensory overload I love giving him.

One of these days, I’ll take him to a baseball game in Atlanta or to see the Carolina Panthers or the North Carolina Tar Heels play. (There are some N.C. State fans in the weeds of his side of the family, but I think Eli’s smart enough to see the light on that one.) And yes, I am quite sure he’ll be adding “race car” to his vocabulary soon.

Things will get back to “normal” some time next week. I head up to Indianapolis Thursday for one of my favorite race weekends of the year, and I am sure a lot of stuff will be going on there.

For now, though, I’ve got boxes to pack.
And move.
And unpack.

No room for selective enforcement

Saturday night, just before the LifeLock.com 400 at Chicagoland Speedway, a NASCAR official stood in the way of J.J. Yeley's No. 96 Toyota preventing him from joining the field for the start of the race.

As the field was taking its pace laps, Yeley was allowed to join the back of the pack. But just after the green, the team was ordered to bring the car in for a stop-and-go penalty. Then, on its first pit stop, the team got a speeding penalty.

The word from NASCAR, as the race was starting, was that Yeley's team had made a suspicious switch of the container holding Yeley's drinking water. One of the old stock-car tricks in the books is to put lead inside a water container to be used when the car is going through inspection. Once the car is weighed and cleared, the real water bottle is put in and the car is a little bit lighter.

NASCAR apparently thought Yeley's team was up to something like that. So NASCAR showed the Hall of Fame team who was boss. It applied the kind of "justice" that some people still think is colorful, if a bit heavy-handed.

The problem was, Yeley's team wasn't "up" to much of anything. Somebody changed the water container after inspection because they wanted the water Yeley would drink to actually be cold -- or at least cool -- during the race.

Now if the NASCAR procedure is for an official to be there for any such switch so he or she can be sure there's no hanky-panky, and if the team made the switch without an official present, the team was wrong. Procedures should be followed. But procedures also should have penalties associated with them, and those penalties should be such that it's not about NASCAR officials acting on some punitive whim.

At Infineon, another race team changed an engine after a practice and then told NASCAR it had done so. Part of the single-engine per event rule is that the team tells NASCAR first, then NASCAR looks to make sure the engine being changed actually has a problem and isn't just one the team doesn't like having in its car.

Again, if the team violated the procedure it deserves to be sanctioned for that. Maybe it loses practice time at the next race. Or maybe it's penalized a lap or two at the start of the race. Whatever, but the penalty should be set forth in simple terms.

What actually happened, though, was that NASCAR officials were angered by that team's temerity. So after the race at Infineon, that team was the "random" team selected for postrace inspection. (After each race, the top five plus one team chosen at "random" go through postrace teardown.)

After the next race at Loudon, oddly, the same team was the postrace "random" pick. And again, after the race at Daytona, the same team got picked again by "random."

NASCAR showed them, right?

Well yeah, but is that right and is that fair? Is that the way things should be officiated? I don't think so.

There's a scene in "Days of Thunder" where the man playing the Bill France character tells rival car owners about an inspection process on shipping docks where produce is allowed to rot before inspectors who would clear it ever even look at it. The stuff never failed inspection, it was just ruined before anybody ever touched it. The owners in the movie were being warned that's the kind of treatment they might get if they didn't toe the line.

It's common for a team that somehow feels it has somehow crossed NASCAR to fear that it's going to get a handful of speeding penalties in a subsequent race. That's not officiating, that intimidating. And it has no room in a truly professional sport.

What if Stewart switch were reversed?

Any time a driver of Tony Stewart's stature switches race teams, there are a lot of aspects to the story that sometimes get lost in the swirl.

In this particular case, though, there's one I can't help but keep coming back to. What if the manufacturer roles in this saga, which is finally unfolding this week, had been reversed?

What would the fan reaction be if Joe Gibbs Racing had still been running Chevrolets and Toyota came in and culled Stewart from that team to set him up with his own Toyota operation?

My guess is that reaction would be apoplectic.

Remember when Toyota was coming into NASCAR and everyone was talking about how that manufacturer was going to upset the entire business model of the Cup garage? Toyota would throw money around and make everybody pay more to keep drivers and top crew members instead of losing them to the new "menace?"

Yes, Toyota did get the Gibbs team to move from Chevrolet to Toyota. But that was at the end of the Gibbs contract with General Motors, at a time in which the team was free to take a deal from Ford or Dodge, too, if those manufacturers had stepped up.

Now, in the first year of that deal, Stewart is going back to the Chevrolet camp. And I don't care what anybody says today at the news conference at Chicagoland Speedway announcing that he's going to own part of Haas CNC Racing, GM's fingerprints are all over this deal.

Stewart has sprint car teams affiliated with General Motors and the Gibbs team's move to Toyota put him with one foot in each camp. I am not saying it doesn't make perfect sense for Chevrolet to want him to pick a side, or for Stewart to have loyalties to the people who're already working with him in those other series.

Stewart had another year on his contract, but apparently that didn't stop somebody from GM from suggesting that there might be opportunities for him if he could jump ship. Maybe Stewart sought out those opportunities, but either way it's clear that Chevrolet's racing folks have been working with a driver who had a contract for a Toyota team for 2009 on another option for that season.

I have no question in my mind that fans would be howling with outrage if Toyota did the exact same thing to a top-tier Chevrolet, Ford or Dodge driver in the same circumstance.

I stay on NASCAR pretty hard about being consistent, so it's only fair to ask the fans to not to have their own double standards, too.

This idea may sound shady but it beats my weather forecast

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - OK, so I was wrong when I said it would rain Friday at Daytona. All that means is I am now fully qualified to be a television weatherman.

* * *

I've been thinking about it all day and I still can't figure out why there are people who begrudge Mark Martin the right to change his mind and come back to run a full season in Sprint Cup in 2009. Apparently some people believe that every decision a driver makes in his NASCAR career must be final.

Some folks get upset when a driver decides he needs to go somewhere else or change his schedule to do what's right for him, for his career and for his family. Certainly there have been some drivers who've stayed too long toward the end of their careers. But I don't know if you could find a single soul in the garage who doesn't believe Martin can still get the job done.

Is it likely that Martin will win a championship in 2009 before going back to a part-time schedule the following year? No. It's not likely. But Martin is good enough that you can't say it's impossible, even in the face of overwhelming statistics to the contrary.

Martin will be 50 when he begins the 2009 season in the No. 5 Chevrolets at Hendrick Motorsports. Only three drivers in Cup history have won races after their 50th birthdays - Harry Gant won eight and Bobby Allison and Morgan Shepherd one each.

But to criticize Martin for "flip-flopping" on his decision to retire from racing misses one important point. Martin never said he was retiring. The fact of the matter is he has for the past two years almost always corrected anybody who said he said he was. He scaled back to a limited schedule and had no plans to change from that until, he said Friday, he got an offer from Hendrick that was so good he was scared he'd regret it if he didn't say yes.

Martin has every right to decide not to live with those regrets.

* * *

Here's a sobering thought for you. Morgan Shepherd is 66 years old. James Hylton is 73 years old. Kerry Earnhardt hasn't driven a race car in a year. All three of those drivers were cleared by NASCAR to compete in Friday night's Nationwide Series race at Daytona International Speedway.

Joey Logano just turned 18 and has already won a Nationwide Series race. It looks likely that he will be driving a Sprint Cup car for one of the series' top teams next season. Logano was not approved to race Friday at Daytona.

Hmmmmmmm.

* * *

I might have had this idea before, I can't remember. Either way, it's still a good one. They should let people into the infield "Fan Zone" at Daytona for free for the July race. But they should sell shade to those fans for $10 per square foot.

* * *

This is not a gripe, it's just a little window into life on the road. I got back to my hotel room Thursday night and I had clean towels and everything looked just fine except for one thing. My bed had not been made.

No big deal - I wouldn't have made it if I had been at home. I just thought it was curious. So I come in tonight and the bed is made. There are new towels, again, but the used towels are still in the floor where they were when I left. And the trashcans haven't been emptied.

My guess is that tomorrow night I will have no towels, old or new, and there will be a used vacuum bag stuffed in my closet.

Weather forecasts and failed inspections

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - It's noon in Daytona and it isn't raining. Yet.

Friday's schedule calls for qualifying to run from 1:05 for the Nationwide Series pretty much straight through until 6:30 or 6:45 when Cup qualifying would end.

I say would end because the chances of us making it 5 1/2 hours without a thunderstorm are tiny. It's Florida in July.

The schedule here makes no sense this weekend. Qualifying should have started at 9 a.m. Friday for Nationwide cars, followed around noon by Cup cars. That would at least increase chances for people to get a shot at qualifying for the race.

* * *

If Martin Truex Jr. gets a 150-point penalty for the car that NASCAR took from his team here on Thursday, it would put him 221 points behind the cutoff for the Chase. That would be a critical blow.

You know what I think - the team shouldn't be here the rest of this weekend. As it stands right now, in fact, the team hasn't had its car on the track and that's how it should stay.

But that's not going to happen. The team hasn't practiced its backup No. 1 Chevrolet, but even if it doesn't get to qualify later Friday it's guranteed a starting spot.

Every other car that came here this weekend managed to build a roof that got through inspection. The No. 1 team, in fact, had a backup car on its truck that got through tech.

I guess you could say that shows that what happened on the impounded car could be an honest mistake. I never have bought that explanation, but I am also telling you it shouldn't matter. If you can't get a car to the track that passes inspection, you don't race.

In a perfect world, that is.

* * *

How fitting is it that Jesse Helms, the former U.S. senator from my home state of North Carolina, died on July 4?

There may not be a man in history with whom I disagreed politically more often and more strongly. Regardless of that, a man who devoted so much of his life to public service should be honored.

Helms spent his lifetime fighting passionately for the things that he believed would make America better. One thing that's wrong with us as a country today is that we don't honor that as the definition of patriotism, regardless of what side of the issues an American might be on.