NASCAR Media Day sights and sounds

Dale Earnhardt Jr. sucked the air out of the tent in which media day was held Thursday, saying he wants “majority ownership” in Dale Earnhardt Inc. as part of his ongoing contract talks with the company.
There was more to his 24-minute session with print reporters, though. Earnhardt Jr. once again commented about what his stepmother, Teresa Earnhardt, said in the Dec. 14 Wall Street Journal about Dale Jr. needing to decide whether he wants to be a race car driver or a celebrity.
“I don’t make a habit of seeking out attention all the time,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “She portrayed it as I was out there waving a flag saying, ‘Look at me, I can dance and I can sing.’ …What she said was a low blow there.”
Earnhardt Jr. also talked about how the media coverage to Teresa’s remark had helped him solidify the position he has decided to take in the contract talks.
“Everything that has been written…I’ve taken that stuff and helped form my position and opinion,” he said. “You don’t like media opinion to sway your decision most of the time. In this case, I have a bad habit of being too modest. A lot of people helped me understand what I’m actually worth, what the situation is.”
How important to DEI is Earnhardt Jr.? On his Sirius Satellite Radio show Tuesday night, Tony Stewart said it best. “Without Dale Earnhardt Jr.,” he said, “DEI is a museum.”

Earnhardt Jr. also talked about how the talk about him needing to win a championship to “validate” his career is something he’s had a hard time coming to terms with.
“I never though I’d be good enough to race full time or hold down a job as driver,” he said. “I never thought I would win a race at the Cup level.
“I look around at people that have followed in their father’s footsteps and had limited success. I never counted on it. I had no goals set as a driver. I’ve accomplished more than I’ve thought I would. I’ve gone places that I thought I would never see. I’ve got lot of years left to in the championship.”
Earnhardt Jr. said he’s far less nervous to go 200 mph in a race car than he is to appear on the “Tonight” show with Jay Leno or present an award at the ESPYs.
“When we go do things like the (music video) with Jay-Z, I wonder how the hell I got there,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I’ve driven a race car at 200 miles an hour, flipped and crashed, and seen some really bad things. But, the most scared I’ve ever been in introducing a band (Linkin Park) on stage at the MTV Awards. I never want to do that again.”

Speaking of Tony Stewart, he’s apparently adjusting well to his new role as a member of the media now that he has his own radio show. Stewart hung around on media day as long as just about any driver, holding at least two additional informal chats with media members after his scheduled session was over.
Stewart said he’s lost about 20 pounds, total, but is down about 30 pounds of body fat but having added back 10 pounds of muscle mass. But he swore he’s not trying to slim down to get back into an Indy car.
“Don’t get that started again,” he said. He also took some ribbing about rumors he might be the next big-name driver to head down the wedding aisle. Stewart said that’s not imminent, but he did say he’s given some thought to the kind of wedding he’d want.
“I’ve never been to Hawaii and I’d kind of like to get married on the beach there, with just family,” he said. “Then, we’d come back and have a big party/reception and while we eat dinner we’ll have somebody record the wedding and play it while everybody’s there, so it’s kind of like everybody’s there.”

The prevailing wisdom among the drivers I talked to Thursday is that Richard Childress Racing is ahead of everybody else when it comes to being ready for the “car of tomorrow” races.
Jeff Burton wouldn’t say he agreed with that, but he said that when you look at 2007 you’d better be ready to run the new cars. “Take out the plate races and the COT races are half the season – 16 and 16,” Burton pointed out.

Mark Martin said he’s not sure about the new car. “I’m not even sure we’ll be able to drive on the track at Bristol at the test without knocking the splitters off,” he said.
…Kevin Harvick took some heat for calling Teresa Earnhardt a “deadbeat owner” a couple of weeks ago, but he’s not backing off from commenting about the DEI situation. “Dale Jr. is really the only person in this deal who has the bargaining power,” Harvick said. “He's got it all on his side and deservedly so. He’s the most popular driver. He’s been successful and…he deserves the respect of being treated like a grown man and not being treated like he’s 15 and somebody's stepson.”

It doesn’t go unnoticed that NASCAR holds its annual media day festivities in a tent that looks like it could be the site where the Cirque de Soleil might break out at any moment. Furthering the theme this year, there was circus-themed paintings and decorations scattered about.

There's more to it than simply trying to sell papers or drive web traffic

On the final weekend before we embark on a new NASCAR season, let’s talk a little bit about objectivity.
One of the questions I am asked most often is whether or not I have a favorite driver. The truthful answer to that question is almost always yes. But it changes a lot, certainly from week to week and sometimes from lap to lap.
Allow me to explain.
When you’ve worked nights at newspaper offices as often as I have, the one comment you can barely keep from laughing at is "All you guys want to do is sell newspapers!" Why, as a matter of fact, that’s true. I’ve always wondered if anybody ever called Domino’s and, in trying to register a complaint, said "All you guys want to do is sell pizzas!"
When people level that "sell newspapers" complaint, usually they’re complaining about the tone or approach to some facet of coverage, and of course there’s more to putting out a good newspaper than merely trying to pander for the sake a few more copies being sold.
But, for the most part, it’s good for newspapers when there are good stories to cover. The Observer does better, from a sports section perspective, if the Carolina Panthers are winning or the Charlotte 49ers or an ACC team like Duke or North Carolina makes the Final Four in men’s basketball. The paper and thatsracin.com also benefit when there’s compelling news on the NASCAR front for us to report.
For that reason, every race day I am pulling for the best story. Some days, that might be your favorite driver winning. Some days, though, it might be a better story if your favorite driver loses in heartbreaking fashion. When I have a rooting interest, it’s almost always for the best story.
Certainly, there are some drivers with whom I have a better relationship than others. I find some guys more interesting than others, and I am certain the same can be said from the drivers’ perspectives. Undoubtedly there are guys who don’t think I’ve done them right and therefore I am not on their lists of favorite writers. That’s part of the deal when you’re entering your 11th season on the beat.
Later on this spring, a book will be coming out that I did with Jeff Burton and his team during the Chase for the Nextel Cup last year. Burton and his guys were good enough to let me hang out with them during the Chase race weekends and I was able to get to know a lot of guys on that team a little bit. Does that mean I will pull for the No. 31 car over the rest of the cars in races this year? No, but that doesn’t mean some people won’t see it that way.
I used to kid around that I should change my email address to jeffgordonlovingidiot@charlotteobserver.com to save people time when they wanted to send me hate mail. You could put Tony Stewart, Dale Earnhardt Jr. or several other drivers’ names in there, too, because I’ve been accused to favoring them at times, too.
One of the things I’ve never claimed to be is objective, at least not in the strict definition of that word. According to dictionary.com, objective means "not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased."
Reporters are human beings, and feelings, interpretations and, yes, even biases are part of everything we see and hear. My job is to filter out as much of that as I possibly can, but my confession to you is that nobody can do that completely.
The best anybody doing this job can promise is that he or she tries to be fair. And so, before I pack up the suitcase to start another season on the road, let me promise to try to do that one more time.
Let’s go racing.

This racing beat has gotten bigger, more complicated each season

Now that there’s been time to let last week’s NASCAR Nextel Media Tour hosted by Lowe’s Motor Speedway digest a little bit, a few things are apparent:

I took over the NASCAR beat for the Charlotte Observer 10 years ago this week, and the one thing that has changed the most in that time has been how complicated the racing business is. Everything, soup to nuts, is just more complex these days. That’s a sign of the sport changing and growing, but it gives a fellow a headache trying to figure out where things are going to be five minutes from now, let alone five years.
This business of partnerships – with the Fenway Sports Group buying into Roush Racing and Ray Evernham saying that he’d like to have a financial partner, too – has to change the sport down the road. You’ve also got Red Bull, a sponsor, owning a two-car Toyota team. The lines are just going to keep getting muddier and muddier, I believe. I don’t know if that’s bad or good, yet. I guess we’ll just have to see.

Reporters who cover the sport are already getting blowback from some fans about how much ink (or, in the case of the Sirius NASCAR Radio show I do each morning, air time) we’re giving to the Dale Earnhardt Jr. story.
As is the case with any story in today’s media, it is easy to lapse into overkill. You sort of wind up covering the coverage sometimes, and that’s a bad trap to fall into. But if Tony Stewart or Jeff Gordon or Jimmie Johnson were in a similar contract position, that’d be big news, too.
The fact that the entire extended Earnhardt family seems to be forced into choosing sides on this deal makes it a story that’s hard to walk away from. And as much as hard-core fans, the people who like to discuss NASCAR every day, hate to hear it, it’s the kind of story that less ardent race fans latch onto and sometimes want to hear more about.
Don’t forget, too, that media competes as much as anybody. If there’s anything remotely new to this or any other big story, everybody wants it first. That turns up the wick, too.

Speaking of Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jerry Gappens of Lowe’s Motor Speedway pointed something out to me at the NASCAR Hall of Fame groundbreaking Thursday that made a lot of sense.
Tuesday night was the Dale Earnhardt Inc. dinner on the media tour. Earlier that day, news of Martin Truex Jr. getting in trouble with the beach patrol in Daytona for urinating on an SUV tire came out and someone asked a question about it at the dinner.
The question was asked in a way that created an awkward situation, and Earnhardt Jr. stepped into that by saying Truex “is in big trouble.” That got a laugh and broke the tension. “I would never do something stupid like that,” Earnhardt Jr. said, grinning at Truex.
It was a little thing, but what Earnhardt Jr. did there was get Truex off the hook. The topic was then dealt with and the discussion moved on. Put in the same situation, Earnhardt Jr.’s father would likely have done the exact same thing.

A big round of applause to Hendrick Motorsports. Instead of handing out “swag” to the reporters who visited on Wednesday, the team announced that it had taken the money that might have been spent on trinkets and freebies and donated it instead to charities in honor of the late Benny Parsons.
Every team, every sponsor and every race track should follow that lead, and any media member who complains about not getting a free hat or notepad should be placed on the “rejected” list when it comes time to apply to participate in next year’s tour or for access to tracks this year.

I think some folks went a little overboard in jumping down Jack Roush’s throat for saying things like he’s “ready to go to war” with Toyota in NASCAR racing.
The American auto industry is in Roush’s bloodstream. He’s a car guy, a Ford guy, and has been for so long that it’s part of who he is.
The company he’s worked with for most of his adult life is going through some rough times, and those hard times have hit Livonia, Mich., the town Roush calls home, as hard as they probably have anywhere. It doesn’t make Roush any happier when people tell him how many cars Toyota builds in the United States or how many people it employs, because in his mind every dollar Toyota makes here is a dollar Ford could be making.
I am not saying that I agree with Roush about how feels about what Toyota may or may not do in NASCAR. I don’t think Roush isn’t willing to compete for whatever share of success there might be for him or anybody else in racing. I just think he wants it to be a fair competition and he’s willing to say that out loud.

Early impressions from the media tour

If you apply the new Chase format to last year’s results, Tony Stewart would have finished second in the final standings instead of 11th after just missing the Chase for the Nextel Cup. He would’ve led Jimmie Johnson by nine points going into the final race at Homestead, but Johnson would have won the title by 16. Of course, everybody would’ve raced differently under those different circumstances, but I knew somebody would ask.

NASCAR presented the seven drivers in the fourth year’s class of the Drive for Diversity program at Monday’s media tour stop. The group includes Chris Bristol, who won at Hickory Motor Speedway last year, as well as Michael Gallegos, Paul Harraka, Jessica Helberg, Jesus Hernandez, Peter Hernandez and Lloyd Mack. The program is advancing beyond weekly tracks into the Grand National Division’s Busch East and West series and the Wheelen All-American Series, which is a good step. But money will ultimately determine whether any of those names become household words, and unless NASCAR starts putting a bunch of its own into the program instead of just funneling sponsors’ money that way, progress is going to continue to be slow in coming.

Sometimes your "uh-oh" meter goes off when you meet somebody relatively new to racing, and sometimes you get a sense the guy might be around a while. I might be 1,000 percent wrong, but at least based on first impressions I think Bobby Ginn is going to be a good car owner for a long time in the Nextel Cup Series.

Ricky Carmichael is one of the absolute best motorcycle racers alive today, but he’s going to start trying to become a stock-car driver at short tracks in Florida for Ginn Racing under Mark Martin’s tutelage. "Let’s be honest," said Carmichael, who’s 27. "The Cup guys are the best drivers in the world. I’m not even about to say I’m ready to be at that level. …That’s like saying Jimmie Johnson and Tony (Stewart) should come and race me. You have to be real. I’m not ready to be a Cup driver by any means." Mabye not, but with that kind of attitude he might get there some day.

Once the conversation with Teresa Earnhardt started, I thought it went pretty well

LOS ANGELES – You’re a NASCAR beat writer from Charlotte, N.C., the hometown of racing.
For six years, you’ve been trying to get Teresa Earnhardt for an interview. The door finally opens, and all you have to do is fly across the country to walk through it.
You arrive a night early. You arrange to have a cab pick you up an hour early to make sure you get to the interview on time. You spend all day doing background work and thinking out your questions. You finally get ready and go out to meet the taxi.
Then, after 25 minutes and two red-faced conversations with your hotel staff, who assures you he’ll be here in five minutes, the taxi arrives. Now, you’re cutting things close. The map says it’s 11 miles to where you’re going, though, so you’re OK.
But then, the cabbie decides to take the freeway. I know nothing about driving in Southern California, but it’s 4 p.m. and I know I am in trouble.
You make a frantic phone call. I’m on the way, don’t leave me hanging. But the person you’re calling doesn’t have his cell phone on.
Six lanes of traffic, and while it never actually stops it moves at a glacier’s pace. Forget the meter, since the company is paying, but it’s a good thing the cabbie said he’ll take a credit card.
None of that will matter, though, if you’re not there on time. You were instructed to arrive by 4:30. At 4:35, the cabbie is letting people over in front of him in the left-turn lane. Thousands and thousands of taxi drivers in the world and I find a courteous one now!
Finally, two mild strokes and $49 later, you pull up in front of the hotel where you’re supposed to do the interview. You have no idea where you’re going inside, but first the driver has to figure out how to get the credit card thing to work.
Finally, you catch a break. Somebody who recognizes you and knows why you’re her sees you walk in and says, “This way.” One floor up, I walk in and I’m still 15 to 20 minutes down the list.
This is why I smirk at people running in airports. Who needs the stress?
Never mind, of course, that it’s already 8 p.m. back at your paper and they wanted your story an hour ago. Never mind that you’re about to finally getting ready to talk to somebody who you’ve been trying to get to for years, and you know you need to try to slip in a question or two that people have been warning you away from for a week.
Oh, and there’s also the fact that it’s almost certain that Teresa Earnhardt has wanted to throttle you for things you’ve written as recently as 10 days ago.
Man, this is an excellent job. The fact is, though, that Teresa Earnhardt could not have been more cordial in the 13 minutes I was allotted. She answered the questions she wanted to answer and that was certainly her right. I hope that she doesn’t think it went too badly and that maybe, somewhere down the road, we can talk again for a little longer and cover a little more ground.
This time, I think I’ll drive.

There has to be a news story when Teresa Earnhardt talks

LOS ANGELES – By the time you read this, I will have spoken with Teresa Earnhardt.
For the first time since Dale Earnhardt’s death in 2001, she agreed to sit down and let me, on behalf of race fans and readers of The Charlotte Observer and thatsracin.com, ask her questions Thursday afternoon. Actually, it was sort of her idea.
There’s a documentary coming out real soon that’s simply titled, "Dale," and it’s the first such project about the late seven-time champion’s life that his family, including Teresa, has been completely behind.
Part of the deal in coming out here for the media day for that movie and getting a chance to talk to Teresa was that I’m not supposed to write specifically about it until an agreed time in the near future. And I will stick to that.
I got an invitation late last week offering to arrange a telephone interview during the day of media sessions she was doing. It took me about 30 seconds to say, "No, I believe I’ll come on out." I want to make sure she has a chance to say whatever it is she wants to say and that I hear it and understand it and don’t have to worry about another call beeping in or any of that nonsense.
Whatever she says, there will be a story about it in Friday’s Observer. In agreeing to hold back on stuff related to what the movie shows and how it’s structured and things like that, I told the representatives who set this up that there had to be a news story written about the fact she’s talking at all.
I’ve gone on the record in my columns that I think Teresa needs to talk to the racing media about her job as CEO of Dale Earnhardt Inc. She, of course, has every right to disagree and not talk to anyone. But I still think that’s part of the job she needs to do.
I’ve been instructed that I can only ask questions pertaining to the movie.
That’s fine, because part of her job at DEI is to sustain the legacy she and her husband built together, and that role of carrying on the legacy is part of the heavy burden she carries in her life after Dale’s death. Sharing the memories that will be in the film is a way to do that, and so questions that relate to the movie also will relate to how Teresa is doing as a person and as a CEO six years after having her life change even more dramatically than the sport her husband loved changed after his passing.
All I’ve ever wanted to do is let Teresa tell her side of the story, whether it’s about how the team is running or about how she’s doing as a car owner and as the leader of a business that is very important to the success of NASCAR.
When I send this blog in, I am going to shut down my laptop and pack it into a briefcase to take over to the hotel where the interview is scheduled to take place. Thanks to the time difference, I’ll be pushing deadline to get a story in the newspaper in time to make deadline tonight.
Look for it on thatsracin.com, and sometime early tomorrow I will follow up on this blog with more about what went on and how things went.
Talk to you then.

Juan Pablo this!

Some of Poole's notes from Daytona:

The second week of Nextel Cup testing started late Monday morning as the track had to be dried. The teams started about 10:45 and went right through a scheduled midday break until 5:30 p.m. That wiped out a planned teleconference with former Formula One driver Juan Pablo Montoya, much to the chagrin of a breathless cadre of media who believe that because Montoya has driven a car in Europe he’s automatically a superior species.

Montoya wound up sixth fastest on the day’s speed chart, two spots behind Chip Pablo Ganassi Racing teammate David Pablo Stremme. Team manage Tony Pablo Glover passed along his simple judgment. "Montoya is really cool," Glover said. "I think he’s going to be the real deal."

David Pablo Gilliland had Monday’s fastest lap at 185.090 mph, just ahead of the Toyota driven by Jeremy Pablo Mayfield, who ran 184.854 mph. Four-time Cup champion Jeff Pablo Gordon was third at 184.744 mph. Regan Pablo Smith, driving for Ginn Motorsports, was fifth best.

James Pablo Hylton, the 72-year-old driver chasing windmills in an effort to make the Daytona 500 field, has a really nice new yellow transporter for his No. 58 cars. On the side it lists his two victories in what’s now Nextel Cup, the last being in 1972 at that big track in Alabama. You know, the Taladaga 500 – that’s how it’s spelled.

Elliott Pablo Sadler went a little overboard in sucking up to his boss in testing, putting the likeness of DaimlerChrysler chairman of the board Deiter Pablo Zetsche on the hood of both of the No. 19 Dodges he’s testing for his Evernham Motorsports team this week.

Michael Pablo Waltrip’s car has a nice message on the side of it here. It reads "We Love you BP." It’s a get-well wish for Benny Parsons, who’s still in a hospital in Charlotte fighting complications stemming from his cancer treatments.

Debunking some of the 'other' Chase notions

Why just about every “other” idea for changing the Chase for the Nextel Cup is a bad one:
1. The “separate” system
This idea is that the drivers in the Chase should be treated separately from the rest of the field. The top Chase driver in each race, even if he finishes ninth behind eight non-Chase drivers, would get “first place” Chase points. The second best Chase guy would get the second most points, and so on.
Most people suggest a simple 10-9-8 (or 12-11-10 in a 12-man Chase) system. But it fails in two ways. First, it’s dumb. At Atlanta last year, Kyle Busch finished 27th overall but was ahead of three Chase drivers. So he would have gotten four points in a 10-9-8 system. The next week, Jeff Burton finished 10th overall at Phoenix, but ahead of only two drivers in the Chase. How is it fair for Burton to get fewer points for 10th than Busch got for 27th?
Second, it gives only the illusion of closeness. Going into Homestead last year, Jimmie Johnson would have been seven points ahead of Kevin Harvick. But that only sounds close. Harvick would have had 66 points after nine races, meaning he could only get to 76 by winning at Homestead. Johnson would have had to beat only three Chase drivers to get four points and get to 77. The number of points doesn’t matter, it’s how many you can make up.
2. Eliminating drivers
There are all kinds of suggestions for this, like cutting the Chase field to five drivers after five races, or eliminating the lowest guy after each Chase race so it’s down to two at Homestead.
No. No. No.
If you’d cut the field down at any point in 2006, Jimmie Johnson would have been eliminated.
Then, if he’d surged the way he did down the stretch, everyone would be complaining that he’s not winning the championship the way they did when Tony Stewart wasn’t in the Chase at all and won races.
Cutting one driver after each race is impractical. Do you reset everyone else after each race? That means the season comes down to who finishes ahead of whom at Homestead? A one-race championship? That makes no sense.
The arithmetic takes care of eliminating people. Everybody’s in the hunt through five or six races, but after that the list of people who have a shot narrows itself naturally. What’s the gain in arbitrarily forcing that to happen otherwise?
3. Big bonuses for every win
The whole reason to have a Chase is to try to keep the championship in doubt as long as possible. You might think that’s a bad idea, but it’s what NASCAR wants to do (and there are good reasons for that) and any Chase changes have to keep that in mind.
It would make it possible for a driver to make up more ground with a late Chase win if the bonus were 50 or even 100 points, but the likelihood that such bonuses would allow one driver to pull away early in the Chase is far greater. That defeats the purpose.
4. Do away with the Chase altogether
It never ceases to amaze me how much folks love the old points system now that it’s gone. I’ve actually had people tell me that the Chase hurts sponsors because they’re eliminated from title contention in September. Holy moly! Under the old system, by Labor Day it was usually down to two, three or maybe four teams in the hunt. Once in 20 years it might be five or six.
In the Chase, it’s ALWAYS 10 – and apparently will be 12 beginning this year – until at least the end of September. More teams, and therefore more sponsors, have more of a chance to be in the championship picture longer under the Chase than ever was the case under the old system.
If you think the Chase is hokey or a tricked-up way to pick a champion, you’re entitled to that opinion. But don’t tell me the old system was great, because my memory isn’t that bad.

Junior leaves early as team readies for a race that starts later

It may be bad news for Nextel Cup teams that Dale Earnhardt Jr. checked out early from testing. After driving the No. 8 Chevrolet on Monday and Tuesday, posting the fastest lap in drafting practice Tuesday afternoon, Earnhardt Jr. went home and Kerry Earnhardt worked through some things with the team on Wednesday. That would seem to indicate that Earnhardt Jr. is pretty happy with the car.

Some folks were surprised Wednesday when word got out that the Daytona 500 wiil start no earlier than 3:15 p.m. Eastern this year. Get used to it. Starting times haven’t been made official for Cup races yet, but 2 p.m. Eastern is the earliest tentative time for anything other than two races at Dover and the fall Martinsville race.

NASCAR will require drivers to use six-point safety harnesses this year. That means two straps holding the lower torso instead of the former five-point system that had a single belt coming between the drivers’ legs.

Mark Martin is scheduled to miss his first Nextel Cup race in 20 years when Regan Smith drivers the No. 01 Chevrolet at Bristol this year. “I think I will know what I want to do in the future by the end of that day,” Martin said Wednesday in a Sirius Satellite Radio interview. “My career is at a crossroads.” Martin is looking forward to his partial schedule this year. Martin said that after having three weekends off between Valentine’s Day and Thanksgiving for two decades, he has 19 weekends off in 2007. “That puts it in perspective,” he said. Martin also will drive at least six Truck Series races for the Wood Brothers and, amazingly enough, at least two Busch races (Daytona and Texas) for Roush Racing, his former Cup team.

Tony Stewart is in Tulsa, Okla., for this weekend’s Chili Bowl, but his race team continues to click right along here. Mike McLaughlin is driving it and one of the No. 20 cars was fastest in Wednesday morning’s first session at 184.483. Sterling Marlin, Jamie McMurray, Jeff Green and Jimmie Johnson were next in the morning. Most teams ran in the draft in the second session. Even though NASCAR will allow teams a half-day on Thursday to make up for Monday afternoon’s rainout, several teams still decided to head home after Wednesday’s session. NASCAR also allowed teams to test a third car on Wednesday, beyond the two they were allowed to use Monday and Tuesday.

Trip Bruce will be crew chief for Johnny Benson on the No. 23 Toyotas in the Craftsman Truck Series this year. Rick Ren left the team to work on Ron Hornaday’s trucks at Kevin Harvick Inc. Benson finished second in last year’s Truck Series standings. Bruce has been at Evernham Motorsports since 2005.

Gary DeHart has been hired as director of shop operations for Ginn Racing. DeHart has spent nearly 20 years at Hendrick Motorsports, where he was crew chief for Terry Labonte in his 1996 championship season. Since Bobby Ginn bought the team formerly known as MB2, it has nearly doubled from 85 to 160 employees.

There was a surprise or two, but not necessarily on the speed charts

Jamie McMurray had the fastest lap Tuesday morning as testing continued at Daytona International Speedway, running 184.090 mph, with Mike McLaughlin second in Tony Stewart’s car at 183.981. Jimmie Johnson, Ricky Rudd and Tony Raines were next. Some teams did drafting in the afternoon session and - surprise, surprise - Dale Earnhardt Jr. was fastest at 186.606 mph, with Casey Mears second and Tony Raines third.

Dodge took Elliott Sadler, Juan Montoya and Kurt Busch to Detroit on Tuesday to have them unveil a new passenger car model, the Avenger, which will be on the roads as the 2008 model. The NASCAR relevance is that the Dodges run in this year’s “car of tomorrow” races will be Avengers while the cars in the other races will be Chargers. How will you know? Because Dodge says so. How will you be able to tell the difference? Beats me.

Eric Kuselias will be the host of the “NASCAR Now” program on ESPN2, which will air weeknights at 6:30 beginning Feb. 5. The show will also air at 10 a.m. on Sundays beginning Feb. 18. Kuselias has been a host on ESPN Radio’s afternoon show, the “SportsBash.”

NASCAR finally made it official on Tuesday. No, not how many people are going to be in the Chase (even though every indication is that’s going to be 12). This year’s NASCAR Day is May 18th. Book those party rooms now! NASCAR Day is a fund-raising project where fans buy lapel pins for $5 and then wear their NASCAR apparel to work to show their fans. The money goes to charity through the NASCAR Foundation.

Dale Jarrett and Ricky Rudd both had good lines about age and racing on Tuesday. “That car,” Jarrett said, “doesn’t know how old you are.” Rudd told a story about his first career start at Rockingham. Rudd was 18 and said he walked through the NASCAR garage looking at all of the “old men” he would be competing with. “I was 18 years old. I was racing motorcycles professionally, Rudd said. “I was in the best shape you could ever be in…and I’m thinking, ‘Gosh, there’s no way these guys can compete. They’re not in shape. There’s no way.’”
About halfway through the race, Rudd said, he was so tired he didn’t know if he could make it another lap.
“Donnie Allison had to be 45 or 50 at that time,” Rudd said. “He lapped me for probably the 10th time that day …and he’s driving with one hand and he’s waving to me as I let him go by. I’m sitting there just white-knuckled up on that steering wheel and I’m thinking, ‘I’m missing something here.’”

Voting for the 2007 National Motorsports Press Association’s Most Popular Driver Award, sponsored by Chex, is now open online at www.MostPopularDriver.com. Voting continues until Nov. 19. More than 2.8 million votes were cast last year, with Dale Earnhardt Jr. getting nearly 1.2 million votes to win for a fourth straight year.

Actually being at the track can have its advantages, Junior notes

You could write stories for a week off what Dale Earnhardt Jr. said in his press conference Monday at Daytona. When asked specifically about his stepmother’s comments about him needing to choose between being a driver and a public figure, Earnhardt Jr. got his point across. “You guys that are here every weekend, you know what the sport is like because you're here every weekend,” he said. For the record, Teresa Earnhardt is not. “You know what it's about. I think it's probably on advantage to have a decent personality as a race car driver. …I think it is important to be well liked and be marketable. I think it's any owner's dream to have a driver that's succeeded” at that.

Some of the teams driving Toyotas are going to struggle this year, there’s no doubt about that. But people are underestimating Dave Blaney’s team at Bill Davis Racing, and that was the case before he turned the third fastest lap at 183.756 mph in Monday’s rain-shortened testing. Blaney finished fourth at Richmond and ninth at New Hampshire last year with a team getting ZERO help from the manufacturer of the cars he was driving. Toyota is going to give him as much support as he can handle this year. Blaney will be better than you think.

Boris Said, who was a big story here in July when he finished fourth in the Pepsi 400, is back to try to make the Daytona 500 in the No. 60 Ford. “This year it’s going to be so hard to make these races,” said Said, who has sponsorship to try at least seven Cup races in 2007. Said will be among those not guaranteed a starting spot in the 500 based on last year’s points. “There will probably be 30 people going for eight spots – really seven spots because Dale Jarrett will be here – so it’s going to be a nerve-wracking week for sure,” he said. Jarrett would be in line for a former champion’s provision in his new No. 44 Toyota for Michael Waltrip Racing.

Kasey Kahne went to Australia and raced in a pair of sprint car races over the Christmas holiday. While he had fun in the cars and traveling abroad for the first time, he said he wasn’t too fond of not being home for Christmas. “I thought it would be a good idea just to go and do something different over the holidays,” Kahne said. “But once I got there I realized I was wrong. It’s not the right thing to do. From now on if I go to Australia or anywhere else, maybe I’ll go on the 26th instead of the 20th.”

Robbie Loomis was crew chief for Bobby Hamilton at Petty Enterprises for three seasons and has some fond memories of the driver who passed away on Sunday. “Hamilton was a unique guy,” Loomis said. “He was special. He did his deal, and I think if you look at the way his cancer went it was just like the way he lived his life. He did it quietly and nobody knew a lot about what was going on. He just did his deal. Now he’s up there in heaven probably thinking he’s glad it’s over with.”

Kevin Harvick’s perspective on potential changes to the Chase for the Nextel Cup format is a little different, and it makes a lot of sense. “The guy who had the best year won the championship last year,” Harvick said, speaking of Jimmie Johnson. “So if we’d had the old points system, he would have won the championship. If we had the new points system, he'd win the championship still. To me the best car usually is going to come out on top in the end.”

People add up quickly in NASCAR's numbers game

I was up in Mooresville this week and had about 30 minutes to kill before I was supposed to meet up with someone, so I rode down the road where Robert Yates Racing’s shop sits.
When you come into the business park, you go down a hill and then back up it and the shop’s on the left. As you start down the hill, you can see the shop pretty well. The closer I got to it, the more I was wondering if I was missing a big story.
The place was absolutely deserted. I looked like it USED to be the home of Robert Yates Racing. The deal, of course, is that for about the only time on the calendar NASCAR was shut down.
With Christmas Day and New Year’s Day falling on Mondays this year, just about every team in the sport is taking this week off. It’s absolutely well-deserved on all fronts, but it is just spooky to go to a NASCAR team’s shop on a weekday and not see it bustling with activity.
I’ve spent a big part of my time the past couple of weeks finishing up a book that’s going to be called “Half the Battle.” It’s an inside look at Jeff Burton’s team as it went through the 2006 Chase for the Nextel Cup, and thanks to Burton and all of the guys on his team I think it’s going to be turn out well.
To gather the information to write it, I spent as much time as I could during the season’s final weeks hanging around with the guys on the No. 31 team’s truck and listening to them on the radio as they went through practices and the races.
It’s one thing to know how much work goes into getting a competitive race car on the track each weekend, but it’s an entirely eye-opening experience to see that up close with a focus on one team.
Week after week, I came away amazed at just how much has to be done right and how much has to be dealt with for a team to enjoy any kind of success in the sport.
I walked away after Homestead with a renewed respect for what all of the people who work in the sport do. I was seeing it up close with one team, but it also made me understand that I could walk into any truck up and down the garage and have the same experience if I hung around long enough.
About 25 people, maybe a few more, directly have a hand in getting the No. 31 Chevrolet onto the track for Burton to drive it each week. There are probably that many more back at Richard Childress Racing who don’t necessarily work on preparing that car, but work to make all of RCR’s cars go faster.
And then there’s another entire group who work to make RCR, the company, run so that the cars have a chance to race.
It’s staggering to do that math and multiply it by 43 cars. Even with the crossover work done on multicar teams, hundreds and hundreds of people have a hand in making these cars go.
Hundreds more work in NASCAR, inspecting cars and officiating the races, and each track had another few hundred people working to provide the sport its venues.
Here’s hoping that all of those folks who make a contribution to NASCAR got spend this week with their families and friends, enjoying the little bit of time when the race shops and the race tracks aren’t humming with activity.

Bobby Hamilton is still fighting

In August, Rick Minter from the Atlanta paper and I sat in Bobby Hamilton’s motor home at Bristol Motor Speedway and talked with him about his fight with cancer.
All of the reports about his three months of treatment for the cancer doctors had found in his neck were optimistic. The radiation and chemotherapy had taken their toll, but Hamilton was upright and moving forward.
Rick and I both wanted to write stories saying that Hamilton had defeated cancer. We kept wanting Hamilton and his fiancée, Lori, to say he was cured. They would not.
“She’s very careful about that,” Lori said, speaking of Hamilton’s lead physician, Dr. Barbara Murphy. “She doesn’t say, ‘Oh, you’re cured of cancer, you’re 100 percent clean.’”
The scans and everything that could be done from outside Hamilton’s body looked good. But some of the doctors at Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville wanted to do surgery to dissect Hamilton’s lymph node to make sure the cancer cells were gone. Some of them didn’t think it was necessary, but Hamilton did.
“I don’t want to go to bed at night,” Hamilton says, “thinking we half-assed it.” Rick and I left and wrote our stories, saying that Hamilton would have that surgery done the following week. I can’t speak for Rick, but I guess I just assumed that no news was good news so I didn’t think about checking in after the surgery to make sure everything was OK.
Then, one day last week, I got an e-mail saying that Hamilton had hired Ken Schrader to drive the No. 18 Dodge in the Craftsman Truck Series in 2007.
Hamilton had said on March 17 when he announced that he was beginning treatments that he wanted to return to drive his truck beginning with the opener at Daytona in ’07. After seeing him in August I knew he had a long road ahead of him to get back behind the wheel. But the Schrader announcement prompted me to send Lori an e-mail asking her how Hamilton was coming along and whether he was going to get to race at Daytona.
Lori answered me quickly, but politely said it’d be a couple of days before they really would have anything to tell us. Maybe I should have been worried by that, but I guess I was still in the wishful thinking mode.
And then, Wednesday afternoon, Amanda Jones sent out a release from Bobby Hamilton Racing.
“In August after extensive treatment from chemotherapy and radiation Hamilton and his doctors were optimistic about findings in his post-treatment CT Scan,” it read. “However, microscopic cancer cells still remained in the right side of his neck. Since that time, Hamilton is continuing his chemotherapy treatment and has gone through several procedures to keep the cancer at bay.”
Hamilton is still fighting. “Cancer is an ongoing battle, and once you are diagnosed you always live with the thought of the disease in your body,” he said. “It is the worst thing you could ever imagine. We are going to continue to search for the best available treatment for my form of cancer. I have flown to several places for other opinions. We know there are some of the brightest minds in the world working on a cure for cancer.
“I didn’t want to be labeled as a victim when I announced it and I sure won’t lie down and be a victim now.”
I hope everybody who reads this will say a prayer for Bobby and Lori and their families, and one for his doctors and another one for all of the smart, dedicated people in this world who’re working every day to kick cancer’s ass.
Everybody who knows Bobby Hamilton would love to see him back behind the wheel for the Craftsman Truck Series season opener at Daytona. But it looks like that won’t happen in 2007.
That’s OK, because 2008 or 2009 works just fine, too.

Fans will be key ingredient in upcoming radio gig

I am really, really looking forward to Jan. 1.
I hope most of you have heard by now that I am going to be part of the “Morning Drive” show that will air from 7 to 11 a.m. weekdays on Sirius NASCAR Radio channel 128. Our show starts Jan. 1 when NASCAR’s satellite radio rights move from XM to Sirius.
I will be doing the show with Marty Snider, who was a pit reporter for NBC and TNT and will continue to be part of TNT’s team in the new contract. He and I agree on some things and disagree on others, which is about the best you can hope for.
I am going to do that show as well as maintain my job as beat writer for The Charlotte Observer.
It means more work, sure, but I’ve been telling people that I talk about racing all day anyway. I might as well get paid and put some of it on the air.
We want our show every day to be a conversation among ourselves, race fans and the people in the sport. We’re going to talk about whatever the fans want to talk about and about what we think the fans are going to want to know. Some days I hope we’ll get it right, and other days I know we’ll wish we could have done better. But the idea is to have fun and to provide fans with what I think has been missing.
NASCAR chairman Brian France has said repeatedly that he thinks NASCAR is an “undercovered” sport. He has talked about how he wants the sport to be talked about and written about not just on race weekends, but all week long.
Well, that’s where we come in. In some of our meetings leading up to the first show, people have said they just hope we’ll have callers. That doesn’t worry me a bit. I know there are race fans out there with strong opinions they want to express. Read my e-mail or the comments on these blogs and you’ll see that. We want our show to be a home for those fans. If you’re fired up about something that has or hasn’t happened, we want you to know that we’ll be there four hours Monday through Friday talking about it.
We’ve talked about having on guys who work in the sport who fans don’t know yet but who we know work hard and do tremendous jobs. We’ll have drivers on, sure, and I hope any driver in the sport will feel totally comfortable to pick up the phone and call us up if he has something to say about an issue we’re discussing. But we also hope any tire changer or transport driver will do the same thing – as well as any fan.
Marty and I want to try to get to the bottom of things as fast as we can. When we hear a rumor, we’re going to check it out and get the people who’re involved in it on the air as soon as we can.
Of course, that’s not very much different at all from what we do now. It’s just that now we’ll have that four-hour block each morning to get what we find out to the listeners. Maybe we can stop a few bad rumors before they really get started.
One thing I hope fans will know right from the start is that NASCAR does not control what we can and can’t say. Sirius is paying NASCAR for the satellite radio rights, and the name of the channel is Sirius NASCAR Radio. But NASCAR won’t control the content. Like anybody else, they’ll try to spin things their way when news is coming out. But we’re going to call it like we see it. If the listeners think we’re shills for NASCAR, we won’t last on the air long. And I hope to be doing this for a long, long time.

Scribe's efforts benefit Victory Junction Gang Camp

I always hate to go to a movie when I know there are going to be reporters depicted in some way.
They always show reporters hanging around in a big group hollering obnoxious questions at victims of horrible tragedies. The way people talk to me about people who cover NASCAR for a living, they think the only thing we do is sit around and wait for free food to be served.
(Let me say this about that. Yeah, they feed us. But once this year somebody was doing a survey and asked me which track serves the best food to the media. I thought about it a long, long time and could not come up with an answer to the question. It's edible, don't get me wrong, but it's not like we're being hand fed grapes by vestal virgins or anything.)
There are some deadbeats in the racing media, just like there are almost certainly some wherever you work. But there are some pretty good people, too.
One of them is a guy named Al Pearce. Al has been covering racing for a long, long time. Nobody in the media, I'd bet, has traveled to NASCAR races via more diffent modes of transportation than Al has, either. He's taken trains, planes, buses, trucks, cars and motorcycles to get to the track.
He's also been on Kyle Petty's charity motorcycle ride every year he's been able to make it, and he's adopted the Victory Junction Gang Camp as a cause.
Two years ago, Al got a plain, white driver's helmet and went around getting every living Cup Series champion to sign it. Last year, he got every living winner of the Daytona 500 to sign a similar helmet. Once he's got all the signatures, he donates the helmet to Victory Junction, and it's then auctioned off to raise money for the camp.
This year, Al's project was to get every living driver who has won the Indianapolis 500 to sign one helmet. As far as some of the historians at Indianapolis know, there's no other helmet out there with all of those names on it.
Al has one to go -- Kenny Brack -- and he's arranged to get the helmet to Brack this week (UPS and FedEx have helped him ship the helmet to some drivers and then get it back to Al after it was signed). He collected a bunch when the IRL came to Richmond earlier this year and has been working on it pretty much all summer. He's also promising whoever winds up buying the helmet at auction that he'll see to any subsequent winner of the Indy 500 adds his name to the helmet.
Al and a group of family, friends and fans around his home in southeastern Virginia have raised nearly $45,000 for the camp with the helmets and a couple of other projects.
Once Brack signs, Al will give the helmet to the folks at Victory Junction and they'll decide when, where and how to sell it to raise the most money for the camp.
It's a really cool thing that Al has done, and there has to be some Indianapolis 500 memorabilia collector out there who's willing to pay top dollar for the helmet Al has put together.

New York: If you can't make it there ...

Sorry to be a little late about commenting on this, but with all of this “idle” time I have on my hands this “offseason” I sometimes let the hours just slip away.
(If you can’t detect the sarcasm, trust me, it’s there. There is no offseason any more.)
The announcement earlier this week that International Speedway Corporation has bailed on its plans to build a speedway on a site on Staten Island is certainly not great news for that company. ISC invested considerable time and money into getting those plans off the ground, and it’s a shame to see that come to nothing.
I know ISC and, by extension, NASCAR want to have a track in the New York City market. Goodness knows the folks who run stock-car racing desperately want New York to love them.
What I’ve never really understood about the idea of building a track there, though, is where’s the demand? Does anybody really get a sense that there are people living within, say, an hour of midtown Manhattan who are “underserved” by NASCAR?
Pocono and Watkins Glen are certainly within a reasonable drive of New York City. Race fans in other parts of the country routinely drive several hours to see a race. If there are fans who want to see racing living in the five boroughs, are they somehow deprived of that right?
ISC wanted to build a three-quarter mile track with about 80,000 seats on Staten Island and use ferries and helicopters and buses to supplement the bridges that might carry fans to and from events. One of these days, mass transit may play a major role in moving fans on race days. But I don’t see that happening any time soon.
Can you imagine a few thousand motorcoaches and RVs pouring onto Staten Island for a NASCAR weekend? Actually, I don’t see how it could negatively impact New York City traffic because it’s already worse than I thought possible. But still, the thought boggles the mind.
There are tracks in Nashville, Kentucky and near St. Louis that would love to have Cup race. Already built, already up and running. There’s a new track in Iowa that, by all accounts, is very nice, too. ISC doesn’t own any of them of course, so that means NASCAR doesn’t have much desire to go there. (Not that there’s any conflict of interest between NASCAR and ISC, which are two entirely separate companies that just happen to both be controlled by the same family, the Frances, and who just happen to share the same headquarters building in Daytona.)
You know, of course, that a track in New York isn’t about fans at all. NASCAR would give away every one of those 80,000 tickets at a track there in exchange for having a venue in that market. Every seat could be filled by a corporate partner’s fanny and stock-car racing’s governing bodies would be deliriously happy.
I am beginning to think that’s one of the major things wrong with the sport right now. The folks in Daytona and in their branch offices in New York and Charlotte and Los Angeles have done an outstanding job establishing and nurturing relationships with sponsors and other corporate partners. That part of the industry is more robust than it has ever been, and NASCAR should be lauded for that.
But that’s only part of the equation. If NASCAR doesn’t take care of its fans better – the fans who pay to come watch the races, not to come do business at them – the sponsors and corporate partners eventually won’t have any customers to service through the sport.
It’s like watering the leaves of a plant and letting the roots go dangerously dry. Ultimately, that’s bad business.

New York parties go on without me

I am not staying at the Waldorf-Astoria.

NASCAR broke me of that a few years back when they overbooked reservations for championship weekend and I got placed in a room in the Waldorf Towers at about $575 a night. The Observer paid that bill, but they weren't too happy and I don't blame them.

I always try to find something in the neighborhood, and for the past few years I've been in a little hotel down about two blocks that's nice and costs, by New York City standards, a reasonable rate. I won't tell you the name, though. Find your own secret New York City place.

Anyway, Friday I had an afternoon meeting up near Rockefeller Center and decided to swing by the Waldorf to pick up my banquet ticket on the way. As I went into the massive lobby (the Waldorf really is a fabulous place, until you actually go to the closets they call rooms), I started seeing a few NASCAR folks.

Some of them looked OK, but several of them were kind of, well, bleary-eyed. One guy I won't name was asking me if they had a Starbucks in the hotel because he needed coffee, badly, and was afraid it was about to start raining outside. Acutally, there is a Starbucks off the entrance on the Park Avenue side.

This guy, and several others I ran across, had been to Thursday night's big party at a place called Marquis. This is the second year that party has been held, and last year it was by all accounts quite the throwdown. That event, in fact, was the final blow for the Myers Brothers Breakfast that used to be held on Friday mornings. Several people who were supposed to give or receive awards at that breakfast last year had not sufficiently recovered from the Marquis party to do so.

No, I didn't go. Not last year, not this year. I am too old and too married for that kind of foolishness. I don't drink, either, and that pretty much seems to be the whole point of this party, too.

Anyway, initial reports are that while this year's event was wall-to-wall people having a very good time, there were far fewer misbehaving celebrants than last year.

There's another chance, though, after the awards ceremony tonight. The post-banquet party seems to have calmed down some in recent years, too. There apparently still hasn't been one yet to match the 1992 party thrown by Alan Kulwicki, which legend has it included Richard Petty dancing in a Conga line and Kulwicki and several Winston officials digging in their tuxedo pockets for enough money to pay the band, Jack Mack and the Heart Attacks, to keep playing for an extra hour or two.

Sorry, but I won't be able to confirm or deny what happens there, either. I have to file a story after the banquet, and once I am back in my room it'd take an act of Congress to get me to go back to the Waldorf and get in the middle of all of that.

-- Written by and posted for David Poole

A quick New York story

I went to the NASCAR/NMPA Myers Brothers Awards luncheon today at Cipriani's, a restaurtant in a wonderful old building on 42nd Street just across the street from Grand Central Terminal.
Before today, I would have written Grand Central Station. That's what I always thought it was called. When my friends and I used to run in and out of the house when we were kids, my mom would say, "Hey, this is NOT Grand Central Station." Well, come to find out it's Grand Central Terminal. Says so right there, carved into the building and everything.
Anyway, I was seated at the same table as Jeff Burton and he told us this story.
On Wednesday, he had occasion to be in Saks Fifth Avenue. I think he said his wife, Kim, was shopping but it was a big table and I can't be sure that's right. Anyway, he said he remembered he needed a couple of pair of black socks.
"So I take these two pair of socks over the register and the guy goes, 'That'll be $246.'" Burton looked around to see who the clerk was talking to. There was nobody else there.
"I said, 'There has to be some mistake,'" Burton said.
No mistake, the clerk said. The socks were 100 percent cashmere. They were $120 per pair -- $60 a sock.
"I said, 'Well let me ask you, where are the plain old cotton socks?'" Burton said.

Contests a good time to review season

Tuesday night was the annual fun-with-arts-and-crafts night in "The Annex," the over-the-garage apartment that's now my office in the house we've just moved into.

At the end of each season, I rake up all of the sports sections since the start of the race season and go through them looking for my best stories of the year. (We pause now for all of you who think I am a hack to make up your own joke.)

There are various contests each year for sportswriters to enter. The folks at the Observer hand entries into the North Carolina Press Association (I never win anything there) and the Associated Press Sports Editors (where I've done OK) contests. But I have to do my own entries for the National Motorsports Press Association and the Miller Lite Motorsports Journalism awards.

This process involves cutting out stories and slicing them up to make them fit on 8-by-11½ inch pieces of paper. You have to cut away the pictures and bylines and any kind of publication information.

It also involves a glue stick, which I have a complete lack of ability to use effectively. I usually wind up gluing at least one piece of paper to my desk (and did so again this year) and inevitably wind up with half of a last paragraph to a story that won't fit on the page.

Some of the people in the newspaper business don't like contests. At least they say they don't. I like entering them and like doing well in them, although I never have been able to figure out how the judging might go.

I just finished my 10th year of covering NASCAR for the Observer, and in those 10 years there are three or four stories that I would rank among my favorite ones I've ever done. I liked the topic, I liked the way the interviews went and I liked the way they turned out. And none of them ever won squat.

Halfway through the average race lead -- the story for the next day's paper about a given race -- I am usually either disgusted with how it's going or happily surprised that it's going pretty well. Nine times out of 10, though, when it comes time to pick race leads to enter in the contests I don't pick ones I liked when I was writing them.

The best thing about arts-and-crafts night, though, is that it serves as a way to review the season. Things tend to run together once the year gets cranked up. When you go back to February and look at stories written when the season was just getting started, you sometimes remember how wrong you were about what you thought was going to happen. Sometimes you realize you might have been more right than you thought you were, too. But not often.

A NASCAR year is a long, long time. The season runs from just before Valentine's Day until just before Thanksgiving. The annual contest process is one of the ways I turn the page from one year to another. As soon as next week's banquet in New York is over, I'll start working as a travel agent arranging things for another season in 2007.

And it will start all over again.

-- Written by and posted for David Poole

The season's end would be a fine time for NASCAR to fix the 'Buschwhacker' problem

Some quick thoughts as Ford Championship Weekend in Miami comes up over the horizon.

Ford Championship Weekend is happening in Homestead. Miami is 30 miles north and still has the same roads torn up that have been torn up since the Cup series started coming here.
Construction? How can be it “construction” unless something “constructive” is being done?

If hell has an airport, it’s a Delta Connection hub.

I keep waiting for NASCAR to figure out how to fix the “Buschwhacker” problem on its own, but I guess I am going to have to go ahead and give it to them.
Nobody in the top 30 in this year’s final Nextel Cup Series driver standings gets any points, driver points or owner points for the car owner, in the first five Busch races next year. After those five races, no one in the current top 30 in the Cup series gets points for racing in Busch races.
Cup drivers can still race all they want to in Busch races. But they’re racing for prize money in races only. They also have to qualify to make the race – no guaranteed spots in Busch fields with no points. Car owners and sponsors decide if they want to run for the Busch championship. If they do, they get a driver who’s on his way up the ladder or who’s decided Cup’s not for him. If they don’t, put anybody in the car you want to and go to town.
Give that system two seasons and the Buschwhacker problem would fix itself.

People who work in NASCAR used to get excited about the end of the season. Those who travel every weekend saw the promise of a real life ahead of them and were gleeful.
Now? Not so much. Here it is, in depressing reality for my friends and colleagues who do what I do. It’s Homestead, Thanksgiving, banquet week, Christmas shopping, New Year’s Day and then testing. Where’s the offseason in there?

When the 2006 season began, I kept asking people how the folks in Dodge’s racing program could let its teams get so far apart and working at such cross purposes that different teams were bringing different cars to the track. You didn’t have to be particularly smart to see that wasn’t going to work out particularly well for Dodge teams this year.
Now, as the season ends, I am looking at what’s happened to Ford’s racing program with the same degree of confusion. How could Ford let Robert Yates get to a point where he’s even thinking about auctioning off the car owner points for the 88 and trying to field only one team next year?
How could Ford not step in and make damn sure that there were Ford cars and trucks for Mark Martin to drive in any combination of races he wants to run next season?
One year ago today, the two biggest stories in Nextel Cup were that Tony Stewart was in command of the Chase and that Roush had done something incredible by getting five cars into that Chase. Now, there’s a game of crew chief musical chairs going on over there and things appear to be in at least mild disarray.
And people wonder why mechanics and other crewmen might want to look into working with Toyota teams?

Speaking of hell, there’s a corner of it saved for the man who invented the magnetic key card that’s used to open hotel room doors. In that corner is all the cold, refreshing water that man could want for eternity. But it’s locked behind a door and the guy’s key card won’t open it.

Make sure you check out thatsracin.com in the next day or so and look at where things would stand in the WARM system – the “Winning A Race Matters” points system I’ve proposed – going into this weekend.
I told you it was good.