The facts about Junior-DEI split? Truth is, they're still evolving

At about 3:15 p.m. Wednesday, I sat down in a chair at MediaComm in south Charlotte to talk to ESPN in Bristol, Conn., for a segment on spotters on its "Outside the Lines" show.

As we were getting set up, a producer there asked a question that changed my day instantly.

"Have you heard anything about a news conference at JR Motorsports tomorrow?" he said.
I had not, but from that moment on it was pretty much the only thing on the radar in the NASCAR world.

At the beginning, the first thing was to simply find out if a press conference was actually going to happen. The first round of calls that Jim Utter and I made got us nowhere. Nobody was answering the phone. Which is, often, a clue in itself.

At some point, we found out that a company that helps assemble and set up sound systems for NASCAR-related press events had a full crew on site at JR Motorsports setting up for an "event" on Thursday.

OK, that means you're not chasing a ghost. Something actually is going on. Now, the question becomes what's going on.

That's where things got off the track, a little bit, I think.

For the next couple of hours, just about anybody we could get on the phone who knew anything or who we thought knew anything were saying that Earnhardt Jr. and Martin Truex Jr. would leave Dale Earnahrdt to drive Cup cars at JR Motorsports next year.

Kelley Elledge said a month ago that JR Motorsports, which fields Busch and late model cars, isn't ready to be a Cup team. And it frankly would make no sense for Earnhardt Jr. to leave DEI for a start-up team that he'd own when the whole stated purpose of the contract talks has been to get him into a situation where he can win races and contend for championships.

Still, at that point in the late afternoon, that's what just about everyone was saying would be announced. As soon as we got official word that there would be a news conference at 11 a.m., I was also talking to people at Sirius NASCAR Radio about trying to arrange for me to be up there in Mooresville for the announcement and for Sirius to somehow cover it live.

Dave Moody was also on the air at that time on his Sirius show, and I also knew we needed to get something up on thatsracin.com. On the web, we put up the fact that a news conference was scheduled and that was about it. Moody, meanwhile, was hearing some of the same stuff from his "people" and started talking about the speculation and conjecturing about what might happen if that turned out to be the case.

Before long, other people were reporting the same thing. Some, were even citing Moody as their source, which shows that nobody else was getting their phone calls returned, either.

Meanwhile, Jim Utter and I were still talking trying to get people who actually know what's going on to tell us something. As the Truex/JR Motorsports/Hendrick story got out there, some folks started calling back to tell us that was not accurate.

By the time the deadline for the newspaper arrived, the story I had was that Earnhardt Jr. would announce he's leaving DEI and won't say where he's will go. Others had different information, and they wrote what they thought they knew. I wrote what Jim and I had.

That's how this business works. Sometimes it gets a little confusing, and the last thing you want to do is confuse readers, listeners and viewers. But sometimes, the information actually changes and with the 24-7 news cycle we have, it takes a while for the right stuff to catch up.

Tinkering with rules a tricky business now

Rick Hendrick's teams have won seven of this year's 10 races and all four of the "car of tomorrow" races. Chevrolets have won nine of 10 races. And a bunch of drivers are finding it difficult to even make races.

Should NASCAR "do" something?

Where you stand on that likely depends on who you pull for. Hendrick fans, for instance, think Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon and Kyle Busch have won races and are all in the top six in points because they have good teams. Hendrick haters are convinced NASCAR is somehow stacking the deck.

Ford and Dodge fans have good reason to be unhappy about how things have gone this season. Nobody enjoys getting whipped. It's easier to believe that's happening because something fishy is going on than it is to say, "Hey, our guys need to suck it up and get better."

The folks on the down side of this debate can certainly point to places in the NASCAR timeline when, if things were this out of whack in terms of results, the sanctioning body would have stepped in to alter the rules to move things back toward a balance.

But that's not what has happened in the past few years. Even before the COT was introduced, the cars are so much more alike than they've ever been NASCAR is limited on what it can do. The new cars, regardless of make, are all measured under the exact same massive template set that looks like "Skeletor." How does NASCAR change that to benefit one make or take the advantage away from one that has it?

Let's say NASCAR could take 10 percent of something away from the Hendrick cars. Well, wouldn't that also take 10 percent from Joe Gibbs Racing and Richard Childress Racing? How would that make a difference on the track?

It is true, on the other hand, that it seems to be Toyota and Ford teams that find themselves struggling most just to make races. But when Johnny Benson qualifies to run a Toyota at Richmond for a team that doesn't run full-time in the Cup Series, how do you make the point that Michael Waltrip and Dale Jarrett and Jeremy Mayfield need help? Brian Vickers missed Richmond, too, but A.J. Allmendinger qualified 13th in cars built by the same team. How do you figure that?

Back when NASCAR did change the rules, it seemed, every six weeks or so, fans clamored against that. Set the rules before the season and live with then, many fans said. Usually, they were fans of the team or make that was winning.

Now that NASCAR is doing precisely that, it's not working for some fans, either.

What should NASCAR do? In my opinion, nothing.

If you're getting beaten, whether it's in qualifying or on race day, there is really only one thing you can do about. Go faster. Race better. Beat somebody.

The more teams that do that, the better off they -- and the sport -- will be.

Watching from a far

My newspaper has me helping with coverage of the PGA Tour event in Charlotte this week, so I am not at Richmond for the Jim Stewart 400.
It's always interesting to cover another sport that's out of your regular element. For one thing, you get asked a lot why you're not where people are convinced you're supposed to be. But I will be back at the track next weekend at Darlington.
Just wanted you guys to know I haven't fallen off the face of the earth or anything.

Time for Tony Stewart to do his job

Tony Stewart lost the Subway 500 Saturday night at Phoenix International Raceway.

Stewart finished second to Jeff Gordon, so he didn’t win. He has not yet won this year. He’s been wrecked. He’s had fuel pumps go bad. He’s caught bad breaks with caution flags. In other words, he lost, he lost, he lost.

This is racing’s cruel reality.

Winning, even for the very best, is only a sometimes thing. Stewart has lost 263 times in the Nextel Cup Series, but his winning percentage of 9.93 percent puts him 24th best on the all-time list in the sport and third among active drivers.

Learning to lose begins at the basic level of any sport. If you’re 6 and playing T-ball, as soon as somebody starts to keep score you start learning how to lose. Nobody likes losing – no champion has ever developed that capacity. But every athlete is responsible for how he acts after a setback, and as good as Stewart is at being a race car driver he’s that bad at handling disappointment.

I know some fans want to make Stewart a hero for stomping away after the Phoenix race without talking to the media. There’s nothing gallant or heroic about it, and it seems an entire payroll of people apparently have it as part of their job description to make excuses for Stewart’s unwillingness to do that part of his job.

Monday, ESPN sent reporter Shannon Spake to try to find out why Stewart didn’t talk and how Stewart felt about finishing second at Phoenix in a close battle with Gordon. J.D. Gibbs, the president of Joe Gibbs Racing, wound up answering her questions. Here’s what that means. The president of Joe Gibbs Racing had time to deal with the media to explain away why his driver didn’t. How does that make any sense?

Stewart was so frustrated after crashing out at Texas a week earlier that he talked about how he felt like retiring. He spent the next week explaining he wasn’t serious, and some believe he didn’t speak after Phoenix for fear of saying something else he’d have to take back. But the media didn’t “goad” Stewart into anything. They asked questions and Stewart answered. On both sides of that, people were doing their jobs.

It stinks to lose. I get that.

But when Mark Martin lost the Daytona 500, under frustrating circumstances, Martin did his job. When Jeff Burton lost to Kyle Busch at Bristol, barely, Burton did his job. When Gordon lost to Jimmie Johnson at Martinsville, Gordon did his job. And in each of those cases the media did its job.

The next time Stewart wins, will reporters refuse to talk to Stewart to “pay back” the two-time champion for his snub Phoenix? Of course not. We’ll ask questions and report what Stewart says to the fans who are the people who’ve allowed Stewart to become a very wealthy man as he’s been able to live out the racing dreams he had from the first time he climbed into a go-kart back home in Indiana.

In other words, we’ll do what we’re supposed to do. That’s all anybody is asking Stewart to do. When he finishes in the top three in a Nextel Cup race, he’s supposed to talk afterward, just like everybody else who finishes in the top three is expected to do.

Do the job. Handle responsibility. Act like a grown-up. Surely the best driver in NASCAR can handle that.

Some Earnhardt fans irrational about Gordon's use of #3 flag

It's absolutely amazing how far some people will go to get ticked off.
Jeff Gordon wins at Phoenix and ties Dale Earnhardt with 76 victories on NASCAR's all-time list.

Gordon had been hung up on 75 wins for a while, so he'd had time to think about what he might do after moving even with Earnhardt in the record books. What he came up with was taking a victory lap while holding a "3" flag as a tribute to the late seven-time champion.

Pretty neat, huh?

Well, no, not if you listen to some Earnhardt fans (and, by extension, Gordon haters).

One internet "writer," whose name I refuse to use so as not to give him the attention he so pathetically seeks, summed up the irrational reaction I am talking about:

"Jeff Gordon’s arrogance never ceases to amaze. ...Gordon and crew will of course claim they were honoring a fallen hero. The argument feigns weak at best with the long-time supporters of the man in black. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. congratulated Gordon in victory lane seemingly endorsing Gordon’s parade. But to a large contingent of Dale Earnhardt fans, Gordon’s antics after his win at Phoenix were self-serving.

"HE MIGHT AS WELL DANCE ON TOP OF THE SEVEN-TIME CHAMPION'S GRAVESITE TO CELEBRATE HIS WIN. (Emphasis mine).

"The flag waving did not buy Gordon any new fans. One can well bet that long time fans of the late Dale Earnhardt would rather be boiled in oil than wear Gordon’s colors. There was and only ever be one Dale Earnhardt, and Jeff Gordon needs to come to grips with the fact that he is no Dale Earnhardt.

"Here is hoping Gordon enjoyed his little show of defiance and his moment of glory."

Lest you think this is a lone nut, the message boards and Sirius radio talk shows were filled with like-minded responses. Maybe not quite as bizarre as the dancing on the gravesite line, but pretty far out there.

Look, folks. Nobody says you have to like Jeff Gordon. Nobody says you even have to respect him for paying tribute to Earnhardt after his win at Phoenix. But don't assign your irrational feelings to Gordon and his team. That's sad.

Believe what you will -- and you will anwyay -- but here are the facts. Late last year, a member of Gordon's team thought of the idea of carrying the flag around in the postrace celebration. The team member knows Dale Earnhardt Jr. and was actually at a birthday party for Earnhardt's son. He asked Earnhardt Jr. and Kelley Elledge, Dale Jr.'s sister, what they thought of the idea and they were enthusiastically supportive.

And, of course, after the race Saturday night Earnhardt Jr. said on his radio that it was a cool, classy thing for Gordon to do. He also came over to victory lane to congratulate Gordon.

What more do Gordon's haters want in terms of "approval" of the idea from the Earnhardt side? I am sure they bought the flag, so Dale Earnhardt Inc. got its licensing money off the deal. What's the problem?

Web reports, ESPN and Earnhardts, oh my!

On the surface, it appears that this weekend’s "news" about the Dale Earnhardt Jr. contract talks is directly contradictory.
It started Thursday morning with a website called MaxChevy.com reporting that a 51 percent ownership stake in Dale Earnhardt Inc. for Earnhardt Jr. had "essentially been negotiated." Glen Grissom, a guy who’s been around racing for a long time and has a lot of good contacts, was behind that report.
Hours later, as it often does, ESPN pretended it invented the story by reporting in breathless terms at the top of its "NASCAR Now" show almost exactly what Grissom had – including the idea of a board of director-type structure set up for Earnhardt Jr. to "report" to.
ESPN did call DEI and talk to Max Siegel, the president of global operations there, to confirm that before taking the story and running with it. One of its online stories quoted a "source" in fleshing out details of the story, and it was fairly apparent that Siegel himself was that source.
Why, you might ask, did your faithful correspondent (in other words, me) not make the same phone calls. Well, it just so happened that on Thursday afternoon I was scheduled to go to Mooresville to see Kelley Elledge any way at the scrapbooking store she and Wendy Childers own up there.
I am working on a story for later this year about people in the sport with talents, interests and pursuits outside the sport, and the Scrap Shack is on that list. (By the way, if you’re ever in a position to bet on how many different shades of paper you can buy to put in a scrapbook, by all means take the over.)
As we wrapped that up, I asked Elledge if there was any news on the contract front. She said the sides were talking just about every day and there had been a lot of things talked about back and forth. So I drove back home and didn’t think much more about it.
Well, after catching the screaming headlines on "NASCAR Now" I tried to touch base with Elledge once again to make sure I hadn’t simply failed to ask the right question. She sent a reply to my e-mail inquiry early Friday morning, and that’s when I wrote a story saying that she said no formal offer for 51 percent ownership has been presented to her and, by extension, her brother.
So what’s the real story?
Well, I don’t think this is necessarily a case where anybody is off base with what is being reported.
Earnhardt Jr. has said he wants control of DEI. When he was pressed on what that means at Daytona’s media day in January, someone asked him if that meant 51 percent. Earnhardt Jr. said yes. In the weeks since, that number has sort of become the key fact in some minds.
If DEI has put forth some kind of proposal that offers Earnhardt Jr. 51 percent of the company’s assets, in terms of how it might add up on paper, I don’t think that necessarily equates to "control," and it’s control that he’s looking for.
Earnhardt Jr. knows that he’s going to be defined in his career by what he does on the track, and if he believes his team isn’t getting what it needs to compete at the sport’s highest level now he wants to change that so that he is ultimately judged on what he does to make sure he has a fair chance to reach his goals. If he falls short of expectations, that way he’d at least know he gave it everything he had.
Teresa Earnhardt, on the other hand, shouldn’t be expected to merely skip away happily after ceding control of a company she helped build. She’s smart, too, and she knows that in the court of public opinion if it appears Earnhardt Jr. has been offered what he’s asked for – that 51 percent number – and he says that’s not enough that the prevailing opinions about this whole soap opera might change.
If a board of directors is created to oversee the operation of the "new" DEI, how is that board constituted. Who’s on it and, more to the point, who gets to pick who’s on it? Answer that and you’ll answer who actually would have control of the company in such a setup.
DEI has been on the public relations defensive on this story since the first time Earnhardt Jr. spoke in January in response to the comments Teresa Earnhardt made in a Wall Street Journal story in December about her stepson needing to choose between being a NASCAR driver and a rock star.
Earnhardt Jr. and his sister have been calling the dance pretty much ever since then, using the leverage of Earnhardt Jr.’s popularity successfully to frame the reaction and discussion to this story in the garage as well as in the "NASCAR nation." What has happened in the past 48 hours, in my mind, is that DEI has tried to move that ball back toward midfield a little bit.
What’s really happening is that Max Siegel and Kelley Elledge are still talking about a new deal for Earnhardt Jr. Rest assured that both of them have plenty of smart people advising them along the way, too, and that include Teresa Earnhardt on the DEI said and Earnhardt Jr. himself on that side.
My belief, and it’s nothing really more than that, is that those talks have crossed a very critical point. I don’t think they’re talking any more about whether or not they can get a deal done, I think now they’re talking about how they can best get one done.
There’s a huge difference.

Maybe Jimmy Spencer can blame the media

A lot of people were really upset at Jimmy Spencer because of some of the things he said on Speed during the prerace show before last week's race at Texas.
Spencer criticized Kelley Earnhardt Elledge for "keeping" the Earnhardt name and for being a bad negotiator on behalf of her brother, Dale Earnhardt Jr., in talks over a new contract with Dale Earnhardt Inc.
I've got no help for Spencer on the latter issue. Anybody who doesn't think Elledge has done a first-rate job on her brother's behalf isn't paying much attention.
But I will try to help Spencer out a little bit - just a little bit - on the name issue. It's probably the media's fault that Spencer got teed off about that.
Kelley Elledge doesn't sign her emails or her checks with "Earnhardt" in the middle. When she became prominent in the DEI talks, though, people like me started inserting that name in there to identify her as the driver's sister. It sort of helps tie her role in to the stories we've done on the issue.
Spencer said that Elledge was displaying "ego" by using the Earnhardt name. In my dealings with Elledge, what I've found is precisely the opposite of that. She's not looking to make herself part of this story, at all. She's in it because her brother trusts her and wants her working on his behalf, and that's it.
Of course, this whole thing begs the question of whether you think Spencer is right or wrong in objecting to a woman using her maiden name after being married. I'll let you argue that one among yourselves.
On another topic, Associated Press writer Chris Jenkins wrote a story earlier this week about baseball honoring Jackie Robinson and wondering why NASCAR couldn't do the same for Wendell Scott.
Scott is the only black man to ever win a race in what's now the Nextel Cup Series. That happened at Jacksonville's Speedway Park on Dec. 1, 1963.
As far as I know, NASCAR hasn't officially announced the dates for this year's Cup banquet in New York City. But if tradition holds, it will be on the Friday at the end of the week after Thanksgiving. That would put the banquet on Nov. 30.
With all of the big-time sponsorship folks who'll be in New York that weekend, wouldn't it be nice to have some kind of special ceremony there that Saturday on the anniversary of Scott's win? Let young drivers in NASCAR's diversity programs come to New York, on NASCAR's dime, and meet the people who control the purse strings that might one day allow one of those people to follow in Scott's footsteps.
Just an idea.

One election you shouldn't be allowed to vote in

Just a few musings on a cloudy Friday at Texas Motor Speedway:

• I am philosophically opposed to the idea of allowing the fans to vote a driver into the NASCAR Nextel All-Star Challenge. If everybody else wins his way in, I don’t know why somebody should get voted in just because the fans like him.

A couple of years ago the fans voted in Kerry Earnhardt. Nice guy, but on any kind of scale of deserving recipients of such a “pass” he would have been way, way down. Last year Kyle Petty used a campaign aimed at raising money for his Victory Junction Gang Camp to get into the all-star event. Could be worse, but again it goes against the idea of a “winner’s only” race to put him in.

This year, Carl Edwards, Ricky Rudd and Juan Pablo Montoya are among those who might be voted in. I wish I could trust the fans to choose someone of that caliber, but this is me not holding my breath.

The idea is to give the fans a voice in a race that’s designed to entertain them. Fans vote for all-stars in other sports, but the all-star events in those sports aren’t as all-out competitive at the NASCAR Nextel All-Star Challenge is.

I am just not a fan of the idea of having a participant voted in. I once nicknamed this the “pity pass,” and I can’t imagine fans who hate the idea of the “lucky dog” to give a drive a lap back being able to tolerate doling out a slot in a high-profile race just on what amounts to charity.


• It’s hard to say anything about the whole Don Imus mess without opening up a can of worms. What I wonder, though, is how anybody can believe that anything has been significantly improved in any real way by what’s happened in the past 10 days? Is the world any better off? Is America any closer to having any kind of real discussion about race and class issues that really matter? If Imus has a job or doesn’t have one, does that matter in terms of the true causes that create the deep divisions in our culture? I’m going to say no, to all of the above.


• Somebody sent around an email the other day offering up six photos of the Toyota SUV that Michael Waltrip wrecked in “to the highest bidder.” As long as people like that exist, I’ll know that somebody has less of a life than I do.


• I don’t think I would be a very popular person on the racing message boards if I ran a race track. That’s because I would have an absolute ban on outside food and drink in my track.

Coolers? Have fun with them in the parking lot, but when you come in the gates if you want food or drink you have to buy it from me.

I have no problem with people who’re camping cooking or with fans tailgating. Yes, beer and hot dogs and sodas and everything are overpriced at the race track. But how much does a drink and box of popcorn cost at the movies? You can’t carry your own food in to the multiplex, can you?

How to win a NASCAR race

Greg Biffle is confused. He’s not by himself.

“I don’t know what etiquette is,” Biffle said this week when asked about the finish of the past two Nextel Cup races.

At Bristol, Jeff Burton got the nose of his car to the inside of Kyle Busch’s bumper off Turn 4 on the last lap. Burton, however, chose not to turn right to take Busch out and take the win away.

Then, at Martinsville a week ago today, Jeff Gordon rapped on teammate Jimmie Johnson’s rear bumper around a dozen times in the final five laps. But Johnson managed to keep from wrecking and held off his Hendrick Motorsports teammate to win.

Instead of offering applause for the relatively clean racing that still resulted in breathlessly dramatic finishes, however, some people have reacted with derision and accusations that Burton and Gordon displayed nothing more than a lack of willingness to do what it took to get the job done.

Such bloodlust, frankly, is not all that surprising from some NASCAR fans. Until six cars crash across the finish line upside down and on fire one day, there’s a group out there who’ll never quite be satisfied.

What’s troubling, though, is that in the past two weeks I’ve heard criticism of Burton and Gordon from people who, quite frankly, I thought knew better.

One person with a very prominent job in the sport called after the Martinsville race and suggested that I needed to write a column reminding drivers that each victory in the season’s first 26 races is now worth an extra 10 points they’ll carry forward with them into the Chase for the Nextel Cup.

The implication, of course, is that the cost of wrecking Busch and Johnson and potentially doing them actual harm needs to be weighed against the potential value of 10 extra points when a championship is on the line.

Has the sport sunk that low?

“If you can just get to his rear bumper do you just boot him and take the win?” Biffle asked. “I don’t know what we’re supposed to do. I’ll do whatever. If you can…catch him and just wreck him and go, that’s what I’ll do. But there are going to be a lot of people outraged about that, I think.”

Last year at Talladega, Brian Vickers was vilified for winning after he wrecked the two cars leading him on the final lap. Was that because it was at Talladega, a track where the cars go faster than they do at Bristol or Martinsville and therefore perceive it to be more dangerous there? Or was it because one of the cars that got wrecked was being driven by Dale Earnhardt Jr.?

There has to be a standard, one that applies no matter what track you’re at or who you’re wrecking. That standard ought to be that if you have to wreck the guy to beat him, you don’t deserve to win.

“It doesn’t take any ability to crash the guy in front of you,” Biffle said. “That takes no skill whatsoever.”

It takes no class, either.

Opinions vary about Martinsville's future

MARTINSVILLE, Va. – There’s nothing like walking into the middle of a movie.

After sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic for one hour, 20 minutes trying to get into Martinsville Speedway Sunday morning, the first thing I heard when I walked into the press box was track president Clay Campbell on an audio feed from the downstairs media center.
He didn’t sound happy.

Taped to the back of the press room door was a sign telling me what was going on. At 10 a.m., Campbell commenced an effort to “address recent, persistent, unfounded and irresponsible stories and rumors about Martinsville’s demise.”

“Unfounded” and “irresponsible” are strong words, and within just a few minutes I was told the flash point for this rebuttal was a column on nascar.com written by David Caraviello. Click here for a link to that story if you want to read it in its entirety.

If you’ll take the time to go to that link and go all the way to the bottom, you will see a tagline on the bottom that says the opinions expressed there are solely those of the writer.

That’s what Caraviello is paid by NASCAR.com to do – express an opinion. That doesn’t give him carte blanche, of course. A good columnist is still responsible and his opinions are founded in fact. But the nature of opinion is that people have the right to agree or disagree, and it’s perfectly understandable that Campbell and the folks at Martinsville Speedway wouldn’t agree with what Caraviello wrote.

That, however, also doesn’t mean Caraviello is necessarily wrong, either.

I don’t agree with some of what’s in the column either. “Compared to most other race tracks in NASCAR, the place is a dinosaur,” Caraviello wrote. “And we all know what happens to dinosaurs. They go extinct.”

Martinsville is not a dinosaur. Campbell and the capable staff who works with him have done a remarkable job of striking a unique balance between the old and new schools. This .526-mile track has grown markedly as the sport has grown around it, but it still also has managed to maintain a small-town charm that makes a weekend here fell as much like the centerpiece event at a county fair. And I think there should be room in the sport for that.

That having been said, though, Caraviello is right on when he writes that the prospect of new tracks in places like the Pacific Northwest, New York City or Denver are bad omens for a track in a market as small as this one is.

While it is petty to try to make it a big deal that Martinsville doesn’t have paved parking lots, it’s not to correctly note that a lot of big-time sponsors don’t bother with hospitality here. It is hard to get people here from any significant distance.

I stayed at the nearest major commercial airport, near Greensboro, N.C., this weekend and drove 42 miles each way each day. You can stay in Danville, Va., which is a little closer, but unless you’ve been doing it for a couple of generations, good luck finding a hotel room in Martinsville itself. It would have taken me maybe half the time it did to get to my parking spot if guards weren’t standing, arms crossed and scowls affixed, across the logical place to enter while hundreds of cars were directed around the posterior to get to the elbow to get to where they should have been going.

“Right now, it's a race track being saved by red tape,” Caraviello writes. If International Speedway Corporation does ever overcome opposition and get a track built somewhere else, especially if that new track is a short track, Caraviello is right to say that the clock is ticking here.

It’s not irresponsible to point out that Martinsville is in a vulnerable spot. You could argue all day that other tracks deserve to lose a date before this one does, but that doesn’t mean that’s what would happen.

Clay Campbell and his staff have a strongly vested interest in keeping Martinsville out of the discussion when it comes to where Nextel Cup dates for future tracks might come from. But their enemy in that fight is not a columnist like Caraviello who effectively presents the opposite argument and backs that up with things that are rooted in his more objective reality.

Busch was right to speak his mind

I expected there would be a little bit of blowback against Kyle Busch for what he said when he got out of his race-winning car Sunday at Bristol Motor Speedway, and we’re certainly hearing it.

Busch won the Food City 500 and then basically used victory lane as a platform to tell everybody the car of tomorrow – and this is the word he chose – "sucked."

He called the new car a "thing" about 20 different ways and said it was "terrible" and no fun to drive. Now keep in mind he did most of this as he was being interviewed as the winner just before they handed him the big trophy.

I have to admit that I was a little bit surprised when one reporter asked a NASCAR official if Busch’s use of "sucked" might draw him any kind of penalty for using bad language on television. As unpleasant as you might think that term is, it’s not a word the Federal Communications Commission has among those that can get television networks fined when someone uses them.

Every time someone says "hell" or "damn" in a postrace interview now, I get 20 or more e-mails asking me why that guy doesn’t get fined the way Dale Earnhardt Jr. did for his use of another four-letter word after a win at Talladega a couple of years ago.

You will note that I didn’t write the word Earnhardt Jr. used, and that should tell you something right there. It’s a word that, right or wrong, is considered "wrong" beyond whatever limit might be drawn on language that’s fair game in public discourse.

You might consider "hell" or "damm" or even "sucked" just as bad, but the people drawing the lines on such things don’t. When it comes to television, that line is drawn specifically by the FCC. The reason Earnhardt Jr. got penalized is that the word he used is considered obscene by the FCC and that put the network carrying that race – along with the stations that aired the broadcast – at risk of being fined. NASCAR penalized Earnhardt Jr. to stop others from putting the TV guys in that predicament again.

It’s not NASCAR’s rule that the Earnhardt Jr. word is worth a points deduction and these other words aren’t. It’s the government’s. The blowback that I expected and am hearing for Kyle Busch regards the attitude his words represent.

Some fans feel that Busch gets paid pretty well to put up with the challenges of driving whatever race car they strap him into and that he should just shut up and drive it. Others feel that, at the very least, Busch’s remarks could have been saved for later instead of being part of his initial reaction after a victory.

I reject the first reaction. Busch and the rest of the drivers in NASCAR’s top series have not only the right but the responsibility to be honest with the fans about what they believe. There’s nothing worse than a guy who’s being an obvious shill for NASCAR because he believes sucking up will help him down the road. Fans see right through that. Some drivers go too far in complaining about virtually everything NASCAR does (some of us in the media are guilty of that, too), but no driver should be expected to swallow his tongue before giving what might be considered a "negative" response.

On the other hand, maybe Busch could have tempered his initial remarks to some degree. "We still have a lot of work to do on this new car," which is one of the things Busch said, sounds a lot better than saying "this thing sucks." And maybe victory lane isn’t the place to proclaim your verdict on a car you’ve just raced for the first time.

This new car that NASCAR debuted last weekend isn’t the one these drivers are used to. Until they’ve raced it a few times, they won’t know what "good" is in terms of how this car handles. All they know now is that it almost universally was felt not to be as "good" as the old car, which is the only car most of these guys have ever raced in at this level.

But as soon as the Bristol race was over, everybody wanted drivers to "grade" the car of tomorrow project. Some guys, including the race winner, elected to do so. I think it’s awfully hard to be too critical of a guy for simply giving you an honest answer to your question, no matter how bad the question might be.

We now venture into dangerous waters

I come today to say that NASCAR isn’t always wrong. Nor is it necessarily corrupt.

This, of course, means that I have been forced to drink the Kool-Aid. Or paid to walk over to the dark side. Or threatened to have my garage pass revoked if I don’t toe the line.

It can’t be that I am giving you an honest opinion.

Nobody’s allowed to do that these days, in a world where the truthful definition of “fair and balanced” is anything but that and where people are no longer allowed to respectfully disagree.

You’re either for us or you’re the enemy. That’s that.

But what the heck, I am stupid enough to try this anyway.

We’ll start with “debris cautions.” Late last year, after a race at Atlanta in fact, I wrote a column in which I said NASCAR is damaging its credibility by throwing caution flags for suspect reasons. I have not changed that opinion, at all, but after last Sunday’s race at Atlanta I also feel it’s important to point out that not every caution flag should automatically be considered suspect.

Just because a television broadcast doesn’t follow the safety truck around the track to show workers picking up debris, that doesn’t necessarily mean there was no debris there. I’m convinced some fans wouldn’t be satisfied unless the safety truck brought a piece of debris to the “Hollywood Hotel” so the experts there can offer their analysis of what the debris actually is.

You have to remember that NASCAR has to make decisions in real time. If something is on the track in the racing groove, officials have to decide if it constitutes a hazard. It might be a harmless piece of plastic, or it might be metal with a razor-like edge on it. If there’s any doubt, the yellow has to come out.

My main criticism of NASCAR, then and now, is the double-standard they seem to apply. In my opinion, the right thing to do is to throw the yellow when there’s any doubt that the track is unsafe for racing. But that should be done 10 laps into a race or with 10 laps to go – with no difference in how quickly the decision comes. I still maintain it was absolutely ridiculous that no yellow was thrown on the final lap of this year’s Daytona 500 until after Kevin Harvick and Mark Martin crossed the finish line.

It’s a problem for NASCAR that fans assume a late-race caution is bogus until they’re convinced otherwise. That’s the credibility issue I keep harping on, and one day I hope NASCAR realizes it’s a problem it needs to go work on.

That notwithstanding, however, it’s absurd to believe that NASCAR throws a caution with 20 laps to go in an attempt to manipulate the finish of a race in any particular way. The late-race caution at Atlanta was not an effort to hand Jimmie Johnson a victory, no matter how convinced you are that’s what happened. Sorry, but that’s just now how the sane world works.

We move on.

NASCAR got sued last Friday by AT&T, and Brian France had a pretty good line about it on “The Morning Drive” radio show on Sirius NASCAR Radio the other day. He said it’s flattering, in a way, to have companies suing for the right to stay in the sport.

The deal is that Jeff Burton’s No. 31 Chevrolets have been sponsored by Cingular. But Cingular, as a brand name, is going bye-bye. Cingular has merged with AT&T and the new company wants to put its logos on Burton’s car. NASCAR, however, says no because changing the brand would violate the terms of a grandfather clause in its agreement with Sprint Nextel.

The easy stance to take here would be to say Nextel should take a chill pill and let AT&T do what it wants to do. But how is that fair to Nextel? They’re paying $70 million a year for 10 years to be the title sponsor of Nextel Cup, and part of what they were supposed to get in that deal is exclusivity in the wireless sector.

Remember when Winston was the title sponsor? How close to a NASCAR garage did Marlboro ever get? That was being “loyal” to the title sponsor. How come Nextel doesn’t get that same “loyalty?”

Nextel allowed Cingular and Alltel to stay in the sport as long as they stayed where they were – they couldn’t move to another car or change from an associate to a primary if that had been a possibility. But one of the things Nextel was “getting” for its $70 million was the right NOT to have AT&T and Verizon and other competitors come into the sport and counter its involvement with sponsorships of their own.

I’ve got nothing in the world against Richard Childress Racing and Jeff Burton’s team – in fact, I know as many guys on Burton’s team as I do any other team in the garage. It stinks that this Cinuglar-AT&T merger puts their sponsorship deal in peril, and if there’s a way it can be worked out so everybody’s happy, that would be great.

But if can’t, I think NASCAR is right to take Nextel’s side on this one.

I hope you don’t think that makes me one of “them."

NASCAR is right to guarantee spots

I know fans really get tired of having sportswriters tell them what’s good for them when it comes to their favorite sport, but here goes.

A lot of NASCAR fans think they would like to see the rules changed so that the fastest 43 cars make each week’s Nextel Cup race. That’s it. You go fast enough, you’re in. No provisionals, no safety net, no nothing. A strict meritocracy.

Sorry, but that really is not what you want. Not at all.

I am not saying the current rules are perfect.

Guaranteeing the top 35 in the standings a spot in each week’s race does put an extreme onus on the “have nots” who have to race their way in for the other seven or eight spots each week.

For a long time, I’ve thought that number ought to be cut back to the top 25, but I don’t think that’s the right answer, either. I know fans will hate to hear this, but 25 isn’t enough for the very reason that you need 35 to start with.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

There are really two reasons you need guaranteed spots in the first place, no matter how you do that. The first one is obvious. If what happened to A.J. Allmendinger in qualifying Friday night at Atlanta Motor Speedway – his car started missing and he didn’t complete a lap – happens to Dale Earnhardt Jr. or Tony Stewart, there has to be a way for Earnhardt Jr. or Stewart to be in the race.

You can say what you want to, but NASCAR needs its biggest stars racing each weekend.
Stewart and Allmendinger should be treated equally in almost every way by NASCAR, but until Allmendinger has at least made a race or two you can’t say he brings as many people to the track as Stewart does. Stewart’s fans buy tickets and make travel plans expecting to see their guy race, and he needs to race even if something screwy happens to his car in qualifying.

You could at least partially accomplish that the “old” way, by putting the top 36 cars in the race based on speed and then assigning provisionals from the top of the points standings down.

But the top 35 guarantee makes more sense because it more likely ensures the top teams will be in the race each week even if early in a given season they’ve had bad luck and find themselves well back in the pack. Kasey Kahne, for example, is 36th in the current standings, and he needs to be racing on Sundays.

The real reason that NASCAR is right to guarantee spots for a certain number of its teams, though, has more to do with the teams and the sponsors than it does the drivers.

If an owner and a sponsor are willing to commit to racing every week, there should be some benefit in that, some advantage. It’s certainly true that some full-season teams and sponsors are being sent home now, but the only way to prevent that is to guarantee any full-time team a starting spot even if that means expanding starting fields beyond 43 cars.

I think that goes too far. The NASCAR garage shouldn’t be a closed shop, with only those willing and capable to run 36 races having any shot to compete. There has to be room for new teams, for teams with partial schedule plans to get their feet wet in the big pond.

Going to 25 exempt teams, though, goes too far I think. That comes off as another case of the rich getting richer, the haves getting more than the have nots. The top 25 teams are almost always going to be the ones with the most resources, and therefore the ones likely to get the most exposure that keeps that kind of support coming.

The real benefit of the current system falls on those teams that are 26th through 35th in the standings, I think. These are the guys who don’t get into the top 10 all that often, who don’t get the maximum television exposure. But if they go into a season knowing they’re going to make the first five races, they know they have a chance of staying in the exempt group and that makes them more appealing to sponsors.

What about new teams? Well, shouldn’t it be at least a little bit harder for somebody new to come in and take away a spot from a team that has been part of the sport? Shouldn’t there be at least some hurdle for new teams to clear?

It might be fair to argue that the current hurdle is too high to clear. Is it too easy for teams to stay in the top 35 and too hard for anybody to ever fight its way in? If more spots were available through qualifying, wouldn’t that give new teams a more equitable chance of carving out its place in the sport?

If you’re going to change anything, I’ve about decided that what you should do is guarantee the top 30 in points starting spots in the races. That allows at least 12 teams to make the race on speed. Maybe you could make that 13 by going ahead and starting 44 cars – there’s really no good reason not to fill out that last row with one more car.

But that’s as far as I am willing to go.

NASCAR's process needs inspection

The devil, as they say, is in the detail.

You wouldn’t expect, for example, there to be much of an issue when it comes to how cars are inspected before a NASCAR race – at least in terms of who goes where in the inspection line.
But early in this Nextel Cup season, that has emerged as a very big deal.

At California Speedway two weeks ago, there were 51 cars attempting to make the 43-car field. That meant eight teams went home early, so qualifying was a big deal for that race.

But before practice that Friday, inspections took so long that several of the guys who needed to race their way into the field on speed didn’t have an opportunity for their cars to pass through the inspection line even once before practice began.

In a 90-minute practice session, some teams were as much as an hour late in getting on track – through absolutely no fault of their own. And that’s wrong.

NASCAR has to put itself in position to give every team entered in an event at least one chance to clear inspection before any car goes on the track. Whether that means setting up two inspection lines and adding more staff or some other option, it’s on NASCAR to have the personnel present to give everyone a fair shot.

Now if a team’s car gets kicked out of line for having something wrong, that’s different. But if I’ve got a car that’s ready for inspection at the proper time and that has everything on it that is in compliance with the rules, there’s no way I should be penalized by losing practice time because of a backlog in NASCAR’s inspection process.

Teams go through inspection in the order of their standing in the points, and some might argue that’s backward. The top 35 already have the advantage of having a guaranteed starting slot, why give them the advantage of having the best chance at getting a full practice in, too? Why not invert the field and inspect the guys at the low end of the totem pole first? Or, even, have a lottery to determine inspection order the same way they do now to select qualifying order?

Those ideas offer interesting debate topics, but the point is that it should not matter what order the cars are inspected in. There shouldn’t be any advantage, one way or another. If you go from first to last, last to first or at random, the only fair way to do it at all is to have things set up such that everybody gets a fair shot at being on the track the same amount of time for practice sessions.

As long as a team shows up on time to present its car for inspection and as long as that car is in compliance with the rules, it should never miss a minute of on-track time because NASCAR can’t get it inspected before it’s time to start practice.

Slams against Petty and NASCAR fans by Washington state lawmakers sidetrack legitimate debate

International Speedway Corporation tried last week to make some headway toward getting a track built near Seattle, but that’s not exactly how things worked out.

ISC had Richard Petty, Darrell Waltrip and Greg Biffle travel to Washington state to talk to legislators and try to drum up support for a bill that would help create the public funding portion of the track project.

There’s plenty of resistance to the idea of public money being used to pay for any sports facility, whether it be in Washington state or anywhere else. And many of the newspaper editorial writers in the Seattle area seem steadfastly opposed to the bill in question because they question its fiscal wisdom.

All of that is completely fair game. So, too, is opposition to the track project from the folks in Kitsap County, where the site ISC prefers is located.

Some of them don’t want a major sports facility built close to where they live. They don’t want their lives upset by the crowds that would come in and by development that might be spawned by having the track in their area.

That’s the kind of public debate that’s completely warranted when a project the scope of a NASCAR track is proposed. What’s troubling, though, is how tawdry the debate grew thanks to words that came out of the mouths of two elected officials during the racers’ visits to their state.

First, House Speaker Frank Chopp referred to Petty, the seven-time Cup series champion, as “that guy who got picked up for a DUI.”

Uh, no. Not only has Petty never been picked up for driving under the influence, he has never allowed his race teams to be sponsored by any form of alcoholic beverage because he promised his mother he never would.

Chopp said he “wasn’t sure” Petty was the guy he was thinking of, so I guess he thought that made it OK. Later, he apologized and called the remark “inappropriate and wrong.”

Well, at least he got that part right.

Then there’s House member Larry Seaquist (who, for the record, is a Democrat as is Chopp).

Mr. Seaquist offered the following opinion when the idea of having NASCAR fans in the state came up: “These people are not the kind of people you would want living next door to you. They'd be the ones with the junky cars in the front yard and would try to slip around the law.”

Hmmm. That sounds like a stereotype, doesn’t it? That’d be sort of like stating that anyone who lives in Seattle has webbed feet (because it rains so much there, you know) and puts double-caff, half-fat lattes in their babies’ bottles (since the only thing they drink there is coffee).

That would be silly of course. But there’s one judgment here that I can make based solely on what was said this week on this topic, and that’s that Richard Petty has forgotten more about class and respect than at least two pinheads in the Washington state legislature.

NASCAR isn't always like other sports

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Some leftover thoughts and opinions from Speedweeks:
– I sometimes get criticized by longtime NASCAR fans for making analogies to "stick and ball" sports when I write about racing. The comparisons don’t work, they say.
Sometimes I think they do. I think there are aspects of big-time racing that compare nicely with the other major professional sports. But there are also times when you have to be careful to consider the differences. I think the final lap of Sunday’s Daytona 500 is one of those instances.
Some of the national, nonracing columnist guys were saying on Monday’s talk shows that letting Kevin Harvick and Mark Martin race to the caution flag with cars wrecking behind them was OK. They compared it to a basketball game, where a player might be going for an uncontested layup and an official won’t call a foul off the ball to prevent that. Or to hockey, when a penalty call is delayed until one team completes a scoring opportunity.
The points have some validity, I guess. There’s also the fact that referees "swallow the whistle" late in close games, declining sometimes to make calls that could swing a final score. Let the athletes decide things, not the officials, the thinking goes.
But the racing equation differs in two ways, I think.
First, there’s the safety issue. By holding off on the yellow Sunday night, NASCAR required drivers to keep going wide open as they headed into a patently dangerous situation.
This business about how the cars were all going toward the apron is silly. NASCAR couldn’t have known that would continue to a point where the track would be safe for racing. Remember, these guys will throw a yellow for a ball of tape on the track – the hated "debris caution" – if they think it’ll pick up the pace of a race. How do you justify that on the basis of safety and then let action continue through a 10-car pileup?
You either race back to the checkered flag or you don’t. That’s what a rule is. You can do this or you can’t do it.
Second, there’s the fact that the drivers who were not in front of the wreck are competing, too. Teams won and lost a lot of money and points based on whether they got through that wreck, and the teams that didn’t also had expensive cars torn all to heck. Every competitor deserves a safe track to run on, not just two guys who happen to be racing side-by-side to win the Daytona 500.
– I learned something Monday that I didn’t know.
NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston was on "The Morning Drive" on Sirius NASCAR Radio Channel 128, and Marty Snider and I asked about the finish of the truck race Friday.
Johnny Benson went below the yellow line and passed Travis Kvapil for second in the three-wide finish with winner Jack Sprague. Callers and e-mails had asked us about that, so we asked Poston.
He said the yellow line rule includes a caveat. "When the drivers can see the checkered flag, you can get all you can get," he said.
That was news to me. He’s saying that once the flagman has the checkered flag in his hand and is waving it, the area below the yellow line is not out of bounds.
– There might be ways to explain why the rating for ESPN2’s first Busch Series race were down 26 percent from the same race on TNT last year. But any way you slice that, it’s not good news.
ESPN had its hype machine going full blast for weeks leading to Saturday’s race. I don’t think it’s television’s fault. NASCAR, as evidence by lower ratings for the Daytona 500 on Sunday, has some real issues to face forthrightly. And the Busch Series is in real, real trouble of further losing its identity and, thereby, its appeal.
– Having said that, ESPN has assembled a great staff of people to contribute to its racing coverage. Marty Smith, Terry Blount, Tim Cowlishaw and Angelique Chengelis are first rate. If they’re allowed to do their jobs the way they know how, everybody else is going to have to work a little harder to keep up.
– Speaking of other people in my business, I don’t know how often this happens, but the Daytona Beach News-Journal ought to win a bucketful of awards in Florida’s respective newspaper awards contests for how it covers Speedweeks. My own employer, The Charlotte Observer, does a good job for our readers, too, I think. But if you’re ever down there for Speedweeks, make sure you buy the local paper every day. Those folks get it done.

So, do we understand you to say that a certain level of cheating is acceptable?

Sights, sounds and observations from Wednesday at Daytona International Speedway:

NASCAR chief executive officer said in his "state of the sport" speech on Tuesday that when you have 120 cars at a given track you’re bound to have a certain number of them who try to beat the rulebook.

That’s sad, isn’t it?

Counting all the Nextel Cup, Busch and Truck cars here this week, it’s more like 140 cars. Let’s say that "only" seven of them are found to be violating the rules. That’s a conservative estimate, since we already know about five for sure, but let’s just keep the math simple.

If there are seven cars out of 140 that can’t be counted on to play by the rules, and if France and NASCAR find that percentage acceptable that means that it’d be 5 percent of the cars here. So, by that accounting, it’s acceptable for the people in racing to be honest 95 percent of the time.

OK, now let’s say you’re a father. You’ve got a son who’s about 6 years old and he’s beginning to ask you all of those questions you never quite know how to answer.

"Daddy?" he says. "If I play fair 95 percent of the time, if I tell you the truth 95 percent of the time, if I obey 95 percent of the law, will I be OK?"

Which is the right answer?

a) Yes, son. That’s about the best I should expect.

b) No, son. You need to be honest 100 percent of the time.

It was very windy during Wednesday’s practices. There were whitecaps in Lake Lloyd in the track’s infield and, at one point, a wheeled beer cart in the Fan Zone was blown around several revolutions by the wind. Fortunately, since crowds weren’t as big on Wednesday as they will be later this week, the cart was empty and no beers were lost.

I said this on our Sirius Satellite NASCAR Radio show Wednesday morning and I will say it again here. The only racing that Evernham Motorsports should be doing this weekend should be seeing which of its three transporters makes it back to the shop in Statesville first.

I really respect Ray Evernham. I think he’s trying to build a championship quality race team and I know, without a question, that he works as hard as anybody in the sport at trying to reach his goals.

But there’s no way to sidestep the fact that having all three of your crew chiefs – or team directors, in the Evernham lexicon – suspended in the same weekend looks awfully bad.

It’s always interesting to look at how the two 150-milers sort out, and this year certainly follows that pattern.

The first three starters in Thursday’s first race – David Gilliland, David Ragan and Boris Said – have never raced in a Daytona 500. Johnny Sauter, who starts fourth, has one career start in the race.

So there’s a total of one Daytona 500 start among those in the first two rows. And who starts next? The defending champion, Jimmie Johnson.

Johnson has Hendrick Motorsports teammate Casey Mears in that 150, while Jeff Gordon and Kyle Busch are in the other. Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his teammate Martin Truex are also in that race, as are Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin and both Kyle Petty and Bobby Labonte from Petty Enterprises.

But Reed Sorenson is flying solo – his teammates Juan Pablo Montoya and David Stremme are in the second race. All three of Ray Evernham’s Dodges – Elliott Sadler, Scott Riggs and Kasey Kahne – are also in the second 150.

Filling the field for the Daytona 500 is really a process that takes several steps.
You have the top 35 from last year and they’re all in. Then, you have the top two finishers from each of today’s 150-mile qualifiers. Those drivers will start in the first 39 spots on Sunday.
David Gilliland starts first on Sunday. Ricky Rudd starts second.

Take everybody from the first race that was in the top 35 – David Ragan, Jimmie Johnson, Casey Mears, Denny Hamlin, Tony Stewart, Martin Truex Jr., Dale Earnhardt Jr., Bobby Labonte, Jeff Green, Greg Biffle, Kyle Petty, Robby Gordon, Dave Blaney, Clint Bowyer, Reed Sorenson, Ken Schrader and Jeff Burton – and add the top-two finishers from that race who’re not in that group. That will be 19 drivers. They will start on Sunday on the inside of the next 19 rows behind Gilliland in positions 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 and so on down to 39 in the order they FINISH in today’s first race.

Now, go to the second 150. David Stremme, Juan Pablo Montoya, Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch, J.J. Yeley, Elliott Sadler, Jamie McMurray, Ryan Newman, Kevin Harvick, Mark Martin, Tony Raines, Kurt Busch, Scott Riggs, Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth and Kasey Kahne are the drivers guaranteed spots in that race. Add the top two finishers from outside that group. Those 18 drivers fill positions 2, 4, 6, 8 and so on behind Rudd in the starting lineup.

Now, we have four more slots to fill.

The next three go the three drivers who were fastest in Sunday’s qualifying who’re not guaranteed spots. Boris Said, Sterling Marlin and Johnny Sauter are in those spots for now, but if they make the race through the 150s those spots could pass to, in this order, David Reutimann, Jeremy Mayfield and Mike Skinner.

The 43rd spot goes to a former champion otherwise not qualified if there is one. Dale Jarrett is the first one eligible for that spot, followed by Bill Elliott. If neither needs that spot, the next person in line on speed would get it.

David Poole's 'state of the sport'

On "The Morning Drive," the Sirius Satellite NASCAR Radio show he co-hosts, David Poole played the role of NASCAR chairman Brian France and gave the following speech as what he would say in the "state of the sport" speech that France will give this afternoon in Daytona:

Good afternoon and thanks for coming.
Today I want put aside the normal platitudes and doublespeak you might expect and speak honestly. Our sport faces too many critical issues for today. We are at a cross roads, and beginning today we will chart a new and, I believe, proper path that will buttress our foundation and allow us once again to start growing a sport that, today, faces a number of crises.
We face, for starters, a crisis of integrity.
For too long, we’ve asked our fans to swallow inconsistent officiating and capricious enforcement of rules that seem to shift like sand on the beach where cars once raced under my grandfather’s aegis.
We’ve treated cheating like a family might treat weird Uncle Fred – pretending like everything’s OK because nobody’s really getting hurt. That’s not how a professional sport should be run.
If we are to have any integrity at all, we have to establish a system of rules that can be followed by teams who are eager for a chance to compete fairly and evenly. We have to enforce those rules fairly and without regard to the economic impact of sanctions or other actions on our part.
Every team, no matter how many T-shirts its driver sells, must be treated the same way. It’s hard for us to do that when we have people in our tower on race day who’re also involved with the marketing of our sport. Even if they intend to be fair in every instance, they’re human beings. They can’t help but be influenced by what their actions might mean in the marketplace, not when our company has made that the over-riding priority in how they’re judged in terms of how well they do their jobs.
We’re taking those people out of that impossible situation. Beginning today, we will spend whatever money we have to recruit and hire independent officials with experience at race tracks all across this country to come in and join our officials in forming an independent agency to officiate our races. NASCAR will pay this agency a lump sum each year to pay salaries and expenses and keep these officials trained. This agency will write our rulebook and enforce it and NASCAR will have no influence on that process.
We will, however, insist that beginning with the 2008 Daytona 500 any team caught with a major rules violation before qualifying will be denied the right to race in that week’s event. Any team found to have committed a major rules violation in postrace inspection will lose all points and money earned in that event and will be prohibited from entering the next event on the schedule. This rule will apply evenly, to all teams.
Earlier today, I ordered the creation of a traveling medical team that will attend all of our events and co-ordinate care center operations with local personnel retained by each track. We actually will have two teams, with each team alternating at a given track for a given race. While one team is at a track, the other team will be at the next venue coordinating with local personnel and conducting extensive safety and medical meetings with the people they will be working with when our competitors arrive.
Our sport also faces a crisis in competition.
Let’s be honest with one another. Side-by-side racing has largely become a cherished memory in our sport. We have to get that back. So I have ordered our competition department to call a meeting in Charlotte at which every team member interested in attending can sit down and hear the following message. Beginning in the 2008 season, we will run 10 to 15 percent slower at every track where our cars compete in Nextel Cup, Busch and Truck series events. On July 1 of this year, we will have another meeting at which our teams will present to us their plan for slowing the cars down. If the teams are unable to agree on such a plan by that date, we will formulate our own plan and deliver it to the teams by Oct. 1. But hear this and hear it now, we will go slower in 2008. We can do it the way the teams want us to, or we’ll do it the way we decide to do. But we will do it.
We also have a crisis of emphasis on our hands.
For too long, we’ve been obsessed with television ratings and the image that our sport has with people who don’t even care about it. We’ve tried to cater to people who don’t care about us long enough. That stops, today.
We will no longer, as a company, talk about the championship 365 days a year. We will still crown champions in our top series each year. But the champions will receive trophies and checks for $1 million in Nextel Cup and $500,000 each in the Busch and Truck Series. Money now earmarked for points funds will be redistributed as part of a new formula for determining purses. Television money will also be reallocated in this formula in such a way that performance on the track each week determines how much money a race team and its drivers win.
The minimum purse for every Nextel Cup race, beginning in 2008, will be $7.5 million. No Nextel Cup race winner will be paid less than $1 million for winning any Cup race. The winner of the Daytona 500 next year will earn $5 million, and several other major events on our schedule will pay $2.5 million for first place. There are no more car owner plans or winner circle plans that subsidize the haves at the expense of the have nots. You want to make money in racing?
Race for it.
We face a crisis today, as well, in diversity. Our sport does not look like America, and we know that. We’ve known it for years, and so far we’ve made only pitiably token efforts to change that. Again, that stops today. Beginning in 2008, 5 percent of every purse will be designated to go to fund a program that provides opportunities and, most importantly, a clear pathway of progress for people of color and female drivers to be supported as they move steadily toward competing at the sport’s top levels. We hope our current fans will embrace these efforts, but we say here and now to those who don’t that we will sorely miss them but that we will go on without them.
And finally, but most importantly, we face the crisis of losing the most valuable asset we’ve ever had – our connection to our fans. We’ve stopped thinking about them. We talk about them a lot, but we don’t do much for them – not for the people who support us.
Increasingly, we’ve taken the access to our competitors that once served as our greatest attribute and turned it into a revenue stream. You want to meet a driver or even see one up close? Come on down to the Fan Zone, but it’s gonna cost you an extra $75 bucks. No more. We can’t "upsell" what our fans are entitled to, but at the same time we can’t simply throw open the gates to all fans while our competitors are trying to work.
So, beginning Thursday when Daytona International Speedway opens for the Gatorade Duels, no track will be allowed to sell garage passes. Only people who are working in our garage will have access to this area during times the track is hot. But, beginning one hour after the end of every qualifying session, each track will be allowed to sell for $10 per ticket a pass that entitles any fan access to a two-hour autograph session in the garage. All proceeds from the sale of these tickets will go to create a disability fund to benefit former NASCAR competitors who need financial assistance because of sickness or other hardship. Every driver entered in each week’s race will be required to remain in the garage for this autograph session. This will be the only time during a race weekend when a driver is allowed to sign autographs.
We have a great sport, and it has grown to a point where there is plenty of money to go around. We just need to stop trying to see how much money there could possibly be to make and start trying to see what would make our sport better. That’s how we got as far as we have today, and there’s no reason to go backward any further than we’ve already let things slip.
Today is a new day in NASCAR. I am happy you where here to see this new day come.

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How can you not pull for a guy like Boris Said?

Sights and sounds from Saturday at Daytona International Speedway:
It’s hard not to pull for a guy like Boris Said, who’s among the drivers who’ll be fighting for the final few available spots in the Daytona 500 field in today’s qualifying and Thursday’s 150-mile qualifying races.
Said was talking this week about how hard it is for him, as a part-time driver with a part-time team, to work his way into Nextel Cup races when 35 (or 36, with a former champion’s provisional) are guaranteed to full-time teams.
“I’ll go back to Indianapolis last year, which was probably the most nerve-wracking thing I’ve ever gone through,” Said said. “I was the bubble for a little while and it came down to the last guy, who had been faster than me in practice.”
Said said the mood in his trailer at that moment was like the movie “My Dog Skip,” which is sad enough to wring a tear from even the hardest of hearts. But the last car didn’t go faster than Said, meaning his car was in the Allstate 400.
“In 15 seconds it turned into ‘Brokeback Mountain’ with guys slapping each other on the butts and hugging and kissing each other and telling them we loved each other” Said said. “It was such an emotional swing that day.”

The more I think about it, the more the simplicity of what Dale Earnhardt Jr. is doing in his contract negotiations with Dale Earnhardt Inc. emerges in my mind.
I am sure Earnhardt Jr. has some problems with how DEI is being run as a racing company by his stepmother, Teresa Earnhardt. I am sure he has concerns about the company’s future as a racing enterprise.
But I’m also convinced that this is as much about how Earnhardt Jr. believes he was treated when he was a boy, when he was shipped off to military school, as it is about anything else.
Basically, he feels like Teresa Earnhardt didn’t want him around. Now, he’s got a chance to let his stepmother see much that hurts.

You can’t make stuff like this up, I promise you. Tums is an associate sponsor on Reed Sorenson’s No. 41 Dodges this year, and it’s trying to be a little bit “different” in its marketing.
Next week, it plans to put out a list of favorite restaurants near tracks, presumably ones that might encourage people to use more of its product.
This weekend, Tums has released results of a Harris Interactive poll that asked male and female NASCAR fans which drivers “make their hearts burn and which ones give them indigestion.”
Not surprisingly, Dale Earnhardt Jr. topped the list of those that make fans’ “hearts burn.” He was picked by 48 percent of all fans and 55 percent of female fans. Jeff Gordon was second, Tony Stewart third and Kasey Kahne fourth.
Gordon, conversely, was first in the “indigestion” category, with Stewart second, followed by Kurt Busch, Kyle Busch and then Earnhardt Jr.

Sometimes, qualifying order is a big deal at a track. That’s usually true, for instance, if qualifying starts when the sun is out and goes into darkness. Later is usually better in that circumstance because the track cools off and, usually, gets faster.
Qualifying at Daytona takes FOR-EVER. Time trials begin at 2:10 p.m. Sunday and it might be 6:30 or so when it’s all over. That means it could cool off as the day goes along, but what seems to impact qualifying more here at Daytona is the wind – direction and velocity – so it’s hard to know whether earlier or later will be better Sunday.
For what it’s worth, Brian Vickers, Joe Nemechek, Kenny Wallace, Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch are the first five scheduled to run Sunday afternoon. The final five scheduled are Kevin Lepage, Elliott Sadler, David Reutimann, Carl Edwards and Tony Raines.
Ricky Rudd, fastest in practice on Saturday, is slated to go out 49th. Teammate David Gilliland goes out 26th. Sterling Marlin, also fast in practice, is 15th in the qualifying order. Juan Pablo Montoya is 30th and Jeremy Mayfield is 42nd.

During Speed’s practice coverage Saturday, Darrell Waltrip was talking about what a great accomplishment it was for Toyota to have any of its brand-new cars in the top 10 in practice speeds in its first outing – Jeremy Mayfield’s No. 36 was fourth fastest. Whether you agree with that or not, the fact that he has appeared in about 40 commercials touting Toyota’s entry into the sport, that he has driven Toyotas in the Truck Series and that his brother, Michael, owns three Toyota Nextel Cup teams makes it hard to take anything DW says about Toyota anything other than an advertisement.
…Everybody’s talking about how many cars there are here this year, but while checking on something else I found out there were 58 entered in the Daytona 500 last year. That’s only three fewer that this year’s “glut.”

Friday's sights, sounds and so on at Daytona International Speedway

Sights, sounds and observations from Friday’s activities at Daytona International Speedway:
Last year, Miller tried to get Budweiser to make a bet about whether Kurt Busch, driver of the No. 2 Miller-sponsored Dodge, would finish ahead of Bud’s No. 8 Chevrolet, with Dale Earnhardt Jr. driving.
The stakes were that the loser would have to run a race in the other beer company’s colors. Budweiser didn’t take the bet.
This year, Miller says it will change the name of the baseball stadium in Milwaukee from Miller Park to Budweiser Park for a 2008 regular-season series between the Brewers and St. Louis Cardinals if Earnhardt Jr. beats Busch. If Busch wins, the Cardinals’ home (Busch Stadium) will be rebranded as Miller Lite Stadium for a Brewers-Cardinals series.
"It's too bad for Anheuser-Busch that they didn't take us up on our challenge last year, when Kurt and the team were dealing with the first-year 'new team' transition,” said Tom Long, Miller’s chief executive officer.

Workers have been tinkering with signs at the end of the road leading to Roush Racing’s headquarters at the Concord Regional Airport this week, in preparation for next week’s announcement that the Fenway Sports Group is buying into ownership of the team.
The announcement is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon at Daytona Beach’s minor league baseball park, Jackie Robinson Stadium. Look for the team’s new name to be Roush Fenway Racing.

One thing my media brethren seem to be doing a lot of this preseason is asking drivers their opinions about two of the sport’s top issues – the Dale Earnhardt Jr. contract negotiations and Juan Pablo Montoya’s arrival in the sport.
Patience with such questions, in some camps, is beginning to wear a little thin.
“It’s funny,” Michael Waltrip said on media day Thursday. “I raced for 15 or 20 years and all I heard was ‘How’s Darrell?’ and ‘Where’s Darrell?’”
Darrell, of course, is Waltrip’s brother. “Then I went to race for DEI,” Michael Waltrip said, “and I always hear, “How’s Junior doing?” Pardon me if I don’t choose to answer questions for him.”

It’s hard for everybody to keep up with all the changes that go in NASCAR, even somebody who’s literally inside the race car. During Friday afternoon’s Shootout practice, Kasey Kahne came over his radio with a question. “Who’s in the 44 car?” Kahne said. The answer is Dale Jarrett, with his new Toyota team at Michael Waltrip Racing.
There’s absolutely no way anybody who covers the sport regularly will make it through the first five races without, at some point, typing in that Jarrett drives the No. 88 Fords. Habits like that are just really hard to break.

Best line I wish I had come up with: Ken Willis, the East Coast distributor for wry wit in his columns in the Daytona Beach News-Journal, noticed that a lot of people employed by ESPN seem to be walking around the premises this week. “There are so many ESPN folks on property this week,” Willis wrote, “you’d think Terrell Owens was doing sit-ups in the Fan Zone.”

Man, it’s only the season’s first weekend and the race for this year’s Emmy Award for sports television coverage already seems to be over. Ray Dunlap’s reporting on why the Daytona track’s tunnel is painted yellow (it’s Nextel’s color) and his first-hand reports from a speedboat in Lake Lloyd locked it up.
…Speaking of television tom-foolery, Thursday night’s draw for the Budweiser Shootout was shown “live to tape” beginning at 8 p.m. What that means is that the draw actually happened about 7 p.m. and was recorded for broadcast an hour later. Television calls that “live to tape” because they don’t bother to edit it. Otherwise, the whole thing might have taken about 15 minutes. In English, “live to tape” means “taped.”
…NASCAR chairman Brian France will give a “state of the sport” report to the media on Tuesday. The Observer has learned that France will reveal the state of the sport is “just peachy.”