Max Siegel on a difficult week at DEI

HOMESTEAD, Fla. – Normally, the final week of a NASCAR season feels like the last day of school.

After nine months of seeing the same people just about every weekend, it’s time to go back and finally unpack the suitcase and reintroduce yourself to the family and the neighbors.

Somebody always figures out how many days it is until the new year starts in Daytona, and everybody gives a good-natured groan when they hear that number. It’s usually a lot of “Happy Holidays!” and see-you-soon hugs and handshakes.

Not this time.

Homestead-Miami Speedway is not a bad place. We’re not that far from Key West and even closer to South Beach. The weather is absolutely glorious.

But it’s a depressing place to be this weekend. Instead of a sense of accomplishment for those who’ve had a good year and a sense of hope for those looking for better luck next year, there’s a sense of dread. Instead of being relieved to be at the end of a long season, too many people are fearful over what next week will bring.

Nobody really knows how many people in NASCAR will lose their jobs at the end of this season. With Dale Earnhardt Inc. cutting 116 positions this week on the heels of several other, smaller layoffs by other teams, the number is already well north of 200. Some believe that number could be 1,000 – or more – before the bloodletting is done.

It doesn’t really matter, at least not in any human terms, what the actual numbers are. It’s easy to get caught up in the numbers when things are this bad and forget that each person losing a job is a person – somebody with a family and a mortgage and a car payment. Not to mention a passion that has driven them to come into the racing industry in the first place, a passion they may have to abandon as teams all across the NASCAR spectrum trim their payrolls.

Max Siegel knows that all too well.

As president of global operations for DEI, Siegel spent his week letting those 116 people know they weren’t going to have jobs once DEI completed its merger with Chip Ganassi Racing. DEI had four Cup cars and Ganassi had two, but those six teams will be streamlined back to four in 2009.

“It was a very tough week,” Siegel said Saturday at Homestead. “It’s gut-wrenching to try to go through and make those decisions. You’re balancing the best interests of the business and the impact you’re having on somebody’s life. It’s very emotional. It’s a very difficult thing to do.”

Nobody likes firing people. But without a merger, DEI might have ceased to exist and nobody would have had a job.

“You go and try to stabilize your business and you’re trying to save jobs,” Siegel said. “On the one hand you feel relieved you’re able to keep people employed that you’re passionate about. On the other side, it never leaves you the impact you’re having on other people.”

What makes it harder, Siegel said, is that the people you’re letting go are losing jobs they really, really want to keep.

“Everyone who works in this sport does it because they love it,” Siegel said. “They make tremendous personal sacrifices. The season is long and you make a commitment and give it everything you have every single week. It’s extremely difficult.”

Siegel said he’s going to stay on at the merged company for at least as long as it takes to get the new arrangements in place. Beyond that, he’s not sure. In this economy, nobody is.

DEI gave severance packages and out-placement counseling to the people it let go. Siegel said everyone in the motorsports industry is trying to help each other out as much as possible.

“We just tried to make sure people were in the best place they could be,” Siegel said.

Still, things were a long way from being easy. “There’s shock, anger, a high level of anxiety, confusion – a wide range of emotions,” Siegel said. “People deal with those in different ways. …It’s sobering what’s going on.”

Questionable reporting? That's when the ask exceeds any real grasp

HOMESTEAD, Fla. – Thank goodness this weekend is the end of the NASCAR season. I think some of my fellow media members need some time off.

Or maybe some counseling.

It’s Friday afternoon at Homestead-Miami Speedway and Sprint Cup qualifying just wrapped up. David Reutimann and Scott Speed make up an unlikely front row for Sunday’s Ford 400.

The big story, of course, is Jimmie Johnson’s bid to win a third straight Cup championship. He leads Carl Edwards by 141 points coming into this race, and despite the fact that Edwards will start fourth Sunday and Johnson only qualified 30th fastest, Johnson is in good shape to do just that.

But beginning at Thursday’s contenders press conference up in Coral Gables, reporters have been asking about and writing about how upset they are that Johnson and Edwards don’t appear to despise each other.

Question after question on Thursday picked at that topic.

Darrell Waltrip said it bothered him for Johnson and Edwards to be saying nice things about each other instead of trying to pick at one another or play mind games. Waltrip couldn’t operate that way.

And that’s fine. DW was, and is, a different kind of cat. But if Johnson tried to act like Waltrip, it would come off as phony.

Fans complain about drivers being “vanilla.” That topic is constantly overdone, and I quickly grow weary of hearing fans tell me they want drivers to be more colorful.

No, they don’t. Let a driver show a little bit of temper or a little bit of anger and the fans jump on him like bees on a bucket of honey. Ask Kyle Busch how that’s worked out for him this year.

I don’t think all drivers should be vanilla. But I think a driver should be whatever flavor he truly is.

It would have been a spectacularly bad idea for NASCAR to try to muzzle Waltrip back in his day. Waltrip’s personality added a lot to this sport and he would have been wrong to have tried to be somebody he’s not.

By the same token, it would be just as big of a mistake for Johnson to try to be something he’s not. He’s not a loudmouth. He’s not the kind of guy who likes to make snide remarks about his fellow competitors. He just doesn’t work that way and nobody should expect him to just for cheap entertainment thrills for a few race fans.

On Thursday, former champion Ned Jarrett was at the NASCAR press conference and people started asking him if it’s “good for the sport” that the two championship contenders seem to actually be able to tolerate one another.

One reporter asked Ned and his son, Dale, another former champion, if they didn’t feel that a driver has to be a jerk, or at least act like one at times, to be a good competitor.

The Jarretts both blinked and just looked at the questioner. It was like the guy was speaking a language the Jarretts, two of the classiest men in all of sports, didn’t understand.

The topper came Friday, though, when somebody in the media decided he’d work on a story about why Edwards’ teammates at Roush Fenway Racing don’t openly and intentionally start Sunday’s race with the plan to wreck Johnson to try to help Edwards win the title.

The same guy also asked Rick Hendrick, Johnson’s car owner, why he wouldn’t order his drivers to wreck Edwards to secure the title for Johnson’s team.

Every time the question was asked, the driver being asked reacted as though he thought somebody might be trying to pull his leg.

Matt Kenseth gave a couple of pretty good answers. Why would he not intentionally wreck Johnson? “Common sense?” Kenseth said. “Being a grown-up?”

Good grief.

Bumped broadcast symptom of a bigger ill

In the grand scheme of things, ABC's decision to dump the final 34 minutes of Sunday's Sprint Cup race at Phoenix over to ESPN2 might not matter all that much.

We do have bigger things to worry about, not only in NASCAR but in this great big world of ours. Race teams are fighting for survival and NASCAR management either doesn't care or doesn't have any good ideas on how to help them. Some teams have lost or will lose sponsors and even those who have contracts with sponsors don't know if those sponsors will be in business long enough to honor them. Dozens, if not hundreds, of people who'll be at the track for this weekend's season-ending Truck, Nationwide and Cup races can't be sure if they'll have jobs on Monday.

Compared to all that, switching Sunday's broadcast from one station to another doesn't seem that important.

But it is.

One major newspaper columnist wrote afterward that ABC's decision ends the argument as to whether NASCAR is a major sport once and for all. The end of an NFL game doesn't get handed off from network television to second-tier cable. Networks, broadcast or cable, usually don't bail out on playoff games -- especially if the option is a piffle of a program like "America's Funniest Home Videos."

A lot of us who work around NASCAR have known for a long time that the sport's leadership has basically handed control of the sport over to television. TV sets the starting times. NASCAR will let it's television "partners" push around the timing of the green flag if a baseball game leading in goes to extra innings or if a football game goes to overtime. Qualifying and practice coverage is shuffled off to other cable outlets, shown on bizarre tape delay schedules or omitted entirely.

All of these things could be written into NASCAR's television contract. The TV deal could stipulate that no race can be moved to another network unless the start is delayed more than, say, two hours. The TV contract could force networks to commit to support programming. All of that could happen if NASCAR had the power to set those conditions and the will to stand by them even if it meant taking less money from partners willing to make the commitments they'd have to make to comply.

In the final half-hour of its telecast from Phoenix, ABC got a 4.6 rating. The 30-minutes it aired "America's Funniest Home Videos" got a 3.8. So ABC lost viewers. What it didn't lose, however, was revenue. ABC had aired the commercials it had sold for the race coverage. It had picked up all the money it was going to get there. By switching to its regular prime-time schedule, it also collected the money it was owed for commercials sold on that programming.

Were viewers served? Were race fans served? Not those who didn't hear or otherwise notice the announcement of the switch. Not those who were taping the race hoping to view it later. Not those who don't have ESPN2 on their cable.

What happens this week, if there's a South Florida rain shower and a race that won't start until about 4 p.m. Eastern is shoved back past the scheduled 8 p.m. close of ABC's broadcast window for NASCAR? Will Jimmie Johnson's championship celebration be shown as part of a special on ESPN Classic at midnight? If so, the sad truth is that NASCAR apparently couldn't do anything about it.

Economy may require more than a debris caution

AVONDALE, Ariz. – Things are getting so tough in the economy these days that even people in stock car racing are beginning to notice it.

“I learned a very valuable lesson,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. said Friday at Phoenix International Raceway. “I think that when things are going really, really well ... you want to hire this guy because he’s a buddy of yours and you want to bring this guy in because you’re related to him and this guy in because you heard he’s great. You’ve got to be careful.

“ ... You need to just take what you can afford and when it comes to assets, people, parts, pieces, everything. We were all on the upswing for so long I think a lot of people kept it under control and some people got a little ahead of themselves a little bit.”

That may not sound like piercing business analysis, but the Sprint Cup garage can be an insulated place. The real world doesn’t always get through the gate.

This situation, though, is different. When General Motors announced Friday that it lost $2.5 billion in the third quarter and could run out of money by next year without government help, people had to notice.

“We certainly worry about it," Jimmie Johnson said. "I think everyone in the world is worried about their financial future."

A GM official told scenedaily.com that the company would be able to honor its contractural obligations to NASCAR teams in 2009. But GM has already made cuts in its marketing plans and teams clearly can’t expect the manufacturer to add a lot of things to what it is absolutely committed to provide.

GM has called off any talks of merging with Chrysler and its racing officials have nixed any NASCAR mergers that would involve associations with teams running another manufacturer’s product.

The effect of that for NASCAR is that some teams have fewer options as they try to stay alive and competitive than they would otherwise have had.

There’s talk of layoffs – hundreds of them – once the current NASCAR season ends. Hendrick Motorsports and Earnhardt Jr.’s team, JR Motorsports, have already cut staff. Depending on how you count it, as many as 15 current full-time Cup teams face questions about their sponsorship for 2009. You can multiply that number by two or three if you include the Nationwide and Truck series.

Earnhardt Jr. was probably right Friday when he said GM is too big for the government to allow to fail outright. But if you think NASCAR is going to come through the next 18 months or so with things just like they are right now, you’re nuts.

Everybody seems to understand this. Everybody, perhaps, but NASCAR itself.

Actually, to be fair, NASCAR seems to be aware that things aren’t lovely. Plans to allow Cup teams to test 24 days next year seem to be on hold.

What NASCAR needs to do is make that number zero. Some teams will still go to tracks not on the circuit to test, but if NASCAR allows 12 days of testing on tracks where Cup cars race then every team that wants to be competitive will have to test 12 days.

NASCAR also is right not to make rules changes to the new car. New rules make teams spend more money, and that’s not smart right now. The racing might be better if cars were allowed to raise the splitter and travel more as they go into the turns, but now it not the time to introduce those variables to the sport.

What NASCAR isn’t doing, though, is providing enough of the kind of leadership this sport needs. I know NASCAR wants to treat teams like independent contractors because that makes their business lives a lot less complicated. But I don’t know if that model works anymore.

Can NASCAR just sit around and afford to let six, eight or 10 race teams just go away, figuring someone else will come eventually to replace them?

I guess it can, but I don’t think it should.

Shorter fields would short some teams

FORT WORTH, Texas - Can I ask something? Because I am confused.

What good would it do for NASCAR to officially shorten its fields for Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Truck Series? Why does that make any sense, even if the economy completely tanks?

There was a report a couple of weeks ago that NASCAR was thinking about making 36 races the number in a full field for Cup races, instead of 43. NASCAR has denied it, but that hasn't kept people from still writing and talking about the idea.

The only problem with that is that it doesn't make the slighest bit of sense.

Let's suppose things get as bad as they possibly could and three for four races into the 2009 season only 34 or 35 cars show up for a Cup race.

Would that be the end of the world? It would absolutely be treated as such, of course, but the truth is there would still be the same number of cars capable of winning the race - 15 or so - in a 34-car field as there are in a 43-car field.

Chances are also good that if you had 34 full-time teams show up, there would be five or six one-and-off teams show up, too. Call them "start and parks" if you want to, but someone running five or six races as a start-and-park team might figure out that they could make a go of this and one day in the future there would be a new team formed out of that.

But let's say the sport goes eight or 10 weeks with fewer than 43 cars showing up and NASCAR reacts. It cuts the 43-car fields to 36 and cuts the qualifying-exempt number from 35 to 30.

So right off the top, you've taken something away from five race teams they've done nothing to deserve losing.

Anyway, you've decided that 36 is the maximum. So what if 39 teams show up? You're telling me it's a good idea to send three of them home because you've decided that it looks better for you to say your maximum is 36 and not 43?

Of course it isn't. If you can run 43 cars, and you have been for years, you've got no business lowering that maximum if it means you're going to be sending teams who're trying to hang on for dear life home for no good reason.

It just doesn't make any sense. At least not to me.

Changing the Chase format would change nothing that matters

FORT WORTH, Texas – This is me. About to SCREAM!

I thought I was weary of election talk. And I am. But I would rather be forced to watch campaign ads on a continuous loop for the next three days that listen to one more Sprint Cup driver be asked how the Chase for the Sprint Cup ought to be changed.

Actually, I would rather have somebody poke me in the eye with a sharp stick than listen to more Chase questions.

OK, I am going to try this one more time. Because I am a patient man, I guess.

There is nothing you can to do ANY championship format that will change the fact that Jimmie Johnson and his team have been money in the championship bank the past three years.

In 2006 Johnson rallied from a big deficit with a streak of five races in which he finished second four times and first once. Last year, he won four in a row. This year, he has seven top-10 finishes in seven tries while everybody else in the Chase has had at least one stumble.

Johnson has 23 straight Chase race finishes of 14th or better, with 21 of those being top-10 finishes. If you can run like that, you SHOULD be the champion.

The 12-11-10-9-8 system? It doesn’t change anything. The idea of throwing out your worst finish? Changes nothing. The idea of a shorter Chase – five races instead of 10 – would make it closer after two races but if it was a five-race Chase people would gripe about that not being a fair representation of how to pick a champion. Somebody would STILL want to put a road-course race in the Chase, which is a spectacularly bad idea.

Greg Biffle said Friday he’d like to see Talladega pulled out of the Chase because it’s too much of a wild card. Let me ask this. Does everybody in the Chase have to race Talladega? I thought so.
Sports Illustrated’s Lars Anderson wrote this week that the 12-11-10-9-8 system would have Carl Edwards 19 points behind Johnson right now, meaning Edwards would “still be in the hunt.”

Well, 19 points certainly sounds closer than 183 points, which is Edwards’ current deficit. But, for the 90th time, it’s an illusion. In that system, if Edwards won here Sunday and Johnson finished 43rd, he would still be eight points behind Johnson. In that system, that’s eight positions with two races to go.

But as it now stands, if Edwards wins and Johnson finishes last year then Johnson is only 22 points back. That’s no more than five positions, and that’s counting everybody in the race. To make up ground in the 12-11-10-9-8 system, Edwards would have to beat Johnson and seven other Chase drivers to catch Johnson at Phoenix.

The way it is now Edwards could catch up by beating Johnson and just four other drivers – anybody. Or he could win and have Johnson finish as high as THIRD at Phoenix.

As would be the case in the “mulligan” system, Edwards is closer to Johnson in the current format than he would be in the 12-11-10-9-8 system.

When is an idea a bad idea? When it makes the situation you think is bad even worse than it currently is. And there’s no way to fix a bad idea by talking about – no matter how much you talk about it.

Here's an idea:Quit worrying about the points format and get back to work

HAMPTON, Ga. - So maybe you've heard that Jack Roush proposed his own variation on how to Jimmie-proof the Chase for the Sprint Cup after Sunday's Pep Boys Auto 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

After one of his drivers, Carl Edwards, won the race, Roush said he thinks NASCAR should allow each driver in the Chase to throw out his worst finish in the 10-race playoff and count only the other nine. The thinking would be that would not penalize a driver too much for having one bad race.

OK, first, if a driver can go 10 straight races without having a finish worse than about 10th, why shouldn't he get credit for doing that over a guy who doesn't? Why shouldn't everything count?

But even if you don't buy that, this is yet another example of somebody not understanding that no system you can think of is going to help you beat a team that's beating you as bad as Johnson and his team are beating his Chase rivals.

Let's do the math.

If we had a one-race forgiveness system, Johnson would now throw out a 143-point race.

Edwards would throw out his 64-point race at Charlotte. Greg Biffle would lose 96 points. Jeff Burton would throw out a 109-point race.

OK, that would leave Johnson 104 points up on Edwards right now. He'd be 138 ahead of Biffle and 184 up on Burton. And that would be closer than it is now (Johnson leads Edwards by 183, Biffle by 185 and Burton by 218).

As always, though, where these things fall through is in how fast you can make up points.

Let's say next week Jimmie Johnson finishes 43rd at Texas and Edwards wins the race and leads the most laps. Under the current format, he'd gain 161 points and be 22 points behind.

But under the system Roush advocated, Johnson would throw out the 34 points he'd get at Texas and get back the 143-point race that's now his lowest. So Edwards would get 195 points and Johnson, in effect, would get 143 from Texas.

So Edwards would pick up 52 points and would be 52 back.

In other words, he'd be 30 points further back Roush's way than he would be the way things are now.

Look, what teams in the Cup series ought to do instead of worrying about how to change the Chase system is to figure out a way to beat the 48 team more often.

Johnson and his team come to the track and do their job. They got a lap down Sunday and fought all the way back to second place. A bunch of teams could have come in for tires with eight laps left in Sunday's race and tried to pick up positions. Johnson's team did, and Johnson moved from 11th to second in those eight laps.

The Chase system didn't give them those points. Johnson and his team earned them. Every last one of them. And every last one of them should count, too.

Cale Yaborough and the coach

One good thing about the fact that Jimmie Johnson has a chance to match Cale Yarborough’s record with a third straight Cup championship is that it provides a good opportunity to tell Cale Yarborough stories.

Yarborough was a car owner by the time I started covering the sport full time, but I certainly remember watching him race. In my mind, Cale was leading every lap I ever saw him race. He just wanted to be up front more than he wanted to breathe, it seemed.

When I was sports editor of the newspaper in Gastonia, N.C., my hometown, we had a lady who worked in the business office named Charity Tignor who was without question the biggest Cale Yarborough fan I knew. Charity would have walked barefoot across a mile of broken glass to see Cale race. She might have walked half of a mile through a blizzard just to see him read a newspaper or clip his fingernails.

Anyway, NASCAR had Yarborough on a conference call the other day and he started telling the story about how he chose racing over football. Clemson fans will get a kick out of the story.

"I had a scholarship to Clemson, a football scholarship, playing under Frank Howard,” Yarborough said, speaking about the legendary coach as the South Carolina university. “I was racing during the summer. I was just about to win the track championship.

"I went to Coach Howard and told him I needed to go home to race one more race and then I'd be through with it. He said, ‘If you go back, pack your clothes, don't come back. You either go and race or play football.’ ”

So Yarborough packed his clothes and left Clemson.

“Of course, he kept calling,” Yarborough said. “I told him, ‘You told me to pack my clothes, and that's what I did. I'm going to make racing my career.’

“He says, ‘Son, you'll starve to death.’

“I said, ‘Well, I may.’ ”

Yarborough did all right, of course. He won 83 Cup races and three championships and had career earnings of over $5.6 million dollars.

He also had legion of fans – fans like Charity Tignor ... and like Frank Howard.

“In the end, Frank Howard is one of my biggest fans,” Yarborough said. “He used to love to go to races and stand in my pits.

“I'll never forget that he was at Talladega when I won a race there. He was in the winner's circle. He walked up to me and put his hands on my shoulder. He always called me boy. He said, ‘Boy, I ain't never been wrong many times in my life, but I want you to know I was wrong this time.’ ”

Helping doesn't always have to be about marketing

How could NASCAR set up a driver development program that would work?

Easily, provided the people who run stock-car racing get over two major phobias.

The first hurdle is the willingness to spend its own money. NASCAR likes to cash checks, not write them. But to do driver development the right way, that won’t work.

The second fear is about having NASCAR itself pick out and support some drivers whereas others are told they have to make it on their own. There are legitimate concerns there, and any program operated and supported in a real way by NASCAR will have to be run properly. But before we start worrying about how to make such a program fair, we first have to overcome the resistance to having one in the first place.

I would take what’s now known as the Drive for Diversity program and expand it greatly.

Every January, drivers from around the country would apply for spots in the developmental program. The same kind of people who now pick candidates for the D4D program would select 50 candidates from these applications. All drivers, not just women and minorities, could apply, but at least some of the 50 candidates would represent all facets of the applicant pool in terms of race and gender.

Those 50 drivers would be brought to Irwindale Speedway in California in January for a two-week evaluation session in the weeks leading up to the annual Toyota Showdown at that track. The candidates would drive individually and in groups, in qualifying and racing scenarios, so their talents could be evaluated as fully as possible.

From that group of 50, the top-30 candidates would be selected to participate in the upcoming season. They would be teamed with current or future team owners who agree to participate in the new program, with each getting the same amount from NASCAR to support the team for a season of competition.

The selected drivers would be divided into three groups of 10. One group would run tracks primarily in the Southeastern United States at tracks like Hickory and Concord that have long supported NASCAR-sanctioned racing at the grassroots level. Another group would focus on tracks in the Northeast and Ohio Valley. The third group would race in the western portion of the country.

The groups would travel to several tracks within their own area and compete against the drivers who race at those tracks each weekend. This would give short tracks events where drivers who’re identified as potential future stars could be marketed, boosting the short-track industry.

At various times throughout the season, all 30 drivers would come together to compete in a race that would be paired with a Sprint Cup race at a nearby track. During Charlotte’s May race week, they would compete at Concord. During Daytona’s July race week, they’d be a Volusia County. They could run at Oxford, Maine, along with a race at New Hampshire or back at Irwindale when the Cup guys are at California.

The season would conclude in September, the week after the 26th race of Sprint Cup season. This would be an open date on the Cup schedule and the season-ending race for the developmental series would be held on Sunday afternoon and broadcast as part of the NASCAR network television package as a showcase event.

The driver who scores the most points during the season – with all of the races where all 30 compete counting double – is the developmental series champion. What that driver wins is a two-year driving contract with a NASCAR Truck or Nationwide series team, with NASCAR guaranteeing that team with the financial backing it needs to compete.

The idea of NASCAR directly sponsoring drivers and teams might sound radical to some, but if done right the process of determining who gets that backing would be based on ability and performance on the track. Instead of hearing about things like marketability we’d be hearing about lap times and victory totals. It could be more about driving cars and less about driving products off the shelves.

And it could work.

It matters who the messenger is and who pays the messenger

CONCORD, N.C. - So now photographic proof of Thursday's scuffle between Kevin Harvick and Carl Edwards is out there for everyone to see.

It's not that there was ever any doubt that what was reported actually happened. Too many people saw the two drivers pushing and shoving for that. They also saw photographers standing there, taking pictures of the whole thing, too.

Why weren't those photos immediately available on news wires and Internet sites?

Well, the sad truth is that most of the people shooting pictures in the NASCAR garage these days aren't there working - at least primarily - for news organizations.

Yes, they've got press credentials. But most of them are working in one form or another for NASCAR, for the race track, for one of the manufacturers or for one of the teams or their sponsors. That means they've got conflicts of interest.

As soon as word spread of the Edwards-Harvick incident, the rumors also started spreading that representatives from the teams those drivers represent were exerting influence to have the pictures withheld from distribution to the media.

I know for a fact that at least one person working for Lowe's Motor Speedway had images of the scuffle, and I also know that there was a discussion about whether or not those images should be supplied to The Associated Press so that newspapers and web sites everywhere might have access to them.

As I said in Saturday morning's paper, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that if Humpy Wheeler had still be president and general manager of this track there would not have even been a question about them being released. Wheeler would have taken the pictures down to the closest Walgreen's himself to have them process had that been necesary.

But Wheeler is gone and there's a new regime in charge. I don't know for a fact that the man who replaced Wheeler, Marcus Smith, was called in personally on the decision whether to sit on the photos or not. But if Wheeler still worked here I promise you he would have made sure anybody who hadn't heard about scuffle did so as quickly as possible.

Look, if you run the race track you might decide not to let the photos get out because you want to make sure your relationships with the Cup teams are good. If you decide that it's more important to make nice with a race team than to try to stir up controversy surrounding your race, that's a question of philosophy.

But as a fan, it ought to worry you that the rest of the photographers who got pictures of the scuffle didn't race each other back to their computers to get them sent out over the wires. That's the way things used to be, when you had professional photojournalists who were here to see and document the news and not primarily to shoot promotional pictures than can be billed to some corporate client.

The media can be a popular whipping boy these days, and we don't always get it right. But we are here so that the whole story - and not just what NASCAR and the tracks and the teams want you to hear - gets told and gets shown.

When it isn't, and when business decisions start trumping good journalism, that is when the media will let you down.

Good is probably better than perfection anyway

CONCORD, N.C. - I can’t go into my e-mail box without somebody telling me how many fans NASCAR is losing these days.

But then, I go places and I see fans like the ones I saw Friday morning at Joe Gibbs Racing and I have to wonder what they’re talking about.

The first people in line at the annual fan fest to get wristbands for autographs had been there since 10:45 Wednesday night. They wanted Tony Stewart’s autograph, and even Stewart himself told me he can’t understand why anybody would be that loyal.

I got there at 6:30 a.m. and there were already hundreds of people there. I left about 11 and a lot of them were still there, and had been joined by hundreds more.

There were open houses and things like that at several places around the Charlotte area Thursday and Friday, and I assume the stories were similar at each one.

Maybe the fans I’m seeing are the ones who have a little bit more passion and a little bit more dedication to the sport. I know that at the test at Lowe’s Motor Speedway a couple of weeks ago there were people who drove from Florida just to see testing. I know that there are people who send e-mails three or four times a week asking me about a driver who you might think has only a handful of fans - wanting to know why I don’t do more on a particular driver or asking me about whether some driver who has been crowded out of the sport has a chance to get back in.

Sometimes your first reaction is “Why do you care?”

But the answer is that they’re fans.

One guy wears me out about how Steve Letarte is ruining Jeff Gordon’s life.

One guy used to call my voice mail at work about four times a week and tell me what an idiot I am. For the longest time I kept a copy of one of his messages saved and would call up on my cell phone and play it for friends. In a two-minute message, the guy probably used 500 words you can’t say on television. Not 500 different words, mind you, a lot of it was the same word over-and-over again.

If “fat” were a swear word, the count would have been closer to 1,000.

I read the comments posted when I write one of these blogs and wonder what would happen if I ever did something that really had a real impact on these people’s lives.

That’s OK.

For all the little annoyances that crop up during a race weekend in Charlotte I also get to write at least a little bit about things like Jeff Gordon’s Foundation helping to raise $310,000 in one day for bone marrow research, or Brienne Davis’ friends getting $100,000 in one evening for the scholarship fund that honors Davis, a NASCAR official who was killed in an automobile crash earlier this year.

Fans paid to get autographs at Joe Gibbs Racing Friday, but that money will go to the Mooresville Soup Kitchen, which provides more than 20,000 meals each year to people who otherwise might not have anything to eat. That’s a very good thing.

More than 1,000 motorcycle riders are expected to ride to the Victory Junction Gang Camp to raise money and honor their friend, Click Baldwin, who was killed in a motorcycle wreck in Montana a few months ago. They’ll leave from the Harley-Davidson dealership Baldwin ran in Gastonia.

They’ll tell stories, laugh a lot and maybe cry just a little bit, and then they’ll go help make the magic that the camp founded by the Petty family manufactures here in North Carolina and, soon, in Kansas at a second camp that will be built there.

Things might not be perfect, either in racing or in the world we live in. But they surely aren’t as bad as we sometimes let ourselves believe they are.

I am going to try to work harder remembering that.

Intermittent rain goofing up track schedule

CONCORD - The early news from Sprint Cup qualifying day at Lowe's Motor Speedway is that rain is bedeviling efforts to get things going.

It hasn't rained much here since about lunchtime, but it has rained just enough to keep Nationwide Series cars off the track for most of their practice that was supposed to begin at 1:15 and run until 2:50. As of 2:30, cars had only been on the track for about 10-15 minutes, but the cars are going back out as I write this.

The news of the day so far wasn't really news, just confirmation that Ryan Newman's No. 39 Chevrolets at Stewart-Haas Racing will be sponsored by the U.S. Army next year. The Army sponsorship moves over from Dale Earnhardt Inc. The Army will be on Newman's car for 22 points races plus the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Challenge.

Stewart said the team is working on sponsorship for the other 14 races and is narrowing the list of candidates to serve as Newman's crew chief.

On a side note, the photo opportunity following that announcement featured Newman's car in front of a vehicle from which shoulders can launch missiles. I have to admit the idea of Stewart having access to a missile launcher is disconcerting.

Stewart said to me - in jest, just to make sure everybody gets that I am joking - that he'd much rather have access to a tank because he'd like to use it to clear some property he has in Indiana.

In the time it took me to write those last three paragraphs, the red flag came out again because of more raindrops.

This could be a long day.

Racing photographer-craftsman Thomas Taylor Warren dies at 83

Two eyes who helped shape and record the history of racing in America are now closed.

Thomas Taylor Warren, a photographer who captured thousands of enduring images during his brilliant career, passed away Wednesday night. The man known throughout the NASCAR garage as T. Taylor was 83.

Warren’s most famous image was taken at the inaugural Daytona 500 in 1959. Earlier this year, Warren shot photos at the 50th running of that race. He never missed one in between.

In 1959 he was positioned on pit road to shoot the winner’s car as it came to the finish of the first Daytona 500. But three cars wound up in his viewfinder. Lee Petty and Johnny Beauchamp were battling side-by-side on the final lap. Petty had Beauchamp to his inside and the lapped car of Joe Weatherly to the outside.

Petty and Beauchamp both thought they’d won, but NASCAR called Beauchamp to victory lane. Petty immediately lodged a protest.

Warren took his cameras and film to NASCAR’s offices on South Peninsula Street in Daytona Beach and went into the darkroom.

“I started looking through my negatives for some reason, I don’t know why,” Warren recalled in an interview in February. “I saw a frame from the finish and made a print. I ran it through the chemicals real quick and looked at it.”

Uh-oh, Warren thought. The image showed Petty’s No. 42 car a hood ahead of Beauchamp’s No. 73 just a few yards short of the finish line. Warren took the still-wet print upstairs to the office and found Pat Purcell, NASCAR’s executive director and Bill France’s right-hand man.

“I said, ‘Pat, we’ve got a problem,’ ” Warren said.

Three days later, NASCAR reversed the ruling and named Petty the race winner.

Warren was born July 4, 1925, in Wyoming, Delaware. He lived in Florence, S.C., at the time of his death.

Warren started shooting photos as a boy and studied the craft at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. His brother bought a Midget race car and Warren went with him to the track. Once he started taking motorsports photographs, Warren never stopped.

He worked in Milwaukee and Kansas City before getting a job with a Kodak lab in High Point. There, he made friends in the stock-car world and was hired part time to shoot photos at a race on the old Daytona beach and road course in 1952. He eventually got fired from his regular job because he spent so much time at race tracks, but it worked out just fine for him.

Warren, who almost always had on a fisherman’s-style hat with a Goody’s logo and a khaki photo vest, was in 2006 given the Henry T. McLemore Award for achievement in journalism from the International Racing Hall of Fame in Talladega, Ala. He was the first photojournalist to receive that honor.

A memorial service will be held this Sunday at 4:00 p.m. at the Trinity United Methodist Church, 126 Pearl Street in Darlington, S.C. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the National Motorsports Press Association, P.O. Box 500, Darlington, S.C. 29540. Kistler Funeral Home will be directing the service.

In addition to being one of the most respected people in the NASCAR garage, Warren was also one of the most likeable. It is not enough to say that he will be missed. T. Taylor is a man who can never be replaced.

NASCAR got the call right at Talladega

It's hard to come to NASCAR's defense when it makes the right call on something because it's like somebody throwing darts at a board. Eventually some of them have to wind up sticking.

NASCAR got the call right Sunday at Talladega by penalizing Regan Smith for passing under the yellow line. It might not be popular to say that, but that's how I see it.

Here's why. If you're going to have a rule that says you cannot improve your position by going under the yellow line, then a battle between the first- and second-place cars on the final lap of a race should be the time when that rule in MOST in effect, not when it's suspended. A pass for the lead on the final lap would be the single most important pass of a race. If there's a rule, why would that NOT be covered by the rule? That doesn't make any sense.

Now this is where NASCAR shoots itself in the foot -- and the ankle, the shin, the knee and the thigh.

In February 2007 you had Ramsey Poston saying that when a driver can see the checkered flag he can "get all he can get. Sunday night, Jim Hunter said that's not the rule. Later Sunday night, Robin Pemberton apparently told an Associated Press reporter that you CAN pass under the line on the last lap but only if you can see the flagstand -- not the flag.

Now Poston, Hunter and Pemberton all work for and, when they are dealing with the meida, speak for NASCAR.

Wow, glad they cleared that up.

It's ridiculous to have a rule that's the same except for the lap it matters most. But with all the confusion I can't tell you what the proper call, by rule, would have been.

(UPDATE -- NASCAR president Mike Helton issued at statement Monday saying that, going forward, passing under the yellow line will not be allowed at any point during races at Talladega and Daytona -- even on the last lap. It's a day late, but at least NASCAR's on the record about what the rule actually IS now.)

But I can say it's my opinion that Smith gained an advantage by going out of bounds to make his pass Sunday at Tallaadega, so NASCAR did the right thing by penalizing.

I don't blame Smith for trying -- in fact, I applaud him for it. He could have setteled for second, which would have bettered his best career Cup finish by 12 spots. He made NASCAR make a call and the sacntioning body has been known to swallow its whistle in cases like this one before.

But I don't want to hear that Smith didn't "improve his posistion" until after he'd come back above the yellow line. Some are saying that Smith was still in second place when the got back above the line, but that's nuts. He was behind Stewart's car when he went out of bounds and beside it when he came back up. He'd improved his position and his chance to pass Stewart by going out of bounds.

Was Smith forced below the line? I don't think so. Stewart blocked him, absolutely. But some fans are saying Smith had only two choices -- go below the line or wreck Stewart and maybe himself. Well, there was a third choice and that was to do neither. He had to know that Stewart would make a counter-move to the low side trying to protect his line. So if he makes a move where his only "out" is to go below the line, that was his mistake.

Did you expect Stewart to simply give way, to not go back to the inside and try to use the line to his advantage? Of course not. That's not how it's done in today's restrictor plate racing. If Smith had been beside Stewart when Stewart moved left, that would be one thing. At best -- at best -- Smith had the first few inches of the nose of his car beside the Stewart's rear bumper. But Stewart closed the door, doing exactly what the leader has to do in plate races these days.

NASCAR needs to get its story straight and -- for the 97,458,457th time -- it needs to apply its rules the same way everytime the same issue comes up. But, as hard as it is for the people who don't like how things turned out Sunday, this is how the call SHOULD be made every time.

Fans of racing at Talladega? Count me out

TALLADEGA, Ala. - It's not that I don't get why people love to watch races at Talladega Superspeedway.

That's obvious. It's absolutely heart-stopping to watch drivers run at over 190 mph a foot or two from a car in front of them, one on either side of them and another one behind him.

I've never been one who believes that NASCAR fans want to see drivers get hurt. There are fans who don't want to see wrecks, even, and the ones who do consider wrecks a part of the game want to see a driver cheat danger, not fall victim to it.

I have also heard it argued that a race car driver knows the risk he's taking when he straps in, and if you're going to race in the Sprint Cup Series you know that you have to come here twice each year. The way that line of thinking goes, it's part of the bargain.

I suppose you have to concede that point, but still I have to tell you that I am never going to be a big fan of this race track. Not as long as the racing here looks like it does.

It's entirely possible that nobody will be injured in a crash in today's Amp Energy 500. It's even theoretically possible there won't be any wrecks. I've actually seen a caution-free race here, as a matter of fact.

But that doesn't mean my stomach won't be in knots when the green flag flies, and the longer the race goes without a big wreck happening the tighter that knot will be twisted.

It's a fact that no Cup driver has died in a race here since the beginning of the restrictor-plate era. Larry Smith died in a crash here in 1973 and Tiny Lund was killed in 1975.

But even though it has been 33 years since a driver died in a Cup race here, I don't want to wait until after another one is lost in a wreck here to express my concerns about what goes on here.

I hope it never happens again, not here or anywhere else. And if people want to flame me for having concerns the way they will no doubt do in the comments that are on this blog, I can take that, too.

But I am not going to pretend that I don't think racing at Talladega is over the line, that I would much prefer the racing here be less entertaining and more sane.

I am also not going to tell you that if when it's all over and everybody walks out of here unscathed, I won't most likely be shaking my head in wonder at what happens here today.

It's more likely that today's race will have a memorably thrilling finish that people will be talking about for weeks than it is for there to be the kind of problem that I dread so much. I concede that point.

And I deeply hope that's exactly what happens.

Street cars and NASCAR stars have a big night out

Boys with toys. (Yeah, there were girls there, too, but that doesn’t rhyme.)

Wednesday night was NASCAR Night at zMax Dragway @ Concord, an evening for guys from the stock-car world to bring their hot rods out of the closet.

The only rules were the cars had to be street legal, and some guys were pushing that. For example, I doubt very seriously Greg Biffle puts ice bags on the engine and rides around on racing slicks when he’s got his black Mustang Shelby on the streets.

Marcus Smith, the president and general manager of Lowe’s Motor Speedway who, along with his father, Bruton, built the joint made several passes in his Ford GT and beat most comers. But Biffle’s 10.146-second elapsed time on one run was about as fast as anything I saw. Later, he ran a top-end speed of 136.50 mph on a run that had a 10.225 elapsed time.

Matt Kenseth made a bunch of runs in his red Mustang with several passengers going along for the ride. Kyle Busch was there in his girlfriend’s yellow Corvette.

Several hundred fans came out to watch the action, and their favorite seemed to be the Rat Ride, a pick-up truck body that acted as camouflage for a Winston Cup chassis with a monster motor under the spackle-painted hood. I was told the driver, who works for a Cup team, has a laptop computer on board with him to help it go down the track in great haste.

Ray Evernham was there in a Viper that Rick Hendrick gave him for winning the Cup championship in 1995. Hendrick actually told Evernham that it was a good-looking car before Evernham reminded his former boss where it came from.

Speaking of Hendrick, he made some runs in his red Ferrari and also had a yellow Corvette on the grounds. Somehow that ‘Vette ended up in the sand trap at the end of the runoff area when it’s driver – in this case, not Hendrick – just kept getting it well past the finish line and sort of forgot about the slowing down part.

There was another pickup truck, one that Doug Rice joked looked like it was being held together by rust, that would get on down the road, too.

It was all a lot of fun, but if they keep on doing this somebody’s going to make a lot of money selling performance parts and racing slicks. It stunned me, in fact, that Doug Herbert wasn’t here with a truck full of parts and a credit card machine from his high-performance shop in Lincolnton. He could have made a mint.

Biffle probably ran 10 miles, a quarter of a mile at a time, before he finally packed it in for the night. I was sitting in the media center toward the end of the evening when somebody came in and asked if some track prep could be done – they wanted somebody to put down some TrackBite to make it easier to go faster.

I can’t swear that Biffle put them up to it. But I wouldn’t bet against it.

Rain and mud? No problem for Paul Newman, 'Humpy' Wheeler recalls

When it came to Paul Newman’s passion for racing, Humpy Wheeler was an unapologetic enabler.

Wheeler, the longtime president and general manager of Lowe’s Motor Speedway who now runs his own motorsports consulting company, said Newman was one of the most fascinating people he has met.

“I first met him in 1966 on the set of ‘Winning.’” Wheeler said, referring to the movie that fired Newman’s love for racing. “When he met you he looked you right in the eye like you were the most important person in the world and he heard you out.”

Wheeler said that when Newman, who died Friday evening, was at the race track he was a racer above all else.

“Paul was a humble, nice guy who loved his racing friends,” Wheeler said. “He really didn't like all the Hollywood stuff, but he did regard his profession as an art form to be taken very seriously.”

Newman certainly took his racing seriously.

The actor and philanthropist had a Legends car that Wheeler kept for him at the Charlotte track in 1995.

“He called me one day and said he had a break from the movie he was making and wanted to fly down and run his car,” Wheeler said. “I told him the weather looked awful but he came anyway.”

Wheeler took Newman to a small one-fifth mile paved oval located outside the backstretch side of the 1.5-mile oval.

“I forgot he was here and two hours later with rain pouring I heard this Legends car running full-blast,” Wheeler said. “I whipped over to the track and there he was sliding around the wet oval running pretty fast. …He pulled in, soaked and smiling.”

Wheeler said he noticed that Newman’s lap times in the rain were only about two seconds off the dry track record at the time.

“That is when I decided to run Legends Summer Shootout series rain or shine,” Wheeler said. “It became the first series in oval racing history to run rain or shine and still does.”

Newman and Wheeler both had voice parts in the animated film “Cars” that had its premiere at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in 2006. Newman voiced the character of Doc Hudson, based on the fabulous Hudson Hornets that ran in NASCAR’s early years.

When it came time to stage the premiere at the Charlotte track, Disney brought in a car with a Hudson body built around a racing truck.

“Paul grabbed me and said he wanted to run it around the big track,” Wheeler said. “It had a half-mile track gear in it. Disney didn't want anyone driving it because they wanted it for the premiere, but Paul kept bugging me to do something.”

Wheeler tried to convince Newman that the gearing was wrong. But Newman knew that Wheeler could get the right gear from one of the driving schools at the track.

“So I borrowed a gear from the driving school and he took off at the tender age of 81, wide-open around the big track sliding all over the place,” Wheeler said.

Wheeler turned to diversionary tactics.

“I flagged him in and told him I had a Thunder Roadster for him to drive all afternoon on the dirt track, which he loved,” Wheeler said. “He left the big track and drove for three hours on the dirt on ended up looking like Hondo with all that red clay on him. The evening ended with frosty beers in my office.”

Wheeler said he will miss Newman greatly.

“I actually believe he could have been a pretty good (Sprint) Cup driver had he taken it up in his 20s,” Wheeler said. “But, then, where would the Oscars be?”

A car that fails inspection should not be in the race

KANSAS CITY, Kansas - A few quick thoughts on a warm but otherwise beautiful day at Kansas Speedway:

* * *

Sorry if you're a Juan Pablo Montoya fan (and he comes on our Sirius NASCAR Radio show every week), but the No. 42 Dodge shouldn't be racing here on Sunday.

NASCAR found the rear shocks had too much nitrogen gas pressure in the rear shocks on that car after Montoya apparently won the pole for the Camping World RV 400. Montoya's time was disallowed and he was pushed back to the No. 42 starting spot for Sunday's race.

That doesn't do Michael McDowell any good, though. McDowell's Toyota missed making the race by one spot, but there's every indication that his car was legal. Montoya's was not.

It doesn't matter - or at least it shouldn't - how Montoya's car came to be outside the rules or what the too-high pressure in the shock might have been intended to do in the car. I know fans are going to get all hung up on that kind of stuff because they always do when something like this comes up.

What ought to matter is Montoya's car was outside the rules. So he shouldn't be racing.

I know I am a broken record on this, but I promise you that if I don't actually type these words and have them posted some fans will rear up and accuse me of playing favorites because I've done it before in simialr situations. So here it is.

If your car doesn't make it through post-qualifying inspection, you should go home. Period. No matter who you are.

* * *

Saw Scott Riggs in the garage today and asked him about where he might be driving next year. He said he's confident he'll be in a Cup car but doesn't know where yet.

Riggs is driving for Haas CNC Racing in the No. 66 Chevrolets this year. But that team will be Stewart Haas Racing next year and Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman will be driving its cars.

The other news on Riggs is that he has a bad case of poison oak.

"I was cleaning out some stuff along the driveway on this property I've got," said Riggs, who had a wrap on one arm covering a big patch of the itchy malady and had another large splotch on his abdomen.

Riggs will be fine to race on Sunday.

* * *

Jeff Gordon qualified 13th fastest on Friday. He also practiced his car, but that was about the only thing the four-time champion did. He was under the weather and canceled all of his media sessions to conserve his energy for driving.

* * *

Denny Hamlin had the fastest time in Friday afternoon's final practice for today's Kansas Lottery 300 race in the Nationwide Series. Kevin Harvick, Mark Martin, Greg Biffle and Kyle Busch rounded out the top five in the final session.

Kansas track a NASCAR success story

Off Thursday morning from the radio show on Sirius NASCAR Radio because I am doing the Delta shuffle through Atlanta to get to Kansas City for this week's race.
I always look forward to getting to Kansas each year because I can't wait to see how many more things they've built around the race track there.
When we first started going to the speedway over in Wyandotte County, Kansas, there were a couple of big stores within sight of the track and that was pretty much it. Now there's stuff everywhere out that way and more -- much more -- is coming.
Within the next couple of years a Hard Rock Hotel & Casino will go up just outside Turn 2. International Speedway Corp. is building it in conjunction with a major developer, and I think it's interesting to see ISC get into the casino business. Guess that means there won't be any big anti-gambling policy for NASCAR drivers and officials coming any time soon.
The upshot of that project from the racing standpoint is that Kansas, by 2010, will ask for and undoubtedly get a second date from another ISC track. I don't know which track they'll take a race from, and any speculation you've seen so far is just that -- speculation. A lot of things could shake out in racing over the next two years.
The ecomony is not exactly purring like Greg Biffle's engine these days, but for all of the people who keep talking about the gloom and doom in NASCAR's world all I need to do is look at what has happened and continues to happen in Kansas. If ISC and its partners feel confident enough to tackle a project as big as this Hard Rock Hotel deal. they must feel that racing at least has some future in the nation's heartland.

Absolute control is absolutely the NASCAR way

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

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

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

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

NASCAR always likes to leave itself wiggle room.

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

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

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

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

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

That’s where the control principle kicks in.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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