News-Record.com

Because the Cup drivers are off this week (except for the nine in Sunday's Busch race in Mexico City), you might find a bit of a Sports void in your life.

Let me suggest Tournament Town, the online site for our women's (this week) and men's (next week) ACC basketball coverage.

Yeah, I know it's not racing. But I think I'm contractually obligated to mention it somewhere.

Speaking of racin', did you hear that the NASCAR Hall of Fame is coming to Charlotte? No, really, I mean it this time. ...

A reporter in Oklahoma realizes that the Speed channel has a lot of shows about ... wait for it ... racin'. NASCAR, specifically.

The answer to his question -- "Is there too much NASCAR on TV?" -- is a big fat no. Just because the Biography channel is trying to make a little money off of NASCAR doesn't mean the sport is at risk of being overexposed.

And besides, Speed isn't part of my basic/expanded 80-channel cable package. Without it, I don't see any racin' anything until Saturday and Sunday.

If you rephrase the question -- Is there too much NASCAR on TV compared to other series? -- I'd answer: What other series?

In the Hall of Fame 500, the Charlotte paper reports that Atlanta is trying to slingshot past the Queen City.

The city of Atlanta made a dramatic, last-minute effort to lure NASCAR's Hall of Fame Wednesday, even as Charlotte boosters got ready to pop the cork to hail its arrival.

Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin announced her city was upping its bid from $5 million to $77 million. That money, combined with promised state and private contributions, would put that city's package at about $165 million.

The announcement came hours after the Observer reported that Charlotte's $137.5 million bid had apparently beaten proposals from Atlanta and Daytona Beach, Fla., to win the shrine to stock car racing. Sources told the paper NASCAR had decided to put the hall uptown, and that an announcement would take place Monday in Charlotte.

After that comes a check with Charlotte's anonymous sources, which have dwindled from four in Monday's paper to two today.

The AP, meanwhile, catches up with Governor Trouble in Turn 2:

RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina's highest-ranking NASCAR fan said Thursday he hopes the stock car series will award its first-ever Hall of Fame to Charlotte, but cautioned it's too soon for the city to start a Victory Lane celebration.

Gov. Mike Easley, who has had his share of adventures — and misadventures — behind the wheel of a stock car, said it would be great if reports in The Charlotte Observer are true. The newspaper cited three anonymous sources Wednesday who said the city had won the race for the stock car racing museum, and an official announcement was expected Monday.

Two people in NASCAR who are close to the negotiations told The Associated Press later Wednesday that, while Charlotte is the leading candidate, the deal isn't complete and talks continue.

Why do I post all of this on a facility that's not in our extended coverage area? Maybe because the bumpin' and bangin' was more interesting than the real thing Sunday at California.

I dig numbers. I really dig numbers.

Spreadsheets? Love them.

My favorite racing site: This one.

I'll explain why after the jump. ...

Check out this spreadsheet. (Don't worry; it's your standard MS Excel 2002 file.)

If you crack it open, you'll see NASCAR's new box score.

That's right: NASCAR -- a sport that didn't worry too much about numbers beyond a driver's starting and finishing positions, his place in the season standings and the amount of money he would take home at the end of the day -- has a boxscore.

Just got this e-mail from NASCAR:

ANNOUNCEMENT

NASCAR will have a special announcement today at 4:00 p.m. at the Charlotte Convention Center regarding the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

NASCAR fans are also invited to attend.

Y'think maybe the HOF will be in Charlotte? It's still not too late, Atlanta ...

(more news after the jump ...)

So Charlotte got the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Like that wasn't going to happen. (Here is the official NASCAR list of talking points. My favorite is Number 6: What does NASCAR get? I'm sure it took a lot of restraint on someone's part to keep that question outside of the top 5.)

Now that the who's-gonna-get-it game has ended, it's now time to play the who's-gonna-get-IN game. Dustin Long played a round in today's paper. His picks for an inaugural class: Petty, Pearson, Earnhardt, France Sr., Junior Johnson, Darlington and the 1979 Daytona 500.

Nobody said the hall has to honor just drivers, right?

Duane Cross of nascar.com plays, too.

Update: Charlotte's David Poole puts forward his 25 picks for who should be in the hall.

Also, I updated the post title. Too many Hall of Fame posts recently.

In Tuesday's paper, Dustin Long picked his inaugural class for the new NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte. As part of that we ran a little box asking readers to do the same thing. We've gotten in a handful of responses. The best so far was from David Mielke, an N&R reader who lives in eastern Guilford County.

He makes a convincing case for including Wendell Scott in the NASCAR Hall sooner rather than later or not at all. And Scott is an interesting case:

* Scott should get in because he's a pioneer. He was the first African American to win a Cup race, and he raced in nearly 500 events.

* Scott's stats are, well, not great -- just one win and one pole in 495 Cup/Grand National races. That's not HOF material.

* Scott should get in because he probably would have done better had he driven in a different, more tolerant era or racing series.

* Another pioneer, Jackie Robinson, had good enough numbers to be included regardless of his position in history. Scott, in other words, had his chance and did little with it.

And on and on. See how interesting this Hall of Fame debate can be? Better than Sunday's Vegas race, that's for sure.

Now if you're asking me, sure, Scott deserves entry. I don't think he's part of the first class if the hall goes with 5-7 drivers (which was the premise of Dustin's Tuesday story) -- it's hard to exclude Petty, Earnhardt, Pearson, etc. But Scott should be in the first 15-20 drivers.

David's case for including Wendell Scott after the jump ...

Maybe you heard there's a basketball tournament in town?

That's where my head is at today. My body, sadly, is still locked deep inside N&R headquarters. The boss gets to go to the Coliseum. Me? I'm responsible for everything that's not ACC hoops.

Which means I'm trying to decide if we should run the AP story about Michel Jourdain Jr.. Because Dustin is en route to Vegas, I'm leaning toward "yes."

In the meantime, go read some of the other racing bloggers on the righthand side of this page.

Kinda crummy, actually, reports Dustin Long: 51 and windy today, 48 and rainy Saturday for the Busch race and 52 for Sunday's Cup race.

Here, it was 60 when I left the house this morning, it's about 75 now and the only clouds in the sky are hanging over the Greensboro Coliseum, where Duke is down 6 to Miami (!) at the half in Game 1 of the best day of basketball all year.

Some things to help you get your NASCAR on after the jump ...

So I was wrong about Vegas being a boring race. So, too, was Dustin, though the larger point about the debate over track changes still stands.

(Writing a story about a dull race and having it finish with a last-corner pass is like noticing a no hitter. As soon as you tell a pitcher he's tossing a no-no, he's guaranteed to give up a warning-track double the next inning. Or something.)

And it was an exciting race, at least at the end. More after the jump. ...

Tom Higgins tells the story about Junie Donlavey and a trip to Atlanta. Funny stuff. You should be reading Higgins if you're not already.

More on a guy you haven't heard much from recently:
Donlavey's career stats
Brief bio is here.

More on thatsracin.com's new corporate overlords here and here and here. Don't be surprised to see Poole and Utter in two major N.C. newspapers.

The question: Did any one notice that there was a Yank in Sunday's F1 race?

Scott Speed, bearer of one of the greatest names in all of sports, finished 13th in Sunday's Bahrain Grand Prix. Sadly, he's chosen to race in the worst racing series on earth.

More after the jump ...

Interesting item in SceneDaily: Brian France has dumped most of his ISC stock.

From Scene Daily:

According to its annual filing of stockholders to the Securities and Exchange Commission, ISC reported March 6 that Brian France had 8,930 shares of Class A stock and 8,033 of Class B stock (.03 percent of the total voting power). In last year's report, he had 237,078 shares of Class A and 235,181 of Class B (0.78 percent voting power). The stock sales happened sometime before Jan. 31.

Sister Lesa sold about 471K shares in 2005.

The spin is that neither France had much stock in the first place - less than 1 percent. But the fact remains that Brian sold off 96 percent of what he had. The stock traded in the low 50s for most of 2005. The math, in rough terms: 235K shares x $50/share = $11.8M.

But look at the chart again. The share price tanked at the end of the year right after ISC announced its TV deal, which wasn't as lucrative as analysts apparently thought. And the rule of thumb on these sort of things is "Get out before the bust."

So there are the dots. Someone with more financial savvy than I have needs to connect them for me.

You've all seen the commercials where Darrell Waltrip begs his little brother to drive the No. 99 Busch Series ride, right?

Michael finally said yes:

There aren’t many "firsts" left in Darrell Waltrip’s racing career. On Saturday, July 22, he’ll celebrate two, though.

The three-time NASCAR NEXTEL Cup champion will make his first NASCAR Busch Series start at Martinsville Speedway on that night. And in a long-awaited move, the elder Waltrip will take the wheel of the No. 99 Aaron’s Dream Machine from his brother Michael for the 250-lap Busch Series event.

According to the release from which I pulled the two paragraphs above, there was some sort of fan vote. Apparently enough people thought it would be funny to put a 59-year-old man behind the wheel of a car pushing 750 HP at the circuit's tightest track.

Waltrip knows Martinsville about as well as anyone out there. But c'mon, people: His last Cup win there was in 1989, the year Reed Sorenson turned 3.

Enough already. This is like watching Jerry Rice play for the Seahawks.

While I'm trying to figure out what to put in the weekend papers -- I'm in charge of everything that's not college basketball, which means I'm professionally heartbroken that the U.S. washed out of the World Baseball classic -- here's your thread to talk about what's on your mind.

Will Bill Lester makes Sunday's Cup race?

Who will do well Sunday? USA Today has all of your team reports. (Hint: Everyone says they're going to do great on Sunday. Really.)

DW redefines irony and tells Tony Stewart to chill out.

David Smith ranks your full-time Busch drivers. He likes Paul Menard, Jon Wood and Matt McCall. I don't see Menard as a future Cup champ, but he's definitely an interesting guy who got a lot better in 2005. (He had six top 10s in the last 10 Busch races last year.)

Speaking of Busch, read my reply to this thread. (Which shows the depths of what I'm willing to do to steer some traffic this way.)

It's getting more ridiculous by the day ...

... I hear Newman finished third behind Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch ...

So what's on your mind as the Cup guys head to Atlanta?

Me, I'm glad there's actually going to be a race. If today's Busch event is any harbinger, Sunday should be gooooood. Fast as heck. Lots of passing. As many lines as there were drivers.

Speaking of good, who lit a fire under Jeff Burton?

Sunday was rained out as you know.

As for today ... good thing they're starting early. Dustin Long says it's dry now, but weather.com's forecast for tonight is downright dreary: 90 percent chance of a soaking rain.

Race has been moved to FX. Which stinks for me - our DishTV package (Reason No. 32 I'll stick with cable at home) doesn't have FX, and the Fox network wasn't going to run the risk of pre-empting Tyra Banks, Cops or Fox 8's news at noon ("Our motto: We recycle the N&R's headlines four hours later than the Fox 8 morning show!")

Still trying to find a radio station with an online stream ... any thoughts?

Update, 10:55 a.m.: Wasn't easy, but I found a Greenville, S.C. station that streams live AND is playing today's race. All hail WESC-92.5 FM. Who knew Glen Beck was more popular than racing?

The "Listen Live" button is on the right side of the screen, near the top. I didn't have to register - might have been because I'm registered elsewhere. Whatever - I'm not asking questions.

Update 11:15 a.m.: A curse on the entire state of South Carolina. The station whose call letters will never be uttered again switched to music right after the "start your engines" command. The search continues.

Dustin stumbled onto something weird yesterday: In each of the past two seasons, 8 of the 10 drivers who ultimately made the chase were already in the top 10 after the Atlanta race.

In other words, 80 percent of the drivers in the chase -- which won't start until the 27th race of the season -- are in after just four races.

Your chase lineup, then, will include eight of these drivers: Jimmie Johnson, Kasey Kahne, Matt Kenseth, Mark Martin, Casey Mears, Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kyle Busch, Dale Jarrett and Clint Bowyer.

The question, if past performance does indeed indicate future results, is which eight drivers?

The No. 8 crew e-mailed this out as part of their Bristol preview:

FAST OUT OF THE BLOCKS: With four races completed this season, Dale Jr.’s average finish is 12.25. Only once (2004) has Junior and the Bud team gotten off to a better start. The 2004 campaign featured two wins in the first four races (Daytona and Atlanta), giving Junior an average finish of 10.5.

Season/Avg. finish after 4 races/(rank in points after four races)
2000: 17.75 (14th)
2001: 20.75 (16th)
2002: 18.25 (14th)
2003: 18.5 (10th)
2004: 10.50 (3rd)
2005: 25.25 (26th)
2006: 12.25 (7th)

I haven't been overwhelmed by Junior's 2006 performance. I'll tell you why after the jump ...

The N&R Sports department gets a lot of e-mail and calls from people with suggestions on how to improve the section - aka complaints.

The bulk of them are about things we goofed - you didn't update these standings, that name was misspelled, things like that.

A few take issue with our coverage or lack thereof. Which brings me to the 12 Hours of Sebring. How many of you knew the race was run Saturday? How many of you cared?

Points leader Jimmie Johnson finished sixth at Atlanta - it's his worst finish of the season by far.

So what does Hendrick do? Dumps his crew chief.

Tough sport.

There appears to be one sponsor NASCAR won't allow:

NASCAR officials say they have informed Richard Childress Racing that if Cingular Wireless changes its name to AT&T, as expected after a recent merger, AT&T would not be allowed on Jeff Burton's No. 31 car.

I always thought it odd that Nextel let other phone companies to sponsor cars or races. (Yes, I know Alltel and Cingular were grandfathered, but you make the rules if you own title sponsorship.)

During the Winston era, you never saw the Phillip Morris No. 27 Oldsmobile or the Marlboro Lights 500, right?

Longtime Charlotte Observer writer David Poole has his own blog. The best part is, you don't have to go anywhere near Turn 5 or the Outfield or Behind the Wall to get there.

Sadly, though, you have to brave the madness to get to Tom Higgins. His latest is about Wild Man Junior Johnson, whose '63 Impala is now parked down in a museum in Raleigh.

Speaking of old school ... check out the Historic Stock Car Racing Series. Someone in the group found an old Alan Kuwicki No. 7 and will be racing it this weekend at Infineon. Cool

Jeff Gordon is a rich guy, no doubt about it. He's on every list of top-paid athletes/celebrities/Americans that comes out. Here's the latest.

And here's the lastest twist on these lists from Forbes: celebrity power rankings. Oprah, of course, is number one. The rest of the top 10: Tiger, Mel Gibson, George Lucas, Shaq, Steven Spielberg, Johnny Depp, Madonna, Elton John and Tom Cruise.

Jeff Gordon? He's 46th, sandwiched between Nicole Kidman and Phil Mickelson. Here is his blurb.

Yeah, yeah, I know NASCAR is popular, but it still blows my mind that any driver from this formerly southern and regional sport is among the top 100 U.S. anything.

Here's the mindblower: Gordon ranks 13th in the amount of press coverage over the past year. The way Forbes compiled the list, Gordon got more print mentions than Paris Hilton, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. He's only five spots back of the Mighty Oprah Herself.

Boy, those Gordon-is-struggling stories really added up, huh.

That 10 of the top 13 on the press list are athletes says something about the sports-obsessed culture we live in (and I work in).

Martinsville still has tickets for next weekend's Truck and Cup races. I just played the "Best Available" game at the track Web site for the Sunday Cup race, and they've still got seats in the Bill France tower (turns 3-4), the Clay Earles tower (turn 2), South Annex (turns 1-2), Nextel Tower (turn 1) and the backstretch.

What, you thought you could still get good seats three days before the race? All of these are pretty close to the track, which are great if you don't mind obstructed views.

If you like your racing on the big screen, "Cars" will make its premiere on May 26 at Lowe's Motor Speedway. Don't know which celebs will be there or why you'd want to see a movie with 29,999 other people, but there you go.

The full "Cars" release is after the jump. I wouldn't want to deprive you of the literary masterpiece that is the modern American press release.

"Please God, let this be the last question."

The guy with his back to the camera is the N&R's NASCAR writer.

I can't wait for Sunday's race. After California, Vegas and a Monday race at Atlanta that I didn't get to see, Bristol is the perfect place.

Standing between me are stories to be edited and sections to be planned. In other words, I'm slammed, so y'all talk.

Any predictions for the weekend?

... before I dive back into the weekend papers:

I wondered how the Kurt Busch-Kevin Harvick thing would play out. If you recall, David Stremme ran into Harvick about a third of the way through the Atlanta race. Harvick turned right to avoid him and smacked into Busch, who then hit the wall. That incident wounded Busch's car and didn't exactly help Harvick, who finished a lap down. (Busch came home four laps down.)

Busch obviously wasn't happy. Here's a sample of what he had to say over the radio Monday: @#$% &*$#!$% #$%&!#( %@#*!!*#$^(#@!!!!!

Harvick continued the insult-a-thon today (quotes courtesy of Dustin Long): "Before the year is over, he'll make a fool out of Roger Penske. We'll just have to wait and see. I shouldn't have said that either. It's hard not to pick on a guy when his ears are pinned back. I should stop. My wife is looking at me."

Say what you want about Harvick and Busch, there's no doubt that they're two of the more, ah, colorful drivers in the Cup Series.

Speaking of which: Dustin is working on a piece on Harvick for Saturday's paper, and he's writing an interesting Chad Knaus piece for Sunday. Look for that and more hereabouts.

Dustin wrote a takeout on Busch in February in case you missed it. Dustin also suggests that a Busch-Penske pairing might overwhelm the field at Bristol. We'll see.

What in the H-E-double-hockeysticks is going on with the weather?

On a related note, I hear these guys are thinking about racing at Bristol this weekend.

When Dustin Long wrote a piece earlier in the season about Tony Stewart's new role as boss around the garage, he was dead on.

At Bristol today, Brent Sherman was running 1.5 seconds or so slower than everyone else. So Stewart moved him out of the way and told the moving chicane to get the heck off the track.

When rookie Martin Truex Jr. was a lap-down and trying to play rough with Jeff Gordon (a.k.a. four time Cup champ Jeff Gordon), Stewart moved Truex out of the way, too.

Hey, it's nasty work, but it had to be done.

So what did you think of those little love taps? And what about Kurt Busch's end-of-the-race move on Matt Kenseth? Cool? Not cool?

Speaking of cool: Chad Knaus is his own worst enemy. Even if you don't like Knaus, JJ or anything about the 48, give the story a read. It's a good one.

Dustin's main story: Kurt Busch celebrated. Matt Kenseth winced. And Jeff Gordon retaliated. (Read it here.)

More on Kurt Busch's win here. You'll see Jared Turner's byline next week at Martinsville, too -- he works for our sister paper in Roanoke and will be working with Dustin this weekend at Martinsville.

Race notebook is here. It leads off with Jimmie Johnson, who stunk Sunday. (Bring back Darian Grubb!)

And now for the fines and penalties after the jump ...

Robin Miller, longtime Indy Star racing writer, wrote this about the death of IRL driver Paul Dana:

The general feeling in the IRL paddock was that Paul Dana was a nice kid with a driving passion who was over the moon to be running an Indy car. And also over his head. Sadly, they both were true.

Full column here. ESPN story is here.

ESPN's John Oreovicz comes to the same conclusion after deciding he wasn't jealous of Dana, a former writer for AutoWeek.

A sad day for the IRL.

Here's a good look at NASCAR's future, courtesy of the AP:

Note the recess under the bumper and check out the splitter underneath. Gaze upon the wing on the rear.

Pretty? Definitely not in primer gray. But there you have it - the car that will be on the track at Bristol a year from now.

The Knoxville News sent a sports columnist Mike Griffith to Bristol on Monday to check out the test session. His conclusion:

It will be hard to get used to the look. If you cut off the roof, shrink the body and put wider tires on it, you might as well be watching the Indianapolis 500. Can't we just make today's car better tomorrow?

Unless I went blind between posting that picture and now, the COT still looks much more like the Impala that cut me off this morning downtown than the cars that hit 200+ at Homestead on Sunday. And if I didn't know better, I would have sworn that the "can't we must make today's car better tomorrow" line was uttered by Chad Knaus.

According to Matt Kenseth, he wouldn't have used his bumper to get himself into victory lane on Sunday. The exact words in Dustin's story were "absolutely would not" (have).

Among those who used their bumpers to great effect Sunday at Bristol were Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Kurt Busch and, yes, even Kenseth himself.

Past Bristol bumper-car artists include Dale Earnhardt and Terry Labonte.

To be downright cynical, maybe the better question is: What do all of those drivers mentioned above have that Mark Martin doesn't? And is there any relation between Cup championships and a willingness to use the nose of the car?

David Poole's take: Certainly, fans expect drivers to do whatever they can fairly do when presented with a chance to win anywhere. A driver who sits in second place without making a dogged attempt to at least try to win would be subject to justifiable derision. It's the definition of fairness, however, where things get sticky.

And here's a Mark Martin fan site.

Now that we're five races into the Cup Series, we can forget about last year's owner points and starting working with this year's owner points.

They're important because the owner points (which are like driver points, but different - don't ask me to explain the difference) are used to figure out who gets in the race and who doesn't. Sure, there's qualifying, but that's mainly to decide where the cars are going to line up. Only a few drivers - those outside the top 35 in owner points - are actually worried about whether or not they'll be racing Sunday.

Props to Hall of Fame Racing for using the Terry Labonte strategy - use the past champion's pass (which he did four times in five races) to get into the race. T-lab stayed out of trouble and put HOF 30th on the owners list.

Here are the full-time drivers in trouble: Sterling Marlin (30 pts out of 35th), Kevin Lepage (-45), David Stremme (-60), Scott Wimmer (-69), Brent Sherman (-81) and Travis Kvapil (-163).

Marlin's the real surprise here. MB2 isn't the most high-powered team in Cup, but I figured Marlin would at least be in the top 35.

As for Stremme, that's not such a big surprise. The CW on him was that he wasn't quite ready for Cup after going 0-for-87 in the Busch Series. We'll see what sort of guts he has in the next few weeks - miss a race, and cracking that top 35 becomes a whole lot tougher.

It's got to be hard to know that your job comes down to how fast you can turn two laps on a race track on a Friday afternoon.

This is what Brent Sherman gets for not having the No. 49 in the top 35 after five races: replaced at Martinsville by Jimmy Spencer.

At least Spencer can keep up with traffic. There's no telling whether this will mean more bumping or less Sunday. My guess is "about the same."

So when did NASCAR start to like Hendrick more than DEI?

I think I missed that development.

So a meaner non-robotic Jeff Gordon ("I have a personality, and I have emotions") is $10,000 poorer today after shoving Matt Kenseth. As Dustin Long pointed out elsewhere, "the fine is tip money for a driver who has earned nearly $1 million this season and more than $75 million in his career."

So was NASCAR right to just slap Gordon on the wallet? Or should he have lost points? both?

Or are you tired of Bristol yet?

12:30 p.m. update: Scene Daily's Bob Pockrass makes the case that Gordon should be fined: If NASCAR wants to have any resemblance of a sport and not professional wrestling, it will need to at least slap someone on the wrist and make them think about the penalties of a physical altercation. A shove should at least be worth 25 points and $25,000.

And speaking of professional wrestling, read this. Otherwise you'll have to take my word that "8-Man Lumberjack Match" and "Kyle Petty" appear in consecutive paragraphs in the same press release.

The Associated Press is promising this story for tomorrow's papers:

CONCORD, N.C. — A flat tire caused Jimmie Johnson to wreck Wednesday during an important test at Lowe's Motor Speedway, sending Goodyear officials back to the drawing board to find the right rubber to use on the freshly-paved surface.

The headline on the AP story budget also noted that "speeds reach record highs." This can't be good.

7 p.m. update: Charlotte's David Poole is here.
The AP's Jenna Fryer is here.
PaddockTalk reports in here.
The Mighty Mattfish has a take here: Do we need any further evidence that NASCAR, the tracks, and Goodyear have no idea what each other are doing?

So the folks at Crown Royal are all hot and bothered to get a mention of its latest promotion: special packaging.

One of my great ideas after the jump ...

I'm going to put on my assistant sports editor's hat (it's the oversized one that fits over my Racin' Editor's cap and my red Bud hat) and shout out best wishes to Bill Hass, a sportswriter's sportswriter.

After 36 years, thousands of bylines and bad ballpark hot dogs (and more than his share of good ones, too), Bill took the N&R buyout; Friday was his last day. He signs off over at the neighbor's blog.

I'm going to miss Bill a lot. He was a mentor when I started at the N&R 11 years ago, and he schooled me in the ways of fantasy football. He was patient with me, a noob editor who had the job he once held, and for that I'm thankful. I'm also thankful for his clean, solid prose, written to length and filed on deadline.

The good news, as he explains in his farewell: He'll be writing for us again in about three months, so look for his name atop a variety of different game stories. The only difference: Instead of saying "staff writer," his byline will read "Special to the News & Record."

Bill's always been special at the N&R. Now it's official.

One of the more underplayed moments from Sunday's Cup race at Bristol was Tony Stewart's role as NASCAR enforcer.

One of the most overplayed was Kevin Mannion's use of a certain word that can best be written as sh*t, s**t or #$%^&!!. Mannion was hacked off after Stewart punted his driver, Martin Truex Jr., out of the way.

Marc at Full Throttle recounts the whole thing over at his place. Kathy at Kathy's Pit Stop rolls her eyes at the whole deal.

My take after the jump ...

It's Ray Evernham. So say the media breathren and sistren who voted on NASCAR's super-secret media-only NASCAR site. (The site is super awesome, but you'll have to take my word for it. ;) )

Evernham got more media votes than Dale Inman (the King's cousin), Leonard Wood (one of the Wood Brothers) and seven others on the list.

Full bios of the 10 after the jump. Who would you have picked? No, Tony Eury Jr. wasn't on the list, darnit.

Seriously, it's hard to argue with Evernham. I would have put Kirk Shelmerdine higher, but I didn't vote.

If you missed Dustin's story today on Carl Edwards, you deprived yourself of a real treat.

I'll tell you why after the jump ...

Those three drivers have combined for 132 Cup wins and six Cup titles - and three stories in the N&R this weekend.

Dustin Long's "In His Words" series continues Saturday with Mark Martin, who admits his love for AC/DC ("Highway to Hell," specifically) and says he never gets hungry.

Sunday, we've got Tony Stewart, who talks about his partymobile, a hearse with a 42-inch plasma TV in the back.

Also Sunday, Dustin is writing about Jeff Gordon, the thinking man's driver who uses both his head and his brake to get around at the Paper Clip 500.

Okay, okay, so Jeff didn't exactly use his head last Sunday. Such is the risk of planning stories ahead of time.

Look for those stories and more coverage here or here.