News-Record.com

No doubt - it's messed up. Tony Stewart didn't look great after wrecking Saturday in the Busch race. After Sunday's Cup wreck, he looked like he was considering amputation. I've never cracked my shoulder blade, but, man, it looks painful.

Which is why Ricky Rudd will sub for Stewart on Sunday, probably after the first yellow flag. Stewart will start the race to get the driver points. Rudd will try not to wreck - he hasn't driven since Homestead in November, and he'll be a bunch of laps down by the time he gets in the car. Stewart doesn't exactly leap out of the car under ordinary circumstances.

The points thing is bothering David Whitley of the Orlando Sentinel, who pops a blood vessel in his take on Rudd's pending relief appearance: In the newspaper business, taking credit for someone else’s work is called plagiarism. If Jayson Blair had worked for Gibbs Racing instead of The New York Times, he’d probably be the defending Nextel Cup champion.

Whoa. Never mind that Stewart's point harvest is perfectly fine under NASCAR's rules and what that jerk formerly at the Times did was ... not. Regardless, I think we found our winner for "Worst Sportswriting Analogy 2006."

Elsewhere, DW says Stewart should take the week off: Just think about the big picture — the final 10 races. McReynolds is fine with Stewart starting the race.

You?

There will be more wrecks in 2007.

That's because Todd Bodine is coming back to the Cup series. Yeah, I know he's tearing it up in the Truck Series. In Cup, though, the guy was a menace.

In 2004, he finished 3 of 21 races. That's right - 18 DNFs. He was a one-man yellow-flag bringer-outer. In 2003, his last full season in Cup, he had 8 DNF wrecks in 35 races.

Maybe he learned something in Trucks? We'll see. I hope so. NASCAR has enough recklessness as it is.

The full release, complete with boilerplate I'm-happy-to-have-this-opportunity quotes, after the jump.

Here are your top NASCAR free agents, according to SI.com writer Tim Tuttle:

1. Casey Mears (who Ganassi is going to try like heck to re-sign)
2. Scott Wimmer
3. Johnny Sauter
4. Todd Bodine (who just got a Toyota ride today)
5. Bobby Hamilton Jr.

What? No Jason Leffler?

We had the office teevee tuned to ESPNews ("the siete," I think it's called), which showed a portion of an on-camera interview with Tony Stewart.

The interviewer (off camera) asked something about Sonoma. Stewart's reply was something along the lines of how he's not much of a wine drinker, but he likes to take his girlfriends on the winery tours because they get drunk pretty quickly and don't ask too many questions later.

My kingdom for the exact quote. Anyone?

This isn't the first time that wine and driving haven't mixed well. At least Cast Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church could blame their troubles on the script.

Monday update: Watch the video here from the CBS affiliate in SF. Thanks to Kristi in comments for the link.

Yeah, Matt Kenseth passing Jamie McMurray for the win with three laps left Sunday was a pretty good move. Here is the AP version we ran in today's N&R; the pretty thorough Fox Sports recap is here.

I was hoping McMurray would give Kenseth a better race at the end. But Kenseth clearly had the better car - he ran away and left McMurray, they're teammates after all and, well, that's the way it was going to go.

But Jimmie Johnson ... man, what a comeback. He spun himself in qualifying. Spun himself in the race. Had to share a pit stall with Scott Wimmer. Put himself two laps down. And still finished sixth.

Obviously, the garlic, mirrors and wooden stakes aren't working. Maybe it's time to pull out some silver bullets: Johnson swept Pocono in 2004 and has never finished worse there than 15th. See for yourself.

Awesome Bill from Dawsonville. So says Scene Daily here.

So for 2007, the full-time Toyota drivers will be:
Michael Waltrip, age 43
Dale Jarrett, age 49
Bill Elliott, age 50

Your 2007 part-timers are Todd Bodine (age 42) and Ted Musgrave (age 49). And Bill Elliott (age 50) is your part-time get-the-car-ready-for-07 later this year.

What, Benny Parsons can't get out of his NBC contract?

I don't mean to be cracking on seniors. I'm only 5 years behind Waltrip on the age scale. But you'd think Toyota would want some drivers who might, you know, stick around for more than a couple of years.

Then again, maybe Toyota is worried about making races. Because all of the teams are brand new, they won't have any owner points. That means every driver will have to qualify on time for the first five races of 2007, and then they'll have to stay in the top 35 the rest of the way. All of these guys have a decent amount of qualifying ability.

So is that the plan? Or should Bobby Allison get fitted for a HANS device?

Tuesday morning update: Entry corrected to reflect the fact that Elliott will drive three races in 2006 only. That's what I get for quick-posting on a busy day.

I raised the question of "why all the old guys?" I like Dude's angle - Toyota is buying respect by tapping established NASCAR names.
Another possibility: Elliott's available, he'll probably give you decent feedback and he won't tear up your stuff.

Any other ideas?

Travis Kvapil now sits 38th in points. Instead of, oh, I don't know, practicing, he takes a couple of days this week at Hickory doing some on-location filming for "The Guiding Light," the soap opera that's been on the air since way before I was born. Kvapil's hometown paper in Wisconsin has the whole story.

From the AP version:

The story line revolves around Zimmer's character, Reva Shayne Lewis, and her battle with breast cancer. Thanks to encouragement from her doctor, Colin McCabe, played by Paul Fitzgerald, and Kvapil, Lewis gets the chance to take the wheel of the No. 32 Chevrolet in an attempt to prove her diagnosis will not stop her from living out her dreams.

A few minutes after I saw the story on the wire, I got the show's actual script via e-mail. Just call it "Spotter Theater." Check it out after the jump:

Fresh off the wires:

CHARLOTTE — Brian Vickers got permission from Hendrick Motorsports to look for a new ride. "Brian came to us recently and expressed his desire to explore opportunities outside our organization," Hendrick spokesman Jesse Essex said Thursday. "Although he is under contract, we have given him permission to do so." Car owner Rick Hendrick has been committed to the 22-year-old Vickers, and recently gave him a multiyear extension that had not been previously announced. That contract will run through 2009. So it's unclear why Vickers now wants to leave one of NASCAR's super-teams. Hendrick also fields cars for four-time series champion Jeff Gordon — whom Vickers is close friends with — points leader Jimmie Johnson, and 21-year-old hotshot Kyle Busch.

The story continues here.

So what out there is better than Hendrick's No. 25? The Robert Yates 88? The Ganassi 42 if Mears leaves? A Red Bull ride?

What exactly is going through this kid's mind? Anyone have a guess?

In Dustin Long's story yesterday about Jimmie Johnson, he included a fact that really jumped out at me: Johnson has 2,011 points after 13 races, the most since Ernie Irvan's 2,130 in 1994.

No doubt that Johnson has been smokin' this season: He has 3 wins, 7 top 5s and 10 top 10s. And he has led laps in six races - that's another 30 points right there (and nearly half of his margin back to Matt Kenseth in second).

Johnson's fast start highlights something else: The Chase field has been down to the minimum 10 since after the Darlington race. And that's too bad.

More after the jump ...

When Kyle Busch kep running into Casey Mears, it wasn't because Busch was mad at Mears.

Oh, no. It was Busch's way of saying hi to a new teammate - you know, like a fraternity initiation.

I still can't believe how Mears has become the Hottest Thing in NASCAR just because he finished second in this year's Daytona 500. Really: Is there anything on Mears' NASCAR resume that suggests he's a star in the making?

The biggest loser in all of this, meanwhile, could be Chip Ganassi, who a year ago rolled out Sterling Marlin, Jamie McMurray and Mears. Next season, he's faced with the prospect of David Stremme, Reed Sorenson and some guy now running fifth in some regional midget-car series.

Which, if these standings hold up, Michael Sboro of Watertown, N.Y., will be driving the Texaco car in 2007.

Eh. Could be worse.

Maybe David Smith will have some clues.

I was trolling around on the Deadspin site and ...

You read Deadspin, right? It's by far the best daily read in a pretty bad category of blogs. (Sample entry at most sports blogs: Your Teem droolz ... MY Team RUUUUULZ. And here's 5,000 words on why that is.)

Anyway. I was clicking around the leather-obsessed (don't ask) Deadspin and found this 2005 interview with Jeff MacGregor of "Sunday Money" fame. It's an insightful take on NASCAR except for the bit when he describes the general tone of mainstream NASCAR blogs this way:

Earnest. Or "Ernest Goes to Pocono."

Ouch, brother, that hurts. Ernest? Pocono?! Kick me when I'm down, why doncha.

I'll admit that my best satire usually won't make someone on laughing gas crack a smile. Funny is hard, and I don't write it well, at least not on purpose.

But the last Earnest movie was made 8 years ago, and Jim Varney died in 2000. Besides, if we're going to deal in redneck caricatures, I think this place compares better to Larry the Cable Guy. Don't you? At least those references are from the 21st century. But, hey, a Ricky Bobby blast wouldn't have worked there. You know - earnest, Ernest. Ha ha.

Oh, before I forget: Sunday Money is out in paperback. I read it a while back. Although the season MacGregor writes about was three years ago, some of his driver descriptions and profiles and set-piece encounters with NASCAR fans are laugh-out-loud funny, and he makes a half-hearted attempt to check NASCAR's math. (Of course the math is off. These guys are all promoters at heart, and the only numbers that matter are the ones that favor them.)

A lot of the book is sort of like a long green flag run - it's racing, and that's good, but doggone it won't something happen already?

That said, "Sunday Money," in case you need a last-minute Father's Day present, is the best book I've read on NASCAR. That's like saying it's the best sports blog out there.

Next time you do a soft-focus, mushy-mouthed story on a driver returning from a drug suspension, make sure to ask him what exactly he got busted for.

When you ask Kevin Grubb to give you his reaction to failing a drug test and he tells you "I just couldn't believe it," you're required by all of the laws of journalism to ask:

Why? Was it a false positive?

And when he hems and haws and says no, then you ask:

So what did you get busted for?

The AP story at least mentioned that Grubb declined to talk about what he was on or how bad his problem (drug? alcohol?) really was. Fine. He doesn't have to answer questions.

But as a reporter you'd obliged to ask them. That's your job - not trying to be their best friend.

We'll see if Grubb learned anything in his two years away from the track. He's going to try to qualify for tonight's Busch race.

Here's how goofy Pocono is: Denny Hamlin could run ahead of the field for the first 2.49 miles of today's race and still not get credit for leading a lap.

Does anyone get the same sense that the Pocono race goes on forever? (Beat writers refer to qualifying there as the 24 Hours of Pocono. That's what it feels like.) Any takers in my annual quest to complain all weekend that Pocono gets two races and Nashville, Memphis, North Wilkesboro and Rockingham get none?

Good for them:

Denny Hamlin, who joins a pretty long list of Guys Who Have Won Nextel Cup events. Good for him. Even better, he spins himself out while leading the race and still wins. Impressive.

Jeff Gordon, who loses his brakes, hits a wall at 190 mph, climbs out of his car and checks the wheel. Soccer players, meanwhile, are being carried off on stretchers after falling down while running. (For more on the World Cup, check out our Sports Extra blog - it's soccer 24/7 over there right now.)

Cale Gale, who ran Jason Keller's old car to a 20th place finish in his first Busch race. The back story about Gale's day job - he's a shock specialist for James Finch, which fields the No. 1 Busch car - was a little overplayed. It turns out Gale has some racing experience. I know that because he has his own Web site which say he's been racing since he was 5. Still, it's a good story because this kid came out of nowhere and finished just a lap down in his first Busch race at a tricky aero track.

Okay, people, listen up. We've got a problem here. A big problem. It's this, last weekend's cable TV ratings for the Greensboro/Winston/High Point area:

For the week of June 5-June 11:
1. Game 2, Stanley Cup playoffs, June 7, 4.2 rating, 6 share
2. Game 1, Stanley Cup playoffs, June 5, 4.1/6
3. Atlanta-Houston baseball, June 8, 3.5/5
4. NASCAR Busch Series race in Nashville, June 10, 3.3/6

You know, I never thought I'd live to see the day where hockey outdrew racin' in the middle of North Carolina. Yeah, yeah, it's the Raleightowne Hurricanes. And, yes, we're looking at Busch ratings for a race with not so many Cup guys and on a night where the race is going up against "Bad Boys Bad Boys" and "Hey! That's My Across-the-Street Neighbor's Cousin's Brother's Ex-Best Friend!" (That's a tough programming decision for some race fans, believe me.)

Man, folks, I'm disappointed. You've made Cale Gale cry. Jason Leffler, meanwhile, is kinda happy that there are so many new hockey fans in the region.

Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr.

So what's up with these two? Both of these guys missed the 2005 chase because they, well, stunk. Both came into 2006 with new crew chiefs, high hopes and a fair measure of hype.

First, Gordon. Jeff got his teeth rattled Sunday at Pocono -- he's lucky he didn't break something more than just his car. ("I've either got a really hard head, or these guys built an awesome race car, because that was one of the hardest hits I've ever taken," he told one paper.)

The result, though, was bad enough: He's 11th in points, 25 back of teammmate Kyle Busch. He's 0-for-2006 and has seen the top 10 just twice since finishing second at Martinsville on April 2. And let's don't mention the third DNF in five races. Speaking of 0-fers, Gordon is on an 0-for-18 streak, which for him is epic.

Earnhardt, meanwhile, is lurking back there in sixth. Except for his win at Richmond, he seems content with running in the top 10 more or less. (He has led only one lap since then.) Here are the grabbers: Junior has finished outside the top 15 only three times this season, and he has finished off the lead lap only twice, and one of those was when his engine tanked at 'Dega.

What I'm getting at is this: One driver (Gordon) has become a shell of his hypersuccessful self, and the other (Earnhardt) has become a model of consistency.

It might be too easy to say that one guy's over the hill -- Gordon turns 35 in August -- and the other is finally maturing (Earnhardt is 30). Is that it? Or has one driver lost his fire and the other one found it?

I'm just thinking out loud here. I don't have anything concrete other than the results.

So when are people going to start talking about how maybe, just maybe, this is finally going to be Mark Martin's year?

The guy is third in points, for cryin' out loud. His 17th at Pocono was only his second worst finish of the season.

Does Martin have what it takes to win a Cup title? Or is he truly and utterly cursed and doomed never to win one of those suckers?

One of the more intriguing stories Dustin Long wrote last year was about the Morgan-McClure team. (I can't find it online; maybe I'll post it later. In the meantime, here are McClure's stats as an owner and a brief Wiki history.) Morgan-McClure's drivers included Mark Martin before he was famous, Ernie Irvan who they made famous and Sterling Marlin, who gave them six wins in three years, including the 2004 and 2005 Daytona 500s.

And then ... nothing. As Hendrick, Roush and the rest expanded to two and three and more teams, Morgan-McClure stuck with one. Sterling Marlin gave the team its last win way back in 1998. Kevin Lepage, Mike Skinner, Jimmy Spencer, Mike Wallace and (this year) Scott Wimmer hasn't done much.

You have to wonder if Chip Ganassi and Robert Yates are on that same pace lap to irrelevancy.

More after the jump ...

There is no one on the racin' bloggin' circuit better at The Rant than the Diecast Dude. His latest is on Casey Mears' impending defection:

At that moment you will find out if your boss is new-school or old-school. If they're new-school, they'll pull out a box from underneath their desk, hand it to you, and tell you to clean out your desk right now; please don't let the door hit your butt on the way out. If they're old-school, you'll be the one leaving in a box. Seems some employers -- well, all, really -- prefer those under their charge to either work for them or go elsewhere. Amazing at it may seem, the thought of someone drawing a paycheck from Company A who spends their days staring at the calendar, waiting for the day to arrive when they will start working for Company B where they actually want to be, doesn't go over too well at Company A. ...

Only in sports, folks.

Then go on and check out the rest of his post about how Dale Jr. doesn't own the rights to his own signature. The ESPN story is here.

Unlike the Dude, I don't see Junior leaving DEI any time soon. But it's a cautionary tale about mixing family and money. Weird doings.

Some attaboys from the weekend. Good for ...

... Kasey Kahne. "Four-time winner Kasey Kahne" doesn't quite roll off the tongue. At this rate, you won't have to say it for more than a few weeks before you'll have to get used to saying "five-time winner Kasey Kahne."

.. Junior and Gordon. Both usually stink up Michigan. On Sunday, neither one did. Scene Daily has more on Junior. So does Steve Byrnes, who gives props to Cousin Tony.

... David Freakin' Gilliland. Admit it: You wouldn't have picked this underfunded, unsponsored nobody to win a Busch race this season or any other season. But he did in what the AP story calls the "biggest upset in Busch Series history." Here's the best victory lane photo ever.

After David Gilliland shocked the racing world Saturday night, NASCAR's statisticians scurried back to their dusty books to see if there have been any bigger Busch Series racin' upsets. They found two:

* Matt Kenseth at Rockingham in Feb. 1998. (Yep, that Matt Kenseth.). With crew chief Robbie Reiser looking on, Kenseth bumped Tony Stewart out of the way on the last lap to win by less than a second. (More here.)

* Johnny Rumley at Hickory in the fall of 1993. Here are the results. Check the names - I'd love to know why some of those guys were racing there then.

NASCAR's full release is after the jump if you want its take on things. Incidently, Rumley is still racing.

By now you've seen the story of David Freakin' Gilliland, the guy who came out of Nowheresville, Calif., to win last Saturday's Busch race.

Here's an odd happening: He is entered in Sunday's Cup race at Sonoma. Scroll down to the No. 72 car if you don't believe me.

Here's the transcript of Gilliland and Robby Gordon talking to reporters yesterday.

Question: What do you get when you mix Scott Riggs, a jet ski and a Myrtle Beach oyster bed?

(No, not oyster bar. Oyster bed.)

Answer: 20 stitches - 12 in one foot, eight in the other.

Man, that's got to hurt. That stinks for Riggs, who is putting together a decent season (he's 23rd in points) after missing the Daytona 500.

Full explanation after the jump.

When people talk about how NASCAR has become a national sport, they usually go on about how races are held not at places like Rockingham or North Wilkesboro but at tracks such as California and Chicagoland.

The other piece of it, too, is the drivers. Sure, there are still a lot of North Carolina natives driving in Nextel Cup - Dale Jr., Dale Jarrett, Scott Riggs, Brian Vickers, Kyle Petty. From Virginia, you have Denny Hamlin, Jeff Burton and Elliott Sadler. But that's not a very long list.

So when Hamlin won a couple races ago at Pocono, Dustin Long got to thinking: How many more Denny Hamlins are there out there? It used to be that places like Caraway and Langley and all of the other little bull rings here and in Virginia were NASCAR's minor leagues. It's not so much any more, but Hamlin is giving some up-and-coming drivers some hope.

Here's Dustin's story. Go read.

Some bonus material after the jump.

Dustin Long, our man in the ground in Sonoma, has been tracking David Gilliland all day. Gilliland is his story for Saturday's paper, and the whole rags-to-riches thing works better if Gilliland makes Sunday's Cup race. (If he misses it, it just shows that fame is fleeting. That's the great thing about sports - we have cliches for every situation.)

Anyway.

In practice, Wonder Boy was 46th out of 48th, ahead of only Dave Blaney and Johnny Miller, who presumably is a road-course ringer but drove in practice like the retired golfer. Gilliland's top speed was 89.520 mph -- about 4 mph behind speedy Jeff Gordon.

It turns out he had a little left. He turned a best lap in 91.132 mph and will start 31st on Sunday.

Un-freakin'-believable. The guy is indeed charmed.

P.S. He might soon get a Cup ride next year.

I went to see "Nacho Libre" yesterday with my son, who turns 14 on Tuesday. (I love the kid, he wanted to see it, so, eh, I went.)

The funniest on the screen wasn't Jack Black. It was the trailer for "Talladega Nights." It's here; click on, ah, "new trailer."

"Ricky, control your heart rate."
"I can't control my heart rate! I've got a live cougar on me!"

A while back, I wrote that I was a little worried that the film would let people point and laugh at racin' once again. But you know, who the heck cares. It's Will Ferrell, and it could be a lot of fun.

I'm a fan of the No. 26 Wonder Bread Chevy. (Yes, I get the joke, and it's on me. So what.) And Ricky Bobby's car is a Chevy. Wonder how much GM is paying for that?

Speaking of funny, did you see that Jason Leffler was leading the race with 45 laps left and spun himself out trying to bring his car into the pits during Saturday night's Busch race? Yep, it's true. Congrats to Paul Menard for getting his first Busch win. I think you'll see some good things out of Menard in Cup next year.

I've worked with PR people throughout my 14 years in the newspaperin' business (occupational hazard), and one of the things I think they think is important is timing.

In other words, you try to time your announcement to hit a certain news cycle to give it maximum exposure. Governments intentially put out bad news on Friday because nobody supposedly reads the Saturday paper. (It's our second-highest-selling day. Go figure.) You see a lot of business merger news coming out on Sunday to make the Monday papers, right before the opening of the stock market.

But I'm scratching my head as to why Red Bull decided to announce Brian Vickers as its driver on a Sunday. (Here's the story.) Monday Sports sections are smaller than they should be, and they're already crammed with stuff. The news cycle is pretty slow, sure, but any editor is going to put the race on the front page of Monday's Sports section instead of the Vickers announcement. (Had this happened on, say, a Wednesday, it would have been on Thursday's Sports front because he's a local driver.)

It gets weirder. Rather than have a big dog-and-pony show at Infineon or somewhere nearby - you know, like where the reporters who actually cover your sport are working this past weekend - the Red Bull people leaked it to the AP reporter at the Canadian Grand Prix.

And: Vickers himself made his announcment on Dave DeSpain's show on SPEED, which ain't exactly Leno or The Today Show. In this market, SPEED is on Digital, which further limits your already limited audience.

Here's the kicker: The actual release is a cartoon.

Someone tell me again why leaving Hendrick is such a good career move for Vickers.

The other big news of the weekend, other than Jeff Gordon's 73rd 74th career win at Infineon (Dustin Long's story here), is louder rumblings on the possible tentative maybe-let's-do-it reunion of IRL and CART. (That story is here.)

In IRL, you've got Danica and, ah, that guy who won the Indy 500 and the Andretti (Mikey? Marlon? Junior) who almost won it this year and that guy who climbs fences. In what used to be called CART, you've got one American driver out of the 8 or so who race full-time in that series, and all he's done since getting fired two weeks ago was win two races, the last one at the Cleveland airport. Do I have that right?

No amount of Roger Penske mojo will displace NASCAR as the top U.S. motorsports circuit, at least not in the short term. But does an IRL-Champ Car merger (Ch-IRL? Champica? Champ Hornish Jr.?) make a serious run at it? Will anyone notice?

My favorite racin' site in the whole worldwide Web, racing-reference.com, is down. I'm hoping it's just temporary.

The season's second race at Daytona will start up in about 80 hours or so from now, so we have just enough time to debate the issue of the day:

Who will cause The Big One on Saturday night?

Will it be Jimmie Johnson, who seems to hit everything not nailed down at Daytona?
Will it be Jamie McMurray, who hit everything in sight at Sonoma last Sunday?
Will it be Tony Stewart? It could be his chance to pay back Boris Said, who's entered in the race.
My vote: Kevin Harvick. No particular reason. He's been quiet recently, at least on the Cup circuit. He's due.

Who's your pick?

"Adjustments will be made to the chase beginning in 2007 ... he's still talking ... more to come."

That's Dustin Long's dispatch from Daytona. I'll update it when Dustin checks back in.

11:30 a.m. update: More from Dustin - "From what he's saying, it looks like chase adjustments would be expanding the field of drivers and making the 400-point window larger. Says he's comfortable with the tracks. Maybe extra points for winners and such. Nothing concrete."

12:05 p.m. update: France didn't announce any specifics, but the pending changes are aimed at getting more drivers into the chase. Brian France said NASCAR might look at making the 400-point window bigger. 500? 600? More? He's not saying. Remember that in two years of the chase, the only drivers who made it were in the top 10. Unless Jimmie Johnson forgets to show up for, oh, every race in August, it looks like the 400-point rule won't make a difference again this year.

France's money quote: "We always thought more than 10 (drivers) would get in. It hasn’t happened yet. ... Call it a wild card if you will. I think that would add to the drama and excitement."

1:45 p.m. update: I deleted an earlier reference to Martinsville. Just to be clear, France said NASCAR is happy with the tracks in the chase, and Martinsville is one of those. (Charlotte's another.) But France's comments today were generally about the chase and specifically about who might get in, not about the number of races or which tracks will host them. Whether Martinsville keeps its Cup dates is a whole 'nother issue, one that France did not talk about today.

1:50 p.m. update: Dustin banged out a few grafs here. (We'll have more in Friday's paper.) The early AP version is here. Glad to see that Jenna Fryer is back on the NASCAR beat - last week she was hanging with those F1 jokers in Canada. Speaking of F1 and jokes, they're at Indy this weekend. Maybe they'll race more than six cars this time.

For short-track fans around these parts (these parts being central NC), mention the name "Junior" and a lot of folks will think not of Junior or Junior but Junior.

You know, Junior Miller. This Junior might not be the best Modified driver of all time - a lot of folks would put Richie Evans first - but he's pretty close.

Anyway, Miller just gpt his record-setting 65th feature-race win over at Bowman Gray. And he's racing again Friday night at Caraway when the Southern Modified tour fires up again.

I left y'all a couple of Junior Miller releases after the jump.

Sadly, I did care about the Tour de France even without Lance Armstrong. It's hard to remember a Tour without Armstrong - he won the last seven, for cryin' out loud - but I've paid attention ever since LeMond was riding, and a Lance-less tour wasn't going to change things for me.

But it's going to be that much harder to care after what happened today when the race organizers tossed out 30-some racers - including the guys who finished 2-3-4 behind Lance last year - because of their involvement in a Spanish drug scandal. Here's the AP version of the story; expect it to be updated all day. Cyclingnews.com has more hard-core stuff.

In case you're struggling for context, here it is: It's the racin' equivalent of NASCAR telling Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Kurt Busch, Dale Jr. and about a third of the field to go home a day before the Daytona 500. That's how big this thing is.

You see that big float-y thing in the sky yesterday? That was a big ol' fat NASCAR trial balloon. If Brian France knew what he was going to do to the chase, he would have said it yesterday. So now it's up to fans and whoever else to give some feedback. Might as well get started.

We'll do it after the jump ...

From Sunday's Rolex Sports Car race at Mid-Ohio: Holy cow. (The wreck is about halfway through the clip.)

Good thing driver Joey Hand survived. Otherwise I couldn't say the entry to that crash looked like something out of Dukes of Hazzard. The landing, though, looked like something from Daytona.

Hand talks about the wreck here. The money quote: "When it was all said and done, I came to a stop upside down. I was still in the seat, and the first thing I noticed was my right shoe was off. It blew my right shoe off and my right glove somehow."

See how he celebrated his release from the hospital.