News-Record.com

Sunday night's race starts at 8:05 p.m. The only driver outside the Chase with a legitimate shot of getting in is Kasey Kahne.

Will that, combined with the lateness of the hour, make you more or less likely to drink that 10 p.m. cup of coffee to watch the end of the race at California?

Discuss.

While you mull that question, I'll be playing the will-they-or-won't-they-play-tonight's-game game. It's drizzly and windy here (thank you, Ernesto!), which means we've already got two high school football postponements in our area and probably more to come.

It's not just a light dusting of snow that freaks out folks here. Crikey.

1:30 p.m. update: The Winston-Salem paper has a poll on a related topic: Would it be an injustice if Kasey Kahne doesn't make the Chase?

An injustice?! My head hurts.

Dustin Long passes along this note that will be in Saturday's paper. It's too good not to share:

NO DEAL: Robby Gordon said Friday that he came "very close" to buying half of Robert Yates Racing but the deal failed. "We had funding and sponsorship in place for the 88 car," Gordon said. "We have our car funded. I wanted to buy half of (Yates') two cars. That was the deal. I wasn’t going to do it unless I could own two of those cars. "We agreed on everything and the day it was supposed to happen, it didn’t." Gordon said the conversation has been "dead: since the day after the Michigan race. "It's unfortunate it’s dead," Gordon said. "I think I could have been a good coach for two young drivers."

Gordon continues to look for ways to be affiliated with a multi-car operation. He’s one of the few single-car teams. He ranks 24th in car owner points, highest among the single-car teams.

That little piece of news says a lot about Gordon's aspirations and Yates' intentions.

At times Sunday night, I got the feeling that Kasey Kahne (and maybe Junior) was the only guy really racing at California. Everyone else - merely driving.

The result: Kahne is the only driver outside looking in with a shot at making the Chase. He's 30 points out of 10th (Jeff Burton), 45 out of 8th (Tony Stewart) and 77 out of sixth (Junior). Even Jeff Gordon (4th place, 102 ahead of Kahne) is going to be rolling around Richmond next Saturday night with a little voice in his head (and his crew chief, probably, yelling, "Drive faster. DRIVE FASTER!"

So what are Kahne's chances? Newman was 11th coming into Richmond last year and swapped spots with Jamie McMurray. In 2004, Jeremy Mayfield won the Richmond race to punch his ticket to the Chase. The driver Mayfield knocked out of the top 10: Kasey Kahne.

Yes, I like Kahne's chances very much. Yes, I do.

You won't be reading a whole lot about Kyle Petty this weekend, and for good reason: He might not make Saturday's race. Here's something from Dustin Long's notes that didn't make today's paper (the rest of the NASCAR Notebook is here):

CLIMBING UP: Sterling Marlin finished 29th Sunday at California to leapfrog Kyle Petty to grab the final guaranteed starting spot for this weekend’s race at Richmond.
The top 35 in car owner points are guaranteed a starting spot. The rest must qualify on time. Petty finished 35th at California and trails Marlin by two points in the car owner standings.

Here's the proof. Lucky for Kyle that he's 110 ahead of Kvapil and 200-and-change ahead of Mikey Waltrip. In other words -- assuming Petty makes the race -- he only has to worry about the No. 14.

But will Petty make the race? Qualifying results are hard to dig out, so here is Petty's lifetime performance at Richmond. He has one of his eight career wins at RIR, but that was 20 years ago. His best recent showing was seventh in May 1999. In the 13 races since then, Petty has failed to finish on the lead lap in exactly all of them.

Dark times indeed.

Don't worry - Dustin will have a lot of really cool stuff coming up this weekend. That's because one of his other corporate taskmasters is the Norfolk paper, and they consider the Richmond track to be their home race, sort of like Roanoke claims Martinsville and we in Greensboro claim everthing else.

But for my hometown paper, the Richmond race is an actual hometown event. They'll be covering the heck out of it here. So check it out. Richmond always does a nice job with racing.

Seeing Reed Sorenson in front at the end of the California race was disorienting, to say the least. For one, I didn't know he was still racing. For two, I can't recall the last time I saw the Target car on track, much less leading a race.

And then the journalism instincts kicked in. If Sorenson won, he would be a great story -- everyone loves a rookie and a first-time winner, especially someone who gambled and won. (See "Gilliland, David.") But the race wouldn't end until midnight or thereabouts, which is not nearly enough time to do more than the basics on him.

So I was relieved when he ran out of gas with two laps left. And so, too, was every other East Coast journalist in the press box at Fontana.

Sorenson will get his. It just wasn't going to be Sunday night.

More elsewhere: "Target Team’s Tank Runs Dry Just Two Laps Shy of Victory"

Dustin Long is in Richmond and reports in during Cup practice:

Less than 10 minutes into the first practice, Tony Stewart backs it into the wall. Suffers rear-end damage. I believe they'll have to go to a backup car. This was a brand new chassis and this was to have been its first race.

And a few minutes after Dustin sent that, he sends this:

Backup car is out. Primary car too much left rear damage.

I wonder if the 9 team is cheering?

So if you could be Brian France for a day, what would you do?

Other than move to anywhere else in the world other than Daytona Beach, that is.

Dustin Long's grand plan: Change the Chase. In today's paper, he throws out several ideas for tweaking the points race that will become oh-so-controversial if Kasey Kahne and his five wins don't make it and if winless (but consistent) Mark Martin and Jeff Burton do. (If Junior or Jeff Gordon gets skunked again, watch out.)

Dustin worked through some ideas that have been kicking around for awhile:
* a wild card (which would get Kahne in)
* dump bonus points for leading laps (which would tighten the race)
* give extra to the winner and something for winning a pole
* go to a playoff system (the one Jeff Burton has proposed)
* give double points at selected tracks (talk about wild!)
* award the same points to everyone who finishes 25 or so on back (which Jeff Gordon likes and which Formula 1 uses).

Me, I like the idea of rewarding winners and punishing losers. Anything to make drivers race instead of just drive (see last week's race at California) is an improvement. So, too, is figuring out how to get those hoodless junkers off the track at Bristol and Martinsville. I also like the idea that Ron Fellows or Scott Pruett could have two really good road-course races and could finish the season higher in the standings than Travis Kvapil or David Stremme.

And, yes, there's plenty of precedent for tinkering with the points.

So what do you think, Commissioner-for-the-day?

Bonus coverage: Dustin's driver capsules from today's paper after the jump. He doesn't come right out and say it, but he figures that Kahne will bump Mark Martin from the Chase tomorrow night.

Michael Waltrip will miss Saturday's Cup race in Richmond. He and two other regulars, Travis Kvapil and Kyle Petty, needed to qualify on speed. Kvapil and Petty made it. Waltrip didn't.

One of the guys who beat out Waltrip: 85-year-old Morgan Shepherd.

Kasey Kahne, meanwhile, qualified 20th, but ahead of only two (Stewart, Earnhardt Jr.) of the 10 drivers ahead of him in the standings.

I see crazy times ahead.

Kasey Kahne made the Chase, just like history suggested and a lot of folks predicted.

But he bumped Tony Stewart, of all people, out of the running. I figured Mark "Zero Wins" Martin or Jeff "Zero Wins and Falling" Burton. Give Stewart props for responding to post-race questions with a combination of resignation, disappointment and -- hard to believe -- grace. Of course, he had about 200 laps to put on his post-race face. His car was absolute junk.

Congrats to the 8, the 11 and 24 teams for nursing their crippled cars around the track and to the 29 for making the 5 look like a punk on the next-to-last lap.

There was plenty of drama last night. And unless you're a Tony Stewart fan, it was a pretty darn good night.

Kellie Dixon, our preps and Carolina Panthers game-day writer, saw an unusual site on the side of I-85 Sunday morning on the way down to Charlotte:

Tony Stewart's hauler, pulled to the side of the highway, with a state trooper behind it.

Feel free to add your own punch line.

Denny Hamlin wasn't the only guy racing last weekend at his hometown track. The other guy was Kevin Grubb, a native of Mechanicsville, Va. (one of the greatest hometown names ever for someone who's in racin'.)

He had nine NASCAR starts this season (five Busch, four Trucks) since coming back from a substance abuse suspension. Friday night, he put his Busch car into the wall after one lap. Today, NASCAR gave him the death penalty -- indefinite suspension -- because Grubb refused to take a test, one of the conditions of his reinstatement.

NASCAR doesn't say when it asked Grubb to pee in the cup or when Grubb refused. Considering that NASCAR yanked Shane Hmiel out of his car at Dover when it got back positive results from a test the week before, you gotta figure that NASCAR got to wondering after Grubb lost it on Lap 2.

Good luck, Kevin. You'll really need it now.

Full release from NASCAR after the jump.

Wednesday update: Grubb tells the Richmond paper that he doesn't remember wrecking, refusing to take a test or leaving the track. I suspect he doesn't mean it exactly the way it came across, especially because he says the wreck left him with a concussion. We'll see.

That answer, according to Bob Pockrass of NASCAR Scene, is ... nobody!

At NASCAR Comix, meanwhile, David predicts that Tony Stewart will be a, ah, difference maker.

Why, yes, it's News & Record NASCAR writer Dustin Long.

Props to our sister paper, the Virginian-Pilot, which is hosting Dustin's blog. At this point we haven't figured out (mostly because we haven't tried) how to get Dustin's posts to show up here automatically. That's something we're going to do in the NASCAR offseason, aka the week between Christmas and New Year's. No, I don't know what that will mean for The Spotter.

Anyhoo ... Dustin's first post is about the GM driver test today at Caraway Speedway. Some interesting names on there. For instance, I had no idea that Dale Earnhardt Sr. had a grandson. I sure hope the kid got his driving genes from granddad and not his father.

P.S. If you want to comment on Dustin's blog, you have to register, and then your comments still have to go through the 10 committees they've set up to review things like that. See how good you've got it here at the Spotter?

From Denny Hamlin's teleconference yesterday via Dustin Long's blog:

"I guess maybe you could say driving ability from my mom. She is wide open on the highway. I mean, she is on the gas or on the brake constantly. It almost makes me seasick she drives so fast sometimes."

Zing!

Since we're on the topic of Hamlin, I've got some more Hamlin trivia after the jump.

So who's going to win this thing?

I'm still on the fence about it. I'm down to two (no, not Gordon and Earnhardt Jr., as much as it pains me to write that).

Dustin Long, who's paid to meet actual deadlines, tells you who he thinks will win. It's ... oh, go read it for yourself.

Keep it mind that Dustin thought Biffle was going to win last year's Chase. It turned out to be a pretty good guess, and I think his pick this year will surprise some folks as to how right it will be.

But that's not the guy I'm picking.

More:
Drivers get funny on Letterman.

Thatsracin.com gets funny with the Chase. Next week: A touchdown is worth six points!

Dustin's driver capsules are after the jump.

It looks like those who took Ricky Rudd at his word ("I'm not retiring. I'm taking a year off.") might have been right.

Dustin Long has the scoop.

I'm beginning to think that there might be too many quality drivers for 43 starting spots next year.

All the cool kids are doing it, and by Monday it's too late, so here goes.

As much as I hate to agree with Lee Spencer, my pick to win the 2006 Chase is Kevin Harvick.

Why?
He's hot. (No, not that way.) You could put him out there on a unicycle with a flat tire, and Harvick would figure out a way to get a top 10. That's how hot Harvick is right now.

Consider:
* He swept both races last weekend at Richmond and made both wins look super easy.

* He has run away with the Busch title. He could take four races off and not be in real danger of losing his lead. (His 619-point lead with seven races left is why there's a Cup Chase.)

* In 29 Busch and Cup races since Memorial Day, he has 27 top-15 finishes. That includes both the Cup and Busch.

* The Busch title chase won't (or shouldn't) be an issue. There are seven races left (vs. 10 Cup races), and only one of them is not at the Cup track. (When the Cupsters are at Atlanta, the Busch race is just up the road in Memphis.)

My heart's with Junior, my sentiment is with Martin, but my brain (as feeble as it is) is with the driver of the No. 29.

Dustin, remember, picked Hamlin.

And you? Who's going to be adding the 2006 Nextel Cup to their trophy collection?

My Kevin Harvick pick is my best prediction ever.

In other predictions, it will get dark tonight, and the sun will rise tomorrow in the east. Man, am I on fire or what?

I mentioned my pick to Dustin, who I think is the only person who thinks Hamlin could win it. And Dustin reminded me that Hamlin finished second.

Lots to talk about. Is Jimmie Johnson doomed? What about Kyle Busch? Is the Chase over?

Have at it in comments. I'm buried under Day Job responsbilities for the moment.

Sunday provided a rare Ted Christopher sighting - rare, that is, if you're a Cup fan and/or not Mark in comments. Christopher ran both of the Cup races at Loudon in 2004 and 2005. He missed the first race this year, but got in this year and finished 41st.

Yankees and modified fans know Christopher as The Man. He has won just about everything in New England. This season, he is second in NASCAR's Northern Whelen modified series. Local fans might recall that he got second in the Labor Day weekend modified race at Martinsville.

That's a long windup to get to this (via the Boston Herald, last item):

Lights out

A high-voltage wire fell on Route 106, causing a brief power outage just before the start of the race. NASCAR got the race started on time by using gas-powered generators to operate the safety lights used on the track.

Driver Ted Christopher's spotter was stuck in the press box elevator and NASCAR kept him parked for the first five laps. The track's PA system and infield leaderboard also went out.

N NASCAR won't let you start the race without your spotter, so NASCAR held Christopher in the pits. That's just plain bad luck. One of these days he'll run better for the home crowd.

SPEED TV says Harvick and Burton were cheating. NASCAR and Childress say they weren't. From AP:

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — NASCAR and team owner Richard Childress on Monday dismissed as "sheer fantasy" a television report that said race winner Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton had a performance advantage at New Hampshire International Speedway. A Speed TV report Sunday said NASCAR inspectors had discovered that RCR teams had manipulated the rims on their Chevrolets to act as "bleeder valves" that slowly released air pressure in tires after the race. The practice is not technically illegal, and falls into a gray area of the rulebook that teams are supposed to respect.

Thatsracin.com version is here.

Here's where my lack of technical expertise kills me and leaves me with this question: Why would you want to take air out of your tires after a race? I'm assuming NASCAR mandates a range of pressures, and the suspicion is that the Childress teams are over the limit until the team's creative, ah, partsmanship comes into play. But hasn't the recent issue been that the tire pressures have been too low? I'm thinking of Pocono and Charlotte, where the tires were only round in concept until NASCAR stepped in (at Pocono) and Goodyear made its tires out of cement (at Charlotte).

Someone explain this one to me. I'm not seeing how it might work.

SPEED's official non-response is here. As much as I hate to say it, sometimes reporters just get it wrong. It stinks, but it happens.

The book jacket copy practically hyperventilates: "Driving with the Devil uncovers for the first time the true story behind NASCAR's distant, moonshine-fueled origins ..."

NASCAR and ... moonshiners?! NO WAY!

That was my initial reaction, anyway. And then I flipped to the back of the book. An index. A bibliography. Freakin' footnotes. And the promotional stuff hints as more - namely, that this book fleshes out the relationship between Bill France (heard of him, right?) and Ray Parks of Georgia (nope, not even a vague recollection).

I've spent longer on this post than the book itself at this point, but my gut reaction is that this book has promise. About time someone dug into the history with a little actual scholarship.

The book is Driving with the Devil. The author, Neal Thompson, is a journalist who teaches at UNC-Ashville. (I don't know his work.)

Now that Silly Season is pretty much over (excluding who gets the Red Bull No. 2 and Michael Waltrip No. 3 rides), the biggest 2007 who-drives-where story in the garage swirls around the No. 6.

Its current occupant, Mark Martin, won't be back. And the weekend news on Martin's 2007 plans (it looks like he'll split time in the No. 60 Cup car with Big Bad Boris Said) had this little nugget: "Martin's replacement in the No. 6 next season will be one of Roush's four developmental drivers, Todd Kluever, Danny O'Quinn Jr., David Ragan or Erik Darnell."

Todd Kluever, the heir apparent early on, has made just two races in the 06 this season. (I think he failed to qualify for at least one or two more - anyone remember?) In two Cup races, his best finish was 41st. Not exactly Cup material, this kid, at least not yet.

So I guess this shouldn't come as much surprise to Roush watchers: Truck Series David Ragan will give the 06 a try this weekend.

I have no idea who will be driving that car next season, but none of those four look like a short-term fix. (There's no telling what they'll do in the long term because NASCAR doesn't seem to have much of a long term.)

Here's what I do know: Roush got just two of his five drivers in the Chase this year, McMurray's team didn't show much at all, and the 6 car is going to stink next year. After last year's success, did anyone think Roush would stumble so much? I'm not saying that Roush is BAM Racing or the Wood Brothers, but I'm still surprised that Roush couldn't carry over last year's succes.

Anyone have any guesses why? I'm stumped.

Wednesday update: Matt at The Catfish Show predicts that it's 50-50 between Kluever and Ragan; Darnell's third and O'Quinn is fourth. Sounds plausible. But you have to figure that the Roush camp is a little stressed that what seemed to be seamless now seems to have a few frayed edges.

It's a rainy day, which means I'd be cleaning out a closet or two if I were home. (It's that time of year. What can I say?)

But it's not, so I tidied up the blog roll a bit. I added Dustin and our new Canadian regular (hope you choke on that Busch race next year!) and dropped one or two who don't post much anymore.

If there are other good racin' blogs out there that aren't on the list to the right, let me know. Chances are I don't know about them. I'll admit: I don't spend nearly as much time blog trolling as I should.

And what are my blog roll criteria? There are three: Post often, don't suck and learn to spell. Pretty high bar, huh?

One of the things I hate about my job is thatsracin.com. Don't get me wrong -- there's a lot of good stuff there. I'm just equal parts awed and jealous that they have the resources, the traffic and the wherewithall to put together probably the best all-purpose racin' site on the internets. (thatsracin.com is part of the McClatchy, formerly Knight-Ridder, empire and includes the scribblings and musings of the Charlotte Observer's David "Big Dog" Poole.)

So I have to say I was amused when a good ol' fashioned flame war broke out on the site.

More after the jump ...

Never ever doubt the power of the NFL. The Greensboro market (which includes Winston-Salem, High Point and a bunch of counties all around here) is usually the nation's top-ranked TV market for racin'. So keep that in mind when you look at the local cable TV ratings for the past week:
1. NFL, Minnesota-Washington (early Mon. nite game): 13.6 rating/20 share (Rating is how many homes that have TVs and were watching the game; share is how many TVs actually on that were tuned to the game)
2. NFL, San Diego-Oakland (late Mon. nite game): 11.8/24
3. NASCAR, Nextel Cup race at New Hampshire: 7.5/14

(Some context: The Panthers game, which was on Fox (i.e. over-the-air vs. cable), pulled a 17.0/33. Those are typical Panthers numbers.)

I get it that the Washington game was big. Before the Panthers set up shop a decade ago, this was Redskins country. Sunday around here was absolutely beautiful, and there wasn't much reason to stay inside. (I didn't.) But look at the SD-Oak game, which didn't start until 10:15 p.m. Holy cow. Either people didn't get enough football Sunday (see Weather, beautiful above), or N.C. State fan was trying to relive the glory days through Philip Rivers.

No wonder Brian France is flirting with the NFL. If the first round of your playoffs is buried in your best TV market by a late-night game played 3,000 miles away ... wouldn't you?

One of the problems with being on top is that everyone's gunning for you. Here's Dustin Long with the short version of the latest RCR cheating allegation:

A former employee of Richard Childress Racing says the team bypassed NASCAR's rules at Daytona this season. The charges were made in a suit filed Wednesday in Mecklenburg County superior court, the Charlotte Observer reported Thursday.

A spokesman for Richard Childress Racing told the newspaper that the allegations were untrue.

According to the Observer's story, Anthony Corrente was an assistant manager for engine research and development with the team this year before he was fired. In his suit, which alleges wrongful termination, defamation and breach of contract, Corrente says Kevin Harvick's engine for the Budweiser Shootout in February was altered to allow more air to enter the engine. That would provide extra horsepower that carburetor restrictor plates are intended to restrict.

The Observer reported that the suit also says that Harvick's teammate, Jeff Burton, won the pole for the Daytona 500 with an engine that had the same modifications. NASCAR found nothing wrong with Burton's car in a post-qualifying inspection.

Big Dog Poole broke this one. His version (it's longer) is here.

So is RCR dirty? Aren't they all?

Jeff Gordon on Brian Vickers, who picked last Sunday of all Sundays to start running up front:

"I think that was a little bit lapse of judgment but it also was him kind of getting back at me because I raced him hard earlier in the race. It's not a guy that's out there trying to help you win a championship."

Meow!

Dustin Long has the complete Gordon transcript on his site. Make sure to check Dustin regularly this weekend to see what else he's working on at Dover. One of those stories is that NASCAR might ... oh, you'll just have to wait. I think Dustin's got himself an exclusive.

It's not just the Greensboro-Winston-High Point market that's not watching NASCAR. It's the whole nation.

What's up with that? You can't pin anything before New Hampshire on the NFL.

And now that we're on the topic ... TV needs to stop coming back from caution-flag commercials when the cars are coming out of turn 2.

I can explain the fact that we didn't have a Virginia-Georgia Tech story in today's paper because our Gutenberg-era press was acting up. Chances are, that exact same error won't happen again. But TV consistently misses the restarts. What the heck is their excuse?

Everyone (including me) figured that Jeff Burton was going to win sometime this year. Winning four poles suggests that you're fast.

Now that he's leading the points race, you have to try this on for size: "Jeff Burton, 2006 Nextel Cup champ."

Not saying it's going to happen. The guy in the 24 car is just six points back, and he knows a thing or four about winning Cup titles.

But back to Burton a minute: When was the last time a Virginia driver won a NASCAR title? Joe Weatherly back in the early '60s appears to be the last one.

In the previous thread about Jeff Burton, the comments got a little loose and ended up with a discussion of Matt Kenseth. (No, I have no idea how these things happen. They just do.)

Dustin Long has the scoop on why Kenseth ran out of gas. The short version: He gambled and lost.

The weird thing is that it sounds like Kenseth had a hand in the decision to risk it, then spanked his team (read: Robbie Reiser) after the fact. You know the Chase is taking its toll when Mr. Unflappable is already, ah, flapped.

P.S. The guy who should be ticked is Reid Sorenson. This is the second time this season he has run out of gas late in the race. Can the 41 team not add, or do the Dodge engines burn that much more gas than everyone else?

What are more important for setting a race field, driver points or owner points?

Owner points, duh.

Easy work if you can get it.

The AP is reporting that NASCAR and Humpy Wheeler are tinkering with the All-Star race. Among the possible changes:

* The winner of the Pit Crew competition gets the pole.
* The race will have more drivers, possibly from the Busch and Truck series.
* They'll do away with the three-segment race and do something different.

The full AP story is after the jump, if you want to read more.

And while you're reading, ponder this: Is there anything NASCAR can do to make more people watch this thing?

Bonus points if you can name the 2006 winner.

The short track in question is the Martinsville Speedway, and the big time is the Bailey's 300, which bills itself as the largest annual short-track race in the country. It's so big that (a) three drivers plan to run the 07 (but none are named Clint Bowyer), and (b) qualifying takes two days. The race itself won't get run till 3 p.m. Sunday.

Take a look at the entry list and see which names you know - other than Dennis Setzer of Truck Series fame and Justin Labonte of my-dad-has-two-Cup-titles fame, the rest are a bunch of nobodies.

Relatively speaking. I type up the short track report every week for Wednesday's paper, so I recognize a few names - Travis Swaim, who won the 2005 Caraway title (and the 2004 one as well, I think); Rodney Cook, who just won the Ace title; and a few other folks who have won some local short track races.

Also: Dustin Long has written about Drew Herring, who won the South Boston track title. There's also Philip Morris, who just won the NASCAR Weekly Division I title. (Morris had a little run-in last week at Motor Mile; Roanoke's Jared Turner, who helps out at Martinsville, has the story here.)

Should be a good time. Check it out if you need a racin' fix and you can't get to Kansas.

Pretend for a moment that your Chip Ganassi. You've just signed one of the best drivers on the planet, Juan Pablo Montoya. Guy has an Indy 500 trophy, an Indy Car season title and seven of those oversized champagne bottles you get for winning an F1 event.

So what do you do with your hot new driver?

Why, you put him behind the wheel of an ARCA ... car is not the word I'm looking for here. You know, quote-unquote cars like these right here.

In case you're counting at home, seven cars died on the track right then and there.