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It's going to be a great 2007 - Car of Tomorrow, Toyota, The World Wide Leader, a new crop of rookies, Gordon will pass Earnhardt on the wins list, Junior will win the Cup title ...

That's just a start. What do you want to see happen this year on the track? Off the track?

It's the hype and the driver quotes. Seriously.

Check out this release the Daytona folks just sent out:

To celebrate his coming out victory at NASCAR’s signature track, [Denny] Hamlin performed a burn out with his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Chevrolet. The burn out was so powerful that the marks -- two black strips -- can still be seen today just a few feet ahead of the start/finish line.

No, the e-mail didn't include any visual evidence. (If you've got it, I'd like to see it.) Keep in mind that the car Hamlin drove to victory in the 2006 Shootout had been driven to a series of 60th-place finishes (in a 43-car field) by 2005 Gibbs driver Jason Leffler.

And now for the quote:

"That was amazing," Hamlin said of the burn out at the recent NASCAR Busch Series luncheon at the ESPN Club in Orlando. "I saw (the marks) during the Daytona 500. The odd thing is that it kind of looks like an 11 on the front straightaway."

I would have been really impressed if that burnout had looked like a 47.

Speaking of Daytona: 1966 Cup rookie of the year James Hylton will enter the 2007 Daytona 500, and the Rolex 24 lineup is shaping up nicely.

45 days till the green flag flies at Daytona ...

A straightforward list from NASCAR.com:
1. Toyota
2. The Plow of Tomorrow
3. ESPN
4. Busch Series
5. Chase/points changes
6. Repeat champion?
7. Montoya mania

Me, I'm intrigued most by No. 6. Like Stewart last year, Johnson's the safe and easy pick to hoist the Big Trophy again after Homestead. The last repeat winner was 1998, when Gordon won his second straight and third overall.

A three-peat? Not likely. Only one guy has done it,, and he wasn't named Gordon, Senior or The King.

... and he's writing about my favorite topic, Dale Jr.

I didn't have anything to say last month when Theresa E. sniped at her stepson in the pages of (of all things) the Wall Street Journal. (The reason: I wasn't sure to make of all of it. Plus, it was almost Christmas.) Now Junior's sister fired back on a radio show.

The whole thing is just weird. Can anyone out there make any sense of what's going on around the Earnhardt Family dinner table? And if you were Junior, would you stick with the devil you know or the devil (Jack Roush, Rick Hendrick, Roger Penske) you don't?

Dead of cancer at age 49. That's just too young.

His vitals: 15 NASCAR wins (including four in Cup) over 16 seasons, a Truck Series title (2004) and about $18 million in career earnings.

His last Cup win was in April 2001 at Talladega, where Hamilton drove the No. 55 Square D for Andy Petree to victory lane. The race is notable not so much for Hamilton's win (he passed Tony Stewart on the next-to-lap lap) but for two other reasons: It was the first superspeedway race since Dale Earnhardt was killed at Daytona two months earlier, and there were no cautions. Here's a story.

We'll miss you, Bobby.

More:
Team page
Wiki bio
Share your memories

From here and there:

Ryan McGee, FoxSports.com: "With guaranteed employment in NASCAR's top series for at least a few more seasons, he had walked away (to the Truck Series). Why? Because of moments like this one in Darlington. Sitting around, talking racing, not being able to sort the truth from the B.S. and not caring about it one bit."

Terry Blount, Worldwideleader.com: "That's what all of us should remember about him. Hamilton did what we all hope to do: He rose above his station."

Ed Hardin: "Bobby Hamilton was one in a million, and he stayed that way to the end." (His column should be posted here on Tuesday morning.)

Tom Higgins remembers Hamilton putting a Petty car in victory lane here: "Hamilton had tears in his blazing blue eyes in the press box as the interview ended. So did a lot of media members who admired the down-to-earth country boy Tennessean whose humbleness and sincerity and honesty affected everyone he met."

Jerry Bonkowski, yahoo.com: "There's no question Hamilton was an acquired taste for some. He'd oftentimes be more crabby and cranky than congenial and conciliatory, much like his long-time friend Earnhardt. Sometimes you'd swear the late Intimidator and the silver-haired Nashville native were cut from the same hot and cold personality mold. But that all was part of their charm as both competitors and human beings."

Tom Bowles, SI.com: "Unbreakable is really the word you need to use to describe this lifelong Tennesseean."

Funeral services are Tuesday in Tennessee. Instead of flowers, send you money here or here.

I'm not sure whether this even merits a yawn:

Without sponsor, IROC delays start to season

I mean, will anyone actually miss it? I like the idea of Cup drivers mixing it up with drivers from other series. But now that Montoya and Allmendinger will be driving in the Cup Series in 2007, and more will probably follow at some point (Paul Tracy? Ricky Carmichael? the now unemployed Michael Schumacher?) it's like every Cup race will be an IROC race.

For the record, I didn't watch a single minute of any IROC race last year. Did I miss anything?

The folks here might disagree, but the best racing this week is actually here. This site promises live Webcasts.

These clips will give you an idea of what you're missing if you're not in Tulsa this week.

Has anyone actually been to the Chili Bowl? What's it like? Other than LOUDER THAN HECK and dusty, that is.

Dang if Robby Gordon didn't win himself a stage in Dakar.

Eurosport.com has much, much more, including the bestowing of the title "Nascar legend" upon Robby G. (Hint to Eurosport: I think you mean the other Gordon.)

More:
Official site
Video from Eurosport (Stage 6 isn't up as I'm writing this)
Your race leader, one of the best rally drivers anywhere.

This column earlier this week from Charlotte's Tom Sorenson cracked me up.

He starts off by declaring his love for the Toyota Camry - it's dependable, reliable, etc. etc. And then this: "The Camry is many things, but a race car is not among them."

My first response was: Dude, have you ever heard of the Ford Taurus?

I was trolling around You Tube earlier today and stumbled on this old piece of newsreal footage, which purports to be from the 1960 Daytona 500.

The 1960 500, which was only the second Daytona 500 on the superspeedway,
did have 68 cars. But a lot fewer than 37 were parked at the end, and there's not a big clump of cars that got knocked out on the same lap. Some commenters note (apparently correctly) that two of the drivers mentioned in the clip (looks like Carl Burris and Marion Farr) aren't even in the race, and there's no number 20.

Still, it's a nice little piece of racin' history.

Anyone have any idea what race this might be? And does anyone know anyone at Fox? I want to suggest that they use the soundtrack sometime during their 500 coverage. It's the perfect mood music.

First up this year in the feudin' department was Junior and Teresa E.

Next up: Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards, whose beef goes back to last July's race at Pocono. But everyone's making nice this week, especially with the Bumper Tag 500 a month and three days away. That said, I expect this one to simmer a bit.

Dustin Long, who's down at Daytona this week for testing, brings you the latest, which is Edwards' apology.

Speaking of Stewart, guess who added to his collection of Chili Bowls?

Off-topic here: Do any of you have a news aggregator that you particular like? And what's so cool about it?

I'm in the market for one, mostly because there are more racin' blogs and racin' news sites than hours in the day to check them all.

Our racin' writer, Dustin Long, got to take a few laps around Daytona last night. He was riding shotgun, and he was only going about 125, but still.

A sample:

You cannot get a true appreciation of the 31-degree banking in the corners until you are going through them. One thing is you see how vital spotters are. When you enter turn 1, you cannot see turn 2, you're at such an angle that your forward view is limited. So, if there was a crash in turn 2, you wouldn't know until you were nearly on top of and it was too late to avoid it.

Read about his account here.

There's a lot of stuff being written about Benny Parsons, who passed Tuesday after a brief fight with cancer. I really like Ed Hardin's column today:

It was here at North Carolina Motor Speedway in 1973 where Parsons went from an unknown taxi driver from Detroit to a legend in the making. When he died Tuesday, he was a legitimate voice of the South, a spokesman for a generation of sports fans who assumed no one else even knew they existed. Auto racing is now the fastest-growing sport in the world, and it's partly because of Benny Parsons.

Go read the whole thing.

Also: Tom Higgins shares a story here. Lee Spencer writes here and here.

So, Teresa Earnhardt, are you committed to keeping your late husband's second son as your top driver?
Her reply: "Absolutely."

More from the Big Dog, whose blog posts were a heckuva lot more entertaining than what he had in Friday's paper.

Unrelated: The old gang got together one more time to remember BP. I hope these guys remember to hang out apart from funerals.

The big change to NASCAR's chase is ... they're letting in two more drivers and doing away with the 400-point rule that baffled everyone (including my copy desk) that doesn't follow NASCAR.

They're also giving 5 more points for each win. When the Chase starts, drivers are seeded not on their points rank after the first 26 races but on how many races they won.

Here's one version of the story - scroll down for the handy chart that shows what the 2006 Chase might have looked like had the 2007 system been in place.

No, I don't see much difference either. What's your take? Spam the comments. I'll chew on it overnight and come back at ya Tuesday.

The more I try to squeeze my little brain around the changes to the Chase, the more I come back to this:

The changes are really no big deal.

Sure, NASCAR will add two more drivers to the Chase. Now we're up to 12 from 10. (Here's the official NASCAR propaganda. And, as Dustin Long points out in today's paper, NASCAR's rush to be more inclusive still comes off as stingy compared to the NFL, NBA and NHL. And, no, 5,000 plus x, where x is number of wins times 10, barely qualifies as algebra. (Are we that short of racin' writers? I mean, Marty Smith is hardly irreplaceable.)

I digress. More after the jump.

The big news out of Randolph County is that Petty Enterprises, the folks that put Level Cross and Randleman on the map, is thinking about leaving town. (For my out-of-town readers: Level Cross is just south of Greensboro and just across the county line. In other words, it's in our back yard, if Greensboro had such a thing.)

The move isn't imminent - the Pettys don't have a place (yet) in Charlotte, and the moving trucks aren't idling around back. The idea is to be more competitive. Racin' folks (meaning potential employees) don't want to drive from Salisbury and Huntersville and northern Mecklenburg County to work at the Petty shop, which Robbie Loomis compares to Lambeau Field.

The problem with Petty goes way beyond location. Level Cross isn't Lambeau Field, and Bobby Labonte ain't Brett Favre. I'll explain after the jump.

Kyle Busch goes surfing.

That's why no one should argue for a shorter NASCAR season.

That said, Kyle does get points for getting up on the board. That ain't easy.

As Dustin Long pointed out in yesterday's paper, we're still three-plus weeks away from the Daytona 500, and everyone's already cranky. Everyone's feudin' like it's Dover in June or wherever it is they race in August. So if they're fighting, I'm judging. Here are your preseason winners and losers:

Kevin Harvick vs. Teresa Earnhardt
The battle: The widow of Dale Earnhardt Sr. and owner of DEI isn't around the track much. Harvick called her on it.
The winner: Teresa Earnhardt in the sixth round by TKO. Harvick has said a lot of dumb stuff in his life, but this is probably the dumbest. "Deadbeat" implies that TE has abandoned the team. Last I checked, DEI is expanding. And wasn't that Chip Ganassi and Roger Penske I saw at the Indy 500 in May? And who's that coaching the Washington football team?

There's more after the jump ...

No doubt about it: Juan Pablo Montoya can wheel a race car. He looked good at the Rolex 24 (more here) this weekend. If you were lucky enough to catch the Sunday morning session, you saw Montoya going nose to tail with Ryan Dalziel and Max Angelelli. (Those cars looked really slow on the stock car track. The in-car cameras showed that they were really flying on the road-course portion.)

But I'm getting this sense of deja vu about the whole thing. Hmmm ... like the 2007 winner, the 2006 Rolex 24 winner had open-wheel experience, wore a black firesuit and would drive the No. 42 Texaco Havoline Dodge in the Daytona 500 in three weeks hence.

Yep, Casey Mears.

Remember that Mears finished second at Daytona and was the hottest thing going in February after he finished seventh in California and ninth in Vegas. Then March came, and everyone remembered that this was an average driver working for an average team and he finished the season 14th.

What does this portend for JP Montoya? I haven't the foggiest. Just an interesting parallel.

More on the Rolex 24, including pretty pictures, is here. If you missed it, race recaps here. More race recaps and team reports are here.

If you want to know more about David Poole, the Charlotte Observer's NASCAR writer, the Diecast Dude does not disappoint. It's a six-part interview that appears longer than the 2006 NASCAR season.

You're probably going to want to read it -- Poole has seen a lot of races in his day, and he's atop the NASCAR beat writers' pyramid. I think you'll learn a lot about racin' from the eyes of one reporter who covers it.

But six parts? Whoa, Jerry. That's a lot of typing. I hope your fingers aren't blistered.