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It's pretty clear that Tony Stewart used Kevin Harvick to help him turn his car Sunday at Indy. Yeah, yeah, Stewart had the faster car, and he was going to get Big Orange past the 29 in due time. But, lord, he's impatient.

About all Harvick could do Sunday to get back at him was to a post-race bump-n-run, then ignore Stewart's phone calls during the week.

Dustin Long has a little more here.

Canada's No. 1 Dale Sr. fan pegs Harvick's payback here: "I wonder if the shoe was on the other foot if he would have done what Kevin did? After considerable thought, I think that yes he would have."

So who wins in this situation? Harvick and Stewart are two of NASCAR's better drivers, but both can be absolutely maddening. I wonder if they'll kiss and make up during qualifying today, or if one of them will punt the other into the grass on Sunday. We'll see.

Changing topic, but still amusing: NASCAR coach reveals winning strategy.

Like, throw your keys to the bulldozer in the lake.

Or better yet, get Larry or AJ4 to do your yard work. Neither one of them is worth much behind the wheel of anything faster than a bulldozer.

The story about how a bulldozer failed in its second attempt to kill the meanest man in motorsports is after the jump.

Let's see ...

* Robby Gordon crosses the finish line first in Canada -- he was really going there at the end -- and gets credit for 18th. (Hartford's NASCAR writer doesn't get it. Three words: It's Robby Gordon. Make sure to take a look at his comment thread here.

* Robby Gordon might have ruined U.S.-Australian-Canadian relations, but he picked up a ton of new fans, if you can believe the comments here. My favorites parts are when folks use LOT OF CAPITAL LETTERS TO INTERPRET NASCAR'S RULES TO EACH OTHER. My eyes!

(Speaking of RG, the Diecast Dude weighs in here with links, and Bram goes off here: "NASCAR says more sanctions against Gordon are possible. They should be pinning a medal on the man. He has put the Montreal stop on the firmest of footings, a guaranteed sellout for next year.")

* Kurt Busch led nearly all of the 800 laps Sunday at Pocono.

* Junior finishes second and falls out of the top 12.

* Kyle Busch will be teammates next season with Tony Stewart. As everyone knows, they're the bestest of buddies.

Did I miss anything?

Thursday update: Robby Gordon's going to let Marcos Ambrose borrow one of his cars this weekend for the Cup race at Watkins Glen. (AP story here.) This is why I like Ambrose:

"I think it's a big thing for him to ring me up on Monday and give me this opportunity. I just hope we don't run 1-2 with four laps to go -- it could get a bit interesting."

Man, I hope he makes the race.

The North Carolina Motor Speedway could be yours on Oct. 2.

Here's the auction listing.

Here's the list of races held there.

Here's a fan page of sorts.

The auction house said there's going to be no minimum or reserve, which means that on Oct. 2 SMI won't own it and someone else will. I'm not sure who exactly would want it. Maybe for a plant? Maybe for resort property? (Though you'd have to dig your own lake.) NASCAR's not coming back, and it's too big to be a local short track unless you have gobs of money to throw at keeping it from falling apart.

Now if Bruton Smith and Bob Bahre would go ahead and do something with this place.

In 90 laps at Watkins Glen yesterday, we saw:

* Tony Stewart spin himself out, fall back to 19th, rally to second, then win when Jeff Gordon spun himself out

* Juan Pablo Montoya and Kevin Harvick go helmet-to-helmet. Montoya's side is here.

* Stewart deliver the line of the month about the Montoya-Harvick slap fight: "They still had their HANS and their helmets on, so it didn't impress me."

* Junior learn the Fifth Commandment of Engines: Thou shalt not let thy motor turn 10,000 rpm.

* Ryan Newman, Carl Edwards and several other drivers make like a snowplow through the gravel traps.

* Some wild off-course racing. Who knew Goodyear's racing slicks were an all-terrain tire?

* Patrick Carpentier inducted into the Road Course Ringers Society after coming home 22nd on Sunday. (More importantly, after taking the pole and finishing second at Montreal, he finished on the lead lap in both Glen races.)

* A shirtless guy ran onto the track during the red flag to get Matt Kenseth's autograph. Said Kenseth to the autograph seeker: "I'm a little busy here, buddy."

And everyone says nothing happens at road course races. More like that one, please.

I dig numbers. Always have, from the time I'd sit in front of the TV with my fourth-grade math book to my senior year in high school when I took differential equations at a local college. (Who knew that DE was all about letters and not numbers? That was it for the math career.)

In NASCAR, I'm intrigued by the stats (a driver's top 5 finishes, number of career wins, races since someone led a lap, how many consecutive starts, etc. etc.) and especially the driver numbers. The latest driver-number story involves the 8 - Junior wants to take it with him to Hendrick next year, and TEI doesn't want to give it up. (It's an interesting issue - Junior made his grandfather's number famous, but Junior's grandfather is obviously Dale Sr.'s father, and Teresa is family, too.)

Maybe moreso in NASCAR than other U.S. sports, you ID the driver not with the team but with his number. Jeff Gordon, 24. Richard Petty, 43. Dale Senior, 3. Dale Jarrett, 88. But there's no absolute ownership, except maybe in the case of the No. 3. (No, I don't think anyone other than an Earnhardt will drive that car for a long, long time.)

Jeff Gordon wasn't the first guy to drive the No. 24. Heck, he wasn't even the first Gordon behind the wheel of the 24. But he was the first guy to get the 24 to victory lane.

The No. 43 didn't retire with Richard Petty. A lot of mediocre drivers, present one excluded, have been given the keys to the STP Machine. Jarrett won two Daytona 500s and a Cup championship in the No. 88, but lots of other good drivers - Darrell Waltrip and Bobby Allison both won in it. The No. 28 is probably best known for its Texaco Havoline sponsorship because so many good drivers wheeled that number -- Rudd, Irvan, Yarborough, Baker, two Allisons, Lorenzen. Try picking the best driver ever of the No. 11. Mark Martin didn't get to keep the No. 6 when he left Roush and so on.

Numbers come and go, which means Junior's just going to have to suck it up and get used to another number. He's not happy about it - after blowing off reporters on Friday, he unloaded against T and the 8 this morning in the garage. He's apparently looking for something in the 80s. I'm guessing 81 - it'll take up the least amount of real estate on the arms, legs, backs and butts of his tattooed fans.

Dustin will have more in Sunday's paper if I forget to come back and update the link.

What's left of Tropical Depression Erin punched a big fat hole in my Sunday. NASCAR's going to try again Monday at noon.

Bad news, race fans: The usually reliable weather.com pegs tomorrow's chance of rain in Michigan at 100 percent. Tuesday, it's 30 percent. It's already a short week - the Cup race (Bristol!) is Saturday, which backs up everything a day.

I'm not sure I'd take off work Monday (or Tuesday) to watch the Michigan race. Would you?

All times are approximate:

10:15 a.m.: Still home. (I work 11-ish to 8-ish.) Breakfast? Check. Shower? Coming up. Race? Race?! Crikey - it's on.

10:16 a.m.: ESPN2 is indeed showing the race. (Whew - got that right in today's paper.) Cars circling the track. That's a good sign.

10:18 a.m.: Shot of the infield. Most of the RVs are gone. The ones there must have been abandoned.

10:19 a.m.: Crowd shot. ESPN crew makes mention of NASCAR diehards. Me, I think the folks in the stands died of exposure Sunday and no one bothered to remove them. I mean, who comes to any sort of sporting event on a Tuesday?

More after the jump ...

So what did you think?

Dustin Long rounds up a bunch of Web-pinions here. (Dustin's take is here.) It's what you'd expect. Some folks liked the racing. Others hated the lack of wrecks.

My take? The new surface takes some of the chance out of it. The rap against running at Bristol so close to the Chase is that it was a crap shoot whether you'd get through it intact. Last Saturday night, the best cars ran at the front, and the worst cars didn't. What's wrong with that?

On another note: How did Bill Davis Racing land Jacques Villeneuve? And does Villeneuve know that Davis is essentially a one-car team that sometimes builds a second car from the spare parts from its first? I'm still scratching my head over that one.

If ESPN is right ...

... Regan Smith's lucky number is 01. Good for him that he didn't find himself completely out of work after the whole Ginn-DEI shakeout.

... Junior will be in the 38 next year. Yeah, yeah, I get the significance, and someone else already has the 83. (The 38's spoken for, too, but Yates is so desperate for cash he might sell just sell it.) But talk about an unimpressive pedigree: in 433 starts in Cup history, the No. 38 has found victory lane just seven times, and only two of them have been since 1960. (Elliott Sadler was the only one in recent memory to win a Cup race in the 38.) You'd have to be pretty hardcore to remember that Alan Kulwicki drove the No. 38 three times in 1985 (best finish 13th) or that Butch Gilliland drove the 38 in three Sonoma races in the 1990s best finish 24th - he's clearly no Boris Said).

One more: The first guy ever behind the wheel of the No. 38 in a Cup race? Lee Petty.

OK, that's enough trivia for today. One last number: 08. That would be kind of cool.

Later Thursday: Post above edited to change "David Regan" (whoever that is) to Regan Smith. Obviously both drivers have made quite the impression on me.

That's been the word around the garage (which is reporter-speak for I've heard lots of rumors, but no one will talk on the record about it). ESPN goes the anonymous source route (sun rises in the morning, leaves fall off the trees in autumn, ESPN uses unnamed sources) and breaks the Gibbs-to-Toyota story.

The move makes a lot of sense. Gibbs is the second (or third or fourth) best team at Chevy. Toyota is desperate to win a race. (Guess that Waltrip thing didn't work out after all.)

Dustin Long breaks it all down here.

One thing he doesn't touch, so I'll ask it here: Do you pay attention to car makes on the track? Does it really matter who drives what these days?