News-Record.com

Welcome to the (mostly) All-Earnhardt edition of The Spotter because Senior would have been 57 on Tuesday:

Lap 1: Ah, Richmond -- the second-best race on the schedule. (First: Richmond in the fall, the race before the cutoff for the Chase.) It's also the place where Junior won his last race two years ago. He'll win Saturday. You just watch.

Lap 2: Jeff Gordon's still a whiner. Boooo hoooo hoooo, Junior didn't help me. (More.) Let's face it, 24 fans: The Hendrick cars just don't dominate at the plate tracks any more. Two-Time's rope-a-dope hang-in-the-back tactic isn't sandbagging. It meant his car just wasn't that good. And, no, I can't explain why Casey Mears was had the best Hendrick finish. Can you explain how Furniture Row Joe ended up on the pole?

More after the jump.

My daily 5 a.m. wake-up calls mean that I'm fried after 10 p.m. and comatose by 11, which means I didn't make it to the end of the Richmond race. But I'm glad I missed it, because I think my house would have been down at least one TV set. (Yes, I'm a Junior fan.) Thanks to the miracle of the daily paper and the Intertubes, I spent my Sunday morning wrapping my still-sleepy brain around what had happened Saturday night at my hometown track.

Here's the transcript (sorry, I destroyed the audio) of my wife's conversation with me Sunday morning:

Lap 1 (the wife): So, who won the race last night:
Me: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH ......

Lap 2 (wife again, prying what's left of the Sports section from my hands): Kyle Busch won?
Me: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH ......

The interview continues after the jump.

Here are your Small Team Standings after the Richmond race. Bobby Labonte (13th at Richmond) made up a ton of ground on Brian Vickers (28th). David Gilliland (41st) was your big loser and dropped from second to fourth. Look who squeezed into the top 10 -- Furniture Row Joe! But that's mostly because Mike Skinner hasn't raced since Phoenix.

Vickers, meanwhile, your best-placed Small Teamer, is 17th in the real world.

Your Small Team Standings after the jump.