Sledgehammer

Over the past few days the racing blogosphere and motorsports news outlets worldwide have been all abuzz about the report out of Europe that would have yet another F1 driver joining the ranks of NASCAR.

This time ‘round it’s former F1 champion Kimi “The Iceman” Raikkonen who is expected to come to the states to try his hand at stock car racing in the near future.

Let’s be honest here. The track record for former F1 drivers in NASCAR is not very good, even for former champions. Current Earnhardt Ganassi driver Juan Pablo Montoya, while never an F1 champion (he did win the CART title) has had the best showing of any former F1 driver, although in the end his NASCAR career will likely be described by historians as nothing more than “groundbreaking” and “mediocre.”

During his tenure in F1, Raikkonen won the driver’s title once (2007), scored 18 wins in a series where it is all about the car and not the driver’s talent and eventually won his championship while driving for Ferrari when the Italian team was essentially the best on the grid.

After leaving F1, Raikkonen migrated to the World Rally Championship Series where he’s essentially been a non-factor and better known for his crashes than his finishes. He’s currently 9th in points.

Perhaps the real story here is that the original report out of Finland links Raikkonen with former NASCAR team principle Foster Gillett, the ineffectual frat boy whose role as a poser with his family-owned hockey team supposedly gave him the credentials to run a major league racing team. He instead ran it into the ground.

Any suggestion that Gillett could return to the NASCAR garage is an insult to everything and everyone associated with the sport. Gillett’s family left NASCAR with a trail of unpaid bills and a taste in the mouths of the major players in the sport so vile that nothing could possibly cleanse it.

Raikkonen would be better off picking someone else as a partner.

Rumors have the Finn bringing huge amounts of money to run in the truck series with an eye on moving into the Cup ranks before the end of the year. Money talks. Raikkonen will likely find several takers who are more than willing to remove money from his bank account, bask in the media attention that will come from having an internationally recognized driver behind the wheel and then laugh all the way to the bank.

That brings me to the NASCAR Side Show.

Admittedly, drivers like Danica Patrick, Ricky Carmichael, Jacques Villeneuve, Nelson Piquet Jr., Narain Karthikeyan and others have brought a name with marquee value to NASCAR, producing headlines that the sport that sorely has needed.

Unfortunately, sports editors across the country often latch on to these “one hit wonders” in a cheap attempt to capture their reader’s attention. I’m offended by the idea and you should be to, since these are the same editors who possess little knowledge of the sport and treat it with contempt. A good example of this is the ongoing Danica Patrick fetish by sports editors, television producers and mainstream sports writers that doesn’t do auto racing any favors. It does however, draw attention away from the real future stars of the sport, who will still be behind the wheel of a race car long after Patrick has left the sport and is hosting her own show on the Oprah Winfrey network.

Some say that failure in NASCAR, even by those with considerable driving talent only proves how difficult the sport is. I’m not so sure about that. When it’s all said and done, Raikkonen will join the ranks of those who have tried to make a go at NASCAR and then place the blame on several factors for their failure. Let’s face it. NASCAR racing is a tough business where success depends upon so many different parts of the puzzle coming together and where success in any other motorsports doesn’t mean anything for one’s chances for success in NASCAR.

Despite his talent, his money and his notoriety, Raikkonen is destined be nothing more than the latest chapter in a disturbing trend, the NASCAR Side Show, which for obvious reasons, has been tragically embraced by those who market the sport. Unfortunately, this side show is another reason for the disillusioned hardcore fan base to continue to turn away from the sport it struggles to stay in love with — as it evolves into something they barely recognize.

Can Raikkonen cut it in NASCAR? It’s doubtful. But it’ll be a bit of entertainment as he tries.

Thoughts, observations and a few questions:

It was a very busy racing weekend, as both the Formula One and IZOD Indy Car Series got their 2011 seasons underway and NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series delivered another “you had to be there” finish.

The F1 race was a bit of a disappointment as it didn’t produce the kind of excitement we were led to believe the new rules, which included the reintroduction of KERS and the introduction of movable rear wings, would produce. The podium finish by Russian driver Vitaly Petrov was a nice touch, however, breaking up the Red Bull, McLaren, Ferrari monotony.

The Indy Car race at St. Petersburg got off to a disastrous start when veteran Helio Castroneves, who apparently decided beforehand that he would pretend he was a rookie for this race by driving full speed into the first turn at the start, a move guaranteed to produce a bad result. The reality television show star slammed into Marco Andretti, knocking the mediocre third generation driver’s car upside down, thus giving him the excuse he needed (a bad start to the season) for what promises to be yet another forgettable season in Indy Cars. Castroneves apologized afterwards, taking full blame for his brain fade. It was no excuse for the carnage that took Andretti’s teammates Mike Conway and Ryan Hunter-Reay, his own teammate Ryan Briscoe and former series champion Scott Dixon out of contention for the rest of the day.

During each subsequent restart, as the IZOD Indy Car Series tried to introduce double-file restarts like NASCAR, there was more carnage as the field entered Turn 1, proving once more that the talent level in the open wheel series currently lacks the kind of depth of experience needed to perform a maneuver that NASCAR fans have come to take for granted. Race winner Dario Franchitti commented afterwards that “the drivers have to take some of the blame.” Some of the blame? They deserve all of the blame. I also blame whoever ran the driver’s meeting and was responsible for dictating just how the field should enter the first turn. Spectacular wrecks at the start are an Indy Car race have become an unwelcome tradition. Watch this classic Indy Car start.

The start of the F1 race in Melbourne wasn’t much better.

The Indy Car race made up for its embarrassing start by offering quite an entertaining finish as sophomore star Simona De Silvestro challenged former series champion Tony Kanaan in the closing laps of the race. If only ABC/ESPN would get over its Danica Patrick fetish and pay more attention to De Silvestro, who possesses the kind of talent and competitive drive in an open wheel car that Patrick can only dream about. The 22-year-old Swiss-born De Silvestro drives for veteran team owner Keith Wiggins, whose team was a regular winner in the now defunct Champ Car Series and is now poised to return to prominence in Indy Cars after a long, difficult dry spell with talentless buy-a-ride drivers like E.J. Viso and Robert Doornbos behind the wheel.

The best finish of the weekend however, took place at California…er…Auto Club Speedway. Kevin Harvick’s come from behind victory reminded me once again that if you can make it through the first three hours of a NASCAR Cup Series race, the last twenty minutes are the very best racing on the planet, hands down. Of course, if you’re at home, forced to watch the unwatchable television broadcast, you can always take a nap and have someone wake you with 20 laps to go.

Shortening the length of the Cup race at Fontana from 500 excruciating miles to 400 slight less excruciating miles was a good move, although the 1960s-era track design (a near identical twin of Michigan International Speedway) still makes for boring races. It’s time to reconstruct this facility and either make it a high-banked restrictor plate track (my choice) or a 1-mile, high-banked short track like Dover. And please don’t bring back a second race — ever!

It is a welcome sight to see so many American drivers in the Indy Car field at St. Petersburg, especially rookie Charlie Kimball, who drives for Chip Ganassi’s satellite team. The California native made a rookie mistake early on by tagging the wall on cold tires on his out lap following a pit stop. He then fell on the sword, so to speak, by taking the blame for his mistake on live television. Imagine that, an Indy Car driver accepting blame for his or her mistake! His candor has made me an instant fan.

Here’s a reality check for you: NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series has produced five different winners in its first five races this year; Denny Hamlin is 21st in points, Jeff Burton is 25th, Jamie McMurray is 28th and Joey Logano is 29th; Ryan Newman is 2nd in points; and Jeff Gordon is 16th. One more — Jimmie Johnson is the only Hendrick driver in the top 10.

Should we expect more out of former Chase contender Brian Vickers during his first season back in the seat of a race car? Or is it coming?

It think its time to drop the “sliced bread” nickname for Logano and start referring to him as “burnt toast.”

I thought it was an April Fools joke at first, but the Florida (where else?) legislature has introduced a bill that would allow race fans to have their ashes interred at both Daytona International and Homestead-Miami Speedways. I predict the legislation will pass and they’ll have dozens of takers. I’ve heard stories of people having their ashes spread (illegally) on the grounds of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and other legendary non-racing sports facilities.

My wife, who is a native of Concord, NC, is among the legions of Dale Jr. fans and believe me when I tell you, Sunday afternoons have been a lot more pleasant this year. Thanks, Dale!

I would have loved to have seen what kind of impact (no pun intended) Sebastien Bourdais would have made on the results at St. Petersburg. The four-time Champ Car champion, returning to Indy Cars after an absence of four years, crashed during the morning warm up and was unable to compete. I predict he’ll be a factor when the series races at Barber Motorsports Park in a couple of weeks.

Stock car veteran Dave Marcis told me that Bourdais was the very best open wheel racer in a stock car that he’d ever seen, period. This was after coaching him during a season in the IROC series, where Bourdais won the race at Texas in 2005. Bourdais could have been a star in NASCAR had he not foolishly chased his dreams in Formula One.

I find it hard to believe JGR senior VP of operations Jimmy Makar when he insists that his organization made minor changes to their engines since last season. I’m thinking that the JGR engine department is making some serious tweaks to their Toyota engine to keep up with the newer Ford, Dodge and Chevy engines. Hard to believe, but the design of the Toyota power plant is the oldest among the four manufacturers in NASCAR.

I just read a report out of Europe that stated former F1 champion Kimi Raikkonen, who currently is competing in the World Rally Championship will be coming to America to drive in the Camping World Truck Series for a team run by Foster Gillett. I can only assume that this is an early April Fool’s joke.

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Postscript

With its heavy reliance on a multitude of really bad faux reality shows and absolutely pitiful pre-race entertainment, SPEED Channel long ago lost its place as the first channel I tuned to when turning on my television. There is so much that is wrong.

However, they have gotten something really, really right.

This past weekend, Speedtv.com broadcast online the live, unedited footage of Formula One practice from Australia. The picture quality was superb, the stereo sound was absolutely remarkable and it was truly an fantastic experience to watch practice without all the babble produced by Bob Varsha and Co. Just to hear the genuine sound of the cars, down to the shifting of the high-tech transmissions and to eavesdrop on the banter amongst the crew members, all stuff you never get to hear during a regular SPEED broadcast, kept me glued to my Mac Book Pro until the wee hours of the morning.

Now, Varsha and his band of merry men usually do a pretty good job during race broadcasts, but for whatever reason they feel they need to constantly talk. Maybe its all the coffee they drink to prepare themselves for the early morning F1 telecasts from across the world. Someone really should remind them that television is a visual medium and we, the mostly knowledgeable F1 audience doesn’t need to be constantly reminded of what is happening on the screen in front of us. Shut up, once in a while, will you guys?

Not to be overlooked, ESPN has offered a similar live online stream of the Sunday elimination rounds at NHRA national events on ESPN3.com. The feed is the live feed into the truck that is later edited into the two-hour broadcast sent out over the satellite later in the day for airing on ESPN2. For the diehard drag racing fan, who doesn’t want to miss a single burnout and doesn’t mind sitting through the obligatory oil downs, it’s must watching on Sunday afternoons, beginning at 11 AM local race time.

If you’re old enough to remember black and white television, then you’ll enjoy spending a few minutes with this photo gallery.

It’s a stark reminder of days gone by and how we all have changed, some for the better, many for the worse.

Thoughts, observations and a few questions (a day late, but definitely not a dollar short):

Is there any doubt that Kyle Busch has morphed into “The Intimidator?” From the mannerisms in his post-race interviews, the large, black sunglasses and of course, the driving style, I challenge anyone who begs to differ. Hey NASCAR fans, if you’re looking for the real deal and want to relive the days of the black No. 3, look no further than the guy driving the No. 18 Toyota.

While his brother Kurt sits atop the Cup driver standings (being that he’s not finished outside the top 10 yet this season), Kyle made a huge jump into the top 10 (he’s 6th). And it seems that every time Kyle jumps behind the wheel of a Nationwide car, he turns the race into a joke. We’re seeing a more mature Kyle Busch these days due to a number of factors, both business and personal. The real character test will come around mid-summer, when in the heat of July and August he can keep his cool and his focus as his team heads into the home stretch towards Richmond.

Is it just me, or did ESPN turn their Nationwide television broadcasts into “The Danica Patrick Show?” Admittedly, Patrick has shown that she has the potential to drive stock cars, even if she’s behind the wheel of one of the better prepared cars on the grid. Now that Patrick is headed back to Indy Cars for what will likely be another forgettable open wheel season (likely her last), I can just imagine the conversation in the ESPN production meetings where they’re asking “Who do we focus on now?” My guess is it will be Trevor Bayne. Hopefully, ESPN producers won’t forget Justin Allgaier, Ricky Stenhouse and Aric Almirola – all drivers who one day will be in the Cup series.

Before leaving for Indy Cars, Patrick made sure to remind us of her tendency for being a drama queen with her familiar “What were you thinking, jackass” hands in the air pose after she ran out of talent and hit the wall. The focus of her displeasure was Ryan Truex, who for whatever reason, gave a post-race interview where he apologized for taking Patrick out. Did someone tell him to suck up to Patrick?

I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve seen a pit road miscue destroy a great effort.

I watched a good deal of the 12 Hours of Sebring, the opening round of the 2011 American Le Mans Series live online at ESPN3.com. The coverage was simply superb, although after a few hours, the two announcer’s British accents made it feel more like I was watching a Monty Python movie than a sports car race. I follow sports car racing but I can tell you that I was completely confused by the multitude of different classes racing together at Sebring. The move to live online race broadcasts, which is done in other sports car series in Europe, is a brilliant stroke by the ALMS. The race recap the following day (Sunday) on ABC was well done and captured the heart of the event. Who won? Who cares? Like I said, there were too many different classes and it was hard to follow.

Can we all agree that the Budweiser “Tiny Dancer” commercial makes you want to puke every time you’re forced to watch it?

And speaking of commercials, who was the idiot who came up with the disaster scenarios for the new NASCAR fan commercials? The latest one, which depicts a natural disaster during a hot air balloon race is idiotic, stupid and just plain insulting to every NASCAR fan worldwide. Of course, given the way the entertainment business operates, the bozo who came up with this bad idea probably got a pat on the back, a raise and nows sits in a big corner office.

Watching Tony Stewart being interviewed on television prior to the start of the Cup race Sunday morning I nearly fell off my chair laughing after hearing Stewart praise Goodyear for having a back up plan to deal with the tire issue that arose over the weekend. I can still remember standing inches away from Stewart as he tore into Goodyear a few years ago in Atlanta after a similar tire issue. I guess when you’re paying the bills, you need to make nice with the vendors.

To their credit, Goodyear has learned from the miscues at Atlanta, Indianapolis and several other tracks in the past few years and now has a crisis plan in place to deal with the kind of issue that arose at Bristol. I wonder though, who paid the overtime and shipping costs for getting the extra tires from Charlotte to Bristol?

Is the clock ticking on the No. 20 team? Or maybe Coach and J.D. Gibbs happy with 23rd place finishes?

Try as they may, the IZOD Indy Car series continues to take two steps forward and one and a half steps backward. The $5 million Las Vegas bounty, which is a stupid, ill-conceived attempt at publicity backfired (again) this week when Indy Car boss Randy Bernard made some off-the-cuff remarks aimed at open wheel icon Paul Tracy, essentially saying the Canadian driver wouldn’t sell enough tickets to justify spending any of the Vegas bounty money on buying Tracy a ride for the season. Didn’t anyone tell Bernard that Tracy, the legitimate 2002 Indy 500 winner, continues to be a huge draw at open wheel races and probably sells more tickets than 3/4 of the current Indy Car field combined?

The IZOD Indy Car Series also announced that it would give up rights to live online broadcasts of its practice and qualifying sessions to television broadcasting partner VERSUS. I know that it raised a lot of eyebrows and I understand the logic behind it in trying to capture a larger domestic viewing audience. It does, however, hurt oversees viewers who relied on online broadcasts to follow the series. I expect that we’ll see a return of some kind of online broadcast before we get too far into the season. Although the current market saturation of VERSUS is less than its competition (read: ESPN), I’m predicting that by the end of the year, the network will leverage the strength of its new relationship with NBC Universal and make a huge increase to its market saturation. Comcast will transform VERSUS into a real player in sports television and those who laughed at the Indy Car/VERSUS relationship won’t be laughing so hard in a year or so.

And one more Indy Car note: Unless the rest of the competition steps it up a (big) notch, the 2011 IZOD Indy Car season will be another “Which Penske or Ganassi car will win this weekend” bore-fest. Unfortunately, no one appears to be able to step it up and the series will have to struggle through another ho-hum season of race wins by non-American drivers whom the mainstream sports fan cares nothing about.

If there’s a better story this year in NASCAR than the success of Paul Menard, I’ve yet to find it. It’s all about finding your comfort zone in racing and apparently, Menard has found his at RCR with crew chief Slugger Labbe.

I’m still not sure why anyone attending a NASCAR race would find it valuable to use Twitter to inform others what is going on at the race – especially something like where the field is set for a restart. I’ve seen it happen every weekend. One would have to assume that if you’re able to access Twitter through the Internet, you can also access live results.

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Postscript

For whatever reason, the 24-hour cable news channels seem to think that the majority of Americans care about things that we simply don’t care about. This week, it’s bombing the crap out of Libya. News flash to the news channels: We don’t care. We’re too busy trying to make a decent living, keeping our family healthy and happy, filling up our gas tanks with fossil fuels (that will only continue to be more costly because we’ve let greed control our destiny) and putting food on the table.

The sports channels seem to think that we care about how billionaire NFL owners and millionaire NFL players can’t seem to agree on how to spend our money. We don’t care about that either. Just play football.

It takes an event like the earthquake and tsunami in Japan to put things into perspective and remind us of the things that really matter — that your world can change in just the blink of an eye. Trust me, I know this to be true.

Don’t forget to help those who need a hand. They might be your neighbor. And don’t forget to thank those who serve this country in a uniform, whether it be in the armed forces or fighting fires or patrolling our streets.

You don’t know what you’ve got, until you lose it.

I’ve always been a fan of Kurt Busch.

From his days as a brash young unknown out of Las Vegas drawing attention (and accolades) as he muscled one of Jack Roush’s Ford F-150s in the then Craftsman Truck Series throughout his remaining tumultuous years with Roush, Busch always showed me he had the kind of kill-or-be-killed competitive spirit that you look for in a winning driver.

Despite his faults (and yes, he may have just a few) you can’t take the 2004 Cup title away from him and you can’t ignore how well he’s done these past few years driving Roger Penske’s second tier Cup cars. (They’re much, much better this year.)

He relinquished the tag of “angry young man” to his brother since joining Penske Racing and now Busch has matured into something more than just another animatronic Penske spokesman. He’s somehow been able to achieve the balance between maintaining an edge to his personality, yet still fit in to the mandatory Penske mold. His aggressiveness on the track is more controlled and as a result, he’s become a fixture in the top-10 every weekend, especially since teaming with his brother’s former crew chief Steve Addington.

With all of this as background, I just can’t help but cast lavish amounts of praise on Busch for his venture into professional drag racing. Now, in all fairness, I must admit that I have been a lifelong drag racing fan, far longer than stock cars or Indy Cars. My fondest of childhood memories are of spending Sundays at the now defunct Vargo Dragway with my father and older brother, watching the drag racing stars of the early 1960s race down the quarter mile.

And I’ve been involved with the sport on several levels, including team ownership. I know how competitive a sport it is.

To put things into perspective, Busch not only chose to go drag racing, a sport he’d only dabbled in prior to his outing this past weekend at the 42^nd annual NHRA Gatornationals, but he chose to participate in what is without question, the toughest class in all of drag racing – Pro Stock.

He wasn’t the first NASCAR regular to drag race. The King did it when NASCAR banned the Chrysler hemi from its ovals and Petty took the engine instead to the quarter-mile. John Andretti sat in the seat of a Top Fuel dragster and nearly went 300 mph. And there are others.

But what Busch did was without a doubt the most daring of any of them. Unlike the nitromethane-fueled professional classes in NHRA drag racing (Top Fuel and Funny Car), Pro Stock is a driver’s game. Sure, you’ve got to bring a strong race car to the starting line to be competitive, as in any other motorsport. But, what makes this class so ridiculously tough is that EVERY car that comes to the starting line is a strong race car. Entire 16-car fields are qualified at national events with less than a second separating them. In Gainesville, No. 1 qualifier Roger Brogdon secured that spot with a run at 6.495 seconds. No. 16 was 6.587. Busch was 12th with a 6.532.

Admittedly, Busch had one of the better-prepared cars, a Dodge from the Allen Johnson Racing stables. And he did blow his two qualifying attempts on Friday due to his inexperience. But, he ended up qualifying for the race and lost his first round matchup by three-thousandths of a second. That translates to about half a car length at the finish line.

Simply put, that’s a remarkable outing for anyone’s first time NHRA national event appearance.

In NASCAR terms, it would be like putting someone who’s never raced anything faster than a late model stock car into the No. 22 Dodge Cup car for the first time at Bristol and have him or her qualify on speed and then finish in the top 15.

So, take a bow Kurt Busch. You did a splendid job as far as this drag racing fan is concerned. And please, make it out to Denver in July on your next off weekend. I’d love to see how well you do there, where the track is more than a mile above sea level and where managing your horsepower becomes an even bigger factor in your performance.

And by the way, Busch did lose his first round match up to a girl. But, this wasn’t just anyone. Erica Enders, even at the ripe old age of 27 is a seasoned drag racing veteran. And she happened to be driving for a team that has won multiple national titles in Pro Stock.

Hmmm. Women beating men in racing. Imagine that.

It’s been going on in drag racing for decades. We need more of it in other forms of racing. But then, that’s another blog entry altogether.

Have you heard? NASCAR’s attendance and television numbers are up! Whoopee!

But before NASCAR and FOX Sports television execs hurt themselves from all the high-fives and back patting that’s likely taking place behind closed doors based upon all the good news and before they prepare to take a few extra bows to the audience, they might consider a brief reality check.

Sure, the television numbers are up, which admittedly is a very welcome indicator that interest in NASCAR is a bit better than it has been in recent years. But, to be honest, we are in a bit of a strange time for sports in general at the moment. I’d like to say it has a lot to do with it being a post-NFL, pre-MLB period.  With the professional football season over, and both the NBA and NHL teams playing meaningless games just to keep themselves within shouting distance of the playoffs and the NCAA championship and the start of the MLB season weeks away, both mainstream and motorsports fans who had turned their eyes away from NASCAR apparently (due to Trevor Bayne’s Daytona 500 win) have found themselves sampling NASCAR once again. Apparently they like what they are seeing.

I can tell you, coming from a seasoned observer, it’s been a good year on the racetrack.

The season has indeed started off well, well enough to hide the lingering blemishes that continue to mar the sport. There are still several under-funded teams (including big names) that continue to struggle. One only needs to look at the topsy-turvy driver standings to figure out who they are. Insiders responsible for selling sponsorships say this season is undoubtedly the worst since the economic downturn in 2008 and even the bigger teams are having to do a lot more with a lot less. And despite the positive numbers, the NASCAR television broadcasts still leave the regular NASCAR viewer with a “I was hoping for a steak at Morton’s but ended up with a cheeseburger from McDonald’s” feeling.

Nevertheless, the Trevor Bayne “right place at the right time” win at Daytona was good for the sport, as was Jeff Gordon’s losing streak-ending win at Phoenix and fan favorite Carl Edwards’ win last week at Las Vegas. And as fate and the schedule would have it, Bristol’s bull-ring is up next. I expect we’ll see a new rivalry emerge after that race.

I’ve always told people that NASCAR has the uncanny ability to “fall up” meaning no matter what happened in the sport, the sport has been able to benefit from it. (think about that for awhile, it’s true)

I truly hope the “streak” continues and that the television and attendance figures continue on their upswing. But before anyone from NASCAR publicly pats themselves on the back, may I suggest they serve themselves an ample helping of humble pie before they do.

And have a plan in place just in case the start of the Indy Car season, the Formula 1 season and Major League Baseball don’t impede their current path back to the top.

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Leave it up to Robby Gordon to work his magic and garner some much-needed media attention by decking Kevin Conway in the Cup garage in Las Vegas. You’ve got to hand it to Gordon, at least he delivered on what most of us had hoped we’d have seen from some of the other Cup garage “rivalries” that caught our attention over the past couple of years and eventually ended up fading into oblivion.

Thoughts, observations and a few questions:

Carl Edwards’ victory at Las Vegas has some pundits calling him “the man to beat” in the Sprint Cup Series at the moment. I’m not sure how you can come to that conclusion when at this point in the season it’s clear that there is no team that has shown any kind of consistency to claim that title.

Why are we seeing a lot of different names in the top-10 in driver points? Despite the change in testing rules, it still takes a good deal of time for a team to a) pinpoint a potential advantage; b) test it on the track; and c) implement the change.

It’s hard to believe that drivers like Kevin Harvick (20), Jamie McMurray (28), Matt Kenseth (16), Jeff Gordon (19), Greg Biffle (32), Jeff Burton (31), will remain where they are in points for very long. The cream always rises to the top.

The rule used to be that by the time the Cup series left Bristol, the top-10 in points was pretty much established and there was little change all the way until the Chase. With the new points system you can throw that rule out the window. I think it will take until the Texas race weekend for things to shake out in the top-10.

I dare anyone to question how important (and difficult) winning is after seeing Tony Stewart’s reaction to finishing second in Las Vegas. Assuming the points lead (along with Kurt Busch) was of little consolation to Smoke, who undoubtedly had the best race car on Sunday. It also shows you how high the cost of a minor mistake on pit road can be.

Can you name another Sprint Cup driver whose career has been damaged more by the transition to the new Cup car (four years ago) than Dale Earnhardt Jr.? I’m convinced that when it’s all said and done and the man writes his memoir, he’ll point to the new car as the beginning of the end of his career.

I really like the “new” Kyle Busch. Despite his misfortune in the Cup race at Las Vegas, he’s got to be at or near the top of everyone’s list to win the title this season. I also think that he’ll not have the usual “slump year” that so many drivers go through after getting married.

I’ll admit it one more time – I was the world’s biggest Danica Patrick basher at one time. I was pretty tough on her, to the point where I would receive threatening hate emails and was banned from interviewing her. I had my reasons. Then, when she came to NASCAR, I saw something that I’d not seen before, admitted the error of my ways, retired my Danica bashing hat and jumped on the Danica bandwagon. However, with that said, I’m still not comfortable with what I see as a reliance on an attrition-based racing strategy, the same one that has delivered the majority of her top-5 finishes in Indy Cars.

I’m not convinced that Edwards will stay with Roush Fenway Racing, despite his current success. You’ve got to figure that he’s in this sport to win more than one Cup title and history tells us that RFR has yet to deliver multiple Cup titles to any driver. There’s only a couple of organizations that can (deliver multiple titles) and I can think of one of them that is sure to have an opening beginning in 2012.

Have you wondered what’s happened to “sliced bread?” And could his slow start signal a shake-up on that team?

How cool will it be if Kurt Busch qualifies for the 16-car Pro Stock field at this weekend’s 42^nd annual NHRA Gatornationals in Gainesville (FL)? In case you don’t know, the Pro Stock class is without question the toughest field in all of motorsports to qualify for. There have been national events where the entire field is separated by less than one second.

By the way, Busch should have a car good enough for him to qualify.

I love sports car racing, but the NASCAR Rolex Grand Am Series has become an absolute bore. Chip Ganassi’s teams have won 8 of the last 9 races and there appears to be no one who can even come close to ending their dominance. Ganassi’s Mike Hull led squad are the epitome of precision and preparation. They’re like an NFL team playing amongst a bunch of high school football teams. Will someone, PLEASE step it up and give these guys some real competition?

The other professional sports car series (yes, Virginia there are still two of them in the U.S. for some ridiculous reason) the American Le Mans Series (the one with the more exotic cars) starts its 2011 season in a little over a week at one of my favorite race tracks on the planet, Sebring International Raceway. The entire field will be running on fuels other than straight gasoline. Most use E-10, a 10% blend of ethanol and gasoline, but many use E-85 and the top runners, the ultra cool LMP1 cars from Audi and Peugeot are on diesel. One entry, the Dyson Racing team is listed as using isobutanol as its fuel, which I’ve discovered is a second-generation biofuel.

Having a weekend off a month into the NASCAR Sprint Cup schedule is just plain stupid, except it does allow the spotlight to shine on what will be a hell of a Camping World Truck Series race at Darlington.

Postscript

It’ll be weird to have a race weekend at Bristol in two weeks without Jeff Byrd.

I’ve got a good friend who belongs to some macho NASCAR Fantasy league and like clockwork, I can expect an email from him asking for help in picking his starters and more importantly, who will win the race.

I hate to let him down, so I usually go with the drivers who are the quickest in practice and maybe throw in a little bit of my gut feeling.

But to be honest, it’s become a nearly impossible task to pick the winner. Especially this early in the season, when teams are still working on chemistry and getting adjusted to whatever changes were made in the period of weeks when there is no racing that used to be called “the off season.”

I’ll admit, I’ve only been directly involved with NASCAR racing for a little over a decade, but I am a student of its history and to me, the racing now is better than ever in its history.

That brings me to wonder why NASCAR has hemorrhaged so many fans over the past several years, especially when the racing has become so unpredictable in the Sprint Cup Series — except during the Chase, when Jimmie Johnson, Chad Knaus & Co. seem to have the rest of the field beaten into submission.

There’s plenty of blame to spread around, although the bulk of it lies on the doorstep of the television broadcasts, which is the method in which most fans get their information. I’ve yet to find anyone who follows NASCAR who actually likes them.

There’s plenty of blame to go around, but that’s another blog entry altogether.

I laughed so hard I almost fell off my cabana chair earlier this week after reading about the proposed swapping of rides by NASCAR driver Tony Stewart and Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton. At first I thought it might be a joke. But further investigation revealed that indeed, it was real. The connection between the two is their mutual sponsor Mobil 1. I expect this commercial shoot at Watkins Glen will take place around the time Hamilton is in North America for the Canadian F1 race and NASCAR is racing in Pocono.

This swapping of rides is not a new idea, obviously (to borrow an oft-used word by Stewart). A similar swap occurred in 2003 between Jeff Gordon and then F1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya. I guess Montoya was so fascinated by the experience that when he found himself without a ride in 2006 and team owner Chip Ganassi approached the Columbian to come to NASCAR, he accepted.

Stewart glossed over questions about the swap during his weekly media encounter in Las Vegas on Friday. He did call it “a chance of a lifetime.” I’ll bet it is. Stewart is already lowering expectations, admitting that he’ll need to work on his fitness regime to prepare himself. (insert laugh track here) I’m waiting for the footage of Stewart working out at the gym as he prepares himself for the rigors of driving an F1 car. He instead suggested that he’ll need to run some winged sprint car races to prepare his neck muscles. (insert laugh track here)

Hamilton has yet to publicly respond. He’s never driven anything like a Cup car, although he does know how to do burnouts in a Mercedes. However, the former F1 champion is probably wondering – “How is he (Stewart) planning on fitting inside my McLaren?” (insert laugh track here)

Here’s an idea for the programming geniuses at SPEED Channel…Why not produce a weekly show where drivers/riders from different disciplines swap their rides? I’d watch it.

If you’re not familiar with who Seth Godin is, he an extremely successful author, entrepreneur and marketing guru. His philosophy, in regards to social media, is to decide upon one platform among the many popular options available (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and use the one you’ve chosen exclusively to communicate to the world.

It’s a philosophy that has worked well for him and given that I rarely argue against something that is so obviously right, I too shall follow his direction and limit my public interaction primarily to this blog. My tweets will be used to direct those who have chosen to follow me on Twitter (thank you) to this blog.

My original idea for this blog was to offer a place for my friends and others to continue to follow the Observations column I began writing while working at Yahoo! Sports. In its original form, Observations was for the most part, a look back at the previous weekend’s racing activities — mostly NASCAR stuff. I realized rather quickly after starting this blog that I had much more to say and quite a bit of it, while still racing related, did not involve NASCAR.

So, I started writing about topics outside of NASCAR and I discovered that my audience enjoyed reading what I was writing, especially the stuff that had nothing to do with NASCAR or racing.

As I move forward with this blog, you’ll find a different voice, should you continue to read it (and I hope you will). With more things to write about, you can expect to see something new here every day. I did try that before, but to be honest, writing just about NASCAR was boring and I found it extremely difficult to write something/anything of interest every day. Once I got past writing about the competition on the race track, the soap opera that so many other journalists find fascinating, just bored me to tears.

I will continue to write my Observations after every weekend.

I’m not paid for writing this blog. And I have no one to answer to. Stick around a while. I think you’ll like it.

And thanks for reading Sledgehammer.