Sorry For Showing Passion

June 25, 2000 was a pivotal date in NASCAR history. That was the day that Jimmie Johnson, driving a Busch car at Watkins Glen, lost his brakes on lap 45. The car caught air, sailed over the gravel trap, and slammed into the first-turn fence, coming to a dead stop. (Here's video, though it's not mine.) Jimmie climbed from the car, unhurt, and saluted the crowd. It was a near-miss, but why pivotal? Because it was the last time Jimmie Johnson showed emotion.

One advantage of being a relatively-unread blogger, and not a journalist, is that I can be a little opinionated. Those friends I have who also like NASCAR (all three of them) know I'm not a Jimmie Johnson fan. When he and Herzog Motorsports were winning in ASA, I wanted to like Jimmie. When he announced he would be racing for Hendrick Motorsports in Cup after a lackluster Busch career, I lost interest. Since then, Jimmie's had his share of success, no doubt. But what I dislike more than his streak of unbeaten championships is his seeming lack of personality and emotion.

I realize that this is an interesting opinion from someone whose favorite active Cup driver was lampooned in post-championship commercials for having the demeanor of a robot.

But there's a difference between a shy, aloof camera presence and a seeming lack of emotion. The latter is the feeling I get from Jimmie Johnson. There's no question that he loves winning. But his approach is too controlled, too muted, too censored. I want to see a driver who treats every win like it's his first. I want to see a driver who can't stand finishing second. I want to see the guy who got wrecked under caution throw his helmet at the other car and ask him what he was thinking. No one remembers Richard Petty's victory-lane speech in the 1979 Daytona 500; they remember what was going on on the backstretch with the guys who almost won.

And for a fleeting instant this weekend, we were treated to that kind of passion from Jimmie, the kind that's so rare you can't help but wonder if he was a political-science major. Late in the going at Martinsville, with a car in the top five and ready for a win, Jimmie was tagged for speeding on pit road. Jimmie and his crew insisted they were in the right; NASCAR disagreed, and the penalty dropped Jimmie out of the top ten. By race's end, he was only able to fight back to eleventh. After the race, Jimmie argued to the press that he had not sped down pit road, that he had kept below the 5-mile-per-hour margin on the 30mph speed limit. He felt NASCAR had timed him wrong in a pit road segment, that with the team's calculations, there was no way he could have been speeding. He tweeted that NASCAR should post pit-road speeds for the fans as a measure of transparency.

And then today, he took it all back. Sorry for being wrong. Sorry for the complaining. Sorry for questioning NASCAR's judgment. Sorry for the tweet.

Translated, it sounds more like: "Sorry for speaking up. Sorry for being controversial. Sorry for getting caught. Sorry for showing passion."

Pit road speed limit in NASCAR is a tricky thing. For a number of reasons, NASCAR stock cars are not equipped with a speedometer. Pre-race pace laps are set at the pit road speed limit for the track, and the teams take a tachometer reading during pace laps (for instance, 3000rpm in second gear). Years ago, officials would time a car between segments on pit road to determine pit road speed. Now, digital telemetry can determine a car's precise speed. To account for not having an accurate speedometer in the cars, there is a five-mile-per-hour buffer on the speed limit. But if you're not cheating, you're not trying...so most teams will use every bit of that buffer they can.

Moreover, the teams know where the timed segments of pit road are. As such, a driver will accelerate into his pit and out of it, as long as he can keep pit road speed when timing begins. Johnson's team had calculated this to a science. On Sunday, in the segment in question, Johnson was clocked at 35.53mph. Pit road speed limit at Martinsville is set at 30mph, plus the 5mph margin of error. NASCAR released those numbers to the public, much as they did when Juan Montoya argued a speeding penalty at Indianapolis when he was dominating the race in 2009. Jimmie and his team pushed the envelope, and they went over the line a little. NASCAR was watching, and they called them on it. Jimmie disagreed with the call, and he said so.

But that doesn't call for an apology. An apology for that is basically an apology for caring, for showing passion, for wanting another one of those grandfather-clock trophies for his living room. I don't want to see the eleventh-place finisher shrug off the finish and say he did okay in the points and he'll have a better week next week. I want him to say he didn't agree with the penalty and he didn't come to finish eleventh. I'm not saying that Tony Stewart's early-career "swat the journalist's tape recorder and walk away" approach is the right answer, either, but all I'm asking for is sincerity. I'd rather see true happiness in a winner's eyes, and true determination in everyone else's eyes. I don't want some watered-down "it's okay" politically-correct response. It's not genuine.

There's the other aspect that Jimmie hinted at in ESPN's article today—that NASCAR could fine him for his comments on Twitter, as it was revealed they had privately done last year to two drivers who questioned NASCAR's officiating in post-race tweets. Come on, Jimmie...you're the five-time defending champion with a squeaky-clean public persona and a history of parroting the company line. Saying "NASCAR called that one wrong" is a little different from suggesting the finish was manipulated for ratings.

After the 1996 World 600, in which Kyle Petty was penalized several laps for aggressive driving that resulted in a major wreck, car owner Felix Sabates argued that Dale Earnhardt would not have been penalized in the same circumstances. The next week at Dover, Petty's Pontiac arrived at the track painted black with a silver body stripe down the rocker panels and white lettering outlined in red, mimicking Earnhardt's Goodwrench #3. In tiny letters on the door, a block of text read "Todo es justo en amor y carreras," roughly translated, "All is fair in love and racing." Sabates argued that, since his car looked like Earnhardt's, NASCAR would turn a blind eye. It caught attention, though not a lot as Petty ran poorly most of the day and Earnhardt won. But the statement was made, replica die-cast cars were sold (of which I own one), and as far as I know, no fines were ever levied.

Suddenly, in an era when a driver feels the need to apologize for showing sincerity, the Kyle Petty protest car seems so long ago.

By Any Other Name...

There's a lot in a name. When that name is part of a legacy, it opens doors, doors that may not only have been locked, but concealed altogether. We experience it in business, in academics, and of course, in sports. In Super Freakonomics, it was reported that the single biggest factor determining kids who succeeded in becoming Major League Baseball players was having a father who also played in the majors.

Such is the case in motorsports, too. A talented stock car driver faces three limitations: talent, sponsorship, and opportunity. Given enough talent, enough funding, and a ride at the right level, the sky is the limit. But for a kid whose father is already in the sport, especially if that father has had any measure of success, those opportunities tend to come along more readily. A kid racing weekly at Lee USA Speedway, forty-five minutes from my apartment, is not going to be noticed by the big teams down south. He will have to seek out touring-series rides and sponsors to make the jump to the big leagues. By comparison, Chase Elliott is fifteen years old and has a development contract with Hendrick Motorsports, including a ride in the K&N Pro East Series (which, coincidentally, lowered its minimum age to 15 this year). Chase, of course, is the son of a guy named Bill Elliott who has a Winston Cup title and a few wins under his belt.

And so it is in NASCAR, where the surest way to get a big-league ride is to have a grandfather or a father or a brother who had a big-league ride, and had some degree of success. In the early days of the sport, drivers like Richard Petty and Buddy Baker got their first opportunities driving their fathers' hand-me-down cars, proving their talents in the big leagues before rising to national prominence. Later on, a wave of second-generation drivers swept the sport. Some, like Davey Allison and Dale Jarrett, carried on their fathers' winning traditions in the big leagues; others, like Dale Earnhardt and Rusty Wallace, were known for their fathers' success at the local level and dared to dream larger. Of course, having a fast father is no guarantee of success; Rusty's brothers Mike and Kenny never won in Winston Cup, and Rusty's son Steve remains winless after four full seasons in the Nationwide Series.

Perhaps the hardest act to follow, though, is being an Earnhardt. Richard Petty may have more wins than Dale, but Richard's success came in a different era. Petty Enterprises brought superior cars to every race; few teams could afford to keep pace. That's not to suggest Richard Petty lacked talent; he just had the advantage of superior equipment, too. Moreover, most of Richard's success took place off the TV camera. Many fans probably visually remember only two of Richard's wins; one is the 1984 Firecracker 400, and the other is the 1979 Daytona 500, where Richard got very little TV time while Cale Yarborough kept hitting Bobby Allison's fists with his helmet on the backstretch.

Dale Earnhardt, by comparison, was from a different, more competitive era. He had great equipment, but so did Tim Richmond, Rusty Wallace, Davey Allison and Jeff Gordon. Earnhardt knew the limits of his car, and how far he could push the limit before he was out of control. When in control, he was aggressive and tenacious. Ten years after his passing, fans still remember Earnhardt wrecking Terry Labonte at Bristol in 1995 and 1999, or Dale driving from eighteenth to the lead with five laps left at Talladega in 2000, or the famed and incorrectly-named "Pass In The Grass" at The Winston in 1987. Earnhardt took no prisoners and made no apologies.

Despite their successes, the Petty name doesn't carry the same expectation as the Earnhardt name. Kyle Petty's career was but a shadow of his father's, yet he only got some commentary that he was too unfocused to succeed in stock cars. But the Petty name had also become less potent after Richard's retirement, with the #43 only showing flashes of brilliance afterwards. After Adam Petty's tragic death in 2000, the Petty name was just a relic of the past, and narrowly escaped being wiped off the circuit altogether after last season.

By contrast, the Earnhardt name remains strong. Ralph Earnhardt was a force behind the wheel. Dale Earnhardt was a legend behind the wheel. Dale Earnhardt, Inc. was a championship race team with a winning record. Even Dale Earnhardt, Jr., for all the criticism he shoulders, has his share of Busch Series championships and Winston Cup victories, despite the fact that being Dale Earnhardt's son is an impossible act to follow. Dale's other son, Kerry, was not as successful, but prior to Dale's death, he had racked up a fair number of ARCA wins, opening the door to what would be a long list of second-rate rides before he announced his retirement in 2007.

It would be unthinkable to imagine an Earnhardt making the headlines for anything but winning.

And then, there's Jeffrey Earnhardt.

The younger of Kerry's two sons, Jeffrey made his NASCAR touring debut in a family-owned car, driving in the Busch East Series for DEI in 2007 and finishing fifth in points. The next year, he was teamed with Trevor Bayne and Jesus Hernandez as part of a three-car DEI program. Despite similar results, he was pulled from the car two races from the end of the season. Rumors flew that Jeffrey had been benched because his father Kerry, now working as a consultant for DEI, felt he was focused too much on his extracurricular life and too little on working on the car.

Jeffrey made a few Nationwide starts in 2009, then ran a few Truck Series races last year for Rick Ware Racing. During the offseason, Jeffrey was announced as the fulltime driver of RWR's #1 Truck team, with sponsorship from longtime RWR sponsor Fuel Doctor. The team survived the Daytona carnage to open the season with a top-ten finish, putting Jeffrey third in points leaving Daytona. Two top-twenty finishes have left Jeffrey in tenth in points early in the year, far ahead of expected contenders like Brendan Gaughan and Travis Kvapil.

Then, this Tuesday, RWR announced that Earnhardt would not be in the #1 Truck at Martinsville this weekend. The reason? Apparently, teams had reported to owner Rick Ware that Jeffrey and his agent were shopping around for a new ride, discussing bringing along Ware's Fuel Doctor sponsorship. Jeffrey, presumably through his agent, denied the charges, claiming that he had been told the team could no longer run Jeffrey in the #1 without sponsorship, hence he was looking for a new and stable ride.

I admit, I sort of saw it coming. Last year, Fuel Doctor sponsored Ware's #47 truck with Brett Butler behind the wheel. Butler lost the ride mid-season, after being rotated to a second truck, due to "lack of sponsorship." Seeing as Fuel Doctor remained on the truck through the season (and for Jeffrey Earnhardt's starts), I wondered what sort of sponsor RWR was dealing with. Fuel Doctor had also announced sponsorship of Timmy Hill's rookie efforts in an RWR-owned Nationwide car this season. All told, it sounded like RWR was trying to stretch a sponsor dollar between teams, expecting drivers to bring along additional money to secure the ride. And if the RWR truck team needed Jeffrey to bring his own sponsor portfolio along, I could see him losing the ride once the funding fell short.

But at the same time, if the allegations were true and Jeffrey were shopping the sponsorship around to a new team, one has to wonder what sort of agent would think it were a good idea to start with. Especially with the past rumors regarding Jeffrey's work ethic, this seems like a good way to burn a lot of bridges before ever crossing them. That's just basic business.

And never mind that...where else would he go? There are no competitive Truck teams with an open seat, and the only ones with an opening are demanding sponsor dollars, lest they be reduced to start-and-parking. Former series champion Mike Skinner had difficulty landing a ride before the season started; how would Jeffrey Earnhardt fare with no real credentials to flaunt but his name? Not to suggest that RWR is a top team, but at this point in the year, Jeffrey has completed all but two laps and sits ahead of a number of veteran drivers struggling through bad luck. A ride with potential beats a ride that doesn't yet exist.

Interestingly, RWR and Jeffrey released a press briefing Wednesday evening that they have settled their differences, and Earnhardt will drive the RWR truck at Martinsville and beyond while they search for additional sponsorship. Only time will tell how long this will last; scars like that have a way of lingering, and if a better driver became available, I wouldn't be surprised to see Jeffrey on the free-agent list within a couple months.

But then, you have to step back and wonder, if Jeffrey Earnhardt were Jeffrey Key (keep in mind that Kerry only changed his name back to Earnhardt a few years before his father's death) - or if he were a driver by any other name - would he have kept the ride after Tuesday's debacle? Would he have had a shot at the ride at all?

Making Mediocrity An Art Form, NASCAR-Style

At last, it's Bristol weekend. Admittedly, my NASCAR viewing is sporadic since I only have the most basic of cable packages, but the half of the Bristol race I watched yesterday (on a streaming feed) was the second time I'd seen live racing on TV since Trevor Bayne crossed the finish line at Daytona. Life is busy. But we all make room for Bristol, because Bristol is one of just three short tracks on the schedule. I'd trade most superspeedways for the claustrophobic bullrings, the tracks Dick Trickle once compared to "flying a jet plane in a gymnasium."

Of course, the critics complain that Bristol has never been the same since they resurfaced it a few years back, trading the one-groove slam-bang concrete for a progressive surface that lets cars race and pass each other without crashing each other out. It's hard to judge any race in which Kyle Busch leads 268 of 300 laps, but I'd still take the Bristol high-banks over next week's California.

What caught my blogging eye this week, though, was a peek through the Nationwide Series standings before the fourth race of the year. My eyes fell on a couple names mired deep in the pack, names who had made all three races, but apparently finished poorly in all of them. They're this year's start-and-parkers.

A start-and-parker, for the casual fan, is a driver who qualifies for a race, sometimes very well, and starts that race. And after a few laps, they return to the garage area, claiming some mechanical problem with the car. The day is done, they collect last-place prize money, and load the car up for next week. Where they might try to race. Or they might just pit for that "vibration" or "brake problem" that slowed them the week before, and the week before that, and a couple weeks before that, too. Start-and-parkers have been around in some form for ages; when there's a short field, teams will sometimes enter a backup car to fill out the field, collecting last-place prize money. It was sort of a win-win; NASCAR got their full field, and a low-budget team collected an extra check. And for some low-budget Cup teams, it was the only way to maintain credit for attempting all the races with a budget big enough for a part-time schedule. There were some exceptions; Joe Nemechek was criticized in 2004 and 2005 for running a full-time start-and-park team with Jeff Fuller, and two ARCA teams ran full-time start-and-park teams in 2001 to pay the tire bills for their primary cars. But as long as fields were full, NASCAR looked the other way.

Then one team came along and made a mockery of the system. In 2008, a new team called MSRP Motorsports filed two Nationwide entries at Daytona. The team was owned by for driver-turned-broadcaster Phil Parsons and Randy Humphrey, but that was all anyone knew; there was no team Web site, and Parsons would shrug off interview questions about his team. The questions were in regards to team performance; Parsons' two full-time teams failed to finish a single race in 2008. It wasn't just bad luck that brought the cars to the garage after five or ten laps week after week with brake or ignition troubles.

Parsons continued the charade in 2009, starting a Cup team (PRiSM Motorsports) to shadow his Nationwide Series operation. The MSRP Nationwide teams combined for two finishes in 2009 and 2010, both races where drivers with sponsorship started the cars; otherwise, they parked in every race, sometimes qualifying just outside the top-ten. The PRiSM Cup team ran about as well, making a full-race effort only when sponsored, and parking before the first pit sequence the rest of the time. After the 2010 season, it was announced that the Cup team would run part-time in 2011, attempting to finish the races. Not a word was said about the Nationwide team, but with the Car of Tomorrow chassis being phased in for 2011, it was doubtful that MSRP would field a new car in 2011. So much for the full-time start-and-park teams, we thought.

Enter Ed Rensi.

Back in the late '90s, former McDonald's CEO Ed Rensi started an ARCA team for young driver Billy Venturini. Venturini was replaced by Jeff Finley, who followed the team to the Busch Series where he was replaced by veteran Kenny Wallace to get the team on track. Bobby Hamilton, Jr. joined the team in 2002, and in 2003 they had a breakthrough season with four victories and a strong fourth-place points run by season's end.

Since then, it's been a struggle. Hamilton went winless in 2004, was replaced by Mike McLaughlin and then Ashton Lewis, then a few other part-time drivers. Hamilton returned to the team in 2008, starting all but two races and scoring only two top-ten finishes all season. In 2009 and 2010, Eric McClure brought some sponsorship money to the team, but ran miserably. In a few years, Team Rensi Motorsports went from one of the most promising Busch-only teams to a backmarker that was dependent upon Hamilton's personal money to finish the 2008 season.

Last year, Kevin Lepage, a Vermont veteran on the downswing of his career, announced he would pilot the Rensi #24 Ford. In the press release, he explained how he was pleased to be racing, not just start-and-parking as he had resorted to since 2008. Rumors had it that Rensi would enter a second car for Kelly Bires, a promising driver whose big chance in one of Dale Jr.'s Chevrolets was cut short twice in 2010, once by sponsorship and then when Tony Eury fired him a few races into the season. Meanwhile, as Eric McClure moved his sponsorship dollars to another team, he lamented how he had rarely had enough money to buy tires in 2010, forcing him to nurse the car to a poor finish on worn rubber.

Lepage and Bires showed up at Daytona in 2011, and within five laps, Kevin Lepage was limping toward the garage area in his #24 Ford Mustang. Bires was not too far behind. Lepage made a few more laps, but his debut was a bit concerning for a driver who had promised to race in 2011.

And like MSRP Motorsports, it wasn't just bad luck. After three races, Kevin Lepage had completed only 40 of 520 total laps. Kelly Bires had completed 29 laps...total. At Bristol, Kevin crashed in the third practice session Friday. Shortly afterwards, the #24 team withdrew their entry. Their backup car, after all, was the #25 car...the car that completed two laps on Saturday before parking the car due to "handling problems."

And so we have a rising-star team that has become something of a punch line this year. Ed Rensi has not been shy about the financial problems of the series; he said years before that he had lost sponsorship from McDonald's because they insisted on putting a Cup driver in their car. Yet how encouraging is it to a sponsor when a team cannot bother to attempt more than a few laps each week? The Rensi cars have some sponsorship - from a Web site that claims to leverage local sponsors for small teams - but the fenders of the Rensi cars have been sponsorless for the most part. And what sponsor would want to support a car that disappears ten laps into the race? Worse yet, by withdrawing from Bristol, Lepage eliminated his shot at a guaranteed start based on race attempts. If they were to secure a sponsor, it would be a long, hard road from here. Bires is no better off, a tough break for a driver who was pegged as a championship hopeful before the 2010 season. There is a Team Rensi Web site...but all it promises is that the team will be "racing" in 2011. Parking a car after a mile of driving is not racing.

I don't think there's any doubt that this business of racing is expensive. Junior Johnson once said that the best way to make a small fortune in auto racing was to start with a large one. In the last five or six years, we've seen the departure of such long-term, visible NASCAR sponsors as Kodak and General Motors, with others like Interstate Batteries, DuPont and Budweiser scaling back their programs. Even Jack Roush has had difficulty selling sponsorship programs; his Nationwide programs are largely sponsorless, and early in the 2010 season he was struggling to find backers for Matt Kenseth's season.

But this is about making mediocrity an art form. It's about finishing last with a purpose, being out there to collect a paycheck instead of trying to earn that paycheck. It's about qualifying for a race with no intent to race, while other teams with a desire to compete go home early. It's a shame, really.

As a parting note, the start-and-park battle got exciting in a neighboring garage stall Saturday as well. Before the season, Jennifer Jo Cobb had signed on with Second Chance Motorsports to run in the Nationwide Series, pooling Second Chance's small team with Jennifer's Truck Series pit crew and her marketability. Immediately before the race yesterday, Jennifer informed Rick Russell, team owner, that she refused to start the car, nor would her pit crew pit the car. When the press caught up with Jennifer, she explained that ten minutes before the race, she was told that she would be parking the car within a few laps, and if she did not, he would order NASCAR to black-flag the #79 Ford. Moreover, she would not be in the car at California. Jennifer insisted that she would not start-and-park her car to collect a paycheck, and quit minutes before the race. Rick Russell insisted that Jennifer and team knew of the start-and-park arrangement when they arrived at the track. He managed to put another driver in the car Saturday, too...who made four laps and returned the car safely to the garage area. Ultimately, it cost Jennifer Jo Cobb her ride. She claims another owner "has her back," and judging by a brief relationship with the Baker-Curb team last year, I could see her stepping into the #27 car. But the Baker-Curb team has been starting-and-parking since Daytona, where their car crashed out early on. Jennifer markets herself well and has her own apparel companies, but that might not be enough funding to get her back on the track for more than a few carefully-planned laps.

Maybe there is justice, though. Phil Parsons' #66 Toyota, the car he insisted would run full Cup races in 2011? They blew an engine early on at Bristol today and finished dead last.

Now We Return To Your Regularly Scheduled Season

I will say, this year's Speedweeks was well worth it. Maybe it's because we wait all winter for a peek of racing, then we get two weeks of the most-exciting edge-of-your-seat racing NASCAR has to offer. (Speedweeks might not be the same if it were held at California or Michigan.) Never mind the surprise stories I spoke of last time, capped off with a rookie winning the Daytona 500 in storybook fashion.

But that was three weeks ago. It's March now, and we're back into the regular season. Gone are the one-off Daytona dreams and big headlines and fantasy stories. Back are, well, the typical tales of an early NASCAR season. Let's take a look.

Trevor Bayne is a Sprint Cup rookie again. No doubt, the biggest story of Speedweeks 2011 was Trevor Bayne. The Tennessean turned 20 the day before the Daytona 500, but caught the press' attention when he not only debuted a fast Ford in qualifying, but drove with savvy and patience in his qualifying race Thursday. In the 500, Bayne ran up front all day, proving he could indeed be trusted in tight traffic. He inherited the lead late and never flinched on the last lap, blocking Carl Edwards and taking his first Sprint Cup victory in his second start.

At Phoenix the following week, brake problems cost him a car in practice, and he wrecked a second car early in the race. The critics noticed.

Of course, everyone wants to be the one who correctly determines if Trevor Bayne is the next Jimmie Johnson or the next Casey Atwood. Somehow, people think we can figure that out from two races. Here's what we know for sure: He is a 20-year-old Sprint Cup rookie. At Daytona, he drove like a veteran and won a hard-fought race, no doubt. But he's still a rookie. He's still driving for a team that, legacy aside, had not won a race since 2001, and only scored three top-ten finishes since 2006. I won't write this one off as a fluke - he was a threat as soon as the Wood Brothers unloaded - but as of now, he's just a member of a club occupied by Richard Brickhouse, Dick Brooks, Ron Bouchard, Greg Sacks, Bobby Hillin, Phil Parsons, and more recently Brad Keselowski.

All won their only career Cup race on a plate track. (Sacks was the only of those to do so at Daytona.)

Trevor showed lots of maturity by turning down opportunities to run for Sprint Cup rookie honors, and has chosen to run full-time in Nationwide while running a limited Cup schedule. We'll see how he matures, and if Jack Roush can prepare a better Cup ride for him for 2012.

A Nationwide driver hasn't won a Nationwide race yet. This year, it was a big deal that Cup drivers wouldn't be able to score points in the Nationwide or Truck series, meaning that the second-tier series will have its first full-season series-only champion since Martin Truex in 2005. Critics pointed out that this didn't limit participation by Cup drivers, of course, and fueled speculation that this year's Nationwide champ could win the title without winning a single race.

Well, Tony Stewart won Daytona again, using a late-race push from Landon Cassill to pass fellow Cup drivers Clint Bowyer and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Kyle Busch led every lap at Phoenix to win. And at Las Vegas, Brad Keselowski's flat tire on the last lap opened the door for Mark Martin, who won a race in which no Nationwide-only drivers led a lap all day.

This coming week is Bristol. Last year, Justin Allgaier won his first career race at the half-mile bullring. It was his only win all year, but more astonishingly, it was the only race won by a Nationwide regular all season. Could Allgaier or another Nationwide regular pull it off again?

The Truck Series isn't looking any better, for now. In the neighboring garage area at Daytona and Phoenix, the Camping World Truck Series had a similar outlook to the Nationwide Series. The Trucks have traditionally had fewer interloping Cup drivers stealing victories, though those who moonlight in the series usually come away with a trophy on race day.

Daytona opened with series regulars James Buescher and Timothy Peters leading the first sixty-seven laps, but Elliott Sadler took over at lap 71 and led until Michael Waltrip stole the lead on the last lap. At Phoenix, Kyle Busch led the last 107 laps to win. This week, the Trucks raced at Darlington, an off-week for the Cup and Nationwide teams. Of course, Kasey Kahne showed up to race in Kyle Busch's truck and won the Darlington race.

At least this trend won't continue on the Truck side, by virtue of the fact that Kyle Busch won't run most of the Truck races. But three races into the big three series' seasons, the only big-three race not won by a Cup "regular" (the semi-retired Waltrip is registered for Cup points) has been the Daytona 500.

There are too many bare fenders out there. The argument that keeps Cup drivers stepping down into the other series (and winning) on Saturdays has two parts. For one, it steps up the competition level of the minor leagues, forcing them to race against a higher level of talent. And second, it draws fans. Fans who can't get a ticket to see Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick on Sunday can see them Saturday for half the price and half the crowd. In theory, this brings more fans to the race who might not have gone to see Jason Leffler and Reed Sorenson fight it out.

But my real issue with the Cup drivers isn't fan attendance or driver talent. It's money. Daytona's starting field contained a lot of cars with blank fenders, the so-called "sponsor-me white" paint scheme. At Phoenix, where only forty cars showed up for 43 starting positions, even more cars were blank. Even Jack Roush was running unsponsored cars, with only partial-season deals in place for Ricky Stenhouse and perennial contender Carl Edwards. And there are still a few teams showing up to "start and park," dropping out after a few laps to collect last-place prize money and go home with an intact car. Add in the fact that this is the first full season for NASCAR's "car of tomorrow" chassis to be implemented in the Nationwide Series, making last year's entire fleet of Nationwide cars obsolete. Some teams showed up at Daytona with only one or two cars built to start the season.

With so many teams scrambling for sponsors, prize money is even more important. But that prize money was cut after last year, when NASCAR announced a twenty-percent reduction in weekend purses for the Nationwide Series. So teams are having to rebuild their entire fleet of race-legal cars, funded with nonexistent sponsors and reduced prize money. And when fully-funded, fully-sponsored cars from Cup teams are winning Nationwide races, that leaves even less money for the series regulars. After three races, Reed Sorenson leads the Nationwide points standings with two top-five finishes and $120,000 in series earnings. Brian Keselowski, who completed 28 laps of the Daytona 500 before being crashed out, took home over $270,000 for his forty-first-place finish.

Interestingly, where in past seasons teams would often start a backup car to fill a short field, the new car introduced this year has left a lot of teams without backup cars to start and park. When Joe Nemechek crashed his primary car at Vegas in practice, he had to race his #97 S&P entry for points, then borrow a car for Kevin Conway to start and park after two grueling laps.

The Truck Series, by contrast, looks pretty healthy early in the season, with a number of new teams coming to play. Three trucks failed to qualify at Darlington, by far the fewest number of DNQs in a Truck race this year. But many of those trucks are still scrambling for sponsors, even those of Kyle Busch and series champions Todd Bodine and Ron Hornaday.

Danica Patrick is apparently a stock car driver now. Last year, after Danica's first three races in a Nationwide Series car, the Joyce Julius numbers suggested that her sponsor, GoDaddy.com, had enjoyed more TV exposure from her mediocre runs by leaps and bounds over the next-closest sponsor, Verizon Wireless (whose driver, Justin Allgaier, had three top-ten finishes to start the season). It's a way of quantifying the judgment that the cameras couldn't get off of Danica last year, no matter how poorly she was running (or, at Daytona, if she was running at all).

This year, ESPN was again quick to keep us abreast of Danica's progress, or lack thereof, throughout the races. I didn't think they went too overboard at Daytona. But after mid-teens finishes at Daytona and Phoenix, Danica survived a fuel-mileage battle to finish fourth at Las Vegas.

The next day, an ESPN article surfaced discussing how Danica's finish wasn't anything resembling luck, and how she has come into her own as a winning stock car driver. Pundits were also fast to mention how it was the first time a woman had finished in the top five in a NASCAR race (incorrect, as Shawna Robinson scored a few victories in the Goody's Dash Series back in the '80s, but apparently the Dash Series doesn't count anymore). It's no secret that Danica's performance thus far has been a disappointment to everyone who thought she might come in and set the series on fire, but to praise her after one top-five finish is like calling Trevor Bayne the next Jimmie Johnson after Daytona.

From everything I've read, Danica was mostly thrown into the driver's seat last year, without a real effort to develop her talents. This year, she has Johnny Benson, Jr. serving as a driver coach, helping her to refine her skills behind the wheel of a stock car. Between that and having a consistent teammate in Aric Almirola, instead of last year's driver-of-the-week rotation in the #88, Danica has looked less lost behind the wheel. It shows in the point standings, too; Danica is fourth headed to Bristol.

Danica is in the #7 car at Bristol, too. We'll see how much she has arrived when she takes to the half-mile.

There has to be a different way to set the early-season fields. Back in 2005, Robby Gordon had a strong run in his Daytona 500 qualifying race, finishing seventh. A year or two before, it would have meant a top-fifteen start in the 500. But that year, the new franchising system had been put in place, and Robby's #7 Chevy was not locked into the field. Instead of racing in the Daytona 500, Robby Gordon failed to qualify.

The old NASCAR provisional system allowed new teams a fair shot at qualifying for a race if they were fast enough, with a few spots at the tail of the field for a regular team that missed the setup or blew an engine in qualifying. Under the current system, where drivers in the top of the owner's standings are guaranteed a starting position, it is more difficult for a non-guaranteed team to qualify for a race at all. There are thirty or thirty-five cars locked into the field, not just seven, so the chance of making the field is slimmer. And as Robby Gordon found out at Daytona in 2005, a driver is equally dependent upon speed and fortune. Two cars ahead of him in his qualifying race were also non-guaranteed starters. If all six were guaranteed starters, he would have made the race.

Late in the season, this is not a huge deal. But early in the year, when new teams are forming, it is a big problem. The first few races of the year, the guaranteed starting positions are established by the previous year's top finishers in the owner's points (top-35 in Cup, top-30 in Nationwide, top-25 in Trucks). Team owners with a multi-car team will often switch their points from one car to another, so a veteran driver can qualify on time (or, preferably, a past-champion's provisional) while the rookie driver has the safety net of owner points. And this results in some interesting dealings in the offseason, as new team owners will name a "silent partner" who had a guaranteed starting position from the previous season, rather than let the points go unused.

So far, the biggest victim of this in 2011 has been James Buescher in the Truck Series. Last year, James' Nationwide Series deal came apart early in the season, and so he and future father-in-law Steve Turner turned their part-time Truck Series plans into a full-season effort. They started their season five races in, but by season's end had emerged as weekly contenders in the Truck Series. James was eleventh in driver points, and Turner Motorsports was fifteenth in the owner's standings.

However, the guaranteed starting positions are only awarded to teams that attempt all the races. So going into 2011, Turner Motorsports' #31 truck was not locked into the starting field. At Phoenix, James Buescher was fast in practice, but he could only muster the 25th-fastest qualifying lap. Unfortunately, there were enough faster trucks that were also not locked in. James Buescher failed to qualify at Phoenix.

Similarly, at Daytona, Rick Crawford turned a lap that was fast enough for 24th on the grid. Eleven of the faster drivers, though, were not locked into the field either. Crawford, Cole Whitt, Tayler Malsam and seven other drivers went home early while a few slower trucks made the field by virtue of their locked-in positions. Malsam was in a similar position to Buescher; his Randy Moss Motorsports team had taken a late-season hiatus, so the missed attempts cost them a guaranteed spot despite being in the top-25 in owner's points.

The aim of the guaranteed positions, much as the original aim of the provisional system was, is to reward teams that have made a full-season effort with a safety net for the occasional blown engine or cut tire on a qualifying lap. I'm all for that, but in the early part of the season, there needs to be a better way to award starting positions so that new teams have the opportunity to break into the sport. It's one thing if a team is consistently slow and fails to qualify. It's another when a team goes home while ten or fifteen slower cars are guaranteed to start.

Some expected contenders are struggling. Every year, one or two of the expected title challengers falls short early in the year. A DNF at Daytona, or a couple early crashes, and the media feels obligated to say that someone's title hopes are over.

On the Cup side, someone mentioned to me that Jimmie Johnson is back in thirteenth in points after Vegas, and hasn't run well yet this season. As usual, that means little; they'll be in form by the Chase. Jeff Burton and Greg Biffle are the bigger surprises, stuck in 31st and 32nd after three weeks. Again, they will be in top-ten form by mid-season. By contrast, Paul Menard is sixth in points overall. I can't imagine him staying there very long.

In Nationwide, the big surprises have been Aric Almirola, running for JR Motorsports, and Elliott Sadler, running for Kevin Harvick, Inc. Aric is seventh in points, Elliott twelfth. The surprise is that neither has scored a top-ten finish yet. Elliott was crashed out early at Daytona, but otherwise, both have just been underwhelming so far, finishing a couple laps off the pace. (Granted, when the pace is set by Kyle Busch, it's a hard act to follow.) Similarly, underfunded Joe Nemechek and Mike Bliss cling to the top ten in points. Kenny Wallace is a pleasant surprise in eighth, with two top-ten finishes this year after not scoring one since 2009. Kenny could hang on for a good year if his team keeps it up.

Matt Crafton leads the Truck standings with three top-ten finishes in three starts this year. Of course, Crafton has one victory in 250 series starts, so he falls under the category of consistent, but not title material yet. Rookie Cole Whitt sits second in points, with two top ten finishes and a strong run at Daytona in a borrowed ride. Contender Brendan Gaughan sits all the way back in 20th, with Travis Kvapil struggling in 26th. It could be worse, though; Kvapil's teammate Tayler Malsam, in Randy Moss' second truck, sits 38th after missing the first two races.

But it's only four weeks into the season. Let's sit back and see what things look like in a few more weeks, when the early surprises wear off and normalcy settles in a bit more.

Surprises On The High Banks

Last Saturday, I killed a few minutes watching the first half of the Daytona ARCA 200. Afterwards, as I explained to my girlfriend that this wasn't The Big Race and that there was another week of Daytona action to come (never mind the short-track action at New Smyrna that slips past the Fox camera crews), I realized that the season-opening Daytona Speedweeks are truly something unique in sports, a multi-divisional kickoff from the first hour of the Rolex 24 to the last lap of the Daytona 500.

And it's not just the combination of high-tech sports cars and road-weary weekend warriors and stock cars from shops in the Carolinas. It's not just the long-awaited debuts and anticipated reunions as teams descend upon Daytona just as their press releases promised the year before when their contracts were inked. It's not just the fact that, after a three-month offseason, it will be nice to see cars racing around a track somewhere.

I think it's the way that Daytona just creates surprises.

For me, it started with the 1996 Daytona 500, when Wally Dallenbach raced a white Ford Thunderbird wearing last year's sheetmetal and hastily-applied sponsor decals into a sixth-place finish in the biggest race of the year. Since then, I've realized that Daytona is for surprises. Somewhere, mixed in with the press releases and the predictable headlines, is a story about an underdog making good on their Daytona gamble, or some eleventh-hour deal putting a driver in a car just in time for qualifying. Sometimes it's the tale of big promises gone sour, or a satisfying Speedweeks going up in smoke on the pace lap. Motorsports is about expecting the unexpected, but never is this truer than at Daytona.

So far, Speedweeks 2011 isn't that much different.

One kid almost blew more than a .32: Less than two weeks from opening practice for the Nationwide Series DRIVE4COPD 300, Michael Annett was in the headlines. It wasn't for his new ride with Rusty Wallace's team; instead, he had been picked up for driving while intoxicated. Very intoxicated, if the Breathalyzer result is accurate. I doubted he would lose his ride - he does come along with sponsorship, after all - but if the initial accusations were correct, it seems a bit awkward that he can just slide behind the wheel of a race car. Michael has vowed to get a handle on his behavior; I hope he's sincere, for his sake.

ARCA ran a clean show: Every year, new kids show up in fast cars for the ARCA Racing Series opener, looking to turn heads while the NASCAR teams and top sponsors are sharing garage space. This year, eighteen-year olds Ty Dillon (grandson of Richard Childress) and Kyle Fowler (Venturini Motorsports' latest development driver) qualified on the front row at Daytona. Only twenty laps in, though, veteran Bobby Gerhart was in the lead, holding off Chris Buescher to capture his seventh overall win in the season opener. Gerhart led the final sixty-one laps, and with Buescher choosing caution over valor, it was a dull parade to the checkered flag. The biggest surprise was the fact that less than half the race was run under caution, a departure from the usual ARCA Daytona wreckfest. An honorable mention, though, must be given to the driver who finished eighteenth - James Hylton, who finished on the lead lap at the young age of 76.

Ladies steal the show, if not the results: Back when Shawna Robinson drove James Finch's Chevy to a second-place finish at Daytona in '99, it didn't matter that her greatest impact in NASCAR had been getting wrecked on the start at Atlanta after winning the pole in 1994. To be fair, having a woman in the starting grid was a big deal back then, and it's still more the exception than the norm today. But in the last few years, we've had a few women running several races, and only Danica Patrick has been called out by the announcers as if we might forget she was in the race otherwise. Last year, six women started the ARCA race at Daytona, and toward the end of the race, the broadcasters could only muster "what's-her-name" in regards to the young lady running third who wasn't Danica Patrick. (More on "what's-her-name" later.) This year, the broadcasters went on nonstop about the two women who qualified at Daytona, Maryeve Dufault and Milka Duno. Dufault, a Québec native, was making her oval-track stock-car debut with little fanfare. Duno crashed out early at Daytona last year, echoing her performance in other United States racing series where she has earned a reputation as a rolling chicane, only on the track because of her ties to sponsor CITGO. For the first half of the race, wrecks were typically described in relation to where the two ladies were running on the track. Interestingly, both were taken out in the same wreck fifteen laps from the end. Dufault plans to run the full ARCA schedule, but plans for Milka Duno are hazier, as she has been mentioned as a full-season driver behind the wheel of defending champion Patrick Sheltra's cars.

Sheltra finds a ride: Lately, the jump from feeder-series champ to rookie challenger has been hard for drivers who don't come as a package deal with their own sponsorship. I was going to count Patrick Sheltra in this crowd. Patrick won the 2010 ARCA Racing Series title after a couple wins and a steady season. He announced he would be moving to NASCAR for 2011, but the announcements were nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, Milka Duno (without results, but with a sponsor) tested Sheltra's car at Daytona. At last, this week Rick Ware Racing added another car to the Nationwide Series field at Daytona with Sheltra behind the wheel. Timmy Hill is scheduled to run the full season (starting at Phoenix, when he turns 18) in Ware's #15 car, so it's hard to say if the #41 will be a full-season effort for Sheltra or just a Daytona one-off. I hope he impresses.

A challenger appears: After a 2010 season in which one rookie made a full-season bid for Rookie of the Year, the 2011 ROTY campaign in Sprint Cup looked bleak. Raybestos pulled out as sponsor after 2010, and as of the start of Speedweeks, only Brian Keselowski had suggested he might run enough races to be eligible for Rookie of the Year. Some speculated Trevor Bayne may make a run for it in the Wood Brothers #21, but NASCAR squelched that talk this week stating that a driver has to run for points in the division, while Trevor is chasing the Nationwide title this year. This week, Andy Lally, driving the TRG Motorsports-sponsored Chevrolet at Daytona, signed up for the ROTY battle. I'm not sure how this will work into his road-racing schedule, but time will tell.

A local girl makes good: Last year, while ARCA broadcasters waxed poetic over Danica Patrick's stock-car debut, they glossed over a pearly-pink #15 Chevrolet running third, dismissing the driver as "what's-her-name." The girl in the pink Chevy was Alli Owens, who brought her longtime sponsor to Venturini for a partial season in 2010. With a few laps to go, she was running third until she got shuffled out of the draft and cut a tire. After the season, her sponsor (a voc-ed project backed by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) backed out due to the economy, leaving Alli high and dry for 2011. Still committed to race at her home track, Alli started shopping...this time, for sponsors. A few weeks before Daytona, it was confirmed that she would try to qualify a Ford truck for Ray Hackett Racing at Daytona. Local sponsors, including a chapter of the IBEW, a Daytona-area Ford dealership and even some fan contributors, signed on to back Alli's effort. In the first Truck Series practice, Alli clocked in at eleventh-fastest, the fastest Ford in the field.

Even champs struggle for rides: In 1995, Mike Skinner drove RCR's #3 Goodwrench truck to the inaugural NASCAR SuperTruck Series championship. After a lackluster 2010 season with Randy Moss Motorsports, in which Mike was critical of the involvement of his football-star team owner, it was expected (and eventually confirmed) that Mike Skinner would be looking for a 2011 ride. By the time it was confirmed, however, most of the competitive Toyota rides had been spoken for. Speculation pointed to the SS/Green Light Racing team, where David Starr had taken his sponsorship and Moss' #81 number mid-season, but nothing came up. A week before Speedweeks, Eddie Sharp (who moved his ARCA team to the Truck Series this year with Craig Goess) entered a second truck, #45, for Skinner to drive at Daytona. It's hard to believe that a driver with a winning record in the series could find, at best, a one-off deal to run at Daytona.

Junior lends a hand and a car: Jimmy Means isn't a name most people recognize. He was, in the spirit of J.D. McDuffie and Dave Marcis, an "independent," a driver who ran his own equipment without factory backing or much in the way of sponsorship. His Cup results were never much to look at. Neither are his Busch/Nationwide Series results as a car owner. But he persists with the hope that, with a little help, his team could become something more. This year, Massachusetts driver Bobby Santos III was tabbed to run Jimmy's sole Nationwide car at Daytona. They wrecked badly. And in a tremendous show of class, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. (who admits to having a longtime respect for Jimmy Means and a friendship with his son Brad) lent Jimmy's underfunded team a backup car to race Saturday.

Nothing's guaranteed in qualifying: Alli Owens clocked in eleventh fastest in practice in her one-off deal, and in the second practice session for the Trucks, rookie Cole Whitt (driving a Red Bull-sponsored truck for Stacy Compton's Turn One Racing in a last-minute full-season deal) was fastest in practice. But qualifying is the only part that actually counts. Austin Dillon matched his brother's ARCA achievement by winning the Truck Series pole in the black #3 Chevrolet. Johanna Long, making her first start at Daytona, qualified fifth. Chad McCumbee, a late replacement in a Ford owned by Chase Mattioli, qualified twentieth. Alli Owens, Cole Whitt, and Tayler Malsam (driving a second truck for Randy Moss) were instead among the drivers to go home early, none with the benefit of a guaranteed start. Joining them was Mike Skinner, who was ineligible to use his past champion's provisional because of the late entry.

Brotherly love comes through: When I saw the results of the second Gatorade Duel qualifying race from Thursday, I did a double-take. Brian Keselowski, in the unsponsored white #92 Dodge, finishing fifth? Then, I noticed that Brad Keselowski (now driving the Miller Lite #2 for Roger Penske) finished seventh. Involved in a late wreck in the qualifying race, Brad restarted deep in the field, but found his big brother and shoved him straight to the front. And so Brian Keselowski, who showed up at Daytona with a five-year-old Dodge and a used engine and a single set of tires and one crew member (his father Bob, a former ARCA champion and Truck Series driver), starts twelfth Sunday. Ray Evernham has stepped in to pick up Brian's tire bill, sponsors are talking with Brian for the race, and Roger Penske has offered a newer engine for race day. This could be the feel-good story of the week.

Even the winner couldn't go unscathed: The Truck Series race at Daytona was held Friday night, on the ten-year anniversary of Dale Earnhardt's death at Daytona in 2001. The first half of the race was predictably clean, with teammates James Buescher and Ricky Carmichael holding the lead past halfway. A few single-truck incidents slowed the race after that, and Elliott Sadler worked with Michael Waltrip to take the lead, shuffling Buescher through traffic. A blown tire for Travis Kvapil wrecked several trucks with 25 laps remaining (and several others who slowed for the wreck were damaged when Donnie Neuenberger drove into the back of Johanna Long and pushed her through the high groove), but the racing remained fast and furious. Finally, with five to go, using the two-car tandem draft that proved successful in the Cup sessions, Kyle Busch shoved unknown Chris Fontaine into the lead for a few seconds, before tight racing behind them (and Brad Sweet in a loose truck in the middle) left all but five trucks undamaged. On the restart, with two laps remaining, Sadler and Waltrip rocketed away from the remnants of the field. Coming through the fourth turn, half of Waltrip's rear spoiler came unbolted, falling flat. Waltrip pulled outside through the turn, pulled alongside Sadler and stole the win with a last-lap pass. It was Waltrip's first Truck victory, coming in a flat-black #15 Truck painted similarly to the NAPA car Waltrip had won with at Daytona the day Dale died. Ten years before. No word yet on penalties for the spoiler problem, but no one was going to take Michael's emotional victory away.

In the aftermath, Clay Rogers stole third place, courtesy of another Kyle Busch shove. Jennifer Jo Cobb recorded her best finish, coming home sixth, also the strongest finish for a woman at Daytona in any of the major three divisions and the strongest finish for a woman in the Truck Series. Jeffrey Earnhardt, grandson of Dale and son of Kerry, finished seventh. Fourteenth in a battered truck was Cole Whitt, who had jumped into Shane Sieg's truck after failing to qualify, and took the unsponsored black #93 into the top five before the wreck with five to go. Behind him by one spot was fellow rookie Parker Kligerman, who had raced the evening's sole Dodge Ram into the top five until the last big wreck.

Today, the Nationwide Series teams get their shot at the high banks of Daytona. Clint Bowyer is on the pole, with Dale Junior in his mirror, and Tony Stewart not far behind. Five Cup drivers and Danica Patrick start in the top ten. That does it for the usual, but there are bound to be some surprises in store.

After all, Bobby Santos, the Modified driver in that Jimmy Means #52 wearing the same black and silver scheme as Aric Almirola's JR Motorsports #88?

He qualified 23rd.

And The Point Of All These Changes Is...

There are two weeks to go before Daytona. A responsible blogger would have been blogging on the daily announcements leading up to the 2011 season opener...well, daily. Unfortunately, blogging doesn't pay the bills, and so here I am, playing catchup.

And I would be remiss if I didn't first address probably the biggest announcement of the 2011 NASCAR seasons thus far: the new points system.

The story of the now-former NASCAR points system is often touted as legend: Bob Latford supposedly drew up the system on a napkin before the 1975 season, and it stuck. The winner of a race was awarded 175 points, with five fewer points going to each position until sixth place. Sixth through eleventh would be separated by four points each, with points decreasing by three for every position after eleventh. Unlike previous systems, which were relative to conditions such as race length and prize money earned, the new system was standardized for all races. It was intended to encourage teams to run for a championship, in an era when few teams had the luxury of funding to chase a title. Richard Petty won the 1975 championship, but independent drivers Dave Marcis and James Hylton finished second and third under the new system, on the strength of their consistency (only seven drivers ran all 30 races, and Marcis had one victory in 1975 to Petty's 13).

Not that Latford's system went unchallenged since the seventies. It was in the media-rich '90s and 2000s that it truly came under fire. When Matt Kenseth won only one race en route to his 2003 championship, while Ryan Newman won eight races and finished in sixth place overall, the outcry was that Newman's race victories should have carried more weight in the points than Kenseth's consistent season. With Kenseth's steady success blamed for lagging TV ratings and NEXTEL primed to be a new series sponsor in 2004, NASCAR chose to tweak the system. The result was the controversial "Chase for the Championship," a sort of playoff system where, after twenty-six races, the top ten drivers in the points would be locked in to compete amongst themselves for the series title, re-seeded according to their position in the points, and later based upon the number of wins they scored on the season.

The points system was never a totally intuitive points system. But at the same time, if you (as a fan) could grasp the workings of the points system, you were part of the "in" crowd. It was sort of like the track operator who explained that for years, they had never needed a scoreboard because "we knew Vermonters could count."

I suppose that's why I felt insulted when Brian France announced a new "easier to understand" points system for 2011. The new system awards 43 points for first place, with one fewer point for each lower position, and three bonus points to the race winner (plus a single bonus point for laps led and one more for the driver who leads the most laps). All drivers still receive points, so if you scale down the old system, the spread through the field is still about equal, with the exception of the top eleven (where the spread used to be a bit wider) and the race winner. So while I'd prefer no change to token change, it's not the system that I have a problem with.

It's that we, as fans, were told we needed something "easier to understand." So are NASCAR fans stupid? (My friends would argue this point, but mostly for my reaction.) What about simply widening the gap between first and second place, as was done a year or two ago? That way, a small points premium still exists for a top ten finish, with a higher weight for winning. That's the effective outcome here, anyway. Or give first, second and third places a higher points differential and keep the rest the same.

Instead, Brian France and NASCAR have handed fans the equivalent of the Easy Reader version of the same points system, simplified for fans' convenience. Never mind that only the savants in the fan base (who already would have no problems with the old system) and ESPN's statisticians (who have computers) are going to compute points standings on the fly. And never mind that they've altered the Chase recipe yet again, this time including the two drivers outside the top ten (but inside the top twenty) who have the most race wins.

The PR line is that this is another step toward solving sluggish TV ratings and race attendance. Incidentally, this is a problem NASCAR has faced since, oh, they started messing with the championship system wholesale in 2003. I would go out on a limb and even point to 2001. That was the year NASCAR transitioned from a primarily cable-TV schedule to broadcast-network fodder. Instead of no-nonsense broadcasts for race fans, we were treated to gimmicky broadcasts playing NASCAR up as some kind of spectacle. I've long felt that the pressure was on to shift NASCAR racing from an enthusiast's sport to a sport that could be followed by the most casual viewer, like football. And so we old-guard fans were treated to inane interviews and contrived catchphrases and broadcasts that assumed that everyone tuned into Fox was watching cars go around in a circle for the first time ever. NASCAR and their TV partners started chasing viewers, not fans. In the boardroom, viewers can be quantified. Fans are a little harder to pick out.

That's the best explanation I can come to as to why, since 2001, NASCAR racing has undergone so many tweaks and changes. "Aero-matched" race cars. A championship playoff system. Green-flag finishes. Caution flags for "debris on the track" that bunched up the field, but without any debris to show for it. A tweak to the playoff system. The "car of tomorrow" redesign (which I can't argue has produced a safer race car, but the original model lacked aesthetics that have been creeping back into the newest version). Another tweak to the playoff system. Late race-start times to benefit West-coast fans, then consistent start times to benefit all fans, and now late-season late-start times to conflict less with NFL football. Now, we get a new points system, and yet another tweak to the championship system.

All of the above have been introduced as solutions to sluggish ratings and attendance that started when NASCAR started tweaking the system in the first place.

NASCAR's biggest problem, at least as I've seen it, has been credibility. I'm not going to argue credibility this time, but I feel that in order to establish credibility, a sporting organization needs to be consistent, and this goes back to the method that determines a champion. Again, I'll draw the comparison to the National Football League. Over the last several years, much like NASCAR, the NFL has tweaked its rules to create a better game (as athletes improve) and to promote better safety for the players. Evolution is natural. But the method of determining the NFL Champion has not changed. When the New England Patriots missed the 2008 playoffs despite a strong season in a strong division, no one changed the rules. This year, in the wake of the Seattle Seahawks clinching their division with a losing record, there was talk of new rules as to how home-field advantage is determined, but no one talked of keeping such a team from the playoffs as long as they win their division.

Yet when a NASCAR driver wins a bunch of races but runs inconsistently the rest of the season, and misses the championship cutoff, suddenly the rules must be reconsidered. It reminds me of a few seasons back, when both Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. had weak seasons and were likely to miss the Chase for the Championship. The talk centered around how TV ratings might suffer if two of the most popular drivers missed the Chase. Two years later, not ten but twelve cars were now eligible for the Chase. And Earnhardt still missed it.

In the last ten years, there have been at least four different approaches to determining NASCAR's premier-series champion, including this year's changes. To me, it feels like there should be just one.

No matter how easy it is to understand.

Building Up To Break It Down: A Demolition Derby Saga

So I started this blog on the eve of the annual Bristol night race, and woke up Sunday or Monday morning with about three good subjects to write about. Of course, that all fell by the wayside. It's been a busy summer, no doubt. But the best excuse, of late, has been that motorsports itself has been keeping me from writing about motorsports.

My best friend Carmine and our friend (and my roommate) Adam have been dabbling in grassroots motorsports of one form or another for years. Adam has been a bit more serious about it; for years he's run autocrosses throughout New England, and when he had project cars that were up to the task, he'd put them through their paces in hillclimbs and rallycrosses or at the drag strip. This year's racing project, though, was almost a year in the making.

Last September, a bunch of friends and I went to the Hopkinton (NH) State Fair. Fairs are a little anachronistic these days; it seems they're less of a vehicle to show off livestock to the community, and more of a way to concoct this year's latest food that could kill you (this year, I think it's the donut-burger). I'd been to the Deerfield Fair a few times in my youth, but this was my first trip to the Hopkinton Fair. It was also my first demolition derby. Sure, I'd seen one on TNN's Friday-night racing program years ago, but I'd never seen one live. There's something about a demolition derby that appeals to our most basic desire for destruction and carnage. Needless to say, it caught Adam's attention. It might have been sometime after the first heat that Adam first said the all-important magic words:

"I'm doing this next year."

I think it was after the second or third heat, however, that he was actually reading the rulebook.

The Hopkinton State Fair actually runs two separate demolition derbies. When you think of a demo derby, your first thought is one of old Chevrolets and Chryslers, the twenty-seat behemoths they sang about in "Love Shack," slamming into each other. But this is 2010. Even the still-big-but-not-as-hulking Ford LTDs and Chevy Caprices are in shorter supply. In last year's derby, a few '80s relics held sway against a number of early-'90s Caprices and Crown Vics that had probably seen prior life as a taxi or police car (or both). For that reason, a number of demo derbies (Hopkinton among them) are now featuring a four-cylinder division. The more modern four-cylinder cars are a bit more plentiful and tend to move around the arena a little better than the bigger, heavier cars, particularly in a small arena like that at Hopkinton. Adam's mechanical prowess has been honed largely on smaller cars, so this caught his attention immediately. He would be racing in the four-cylinder derby, no question.

That was last September. Between then and now stood the tasks of finding a car, prepping a car, finding a place to prep a car, and finding a way to transport the car. Since all of that was likely to be a summer project, there was also the task of keeping the motivation running among the crowd that, on that fateful demo-derby eve in 2009, wanted to be a part of the derby run in 2010.

Finding a place to prep the car was pretty easy, and sort of by default. I work for a trucking company, which means that in theory, I have two garage bays and associated tools to offer up, plus a yard to store the car for a while. I say in theory, because at the end of the day, it's not my shop, it's my boss' shop. Fortunately, my boss is also the father of my friend Carmine and his brother Chris, both of whom highly endorsed this endeavor, so the shop was ours to use, as long as we didn't interfere with the mechanics and left everything like we found it when we were done.

Finding the car was contingent upon deciding on what car to use in the first place. The Hopkinton rulebook dictates that, outside of a rollcage around the driver's compartment, there is to be no reinforcing or strengthening the car or its bumpers. That meant we needed to find a car that was built rugged from the start, and with the unibody design of many smaller cars, there would only be a few options. One that stood out immediately was Volvo. The Swedish marque's reputation for safety is legendary, and indeed, several drivers ran Volvos in the derby in 2009. There was the question of mechanical reliability, but Adam opined that the Volvo engine could do no worse than the Chevy or Toyota four-bangers it would compete against. The benefit of the sheer amount of bodywork surrounding that engine would keep it alive.

And so the shopping began. Adam perused Craigslist looking for deals. We didn't need the car immediately, we needed it cheap, and $1500 to win didn't justify buying a well-cared-for car. Our friend Mark was perusing Craigslist on his own, and his fiancée forwarded us some alternatives he came across one Friday night. With those in our back pocket, we took off on a rainy Saturday in June with Carmine, Chris and our friend Isaac to check out Capital Auto Auction in Manchester. One lot in the auction stood out, a 1986 Volvo 740 sedan. Our hopes slipped a bit through the morning, as we watched shabby cars roll through the line with what seemed like sky-high starting bids. At last, the Volvo rolled up on the auction block, and Adam put in his offer, quickly getting outbid. The car went for something around $400, more than he wanted to spend on a car he would be crashing anyway.

So, undaunted, Adam e-mailed one of Mark's Craigslist finds. That week, Adam and I (along with our neighbor Keith, who we greeted with "Hey Keith, want to go get a demo-derby car?") drove out to New Ipswich, NH to pick up a $200 Volvo 740GL sedan. I think the kid was a bit discouraged to know we would be destroying what seemed like his First Car, but hey, few First Cars get to die an honorable death like this.

Prepping the car was next on the agenda. The key was finding weekends where I could open up the shop, and Adam could gather some help to get working on the car. Finding qualified help was the key. Aside from unlocking the shop doors, I would be of little help; my skills under the hood make Jeremy Clarkson look like a world-class mechanic. Isaac had a baseline close to my own, but he was willing to learn and do whatever Adam needed him to do. Mark offered to help as much as he could, but his summer weekends promised to be busy. Carmine and Chris were committed with their own plans for much of the summer. We'd just have to do what we could.

August 14th was our first build day. Adam, Isaac and I tore into the Volvo, stripping it from front to back, inside and out. Every inch of trim, every seat and door panel was removed. Adam started poking under the hood to see what he could disconnect without crippling the car. Mark stopped by to see our progress at day's end, at which point we had created a much leaner, much more spartan Volvo. We had also identified some issues, namely, the stock rear bumper was fractured. If we could not find a replacement, it would have to go. We gathered again on August 22nd. While I tended to office work inside, Adam, Isaac and Mark mounted the driver's seat back in the car, removed the glass from the car and cut the exhaust system off. The car was running rougher now, partly due to the missing air intake, but Adam figured he would get things running smoothly before long.

Mark, Adam and I got together again on the 28th, with Isaac out of town. One of the guys from the shop cut off the remaining bumper support from the rear (Adam found that a replacement bumper would cost nearly what he'd paid for the car), while Adam, Mark and I worked on shedding the door handles and latches and all the wiring behind the driver's seat. Mark had to leave early and I wasn't feeling well, so while I tried to catch up on sleep (and deal with some last-minute work issues) Adam relocated the fuel pump and pulled the fuel tank from under the car. We wrapped our Saturday up with what felt like minor  things to take care of before race day, but with the Demo Derby on the 5th, time would fly. It already felt like we'd spent hours and hours working on a car that would be trashed in twenty minutes.

One thing we wanted to do was route the exhaust through the hood for a more dramatic look, particularly at night. Mark took the header home with him and sectioned the pipe, while Adam prepared some spacers on a CNC machine so we could fit the header on the head upside-down. I picked up the header on Thursday night, and on Friday, Adam came by the shop and installed it, along with a new battery. That evening, I stayed late at the office while Carmine, who offered to use one of our ramp trucks to transport the car Sunday, practiced with the ramp body so he could be ready. We were getting enthusiastic.

However, when Saturday came, we were short on help; Isaac had made plans for the day, and Mark and his fiancée had plans for the weekend, so not only would they miss the final build day but the derby as well. Adam's father Rick brought a friend of his, Paul, who would weld the doors and trunk shut for us. Carmine stopped by and picked the car up with a forklift so we could weld the rear axle, critical for traction in the mud. With welding complete, Adam installed his battery box, lap belt, and fuel tank. We washed the car down before a lunch break, and when we got back, I took to the body with a few cans of Krylon, shooting the driver's door white and then fluorescent orange (to discourage other drivers from taking a direct shot at it). I touched up the rest of the body with a few cans of black paint, while Adam shot the rusted exhaust stack and wheels with silver. Adam finished tweaking under the hood and purging the coolant while I masked and painted numbers on the car, and as dark fell, we forged plans for the morning for the few things that remained.

It's never that simple. Adam, Isaac and I got to the shop around 9am Sunday, with a punch list of final checks taped to the door and even more to complete. Vacuum the car. Cover the windshield with chicken wire to keep errant parts out. Paint some "sponsors" and thank-yous on the fenders and doors and trunk. Cut a hole in the hood in case of an engine fire. Air up the tires. Chain down the engine. Check for last-minute leaks. Adam hadn't had time to find an air filter, so he tried tying a rag on the air intake, but it choked the car up too much to start. When Carmine finally arrived at 12:30 to pick up the car, we were still scrambling to see if we had time for another run to AutoZone.

We didn't. The car was ready to go, or at least as ready as it would ever be. We started winching it onto the car carrier when we noticed a slick of black where the car had been parked, leading up to the bed of the carrier. Fearing the worst, we waited for Adam to make his diagnosis; it was the power steering fluid, not oil, that had drained out of the car. We winched the car the rest of the way, took off for a change of clothes, supplies and girlfriends, and regrouped at an Irving station in Hooksett, NH. It was just past 1:20 when we hit the road. Cars could enter the fairgrounds no earlier than 2pm, so we figured we would be at the back of the inspection line by the time we got there.

Even the drive was a bit eventful, as one of the safety chains came loose on the flatbed in transit. Carmine couldn't hear his cell phone ringing in the truck, so I finally pulled ahead of him to wave him down so we could resecure the chain. We got rolling again, got caught up again, and exit 7 loomed ahead of us just as the clock struck 2:00. All this time, my heart was pounding. The mad rush to get on the road, watching the truck head into a hard right-hand onramp with a dangling chain clinking off the pavement, standing on the side of I-89 while we resecured the chain, then trying to get a sluggish flatbed truck back into highway traffic...all this coupled with the fear that some tiny issue would keep the car from making the show. Maybe they didn't like the remaining piece of the dashboard. Or maybe they thought the door welds were too limited, or the fuel tank wasn't in the right place, or the lap belt alone wasn't satisfactory. A local Caterpillar dealership was the staging point for demo-derby entrants, and I watched as Carmine and Adam peeled off at the dealership, one lonely demo-derby car in the parking lot being looked over. I drove past and wondered.

When Carmine's girlfriend called me to tell me that not only were they only the third or fourth car to arrive, but that we had passed preliminary inspection, I felt a lot of weight lift off me.

(Yes, we were that early. Mark it down; it might be the first time we've ever been early to anything without trying.)

The battle wasn't over yet, though. My girlfriend and I arrived at the fair and met up with our friends, but when we went to see the demo cars lining up for their respective heats, Car #944 was nowhere to be found. At last, I saw it, with the hood up, surrounded by inspectors. Hadn't we passed inspection already? Adam reseated the hood and backed up to the truck, suggesting something was off. We took the next few minutes to peruse the cars that had already passed inspection and were lining up. A lot of front-wheel drive Chevrolets and Pontiacs, a few Ford Escorts, but several Volvos, older and slightly-less-older. Most of the cars were fitted with tractor tires for better grip in the mud. A few looked like they had been wrecked already, and one of them was an obvious survivor from last year's derby. Our car would look like the best in show, but in some ways, it felt like we were outclassed.

We went back to the pulling arena, where we finally met up with Carmine. Carmine had talked to Adam; he had to relocate the fuel pump (again) and cover the fuel tank with rubber mats, but he would be able to race. Adam's father would be arriving a little later; since none of us were adequate mechanics, his dad would be his pit man for the evening. Sure enough, when we left the pulling arena, Adam had lined his car up for the third heat. He was drilling holes into the hood, wiring it down more than the four hood pins we installed would support it. But with that minor adjustment, he would be ready to go.

Chris, his girlfriend and her family had locked up a section of the grandstands for us, so we had time to peruse the fairgrounds a bit while we were killing time before the derby. We ran into Adam while getting some food; he was getting some fried dough before the race. Isaac thought he looked a bit nervous. I wasn't sure at the time, but I could understand if he was. I know I was.

Here's the thing. Through most of this, I've fallen back on the pronoun "we." In some ways, I feel a bit like I'm using it without deserving it. After all, I didn't drive the car. Adam drove it. Adam did most of the actual productive work on it. My monetary investment on the deal was some stencils and a few cans of Krylon; I painted some numbers on the doors, so what? But in the end, we all invested some kind of blood, sweat and/or tears in this project. It was Adam's car, but we were along for the ride, too. I don't think we had any delusions of winning it all, but we could all come away with the pride of having had a little part of getting Car #944 on the track. Adam and I talked Saturday about how, in these kinds of events, he looks forward to being asked if this is actually his first time in the competition, because it shows that he's done his research and came prepared. For Adam's sake, I wanted him to be able to walk away, win or lose, with that pride of knowing that he'd done his homework, that he'd come prepared, and that his hard work had been recognized. We were just a little responsible for that.

We watched the first and second heats of the demo derby with nervous anticipation. Partly, we were looking to see how the competition fared, and how to improve the car for next year. Two of the other Volvos went out early, one due to engine problems and one after a few repeated hits against the Jersey barriers. The second heat was dominated by three teammates who laid waste to the field, working together to take down each car in their way. After a car ruptured its fuel tank in the second heat, though, they had to regroom the course, leaving it a wet, muddy mess that spelled trouble for Adam's street tires.

At last, the cars filed onto the course for the third heat, Adam's heat. Our group chattered in anticipation, wondering what to yell in support of Adam. At last, the shiny, pristine-looking Car #944 rolled into view. For my money, it was the most striking car on the track. The driver's door was bright neon orange, brighter than any other car, the numbers sharply painted on each door and on the roof. Adam's dad's building company was stenciled onto one rear fender, Carmine's dad's company (and my employer) stenciled on the other, and the rear doors and hood were emblazoned with the name of The Stig, Adam's racing identity (lifted shamelessly from the "tame racing driver" who drives cars on BBC's "Top Gear," our favorite car TV show). When everyone in our group noticed that Adam had suited up in a white Alpinestars firesuit and full-face helmet (like the real Stig), they went wild.

And then Adam lined up against the wall, right where they'd had to patch up the track after the gas leak.

And then it started.

Early on, it was just survival. Adam's tires were no match for the recently-soaked mud, but after a while they found grip and got him moving. The other cars with tractor tires were moving around with ease, while Adam tried to get a few hits in and do some damage of his own. A couple hard shots to the front popped the wire on the right-front corner of the hood, and another shot to the nose left Adam's car steaming. The pessimist in me just knew it was all over, but with nothing to lose, Adam gave it hell, gave chase to another car, and did a little more damage, smoke pouring from the exhaust stack and filling the cockpit. A few more hits, and finally, #944 came to a stop with its back against the frontstretch wall, Adam reaching for the stick taped to his B-pillar to break it off. He was out. Car #944 was done.

The heat, however, wasn't, and so we watched as the last few cars cleaned up the field, a few of them bouncing into Adam's stalled car. Compared to some, the Volvo wasn't nearly as wrecked as it could have been, though if the drivetrain had held on, maybe it would have been. When the heat was over, Adam climbed from the car, walking Stig-like from the track (and saluting a few fans who apparently caught the Stig references).

We couldn't see Adam until after the feature was over, so when the feature wrapped up, we made our way to the back gate to sneak into the pits, where we greeted our champion with a slow clap. It turns out that something in the transmission had given out. That's all. The car had a little more fight left, but no way to put that power to the track. We went out, but given the circumstances, it was a good first effort. Plus, Adam was smiling, we were all smiling, and at the end of the day, that's all that really counts.

So that's our story. I could tell you the part about bringing the car home and cleaning the shop, but the calm after the storm is never as fun as the storm itself. What I can say is that it was a blast for everyone involved. Not just those of us who worked on the car, but those who got to watch from the stands, knowing that one of our own was out there giving his all to put on a show. Being involved in itself was an experience, one Isaac described as one of the craziest and yet most amazing things he's ever done. He's thinking about doing it himself next year, and his girlfriend's mulling it over, too. Adam...well, was there ever any question he'd be back next year? We all learned a lot about what has to be done, what can be done a little differently, and what it takes to win. Hopefully, we can put those lessons to good use.

I guess that means that next spring, we'll have to find a few more cars to build up to break them down again.