Since NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series had the weekend off, the “good ol’ boys” of the Formula 1 circuit took up the slack and gave us side-by-side racing and wheel banging passes for position! Really, they did! Sunday, at the Hockenheim Circuit in Germany they held an F-1 event and a race broke out. McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton got the victory and with it the lead in the World Championship points, but to do it he first had to battle past Felipe Massa’s Ferrari and then Nelson Piquet, Jr., who was leading for the first time ever in his F1 career.   

It all started when Timo Glock suffered a rear suspension failure that led to a vicious, car shredding crash. Glock was unhurt but the resulting safety car period scrambled the field as some cars pitted while others stayed out, including Lewis Hamilton. On the restart, Hamilton streaked away from the pack trying to build up enough of a lead to get in a late fuel stop. He didn’t quite get enough before he was forced to stop for fuel and he came back on the track in fifth place. But he had easily the fastest car all day and watching him work his way back to the front, passing cars as he caught them, was a treat that is all too rare in F1 today. 

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Back in the good ol’ US of A where, instead of sophisticated, highly engineered, technically superior missiles on wheels, we race pick up trucks, NASCAR’s Craftsman Truck Series was in action at Kentucky Speedway. As is typical for this series there was close racing and hard fought battles for position throughout the pack and all race long. But the pass of the race has to be the one Johnny Benson pulled off to take the lead with 31 laps to go. He went into turn 3 in third place and came out in front after diving to the bottom and going four wide to pass Michael Annett, Dennis Setzer, and Chad Caffin.  

“I had a tremendous run off Turn 2 and got alongside [Setzer],” Benson said. “We both had good runs on [Annett], and we made a dash to the corner [Turn 3]. I expected [Setzer] to turn left, and he did and I had to turn left. I had the best spot. This track is extremely difficult to pass on. I think we had one of the few trucks able to hug the bottom, and that was a key to winning.”  And win he did. Benson now leads the series points by only one point over Matt Crafton and five over Ron Hornaday. Rick Crawford is a “distant” fourth, a mere ninety-two points back.  

All three of NASCAR’s professional divisions head to Indianapolis next weekend, with the trucks and the Nationwide Series in action at O’Reilly Raceway Park and the Sprint Cup Series runs the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  

Kyle Busch is beginning to look like he’s unstoppable. Saturday night at Chicagoland Speedway, after leading the most laps, he was passed in the late stages of the race by former Hendrick teammate, Jimmie Johnson. Busch keyed his radio and told his crew; “Race over”, as he watched Johnson pull away. Then, just a few laps later, David Gilliland’s engine expired bringing out the final caution and setting up a two lap dash to the checkered flag. Busch knew he had one shot, and one shot only, to get Johnson on the restart and he made the most of it. He beat Johnson to the white flag and then it really was race over, Busch wins, again! 

His Cup win on Saturday coupled with his win in the Nationwide Series on Friday night completed Busch’s sweep of events at Chicagoland and pushed his season win record for all three of NASCAR’s top divisions to fifteen. Seven Sprint Cup wins (including 3 of the last 4), six Nationwide wins, and two wins in the Craftsman Truck Series. Last year, Jimmie Johnson won ten races on his way to his second consecutive NASCAR championship. But at this point in the season he had only four of those wins. At his current pace Busch could easily have ten wins even before the beginning of The Chase when the circuit gets back to New Hampshire in the fall, seven races from now. After that it’s not unrealistic to think that Busch has a shot at the modern era record of thirteen wins in a single season, set most recently by Jeff Gordon in 1998 when he tied Richard Petty, who won 13 races in 1975. (Gordon had 6 wins at this point in the ’98 season, and Petty had 8 at the halfway point of ‘75.)  

Whatever happens, Kyle Busch is enjoying a dream season and he shows no signs of slowing down. The combination is nearly perfect. He has the best equipment in the garage, and the talent to make the most of it. He’s backed by the best people in the sport, the Joe Gibbs Racing organization. You add a little bit of luck into the mix, (they’ve had that too), and Kyle Busch just might be unstoppable.

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The NHRA made its annual “Mile High” stop at Bandimere Speedway near Denver this weekend, and for the first time in history the nitro fueled cars would only race to 1,000 feet instead of the traditional 1,320 feet. This is supposedly a temporary measure while the investigation into the death of Scott Kalitta is still ongoing. Once that is completed, a newly appointed “safety board” will make its recommendations for a more permanent solution. Officials, racers and fans alike have applauded the NHRA for not waiting and doing something in the interim. At least while the TV cameras were on that is. A couple of racers and crew chiefs tried the diplomatic approach by calling themselves “traditionalists” and saying that a “real” drag race is a quarter mile long, and that they will be glad when they can return to running that distance. But no one was willing to be outwardly critical of the sanctioning body.  

It is this writer’s opinion that drag racing to 1,000 feet is sort of like getting a kiss from your sister. Yea, it’s still a kiss, but something is missing. Top Fuel dragsters and Funny Cars still sound the same. The burnouts are the same. And there’s still a lot of pretty good side-by-side racing. But then it all ends too soon, and you’re left wishing there was more. The combination of Bandimere’s high altitude, (5,800 ft) and the 1,000 foot track meant that Funny Cars never got anywhere near the 300 mph mark and the Top Fuel cars were in 295+ range. (Top Fuel winner Tony Schumacher did record some runs just slightly over 300 mph, but nothing like the 330+ speeds we’ve all become accustomed to.)  

Most analysts will agree that the real culprit in Kalitta’s tragic death was insufficient shut-off distance and the barrier at the very far end of the track. It had nothing to do with running the full quarter mile. (The engine explosion that precipitated Kalitta’s crash happened well short of the 1,000 foot point.) What the NHRA needs to do is develop some standards for the shut-off areas of its member race tracks. They need to establish a minimum distance required to stop a 330 mph race car safely with some degree of built-in margin for error. Those tracks who can’t comply will be forced to lose their sanction and their race date. Many of the current tracks on the NHRA Powerade circuit were built or last upgraded more than twenty years ago when speeds were much lower. Some have the room and the capital to upgrade, and some don’t. Those that can’t, will certainly lose the revenue they are used to, as will the economy of the surrounding area. Those tracks who do upgrade could be awarded the extra race date for their efforts. In either case, the sport will better off as the tracks will be safer for the drivers, and the fans will see the full quarter mile drag race they are paying to see.  

There was plenty of excitement in Daytona over the weekend. The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series made its annual July stop at the Central Florida super speedway and the action was so close that NASCAR officials had to review video tape and computer scoring to figure out who won. The race had gone to a green-white-checkered finish due to a late caution period and as the cars headed for the first turn after taking the white flag a multi-car wreck behind the leaders brought out the final yellow flag, ending the race.  

Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch had been running side-by-side, with neither driver having a clear advantage and officials needed to take a few minutes to determine which one was in front at the time the caution lights came on. It was Busch by a fender.  

This was Kyle Busch’s sixth win on the year and clearly puts him in a dominant position in the points when The Chase starts up later in the season. That’s when the points will be re-set for the top twelve and each team will receive ten bonus points for every win. His six wins so far give him a 40 point advantage over his closest rival and this team is showing no signs of slowing down. With 9 more races to go before the cut-off, there’s no telling how many more races the 18 team could win.                                                                      -   -   -

Not all of the action was in NASCAR this past weekend. The UARA STARS Late Model Series came to the high banks of Bristol Motor Speedway for the “Thompson Metals 150” on Saturday night. Racing at Bristol is exciting regardless of the type of cars or the stature of the stars and this race was no exception.     

Jamey Caudill and Alex Yontz made up the front row and it was Yontz who jumped out to an early lead at the drop of the green. It looked like Yontz would run away with this race as he did here last year, but by lap 91, fifth place starter Jake Crum caught and passed Yontz. Crum led for the next 30 laps while he and Yontz battled side-by-side in a great display of talent and good clean, hard racing. Unfortunately, a cut tire with twenty laps to go brought this battle to an end, sending Crum into the wall and handing the lead back to Yontz for good. It was Yontz’s first win of 2008 and his seventh in UARA competition.

The UARA is a great race series with plenty of NASCAR connections. Pole sitter Jamey Caudill is a team manager for Dale Earnhardt, Jr’s “JR Motorsports”, along with development driver Curtis Truex, the cousin of NASCAR driver Martin Truex. “JR Motorsports” also fields a UARA late model for Richard Boswell II.  Several sons of NASCAR personalities are also present in this series as Brandon McReynolds, (son of Larry McReynolds) Cory LaJoie, (son of Randy LaJoie) and Kyle Grissom (son of Steve Grissom) all competed Saturday night.

Race winner Alex Yontz, a former development driver for Richard Childress Racing who now races on his own, said this race was much tougher than last year when he cruised to an easy win. “It was tough tonight,” said Yontz. “We didn’t have to work nearly as hard (last year) as we did this one. You had those veterans beating on you from behind and you really had to work for it but that’s what makes it fun. Jake (Crum) had a really strong car and that was unfortunate luck for him. I hate to see things happen like that. We had a good race car and it was a lot of fun out there.” 

There’s an old racing adage that Kurt Busch reminded us of in victory lane Sunday after winning the “Lenox Industrial Tools 301” NASCAR Sprint Cup race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. “Sometimes, it’s better to be lucky than good.” And that certainly was the case for the driver of the Penske Racing #2 Dodge. Busch hasn’t won since August of 2007 in Michigan and, except for a second place finish in the Daytona 500, hasn’t exactly been the most competitive car on the circuit this year. Up to this point in the season, Busch has only one other top five finish and he’s spent most of the time mired in the twenty-something area of the points.  

Sunday, with 30 laps to go it looked like this would be another race with no chance for the Miller Lite Dodge to win. That’s when the race’s sixth, and most unusual caution flag came out. As Dale Earnhardt, Jr., was coming to pit road, Jamie McMurray, still traveling at full speed, apparently didn’t see him and plowed into the back of the slowing #88. That’s when Pat Tryson, Busch’s crew chief made the call; 

“We topped off the fuel [on Lap 218] and were pretty close to making it to the end. We were hoping for some cautions, we got them, and I told Kurt that we were going to stay on the racetrack and take a gamble.” 

Nine other lead lap cars stayed out with Busch, while all of the front runners came to pit road for at least a splash of fuel. The race resumed for only one lap when the caution flew again and then it rained. Lightning flashed and a violent thunder storm rolled in and settled over the speedway and that was that. NASCAR officials called the race with 23 laps remaining in the scheduled distance. 

“We weren’t the fastest car, and we didn’t deserve to win,” Busch said; “but the record book will show that we won the Lenox 301,”  

Kurt Busch got lucky and so did Michael Waltrip, J.J. Yealy, and Elliot Sadler, all of whom got their best finish of the season.

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After the tragic events of last weekend’s NHRA race it was good for all of the competitors to get back to business as usual at the “Summit Racing Equipment Nationals” in Norwalk, Ohio and begin the healing after the loss of Funny Car driver, Scott Kalitta. And there were few drivers who needed more healing than Doug Herbert. You’ll remember that Herbert lost his two teenaged sons in a highway accident back in January and has been trying to “. . .win one for my boys” ever since. Sunday he defeated Brandon Bernstein for his first Top Fuel win of the season.  

“It’s such an emotional day, and I’m just happy to get the job done. Going up there I knew I was going to dig down and give it everything I had. I just wanted to do everything I could do to beat [Bernstein] because I didn’t want to have a mistake that I made cost us the race. Luckily, I have my little lucky charm [daughter Jessie] with me, and we did a lot of thinking about her brothers today, and I’m sure they were riding with me on that final-round win.” 

Tony Pedregon gave notice that he was still a factor for the championship when he defeated a dominant Robert Hight in the Funny Car finale. And Greg Anderson put down Larry Morgan to claim the 55^th Pro Stock title of his career. 

The victory speeches for all three drivers were heavy with emotion as they all dedicated their wins to the Kalitta family and the memory of Scott Kalitta.       

Saturday, June 21, 2008 started out like any other day at the NHRA Lucas Oil Supernationals in Englishtown, New Jersey. But it ended like no other. Scott Kalitta staged his nitro Funny Car for another routine qualifying run. His previous three runs had not been quick enough to get him into the field for Sunday’s elimination rounds but the crew was confident that they had the tune-up in the car that would get the job done. The car launched well and it looked like this would be a good run. But near the finish line, the car’s engine erupted in flames. This too is not all that uncommon with Funny Cars, but this one was somehow different. The car never slowed. It continued down the race track at full speed, careened past the end of the track’s shut down area and into the barrier at the far end of the track.  

When Scott Kalitta was born, his father, Connie Kalitta was already a touring professional drag racer with a national reputation. Scott literally grew up in and around the sport. He began driving a Top Fuel dragster in 1982 before moving to Funny Cars full time in 1986. He returned to the dragsters and earned back-to-back championships in 1994 and 1995 and then he retired from the sport in 1997. He came back for a partial season in 1999, sat out again for three years and returned to competition in 2003. Over his career he won 18 national events, the last coming in a Top Fuel car at Chicago in 2005.

Scott’s final pass in a Funny Car was good enough to qualify him for thirteenth place. The first round of eliminations on Sunday was an emotional one as most of the crewmembers from not only Scott’s team but all of the other Kalitta Racing team members stood silently at the starting line where Scott’s car would’ve been. His opponent, Robert Height lined up in the opposite lane. When the Christmas tree flashed green, Height simply idled away from the line and drove slowly down the track to a standing, but somber ovation from the crowd. It was a fitting and poignant tribute to a fallen champion, racer, and friend.   

Scott Kalitta is survived by his father, and team owner Connie Kalitta; wife, Kathy; and sons, Corey, 14, and Colin, 8                                                                

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In other racing news; Johnny Benson won the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race on Friday night in Milwaukee, WI, and Carl Edwards won the Nationwide Series race on Saturday at the same track.  

Kurt Busch won the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race in dominant fashion on the road course in Sonoma, California.  

In a subdued victory lane at Englishtown, Tony Schumacher won Top Fuel, Tim Wilkerson won in Funny Cars, and Greg Anderson was on top of the Pro Stocks. All three dedicated their win to the memory of Scott Kalitta.

The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series takes its act to Infineon Raceway, the road course in Northern California, this weekend. And, as usual, some teams will replace their regular driver with a “road course specialist”. A ringer, if you will. This is a phenomenon that happens every year at this time and will happen again in August when the series runs at the only other road course on the schedule, Watkins Glen in upstate New York. On the surface one can possibly understand why team owners do this. The stereotypical stock car racer who has spent his entire career turning left on oval tracks is ill equipped (or supposedly so) to handle the rigors of upshifting and downshifting, using heel-and-toe techniques, all while turning to the right. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

If you look at the records, none of these so-called “specialists” have ever won a NASCAR Sprint Cup race. Not a single one. You have to go back to the sixties, when Dan Gurney practically owned Riverside Raceway in California and won five NASCAR races in seven starts, to find any sort of success by a non-NASCAR regular on a road course. But when you consider the more recent races at Infineon and Watkins Glen, the record of the road course ringers is dismal. Guys like Ron Fellows, Scott Pruett, Boris Said, Dorsey Schroeder, Tommy Kendall and a few others have all been brought in to run road courses while the team’s regular oval track guy sits it out. And what have these teams got to show for this?  Not much.

Ron Fellows is a championship caliber Trans Am driver who has had a lot of success in several forms of road racing including the 24 Hours of Daytona, the Sebring 12 Hour, and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. In eleven years he has run seventeen NASCAR races and only has 3 top five, and 5 top ten finishes to show for it. Dorsey Schroeder has six starts in nine years and has no top fives or top tens. It’s the same story for Tommy Kendall who has only a single finish of eighth as his best in fourteen NASCAR races over a ten year period.

Road racers Boris Said and Scott Pruett have each run more NASCAR races than just the road courses, (Pruett running 28 races in 2000 for car owner Cal Wells). But between the two of them they have a total of 69 starts with only seventeen top ten finishes.

So what about the NASCAR regulars? What about those guys who supposedly can only turn left? Well, obviously if the ringers aren’t winning these races then the NASCAR regulars must be. And right about now you should be thinking about Juan Pablo Montoya’s win last year at Infineon. While it’s true that the majority of his career has been spent on road courses, his win last year was as a full time NASCAR driver. So you really can’t count him as one of the ringers. It’s also true that no team is thinking about replacing drivers like Jeff Gordon, who has five wins at Infineon and three at Watkins Glen, or Tony Stewart who has four wins at the Glen. But for example, this week at Infineon three regular cup drivers will have to move over and let somebody else in the seat. Scott Pruett will be in for Reed Sorenson, Ron Fellows for Regan Smith, and Max Papis will sub for Scott Riggs.

Of course, we’ll never know how Sorenson, Smith, and Riggs would have done had they been allowed to race, but it will be interesting to see how the three “specialists” finish in their place.  I can’t help but wonder why some teams continue to bring in the ringers when the records just don’t support it.   

Finally, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series is back in balance! Finally, the media can stop telling us every single week how long it has been since he last won. Finally, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. has won a points paying race! To make it even better, he did it at Michigan, a track that he had never won on before. And he did it by working good pit strategy and taking a huge gamble on fuel mileage.  

As so often happens at Michigan, this race came down to a test of fuel conservation. To win you have to run fast enough to stay in front of your competitors, yet slow enough to make sure you have enough fuel to get to the checkered flag. As the laps ran down on Sunday, Dale Earnhardt did not have enough. He had made his last pit stop on lap 148, 52 laps from the finish. Typically at Michigan you can only go 40-45 laps on a full tank of fuel. But as others made pit stops for a quick splash of fuel the decision was made to stay out to gain track position.  

“I’m not a gambling man,” crew chief Tony Eury, Jr. said. “I don’t even like going to Las Vegas to put $20 down. … But if we ran out of gas, we were going to finish 25th. If we came in and pitted, we were going to finish 25th. So I told him we were going to go for it. We were either going to win or run out of gas and finish 25th.” 

Then, with only two laps to go, Sam Hornish spun and that brought out the caution flag. Now the race was going to go extra laps and end in a green-white-checkered two lap dash to the finish. Earnhardt immediately cut his engine off and coasted. And for the remainder of the caution period he would start the engine just for a few seconds and turn it off and coast some more. Everybody in the 88 pit was holding their breath. Making it to 200 laps was going to be marginal at best. But going to lap 202? Nobody knew if they could make that or not.  

The field took the green flag for the final time and Earnhardt pulled away to slight lead. As they came back around for the white flag, Patrick Carpentier spun on the front straightaway, bringing out another yellow flag and, according to NASCAR’s procedures, ending the race. Earnhardt had won, and as he turned his car down pit road and headed for Victory Lane, his engine sputtered and died for the last time, out of fuel. 

After climbing out of the car, a jubilant Dale Earnhardt, Jr. told the TV audience; “We were going to stumble to the finish and probably not win the race. We weren’t going to finish. The yellow saved us. They can write what they want, but we won one.”

 The cover of the current issue of Dick Berggren’s “Speedway Illustrated” magazine touts Kyle Busch as “NASCAR’s Hottest Driver”. And his record so far this season certainly bears that out. Driving in all three of NASCAR’s top racing divisions, Busch has earned a total of ten wins and, for a brief time, he led the points in all three. Something that had never been done before. He has won at least one race in every division for the last four years, something only two others have ever done. And he has led more laps already this year than most drivers lead in an entire season. Most of the racing media is calling this 23 year old from Las Vegas the most talented driver to come into NASCAR since Jeff Gordon.  

This past weekend, Kyle Busch had a plan. He would run a Craftsman Truck Series race on Friday night, a Nationwide Series race on Saturday night, and his regular Sprint Cup Series duties on Sunday. Normally this is not that unusual a task as NASCAR often schedules all three at the same track in a single weekend. What made this plan so ambitious was that each race on this particular weekend was being held not only at a different track, but each of those three tracks was in a different state. The truck race was in Fort Worth Texas, the Nationwide race was in Nashville, Tennessee, and the Sprint Cup race was in Pocono, Pennsylvania.   

Each day, after Sprint Cup practice was over, Kyle would jump on an airplane and fly to the next venue, race that night, and then fly back to Pocono. Many were anticipating that the grind would be too much, but many more were predicting that it was entirely possible that Busch would win all three races. And that was something else that had never been done before. Well, it didn’t quite work out that way and it proved that Kyle Busch is only human after all. 

The plan started out well enough Friday night at Texas Motor Speedway. Busch started the Craftsman Truck race from the back of the pack, raced well and finished second to Ron Hornaday. The trifecta was already out of the equation but second was a good showing. Saturday in Nashville however did not go so well. Again Busch had to start from the back of the field and was running well when some tire trouble relegated him to a 20^th place finish, three laps behind first time Nationwide winner, Brad Keselowski. Then it was back on an airplane and back to Pocono on Sunday for Kyle’s regular day job, 500 miles in a Sprint Cup car.  

Once again he would start from the back of the pack. He was running well when a mistake by either Busch himself, or his spotter, depending on whom you ask, caused him to come into contact with Jamie McMurray as the two raced out of turn three. The resulting damage sent Busch to the garage for repairs. Eighty one laps later, he returned to the race track and soldiered on to finish 43^rd while a resurgent Kasey Kahne celebrated in victory lane.   

Was the task of running three races, on three different race tracks, in three different states too much for Kyle Busch? Did fatigue cause the mistake that led to his worst finish of the year? Only Kyle Busch can answer these questions but one has to wonder if things would’ve been any different if he had just concentrated on his Sprint Cup deal. Busch is a racer who loves nothing better than to be driving race cars. He is in the enviable position right now to have a tremendous amount of resources at his disposal. The opportunity to try to make history by winning all three races in a single weekend presented itself, and he took his shot. That it wasn’t entirely successful certainly wasn’t from lack of trying.

There’s nothing new about women driving race cars. They’ve been doing it for years. But none received much notoriety until the sixties when Paula Murphy and Shirley Shahan made national headlines in NHRA drag racing. In the seventies Janet Guthrie was the first woman to race in the Indianapolis 500. Guthrie also had a brief but mostly unsuccessful career in NASCAR’s top series. Probably the most successful woman racer to date is Shirley Muldowney. Shirley was the first woman to drive, and win in a Top Fuel dragster in NHRA competition and she went on to win three world championships in that division. That was also a first for a woman. Since then several more women have been successful in NHRA competition. Angelle Sampey has won multiple championships riding a Pro Stock motorcycle, and six women (including Muldowney) have won in Top Fuel Competition. But now, in 2008, it seems that woman are really coming into their own and making headlines.  

Earlier in the year, Danica Patrick made history becoming the first woman to win an Indy Car race. Chrissy Wallace, the daughter of NASCAR racer Mike Wallace made history by winning several main events at Hickory Motor Speedway, one of the toughest short tracks in the country and a place that has been the breeding ground for more NASCAR stars than any other track in the country. A few weeks ago in Atlanta, Ashley Force became the first woman in history to win in an NHRA Funny Car and she had to beat her dad, John Force to do it. Two weeks ago in Bristol, Tennessee, Melanie Troxel won for her first time in a Funny Car becoming the first woman in the NHRA to have won a national event in both Funny Car and Top Fuel. And now we can add yet another name to the list of women who have won at the top level of their sport. 

Hillary Will beat Larry Dixon to win the NHRA Top Fuel title at the O’Reilly NHRA Summer Nationals at Heartland Park in Topeka, Kansas. This was only Will’s second final round appearance in three years of trying and she combined a tough .038 reaction time with a 4.744 elapsed time to defeat number one qualifier, Dixon. Indeed, she never ran worse than 4.80 all day and had to beat no less than Doug Herbert, Morgan Lucas, and Cory McClenathan before facing Dixon.  

“I’m thankful for all the women drivers who’ve paved the way and shown that women can drive a race car and drive a race car well,” said Will. “I’m proud of Melanie [Troxel], and I’m proud of Ashley [Force], and I’m proud of other women in motorsports. Honestly, we just want to be racers. . . There’s so many emotions for me right now because there were times when I thought, ‘I can’t do this. Maybe I shouldn’t be racing. Maybe I don’t belong in this fuel car,’ but this is what I love to do, and through everything, you can just never, never, never give up. My team never gave up on me. I still have a lot of the guys working on the team that I did when we started, and they never gave up on me. Our team owner, Ken Black, has been nothing but supportive. I’m thankful that everybody just stood by me.” 

Over on the Funny Car side, John Force picked up his 126^th national event win and the first after his devastating crash in Dallas last year. In victory lane, an emotional John Force just kept repeating, “I did it, I did it, I did it.” 

“At the end of the day, winning’s what it’s all about.” Force said, “Every driver says that, but when you’ve won like me, you get to take it for granted, but then I got slapped, and I don’t take it for granted anymore. To go all these rounds was a great feeling for me. I didn’t want to go winless, not after that wreck.” 

Ron Krisher won the Pro Stock title driving his Valvoline sponsored Chevrolet Cobalt. He used a 6.758 to beat a slowing Larry Morgan in the final.

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All of NASCAR’s top three divisions where in Dover, Delaware over the weekend and the track nicknamed the “Monster Mile” provided plenty of action. Kyle Busch, as he has been for most of 2008, was the hottest driver on the weekend and, were it not for a transmission problem in the truck race and a crash in the Nationwide race, just might have swept the weekend.  As it was Busch drove what he himself admitted was a third place car at best to his fourth win of the season in Sunday’s Sprint Cup feature. He did it using good pit stops to gain track position near the end and then stretching that out to a three second lead over second place runner Carl Edwards. Busch and Edwards were followed by Greg Biffle, Matt Kenseth, Jeff Gordon, and Martin Truex, Jr. as the only other cars finishing on the lead lap.  

Denny Hamlin was victorious in Saturday’s Nationwide Series race, and rookie Scott Speed won the Craftsman Truck Series race on Friday in only his sixth start. 

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The Indy Cars made their traditional, week after the Indy 500 stop at the historic Milwaukee Mile on Sunday. Ryan Brisco, driving for Penske Racing, entered victory lane for the first time in his career. Ironically, it was thirty years to the day since Rick Mears won his first Indy Car race, also at Milwaukee, and also in a Roger Penske owned car. “It feels so good to win and it feels so good to do it here in Milwaukee,” Brisco said. This was his 25^th start in the series.

We celebrate Memorial Day to remember all those who sacrificed everything in the service of our country. The brave men and women who died so that the rest of us can be free and safe. Free to live our lives and enjoy our many favorite activities in the safety of knowing that they are standing watch. One of those activities is auto racing and on Memorial Day we get to enjoy three of the biggest races of the year; The Formula 1 Grand Prix of Monaco, The Indianapolis 500, and NASCAR’s Coca Cola 600.

The day begins in the tiny principality of Monaco. A glittering jewel on the French Riviera, Monaco is the site of the world’s oldest temporary street circuit. The sights and sounds are like nowhere else in the world as the race cars wind through the city around a five star hotel, a casino, and past multi-million dollar yachts lined up in the harbor. And every evening, at the conclusion of race activities, the barricades come down and the streets are once again open to the public. The famous and the not-so-famous alike can drive along the same stretch of pavement that, just moments before, was being taken at more than 100mph by the greatest racing drivers in the world. To win at Monaco is to solidify a Formula 1 driver’s career. It is one of the most difficult races on the circuit and it requires all of the skill, and precision that a driver has. The streets are narrow, the guardrails are close, and there is no margin for error. Miss a braking point or an apex by just one inch and the car goes into the barrier and your race is over. No other circuit in the world demands so much precision from the driver.

This year, the race was made even more difficult by rain. It began with everyone on wet weather tires and difficult conditions. The front row starting Ferrari’s of Massa and Raikkonen had their races slip away from them due to a spin by Massa on lap 16, and two incidents by Raikkonen, both of which required a pit stop for a new nose. Third starting Lewis Hamilton also had a brush with the wall that required a stop for new tires, but the team played their remaining fuel stop and several safety car periods to perfection and Hamilton achieved what he himself called the highlight of his career. The win put Hamilton back on top of the championship points.

After the glitz and glamour of Monaco, the attention of the racing world turned to the down home, mid-west American traditions of the Indianapolis 500. This was the 92nd running of the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing” and the first one since the unification of the IRL and Champ Car series and the excitement was everywhere. For the first time in thirteen years, all of the greatest open wheel drivers in America where racing on the same track, at the same time. The fans responded by filling up almost all of the 250,000 seats, with tens of thousands more in the infield. The Indy 500 was back! The big story was the “super teams”, with the cars of Chip Ganassi, Roger Penske, and Andretti-Green Racing occupying the first six starting spots. Everyone was sure that the winner would come from one of those teams. Scott Dixon, driving for Ganassi-Target Racing, may have started from the pole but his journey to the winner’s circle was anything but easy. Nine different drivers swapped the lead 18 times with Dixon taking the lead seven times for a total of 115 laps. Teamate and fellow front row starter Dan Weldon lead four times for a total of 30 laps. Andretti-Green Racing’s Tony Kanaan was leading at the halfway point when a spin put him in the path of Sarah Fisher and the crash ended the day for both of them. Marco Andretti had a brilliant drive leading for 15 laps and being in strong contention at the end and finishing third. And of course, most eyes were on Danica Patrick. She struggled most of the day with an ill handling car that kept her mired in the bottom half of the top 12 when it all came to end on pit road. As she was exiting after a routine stop, Ryan Briscoe swung wide out of his pit stall and collided with Patrick, breaking the rear suspension of her car and ending her day. As for Penske Racing’s two super stars, the popular and two-time 500 winner, Helio Castroneves finished a respectable fourth, and the aforementioned Briscoe was credited with 23^rd.