You know what they say about payback. In the Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway yesterday Carl Edwards paid Brad Keselowski back for previous grievances. His intention was to merely spin Keselowski out and send a message. The result was something else entirely.

Once Keselowski’s car turned around backwards it lifted off the ground and, in a scene eerily reminiscent of Carl Edward’s crash at Talladega last year (ironically started by contact with Keselowski), sailed upside down and backwards into the crash wall.

The good news is that, in spite of severe damage to the car’s roll cage, Keselowski was not hurt. The bad news is that Carl Edwards may have done much to damage his “Mr. Nice Guy” reputation.

Paybacks have been an integral part of stock car racing since the very first race. It is often the best way for one driver to send the message to another that he cannot be intimidated. Racers, just like any other life form, will pray on the weak. And to be perceived as weak on the short tracks of America is to be seen as someone who can be beaten. The unspoken, unwritten rule of the jungle, as it were, has always been if shove me I will shove you back. If you spin me out, I’m going to put you in the fence.

The mistake Carl Edwards made was choosing to take his revenge on Keselowski on the fastest track on the circuit. Crashing someone at 195 miles per hour is not cool. The next race is just two weeks away at Bristol. Once there, Carl could have wrecked Keselowski without creating such a potentially serious result. Race drivers have long memories and Keselowski would still have gotten the message. And NASCAR might have even looked the other way.

As it stands now NASCAR will be reviewing the situation over the next couple of days, reviewing tapes, and interviewing the participants. No one knows what they will decide but it’s pretty sure that Edwards and the team will lose points or cash or both. But you can also be sure that paybacks will continue to be an accepted, if unspoken, part of the sport. Let’s all hope that in future it takes on a much less serious form.

The difference in the Shelby American at Las Vegas Motor Speedway yesterday was two tires. Jeff Gordon dominated the day leading all but 48 of the 267 laps and didn’t win. During a late race pit stop Gordon took on only two right side tires, while Jimmy Johnson got four new Goodyears. After the restart, Johnson ran Gordon down and passed him with 17 laps to go. With inferior tires, there was nothing Gordon could do to prevent it.

Crew Chief Steve Letarte and Gordon both thought taking on only two tires was the right call to gain track position. I’m not going to sit here at my keyboard almost 24 hours after the fact and second guess two of the best minds in the business. In the post race interview Gordon said, “. . . .we’re not going to beat ourselves up over this.” Neither am I.

Johnson has now won two out of the first three races of the young season. Some in the media are already talking about Johnson winning his fifth straight championship! While I wouldn’t bet against it, I think it’s just a little too early to be talking about that!

It was necessary for me to be on the road most of yesterday and I took advantage of the situation by listening to the race on the radio. The highlight for me was Juan Pablo Montoya being interviewed after the crash involving him and teammate Jamie McMurray. Juan used a somewhat profane expletive to describe what happened. NASCAR has said they want to let the boys be boys but I’ll bet Montoya will be asked to write a check to cover that little transgression. And the folks at PRN may give some thought about incorporating a delay in the future.

Rookie Michael McDowell learned an important lesson on Saturday during the Sam’s Town 300 Nationwide Series race. Specifically, when a faster car is bearing down on you, hold your line and let the other car go around where they can. Instead, when McDowell saw the most famous rookie in NASCAR, Danica Patrick, in his mirror he decided to give her room on the high side. Unfortunately, she had already decided to go low. He turned down into her path and both cars ended up wrecked and in the garage early.

To his credit, McDowell took full blame for the incident during the post crash interview. Ms. Patrick, however, was unavailable for comment.

Rain and strange crashes plagued the NHRA Full Throttle event at Firebird Raceway near Phoenix, Arizona over the weekend. The weather reduced Saturday’s activities to only one round of qualifying for the professional classes. And the day was also prolonged by several long oil-downs and the crash of Vinnie Deceglie’s Pro Stock Dodge.

Deceglie’s crash was nearly identical to the Friday crash of Gordie Rivera in his Pro Stock qualifying attempt. The two crashes were both in exactly the same place in the left lane. Experts blamed the crashes on a combination of poor track conditions and a nearly complete lack of down force typical of Pro Stocks.

During the first round of Sunday’s Pro Stock eliminations several cars were seen to be more than a little skittish in the suspect left lane. In a TV interview, veteran driver Greg Anderson even said that he was “scared” of the left lane.

Blaming the weather for a “. . . lack of adequate traction.”, officials decided to postpone the remaining three rounds of Pro Stock eliminations until the circuit arrives in Gainesville, Florida in two weeks.

Although it was never stated, I can’t help but feel that the driver’s may have gotten together and refused to compete any further.

Another bizarre and, sadly, tragic accident happened in the first round of Top Fuel eliminations. Soon after leaving the line, Antron Brown’s car experienced severe tire shake which apparently sheared the studs on the left rear wheel sending Brown careening into and nearly over the crash wall. Brown was shaken up but fine. Unfortunately, the errant wheel and tire entered the crowd and injured a female fan who later died in a local Phoenix hospital.

NHRA officials issued the following statement:

“ …. NHRA is investigating the incident. The entire NHRA community is deeply saddened by today’s incident and sends its thoughts and prayers to the woman’s family and friends.”

To put a fittingly sad cap on the day, rain caused the two final rounds of Top Fuel and Funny Car to be postponed until today, Monday, February 22^nd.
 

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There’s an old saying in racing that it’s better to lucky than good. What it doesn’t say is how much better it is if you can be both. Jimmy Johnson was both lucky and good on Sunday at the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California.

With 20 laps to go in the 250 lap race, Johnson pitted for gas a split second before the yellow came out for a spin by Brad Keselowski. As he exited the pits, Johnson crossed the scoring line just a half car length ahead of then leader Jeff Burton who was still on the track. Had Burton been going any faster or Johnson in the pits any longer, the 48 would’ve been a lap down.

The win was Johnson’s first of the year, the 48^th of his career, and was a nice way to come back after his dismal finish one week earlier in Daytona.

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Auto Club Speedway continues to have a difficult time attracting a crowd. The farther you got away from the center of the stands, the more empty seats there were. The extreme ends were mostly barren. The track has a reported 91,200 seats. The official crowd estimate was 55,000.

With Daytona behind them now, the traveling circus of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series heads from one sun coast to the other. This week the teams arrive in sunny Southern California to race at Auto Club Speedway, (formerly known as California Speedway) in the city of Fontana which, on a good traffic day, is about an hour’s drive east of the famous beach at Santa Monica.

But it might as well be light years away from the Hollywood culture that the NASCAR PR machine likes to try to connect itself with whenever they come to the two-mile oval that was built by Roger Penske on the site of the former Kaiser steel mill.

Roger Penske cuts the ribbon to officially open California Speedway. He’s flanked by son Greg on his right and the late Bill France, Jr. on his left.

The first Sprint Cup race ever held at Auto Club Speedway was the “California 500 Presented by NAPA” on June 22, 1997 and for the record it was won by Jeff Gordon. Joe Nemecheck started on the pole with a qualifying speed of 183.015 mph. Of the 42 drivers in that race, only four are still racing full time in the Sprint Cup Series today; Gordon, Mark Martin, Bobby Labonte, and Jeff Burton.

David Green (96), Darrell Waltrip (17), Jeff Burton (99), and Bill Elliott, (94) in the first race at Auto Club Speedway. Of these, only Burton is still racing a full schedule today.

No attendance figures have been given but since this was the first time NASCAR had raced in this area since the closing of Riverside Raceway some eight years earlier, the fans were hungry for racing and there were no empty seats.

Unfortunately, race fans are something that the Speedway has been missing in the years since. Some blame the slide in attendance on overexposure due to the track hosting two races since 2004. Some say it’s because the Southern California fan is fickle and has too many choices for his/her entertainment dollar. A few even say that the design of the track, with its wide sweeping turns that give the racers plenty of room, results in boring races with the cars too spread out and too few cautions periods to bunch them back up again.

Will the Southern California fans show up like they did for that first race? Only time will tell.

Hopefully, the buzz of a new season, and the race coming just one week after one of the more exciting Daytona 500’s in recent memory will help bring the fans out. But in any case, most race teams feel that “real” season doesn’t start until Fontana and now the weekly grind of competing for the 2010 Sprint Cup begins.     

If you had any doubts that winning the Daytona 500 means a great deal to a NASCAR driver, or if you believed that the only reason those guys drive cars within inches of each other at 190+ mph is for the money, all you had to do was watch Jamie McMurray drop to his knees on the huge Daytona 500 logo in the infield and his emotional, tearful interview in Victory Lane after he won the 2010 edition of the “Great American Race”.

At the end of the 2009 season, McMurray was the odd man out at Roush-Fenway Racing. The NASCAR mandated cap of only four teams per owner took effect for 2010 and Jack Roush had to make the cut. Not sure where he would go, or if he would even be able to find any team to drive for, McMurray felt he was lucky to be picked up by Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing for 2010. And it wasn’t a mercy hiring as team co-owner Felix Sabates stated that McMurray was; “. . . the best driver available.”

He rewarded that confidence on Valentines Day in Daytona by driving a solid race and not leading until the last two laps. Two laps that were the result of a second green-white-checkered overtime finish that pushed the race to 520 miles instead of the advertised 500. The only fear he had coming down to the checkered flag was a resurgent Dale Earnhardt, Jr. who roared up from tenth at the green to second in a lap and a half.

“I got a big run down the backstretch again,” McMurray said, “and then I saw the 88, and to be honest, I was like, ‘Crap!’ I’m like, ‘This guy has won a lot of races here and his family has an incredible history here.”

Earnhardt was just as amazed as McMurray; “It was all a blur”, he said, “I was just going wherever they weren’t, it was frustrating to come that close. But, hell, we were running 22nd at the first green-white-checkered.”

One of the most competitive (a record 21 different leaders), and exciting Daytona 500’s in a long time was marred only slightly by more than two hours of red flag periods to repair holes that appeared in the track surface. Holes that were due in part to the excessively wet Florida weather in the weeks leading up to the 500, and the cars bottoming out and hitting the pavement repeatedly.

Officials first tried an asphalt type patch but that didn’t hold up once the cars began pounding over it again. The second time they used some sort of epoxy and, with only 39 laps left, it held up through the finish.

Several of the drivers with dirt track experience felt like they shouldn’t have bothered as dirt tracks get holes in them all the time and they simply race around them. Carl Edwards stated that “We all know where the hole is, we can just go around it”. And Dale Earnhardt’s crew even quipped over the radio that NASCAR was just going to place an orange traffic cone over it.

In any event, the two red flag periods stretched the total time of the race to well past six hours and it ended under the lights instead of in the late afternoon. But almost all of the fans stuck around and what they got for their patience was an exciting finish that saw NASCAR’s most popular driver seem to finally get the monkey off his back, a first Daytona 500 victory for both a team and a driver that earned it, and the return of excitement and drama to NASCAR’s biggest event.

Okay, it was “only” ARCA, and it was “only” 80 laps but by any measure Danica Patrick’s first ever stock car race was a success. She avoided the ARCA trademark wrecks, got knocked around some and wasn’t intimidated by it, and saved her car from being trashed against the wall after Nelson Piquett spun her off the track.

She re-started the race as the last car on the lead lap with less than 20 laps to go, passed four cars on the first green flag lap, and ended her night in sixth.

Now the team is talking about the possibility of her running in the Nationwide race next Saturday at Daytona. The original plan was for her to make her debut in that series two weeks from now in Fontana, California. But the option existed, if her ARCA race went well, to move that up to Daytona.

Tony Eury, Senior even stayed back at the shop in North Carolina to make sure her Daytona car was ready just in case. It looks like he can load it on the truck and head south. Tony Eury, Junior, Danica’s crew chief is all for it.

“I would like to see her do it,” Eury said. “She did great. I couldn’t have asked for too much more. I was impressed.”

She’ll need to be impressive. The talent pool in the Nationwide series is much deeper than in ARCA. And except for the Indy 500, the Nationwide races are longer than what she’s used to.

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Mark Martin is not only the oldest pole position winner in the history of the Daytona 500, but he is also the fastest since 1999. Thanks to four larger holes in the restrictor plate, and some aerodynamic changes to the cars, speeds are up. Martin’s pole speed of 191.188 mph was faster than every previous pole winner until you get to Joe Nemecheck’s 194.860 mph set back in the “old days” before the turn of the century.

Hendrick Motorsports teammates, Martin and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. share the front row for next week’s “Great American Race”. Everybody else will have to race for their starting positions in two heat races on Thursday afternoon.

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Kevin Harvick was so sick that he couldn’t take part in the practice sessions for the Bud Shootout. Clint Boyer and Jeff Burton took turns helping to set-up Harvick’s car.  He recovered enough by Saturday to go out with no laps in the car and win the non-points sprint for big money for the second year in a row. And while that’s always a good way to start the season it’s no guarantee of success. After last year’s win in the Shootout, the team went winless the rest of they year, missed the Chase, and finished 19^th in points.

Irwindale Speedway photo

NASCAR Sprint Cup star Joey Logano won his second NASCAR Toyota All-Star Showdown Saturday night at Irwindale Speedway in Southern California. But the real star of the show was 16 year old unknown Sergio Pena.

Pena and Logano kept Irwindale’s capacity crowd on its feet as they traded the lead back and forth for the entire 225 lap distance after the two started side-by-side on the front row.

Pena, who had to skip some high school classes in his home town of Winchester, VA to compete in the Showdown, is a product of Revolution Racing’s “Drive for Diversity” program. Coming into what is billed as the “Daytona 500” for late model short track racing, he had only one year of experience racing stock cars at both Shenandoah and Motor Mile Speedways in Virginia.

Pena earned the right to compete in the Showdown in a race-off with three teammates. He then proved he deserved to be there by qualifying on the pole, easily besting some of the most experienced and talented late model drivers from all over the country.

Once the race began it was obvious that Pena was for real. The only sign of his inexperience was after caution periods when Logano was able to pull away on the restarts. But even Logano noticed that as the race wore on, Pena was catching on, and Joey had to reach into his Sprint Cup bag of tricks to stay ahead of Pena.

Officially, the two young stars swapped the lead five times. But the official score card doesn’t count all the times the two drivers changed the lead at places other than the start/finish line. Again officially, Logano led a total 171 of the 225 laps and Pena led the other 54. But in reality the two ran side-by-side for so much of the race that it was hard to tell which one was leading.

It was clear through much of the event that Pena had the better car and it was only Joey Logano’s talent and experience that kept him in front as much as he was. Pena was being coached by car-builder and veteran racer Andy Santerre and after the race he had nothing but praise for the job Pena did.

For all his youth, the significance of what he had just done was not lost on Pena. Even before the race began he was humble and yet thrilled to be starting next to one of his racing idols.

“It’s just an honor to run with Logano,” Pena said.  “He has been a role model for me for so long.  A young Cup driver, what kid doesn’t look up to that?”

Following Logano and Pena across the finish line was two-time Showdown winner Matt Kobyluck, then Matt DiBenedetto and Andrew Myers. Eric Holmes, David Mayhew, Eddie MacDonald, Paulie Harraka and, another Sprint Cup veteran, Steve Park rounded out the top 10.

Here we are just twelve days away from the first event of NASCAR’s Speedweeks at Daytona, the Budweiser Shootout, and nobody is quite sure what to expect. Last Thursday NASCAR changed the game plan.

NASCAR announced two rule changes that should make things interesting to say the least. For one, NASCAR has instituted a restrictor plate that restricts less. This will make more horsepower available for the drivers to use. Of course, the cars will also sport larger end plates on the wings which will add drag, so top speed may be a wash, but the drivers should see better throttle response.

The second change involves NASCAR’s attitude about what actually happens out on the track. There will be no more judgment calls about bump drafting. NASCAR is taking a hands-off approach. If the drivers want to bump draft in the turns, so be it. If they get wrecked, don’t come crying to NASCAR.

NASCAR is also going to let the boys be boys and settle their differences in their own way and in their own time. This is a major change for the guys in the big yellow truck. For many years now they have tried to polish the image of stock car racing to the point that many of the drivers became bland “Stepford drivers”.

The corporate suits liked it but the fans didn’t. Fans want to see emotion. They want a rivalry. The sport needs bad guys too. You can’t have good guys without bad guys. Superman needs Lex Luthor, the Batman needs the Joker, and NASCAR needs guys who get their blood up once in a while.

I doubt that this will result in a major brawl after every on-track incident, but it should liven up the interviews and create some interest and excitement for the fans. Yes, there are fans who would come to the races only to see the crashes and the fights. But they are in the minority. However, there are very few fans who wouldn’t like to see a little, uh, displeasure expressed now and then, either verbally or with the use of the bumper.

It remains to be seen what effect these two changes will have on the racing. But it’s sure to be an interesting Speedweeks.

Earlier in the week I wrote in this space about Legend Cars and I mentioned that they raced on just about every kind of track, including NHRA drag strips for 2010. Well, on Wednesday of this week officials of Lowes Motor Speedway in Charlotte, North Carolina shook up the entire Legend Car community with their announcement of a huge event for the diminutive cars.

For the past several years Lowes has been running a race series for Legend Cars on a specially designed quarter mile oval that uses part of the pit lane and part of the front stretch of the big speedway. The weeknight races have been hugely popular with local racers and fans alike.

Well, the announcement that came down on Wednesday was that on the weekend of July 15 – 17, 2010, Lowes Motor Speedway will host a Legend Car race with a one million dollar purse! That’s $1,000,000.00! Many of the details are yet to be worked out but they expect the winner’s share of the purse to be $200,000.00!

As you might expect this has, and will continue to have, a tremendous effect on everybody who owns a Legend Car, or is thinking about getting into Legend Car racing, or is racing in some other division and will put a Legend Car effort together just for this event.

Already there are ads on eBay and other web sites for used Legend Cars and even cars for rent that are being touted as “. . .perfect for the million dollar race at Lowes!” Officials are not sure how many cars will show up for this but some estimates put the entries as high as a couple of hundred cars.

No matter how many eventually show up, this is sure to be a major event with competitors from all over the country ready to take a shot at winning that big purse.

The American Drag Racing League (ADRL) has confirmed its schedule for the 2010 season. For it’s sixth year the ADRL will hold nine national events in eight states.

Mar. 19-20, Dragpalooza VI, Houston Raceway Park, Baytown, Texas

April 23-24, Georgia Drags VI, South Georgia Motorsports Park, Cecil, Georgia 

May 21-22, U.S. Drags III, Virginia Motorsports Park, Petersburg, Virginia

June 11-12, Summer Drags VI, U.S. 131 Motorsports Park, Martin, Michigan 

July 2-3, Independence Drags IV, Heartland Park Topeka, Topeka, Kansas

Aug. 6-7, Gateway Drags III, Gateway International Raceway, Madison, Illinois

Sep. 10-11, Dragstock VII, Rockingham Dragway, Rockingham, North Carolina

Sep. 24-25, Ohio Drags IV, Summit Motorsports Park, Norwalk, Ohio 

Oct. 22-23, ADRL World Finals VI, Texas Motorplex, Ennis, Texas

Based in O’Fallon, Missouri, the American Drag Racing League is the world’s premier sanctioning body for the sport of eighth-mile drag racing. The professional categories featured in the ADRL are Extreme Pro Stock, Pro Extreme Motorcycle, Extreme 10.5, Pro Nitrous, and Pro Extreme, the quickest doorslammer class in all of drag racing. The 2010 ADRL schedule includes nine national events run throughout the United States. For more information on the ADRL, visit online at www.ADRL.us