Checkered Past

That's not what you say in polite company, is it?

Whoa, Pete. You're not from around here, are you?

Pete Rondeau, currently of Dale Earnhardt Inc., is being fairly outspoken about his differences with the management of that company. I find it refreshing and think that's the way it ought to be.

When bad things happen, too often a lot of people in NASCAR feel a need to look the other way. Even though the sport is supposedly outgrowing its Southern roots, they act as if they're at a party at Scarlet O'Hara's place when someone gets fired, or demoted or worse.

"Why, he was such a help to our team and we're grateful to him," they say publicly, while reaching for another mint julep or glass of iced tea.

Fiddle dee-dee.

Race teams aren't that much different from any other business in any part of the country. Most of the people where we all work, too, are on board with the goals. It's the how to get there part where things break down.

That's where the trouble starts, as it apparently did for Rondeau and his bosses.

Yeah, chemistry is important, no doubt about it. But where does candor come in?

Did I mention that they sell beer on Speed Street?

So, it turns out they're giving away Ricky Craven hats on Charlotte's Speed Street, not Bobby Hamilton Jr. hats. Heck he was about two drivers ago for that team, wasn't he?

Or at least one and seven-eighths.

Sorry.

I don't mind apologizing for goofing up. Do it all the time, cuz I goof up all the time. Only people who don't make mistakes are those who don't do anything, my pop used to say.

Besides I've got a couple of really good excuses this time.

I was overly reliant on the word of a co-worker, a man I've trusted with my back for years. (That scenario alone would have given Ronald Reagan "plausible deniability," wouldn't it?)

I've even trusted this man with my life: Once I stood kinda close to him while he was hitting his driver. Or attempting to.

Not that he's my "research assistant" or anything. He does a lot more than that. A graduate of a prestigious university in New York state, the guy is a web wizard, a member of the Internet intelligentsia.

He's as knowledgable about stock car racing as any man his age I've ever met.

And he can type, which helps immeasurably when one is trying to produce and update a web site.

But, all that aside, you can call that guy short-timer now.

No, "hatter-gate" isn't the reason. And his "research" isn't really why I dropped the ball on the hats either.

I prattled on quite a bit about how cool it is to be in Charlotte in May. Even said, a couple of times, how cool I think a street festival with a racing theme really is.

But did I mention that they sell beer on Speed Street?

It's not a "sale," but can it still be a clearance?

Speed Street, Charlotte's race weeks festival, is going ... well, bonkers. And It's still early Friday afternoon. Bands are doing sound checks and the street is filled with race fans, while swag and free boxes of cereal are as plentiful as cheap handguns in most American cities.

But, seriously, there are a ton of really cool displays and things to do. Grocery chain Food Lion and it's suppliers should be saluted for their good work in making this happen every season when the races are scheduled here. (I'm saving my box of complimentary corn flakes for breakfast tomorrow morning, too.)

You'll have to pardon me if I sound like I'm rooting for the home team, but I'm saying it again: Charlotte is an extremely cool place to be in May.

It strikes me, though, that the hats I'm seeing the most of on Speed Street are the orange and blue ones with the No. 32 and driver Bobby Hamilton's signature emblazoned across them.

They've got boxes and boxes of 'em and are handing them out by the fistful as fast as they can.

Is it just me, or does that look a whole lot like a give-away version of a fire sale on Bobby Hamilton Jr. hats to you, too?

Yeah, I know, Hamilton Jr.'s team says Ron Fellows will be in the car only for the road race at Infineon Raceway. Color me unconvinced.

Here's something else I wonder: Should I have looked a little farther down Charlotte's main drag for the Jason Leffler hat give-away?

That's why they call it 'racing'

Boy, what a buzz killer that big wreck in Saturday night's all-star race was. Unless you were Joe Nemechek or Kevin Harvick, of course.

Or are a hockey fan who's really missed seeing competitors mouth off, square off, shove and dare each other mid-game.

Silly me, though, I thought it was NASCAR's even sillier restrictor-plate rules at Daytona and Talladega that caused "The Big One." Heck, I didn't even know you could have "The Big One" on a little ol' mile-and-a-half track.

Turns out though, that when the restictor plates are taken off the purse strings - Saturday's winner collected $1 million-plus and even the first guy out of the race took home more than most Americans make in a year - strange, exciting and entertaining things can happen. The field gets bunched up tight, every inch counts and no holds are barred.

Just like at Talladega and Daytona.

The drivers complain about the plate races, but fans love 'em. It's not too hard to find guys on the teams who will complain just as vehemently about the format for NASCAR's all-star races.

But could it be - whether it's restrictor plates or loosened purse strings - that drivers scrambling for every inch they can get, cars banging body parts until too few are left, even tempers flaring until the combatants are separated are necessary ingredients?

And aren't those things all part of what we've come to define as racing?

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the infield ...

Gotta give a big ol' howdy to Andy Shain, The Charlotte Observer's normally mild-mannered and often funny as hell consumer affairs writer. He may or may not be a real race fan, but he's currently playing one on the Internet and in the newspaper. In a big way.

And I've gotta hand it to him. Anyone who can talk his or her boss into renting an RV for 'em and covering all the costs while he or she works in said RV, which is parked in the infield at Lowe's Motor Speedway during Charlotte's Race Weeks, deserves a toast. Or six.

There are a few things that I think are gonna happen: For one, there will be no doubt about Andy Shain's race fandom by a week from Sunday.

And I think he's gonna have a lot of fun.

I think we will, too, and we'll be thanking him for the ride a week and a half from now.

Check him out, check in with him.

I'm no efficiency expert but ...

It's the middle of the afternoon Thursday at Lowe's Motor Speedway. Craftsman Truck Series teams are about halfway through their second hourlong practice in advance of qualifying at 7 p.m.

It's been kind of cool, watching the recently slumbering beast that is a modern speedway awaken over the last few days. The campgrounds greeting early arrivals, vendors setting up. And with Truck practice, today, the critter is starting to make a little noise.

But it's nothing compared with what we'll see on Friday.

That's when the Nextel Cup teams roll in to practice and qualify for Saturday's all-star activities and everything ratchets up considerably. The beast will be at full bellow by this time tomorrow afternoon.

As full as Friday's schedule is, at least it makes more sense than Thursday's. Like I said, Truck series practice will end soon, at 3:30. And qualifying isn't until 7 p.m.

Which begs the question: Why is practice in the heat of the afternoon and qualifying at 7 in the evening Thursday when the race won't start until after 9 p.m. Friday?

I thought NASCAR's whole idea behind monkeying with race weekend scheduling was to improve it.

Do they drive like they... drive?

There have always been a handful of drivers - in every racing series and era - who, like Twain, enjoyed spoiling a good walk. Or spoiling a good ride, maybe, by using a golf cart. You can count Nextel Cup drivers Dale Jarrett, Michael Waltrip, Rusty Wallace, Elliott Sadler and Jamie McMurray among those currently under golf's spell.

I've heard the TV guys refer to Jarrett's abilities and understood him to have played very well in some celebrity pro-ams and the like. He's also teamed up with Phil Mickelson on behalf of Ford.

And Wallace isn't shy about his love of the game. He even has a ubiquitous golf ball's branding on his Busch car.

But I don't really know anything about their games. Or of those other three guys'. So I wonder if they drive like they ... well, drive. Pitch and putt like they pit. And so on.

We'll apparently get to find out very soon, thanks to the Golf Channel.

The all-golf, all-the-time cable network will feature the five wheelmen in its  "Big Break All Star Challenge" at the Peninsula Club at Lake Norman in the days to come. It will be a version of Golf Channel's wildly popular reality show "The Big Break.''

The NASCAR stars will play for charity. And bragging rights, of course. A previous "All-Star Challenge" featured members of the Boston Red Sox.

We'll hope to find out more, even see how these guys do at the Peninsula track. We'll let you know, hopefully, without spilling too many of the beans.

Golf Channel will air the segment on July 5.

What's the difference between an "independent" and a "field filler?"

With Kasey Kahne's popular victory last weekend at Richmond International Raceway, there have now been a pair of Nextel Cup races won by drivers not in the employ of Hendrick Motorsports or Roush Racing.

Kevin Harvick, with Richard Childress Racing, won the other one,  at Bristol. The superteams of Jack Roush and Rick Hendrick have otherwise been dominant, winning nine of the 11 Nextel Cup races run in 2005.

Fair or not, right or wrong, it's not a lot unlike NASCAR's factory wars decades ago. Then, the "independents" usually had to get by on the table scraps left by the factory outfits. In today's NASCAR world, of course, the truly independents are now called field fillers. And the guys getting results like the independents of old? Those are the operations with only one or two full-time Cup teams.

The DEIs, the Evernham Motorsports, the Bill Davis Racings, Joe Gibbs Racings, Chip Ganassi Racings, Richard Childress Racings, Robert Yates Racings, Penske Souths, even the Petty Enterprises, Wood Brothers, and the MB Motorsports variations on today's Nextel Cup scene all work with a degree of factory support - even if the factories are more supportive of some than others.

And if some of those race teams are underfunded, it's only likely to show up in comparison to one of the superteams. And then it's a new argument, over whether or not the big guys are overfunded.

What's as troubling as the gulf is that it could be getting wider. And there's more to it than great success breeding even greater success.

With red ink washing all over the books of the major automakers, it's not unreasonable to wonder if factory support could get harder to come by and keep in the next Nextel Cup season and beyond.

Think about it. You're Ford Motor Co. or General Motors, you're looking at horrible sales figures and you're looking really hard for savings. Your shareholders are, in fact, demanding that you find said savings or find a way to sell more cars. Or both.

If you were calling the shots, you could stop writing checks and lending other expensive assistance to a whole wad of Nextel Cup teams, which would save your company a whole lot of money (and maybe even score you a bonus). Meanwhile, you could keep the Roush and Hendrick checks moving, maybe even in modestly larger amounts.

It' s what they call a win-win situation.

You'd be saving money, and quieting many of your rowdier shareholders in the process. The teams you're cutting rarely win anyway, right? And your Roush and Hendrick would keep winning on Sundays, and the occasional Saturday nights, too.

Now, about that selling on Monday thing ... That one might be little harder to fix.

Put a governor ON the car before the governor gets IN the car

North Carolina's governor, MIke Easley, has had another little problem with one of the Hendrick Motorsports cars.

The Charlotte Observer's Mark Johnson, well ... observes:

Easley fired up the No. 48 Lowe's car, once driven by Jimmie Johnson, in front of the Executive Mansion. He roared out of the gates and attempted a "burnout," gunning the engine to spin the back tires and produce squeals and smoke, but the car spun too far around. The car nearly smacked a Mercedes and a utility pole before stopping against the curb, according to witnesses.

The mishap came two years and a day after Easley smashed into the wall at Lowe's Motor Speedway while driving the same car at about 120 mph for charity. It was later repaired.

I doubt it was the very same car, but it did have a similar paint job and the same number, 48.

But it is one of the many cars that represent Nextel Cup points leader Jimmie Johnson and his primary sponsor, Lowe's, the North Carolina company with home-improvement stores by the same name.

The car - and it's 0-for2 gubernatorial stand-in - are part of a massive lobbying effort in North Carolina.

There are uncertainties over the venue for future NASCAR all-star races, held every season save one at Bruton Smith's 1.5-mile track near Charlotte. There's a proposed NASCAR Hall of Fame on the agenda, too.

Oh, and it's also recently come to the attention of many political leaders in North Carolina that there's a lot of money involved in "this NASCAR thing."

Politicians in other states, too, have found this truth to be self-evident.

There could be no more perfect pick than one of the Hendrick team's No. 48 cars for a North Carolina lobbying effort on behalf of racing. Jimmie Johnson's recent success in Charlotte's May races has been nothing short of stunning.

And it's kinda cool to have a governor who's interested enough in the sport and its success to get involved.

I think the governor's advisers should advise him, if he doesn't already know, that many of the giants of North Carolina racing history found their greatest success after hanging up their helmets and gloves.

But if Easley won't give up the wheel - and no one at Hendrick Motorsports will just say no - next time let's at least put a restrictor plate on the car before the governor climbs in and fires it up.

A touch of gray? Or is it worse?

Not unlike one of her sister tracks, at Talladega, the Lady in Black is hard to take your eyes off of during green-flag runs. That's because at both Darlington Raceway and Talladega Superspeedway, if you aren't watching closely, you might miss something.

Friday night's Busch Series race and Saturday's Nextel Cup event were both slowed early by cautions, on their first laps. While the overall number of cautions on this stop at Darlington - so far - hasn't been particularly outrageous, it sounds like the drivers have their hands full.

We've been fighting loose since we got here," said Greg Biffle. "I didn't make a run over 15 laps" in practice.

"That's about how long I can hang on and hold my breath. It's going to be tough racing."

That's how Mike Harris of The Associated Press and many others are quoting drivers this weekend. Here's another quote, from Elliott Sadler:

"We're more out of control this year than I've ever been at Darlington."

Sadler, who has been upside down a lot on recent trips to Talladega, knows a little something about out of control. Here's something else the driver of the No. 38 Fords said:

"The track is just getting old and gray.

Lord knows - even on days other than Mother's Day - that a little gray surely can become a lady. Particularly a Lady in Black who's earned every one of those gray hairs. But even Jeff Gordon is adding his voice to what is starting to sound like a chorus.

"The track continues to age, and it just gets more and more difficult and the bumps get worse. The grip gets less and it just makes you have to really fight that much harder to stay off the walls."

We all love The Lady in Black, a.k.a. The Track Too Tough to Tame. We've read and heard tons of stories about her 55 years of stock car racing history and how wrong NASCAR is to rob her of the traditional Labor Day weekend race. That's a sentiment I share, by the way.

And we all hope that the addition of lights and night racing can help the aging South Carolina speedway survive in NASCAR's New Age. After all, the egg-shaped obstacle course was the sport's first and is the longest surviving superspeedway so far.

The lights - and what looks like a wonderfully successful Mother's Day weekend race - definitely dress the old gal up nicely. But is it past time for The Lady in Black to get a serious facelift?