A top-10 list from midweek copy

A top-10 list of my favorite one- two- and three-liners collected on Tuesday (admittedly a slow news day while waiting to see what else - if anything - NASCAR would say or do about post-race inspections at Dover) and Wednesday.

No. 10. "Members of the Ryan Newman Foundation, including Ryan's wife, Krissie, are in Gulfport, Mississippi, this week, working with Project HALO to deliver pet supplies and rescue nearly 100 pets to bring back to the Charlotte area."

That's from a Penske Racing South news release and is a fine reminder that the extended NASCAR family is full of good people doing a ton of good work. And not just along the Gulf Coast recently. They all deserve a round of applause, a pat on their backs or beers on us and more.

No. 9. "I hate to do this," Buddy Baker said as he departed.  "But I like me.  I've grown accustomed to living."

Pulled from Tom Higgins' Scuffs, that was Baker's line of reasoning when he joined the driver boycott of NASCAR's first race at Talladega 36 years ago.

No. 8. Bobby Allison's lines from that same tense meeting with NASCAR founder "Big Bill" France at Talladega:

"Can we start on foot and get paid by position?  Wait, I take that back. The track is so rough we'd probably trip and fall before we got to the first turn."

No. 7. From Greg Engle's blog entry in The Infield:

"Bart Simpson was supposed to give the command to fire engines, but giggled and said ‘gentlemen, eat my shorts’ on national TV instead. NASCAR immediately suspended him for 1456 races, fined him $22.50 then made him write, “I will not make fun of Bill Weber” 1000 times on the chalkboard in the media center."

No. 6. "We are working very closely with Joe Gibbs Racing. ... You can't put a price on what they will be bringing to the table as this team gets ready to go Nextel Cup racing."

That's what Philippe Lopez says in an Associated Press story about his hiring by Hall of Fame Racing, the Troy Aikman and Roger Staubach NASCAR effort. Yeah, Philippe, it's hard to put a price on that kind of thing, but I'll bet somebody, somewhere has done precisely that. And it ain't gonna be cheap.

No. 5. "Race teams continued to assemble the pieces of the puzzle that is Lowe's Motor Speedway's levigated racing surface Tuesday night and by the end of the NASCAR Busch Series testing session the pieces were falling into place to form a clear picture."

From Tuesday's Lowe's Motor Speedway news release about testing at the 1.5-mile fast track near Charlotte. While we all appreciate their frankness about the troubles with the track's surface, is the word "pieces" what you really want to use? Twice?

No. 4. Former Cup champion Matt Kenseth:

"Yeah, I think we have a chance, but I think everybody in the top 10 has a chance."

No. 3. Rusty Wallace's quote about Talladega Superspeedway in The Birmingham News, after he'd already acknowledged  - at length - how wild it used to be at the big track in the pre-restrictor plate days.

"When I took the plate off, I went 'Holy (smoke), you don't want to do this,'" Wallace said.

No. 2. The always popular verbiage in all of NASCAR's releases about penalties, be they fines, lost points, probation or any of the other tools at the company's disposal: "Actions detrimental to stock car racing."

And my  No. 1 one-liner from midweek?

"Yes."

That's what Krista Voda said when we asked her if she'd contribute to a blog in ThatsRacin.com's Inside Line. She'll start in a few days, joining Lee Montgomery and David Green in a blog to be called Turn 3. We expect some great insight and wonderful reading.

More to come on Krista soon.