Checkered Past

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.

Who needs to take a seat?

At least one NASCAR official seems to have implied that parking an offending Nextel Cup driver was a real possibility in the tense hours after Sunday's Tough Man Contest at New Hampshire International Speedway. That was all conjecture, though, as the stock car racing company took the now-standard course and levied fines, docked points and put some members of the fraternity on double-secret probation.

They also reiterated that NASCAR will, in the future, do whatever it takes to ensure sanity and safety in such matters.

Well, all right. Their game, their show and so on.

So there's no point wondering further to whom NASCAR's Jim Hunter might have been referring when he told David Poole, Jim Utter and other reporters assembled at the track that weally sewious consequences awaited the wascally wong-doers.

But if it were up to us - if we wore the intwepid Hunter or Helton hat with the ear fwaps - where should we be aiming our twusty weapon?

Of the drivers making the headlines on Sunday, which one - or is it all of them? -  should be parked? Kasey Kahne, Robby Gordon and Michael Waltrip are being penalized by NASCAR. It's fair to say that others might have deserved a little official attention, too.

None will miss a race because of his actions on Sunday. And some of us think somebody ought to be riding the pine. But who's it gonna be?

We should, of course, stop to consider that teams invest millions of dollars in people and equipment and more to make a Nextel Cup race. So, depriving them and their sponsors of a weekend's worth of TV exposure would be harsh treatment indeed.

Maybe even harsh enough to have legal consequences.

Never mind that some of the people we're talking about fail to qualify with some regularity and therefore already deprive their teams and sponsors of such opportunities.

The three guys bagged by NASCAR, and even Kyle Busch, are race winners. Scott Riggs, who made the first significant contribution to the day's decline, hasn't won a Cup race, but has performed well in other series.

And Kurt Busch? A champion. But how does that make him ringleader of a media circus - complete with official NASCAR escort - on pit road while a race is still being run?

Hey, you guys cut that out!

There should be no doubt about NASCAR's serious intention of doing whatever it takes to rein in drivers' poor behavior and word choices.

Why else were penalties announced only a little more than 24 hours after the wreck-fest at New Hampshire International Speedway? Sure, striking with a penalty story while the iron is still hot from Sunday's shenanigans is good marketing. Still, they really mean it this time.

This is something up with which NASCAR will no longer put.

Actions not detrimental to TV ratings

At least two things are clear after Sunday's race at New Hampshire International Speedway. Everybody's talking and Tuesday will be a fine day.

Seemed like everywhere I went Monday - not a lot of places, a gas stop, breakfast, into the office, out for lunch, then the grocery store - people were talking about the race, its cast of characters and calculated plot twists. That's not at all unusual in Charlotte, but the level of enthusiasm was way up there this time around.

Then again, a lot of what I saw on Sunday was ratcheted up pretty tight, too.

There was and is plenty to talk about, no matter where your loyalties lie.

One guy I spoke with Monday hadn't even watched the race, but that didn't stop him from proclaiming the Sylvania 300 the best he'd never seen. He'd caught some of the highlights on one of the postrace shows and was kicking himself in the butt for not watching live.

"They ought to do that every week," he said.

Well, some of it maybe. I liked there actually being a race there at the end, for instance.

But a lot of the other nonsense, the wrecking by design, "waving" to fellow competitors, helmet throwing and the rest will be deemed detrimental to stock car racing, and appropriately so.

So, whether it's cloudy or even stormy wherever you are Tuesday, expect NASCAR fines to be announced at some point during the day. Other penalties are likely to include points deductions and, of course, NASCAR probations.

Will everyone feel that their driver was treated fairly? No way. And will everything be fine when all is said and done? Even less likely.

But will more of NASCAR's occasional fans find next week's race telecast a little more quickly during NFL timeouts and station breaks?

You can bet your sweet remote control.

What's the shame is that the county fair side-show flavor of Sunday is being talked about more and will be remembered longer than the race that Ryan Newman won - just barely - over Tony Stewart at Loudon, N.H.

Maybe Chase 'haters' is too strong

David Poole, not your most consistent defender of NASCAR and the way the company changes racing rules and policies the way some of us do our underwear, wrote positively and eloquently the other day about the Chase for the Championship.

Some readers hit Thatsracin.com's feedback button and wrote us - as eloquently, even if more to the point - of their disagreement with David.

In short, Poole wrote that other major league sports have playoff systems that are no more or less arbitrary than NASCAR's decision to narrow the Nextel Cup championship field to the top-10 drivers and teams after the first 26 races.

"The only significant major sport that doesn't use something that's at least akin to a Chase-style system is college football, and its championship format is perhaps the most bone-headed thing ever devised."

That, to me, seems to meet the criteria for hard to argue with, but many seem to disagree.

"Why do we have the stupid point system anyway?" Joann writes. "The way I look at it, the man on top at end of year should be the winner..."

Says Rodger: "Chase haters will get over it like I am. They will just turn off the NEXXXXTEL WWF !!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"Re your op-ed about the chase...and those who note that Emperor France is nekkid," writes Em Bee, who - as best we can tell - was a close relative of the late Aunt Bee. "You have the worst case of the Lewinsky Syndrome I've seen since the impeachment hearings way back in the 90s.

"You obviously have lost touch with the majority of race fans."

Martha, breaking the silence of her majority, adds these thoughts.

"I, for one, and I'm sure many others, am through watching racing for the season. Once your driver is out, if everyone would quit attending and watching, they would go back to real racing.

"This 'Chase' is just another bottom line deal for Nascar."

And from Philip: "I used to be die hard nascar fan . It sucks now. Without Gordon and earnhart who cares. It's boreing."

Who's to say who speaks for the majority?

Someone I know in public relations firmly believes the people who join in chat room and bulletin board discussions are overwhelmingly negative. I suppose he'd lump feeder-backers in with that group as too negative to consider.

And polls? Not scientific in their sampling. Certainly true enough in the case of our Poll Position.

But in early voting, ThatsRacin.com readers seem to offer a little vindication for Mr. France's non-NFL Folly, a.k.a. The Chase.

The most respondents so far say they "hate" the still relatively new Chase format. But the other two choices combined, "Love it" and Don't care - Let's race" are pretty close to the numbers put up by the nattering nabobs of negativism.

But it's still too close to call.

Is it a deal now?

Kevin Harvick was dominating Saturday night's Chevy 400 at Richmond in one of Richard Childress Racing's Chevrolets. Later he battled Greg Biffle, in a Ford, for the lead.

Not to pilfer a tagline, but it makes you wonder - whatever ends up happening Saturday night - if next week isn't a good time to make a deal.

Harvick owned and won Friday night's Emerson Radio-sponsored NASCAR Busch Series race at the Confederacy's capital city track, ran off with the pole for the Cup race, then pretty much took off when the green flew Saturday night.

The driver has been complaining pretty publicly about what he's been driving, asking for  - no, insisting upon - improvements at RCR before he'll talk about renewing his contract there.

Whoa. This just in: Where you and I work ain't all we think it should be either.

I don't have any idea what their schedules look like, but if I'm on the Richard Childress side of the table and I'm meeting this next week with one helluva driver named Harvick - or his people - I'm feeling pretty froggy and wanting to ask.

OK, what else is it you want?

Gordon voices confidence in Loomis

Call it a different kind of confidence game.

Jeff Gordon expressed a ton of confidence in crew chief Robbie Loomis on Tuesday while talking with reporters and allowing that Loomis might not return to his No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports team next season. No doubt that confidence is shared throughout the Hendrick organization.

In some aspects of life as we know it, Robbie Loomis wouldn't have to prove anything to anybody. He's led Gordon and his team to a Cup championship and a bucket slam full of race wins.

But we're talking about NASCAR Nextel Cup racing here, arguably the most competive form of motorsports in the world today. And, as is the case in much of the rest of the workaday world in 2005, every day is race day.

In ThatsRacin.com's current Poll Position - as unscientific a sampling as there's ever been - seven in every 10 respondents in early balloting were voting again Gordon and his team making NASCAR's second Chase for the Championship. That's not the kind of confidence you'd expect to see in a Hendrick Motorsports team, particularly one with four titles under its belt.

Be confident in this much though, regardless of any and all the anticipated spin: Hendrick Motorsports and Robbie Loomis will do the right thing as this one unfolds.

NBC scores with 18-49 age group

NBC's coverage of Sunday night's Sony HD 500 NASCAR Nextel Cup race was a ratings winner and a placer, too, according to the overnights.

Medialifemagazine.com reports that the race was tops among viewers in the 18-49 age group, posting a 2.6 average rating.

Among households, CBS took the lead early in the evening, from 7 to 8 p.m., as some viewers took a pass on prerace programming, opting instead for “60 Minutes.” But that part of the show hung in for second, edging ABC's “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” medialifemagazine.com said.

At 8, CBS was still out front with a repeat of “Cold Case” and held on through the rest of prime time with the movie “Along Came a Spider.” Race coverage, while high in that key demographic, remained in second among households.

No accounting for taste, huh?

The racing and other games need to go on

I share blogger David Green's concern, and yes, some anguish, over the situation along the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. I admire, too, Lori Munro's ability to capture so many of the week's emotions and display them so eloquently.

David lived for a little while in Bay St. Louis, Miss., and it was my good fortune to have spent some time in nearby Long Beach while I worked at one of the newspapers that eventually got blended into The Sun Herald in Biloxi and Gulfport.

New Orleans was, of course, pretty close. And the trouble there hurts, too, but a lot of it just makes me mad. And anger, while no picnic and certainly less than an enviable emotion, doesn't feel quite as bad as hurt.

I'd lived a short way off U.S. 90 in Long Beach for several months (most everyone does along that part of the coast because after you get a little farther inland, it's mostly pine thickets) before I took a closer look at a field on the opposite side of the street from the driveway. The field had a bunch of scrub pines, briar patches and other underbrush kinds of things. I had never really given it much thought.

Then one day I looked a little closer. The place was rife with concrete slabs. They looked to have roughly the same square footage as most of the houses in our part of town, with maybe just enough extra concrete to count as a carport. There must've been several dozen of them in that one area.

That made me think of other areas just like it all over the Mississippi coast then, in the mid-1980s. And it dawned on me that those must've been areas never rebuilt after Hurricane Camille in 1969. Each represented a family's loss, no doubt their great suffering at the time and in the aftermath of that storm, which until this week was the benchmark for most coastians.

I've swapped a few yarns with some of the folks in ThatsRacin.com's forums this week, too, and I share a lot of their disgust with the looters, the chaos, corruption and utter lack of preparedness in New Orleans. I agree to a point, too, with a poster who faults the media for the focus on looters while missing so many of the stories about all of the good folks doing all they can to help.

The looters are every bit as real, though, as the putrid and potentially poisonous waters engulfing the Big Easy, where life will be anything but until some serious help arrives and the water recedes. And for quite a while afterward, apparently. Blaming the media, itself an easy out, doesn't help this time either.

Here's a question for you: Should the racing, our other sports and diversions stop for a little while? Would that be the proper way to demonstrate our support for the victims and those who are trying to help?

I don't think so. But I'm not here to argue with anyone who feels differently this time.

This time I'm going to shut up, send some  meager donations in and try to remember how well parts of Long Beach, Miss., and other towns along the coast were able to recover - as difficult as it must have been - after Camille. Because I know those good people can do it again.

And, at  least for a little while, I'm going to try and cut my own humble abode in Charlotte a little slack. The next few times the stairs creak a little too loudly or I stop to think about how long I've been putting off painting and fixing the deck, here's what I'm going to do:

I'm going to just flat stop, remember our friends in Mi'ssippi and Louisiana, and say a little thanks that my house - many needs though it surely has - is still standing, the ground around it fairly dry.