Turn 3

Bodine smartly opts for discretion

By DAVID GREEN

As we so often must, let us credit William Shakespeare for originating an expression which is apropos on this eve of another Talladega race.

"The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have sav'd my life."

The line was delivered by Falstaff -- a character in the play "Henry IV," not to be confused with the beer brand the late Dizzy Dean used to hawk on his CBS baseball broadcasts. A knight with a penchant for boasting, Falstaff had pretended to be dead to avoid being killed during a conflict. His line explained the rationale for what might have seemed cowardly.

The lesson was not lost on Todd Bodine. The youngest of the three racing Bodine brothers from Chemung, N.Y., made one of the more intelligent decisions in awhile on the final lap of Saturday's Truck Series race at Talladega.

The decision? Don't try to block Kyle Busch.

The driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. once referred to as "that cue ball-headed fool" was nobody's fool Saturday.

"I could have blocked him and who knows if I would have ended up like Carl Edwards into the catch fence," Bodine said afterward.

Who could forget that moment, at the finish of the spring Cup Series race at the 2.66-mile superspeedway, when Edwards tried to block Brad Keselowski as they raced to the checkered flag?

And another moment very similar to that one, less than three months later, when Busch tried to block Tony Stewart at the finish of Daytona International Speedway's summer 400-miler?

Both those incidents taught a strong, dangerous lesson -- if you try to block a guy who has a run on you and is pulling alongside, he's not going to give you any slack. He's going to turn you on his front fender. Time and time again, it has been demonstrated what happens when today's stock cars turn sideways in such circumstances.

They go airborne.

Last year, Stewart won the fall 500 at Talladega when Regan Smith went below the yellow line to pass him at the finish. Smith's pass was disallowed. That, it seems clear, was the defining moment. Keselowski and Stewart refused to slow down or steer clear when the car they were in the process of passing tried to block them. The leader wrecked spectacularly, and the challenger won.

NASCAR is not going to attempt to control blocking by imposing a rule prohibiting it. So, it's up to the drivers to control themselves.

Exactly when blocking became a legitimate tactic in NASCAR racing is a mystery, but why it became commonplace is a little easier to understand. In the rough and rowdy days of yore, every driver did what Keselowski and Stewart did -- they dumped the blocker. Last lap, first lap, any lap, the message was clear -- block me, and you paint a bull's-eye on your car, pal.

It's pretty simple -- when a tactic doesn't deliver the desired result, you consider other options.

Live to race -- and win -- another day.

Observations at random

By DAVID GREEN

Observations on the eve of Race No. 6 in the 10-race Chase to the Cup:

ITEM: Wonder what the real reaction (not the public-consumption one) will be from NASCAR if Jimmie Johnson clinches the 2009 title with two or three races left in the Chase? After all, that's what the Chase was supposed to prevent.

Is such a thing likely to occur? No. But neither is it impossible. ...

ITEM: Jeremy Mayfield goes "Outside The Lines" at 9 a.m. EDT Sunday in an ESPN interview. Previews of the conversation with ESPN's Steve Delsohn indicate that Mayfield continues to maintain his innocence regarding drug use, and states that he's being used as a sacrificial lamb to scare star drivers who, according to Mayfield, use drugs such as marijuana and cocaine.

"I was worth more to them as a failed drug test then [sic] I was as a driver, owner for my team," Mayfield is quoted as saying in an ESPN press release.

However this turns out, it's a sordid mess and a crying shame. ...

ITEM: What, a whole week or so without somebody claiming Danica Patrick has done a deal to race in NASCAR? ...

ITEM: In his Martinsville preview story, Jim Utter takes veteran scribe Ed Hinton to task, writing that Hinton "bemoans the lack of 'danger' in NASCAR today." I don't believe Ed was bemoaning anything; his piece merely inquires of racing fans, "Is racing dangerous enough for you anymore?"

If you read the entire piece, Hinton touches on a number of things that perhaps deserve some introspection, or at least some consideration. ...

ITEM: The "racial slur" of Juan Pablo Montoya by ESPN commentator and former Miami Dolphins quarterback Bob Griese has Griese in apology mode, but will in all likelihood spell doom for Griese as a broadcaster.

It was dumb of Griese to say what he did -- because it was culturally flawed, because it was inappropriate, because it was unnecessary, but mostly because Griese should have known what the reaction to it was going to be. ...

ITEM: My pick for today? Jeff Gordon.

Hall of Fame picks

By DAVID GREEN

Fifty people much better qualified than I will make the official decision later today, but for what it's worth, here are my five selections for the inaugural class of inductees into the NASCAR Hall of Fame:

"Big Bill" France, Dale Earnhardt, Richard Petty, Junior Johnson and Curtis Turner.

It would be pretty hard to go wrong in picking any five from the list of 25 finalists, and equally difficult to choose a lineup that would please everybody. But those are my picks.

It was no easy matter, but I made my choices in a pretty quick sequence based on long-held opinions about the sport and its history.

France, I think, is the one absolute choice. If not for his vision and leadership, stock car racing as we now know it would likely never have developed. Nothing of such magnitude is the product of any single individual, but France was the one irreplaceable piece in the puzzle.

Earnhardt will not be a unanimous pick, for various reasons. But it was he who stood out among all others during NASCAR's rise to full-blown national (and even international) acceptance. It was he who, better than any other, bridged the gap from the previous established generation of drivers to the generation now led by Jeff Gordon. He was the point man, the lightning rod.

Petty, in a similar role, brought NASCAR from its regional popularity to the cusp of bigger and better things. Often compared to Arnold Palmer as one who best personified his sport, Petty not only won more races and more championships (until Earnhardt tied him) than anybody else, he won hearts and souls.

Johnson, nicknamed by Tom Wolfe as "the last American hero" in that famous Esquire magazine article, was legendary enough as a driver, but then he went and became one of the most successful team owners in the sport. It was he who fielded the cars for those three consecutive Grand National championship seasons in 1976-77-78, the mark that was broken only last year.

Turner is perhaps the longest shot in my list of five. He was a contemporary of Johnson's and, like Johnson, he never won a championship title in what is now the Cup Series as a driver. He never accumulated numbers in great numbers. But he stood out as a unique character in a very colorful era, with movie-star good looks and antics such as drawing a "lifetime" ban (it was rescinded in 1965) from NASCAR after he tried to organize drivers into a branch of the Teamsters Union in 1960, in exchange for "bailout" financing from Jimmy Hoffa when the endeavor to build Charlotte Motor Speedway proved to be more than he and partner Bruton Smith could handle.

As for Earnhardt and Petty, yes -- their legends would be diminished considerably without their supporting casts. Earnhardt wouldn't have been Earnhardt without Waltrip, Elliott, Gordon and other on-track rivals. Petty not only one-upped his father, the first three-time GN champ, but he achieved his greatness in competition with the likes of Roberts, Pearson, Yarborough and other greats.

As for Johnson and Turner, they might cancel each other out on many ballots because of their similarities as "outlaw" characters. Johnson was the prototypical moonshine runner of stock car racing's origins and Turner was the party-hearty "Pops" who would have seriously tested NASCAR's present-day substance abuse policy with a race-day breathalyzer check.

Plus, my no-brainer pick, Big Bill France, called Turner the greatest driver he ever saw.

I omit three of my personal favorites who, in my own heart, are at the top of all lists -- David Pearson, Bobby Allison and Bud Moore. One or more of them may very well end up on the list to be revealed later today.

I won't mind being wrong on any or all counts.

This is ridiculous...almost

By DAVID GREEN

The late Bill Connell, long-time public address announcer at Charlotte Motor Speedway, could never have been accused of understating anything. In the manner of an old-style carnival barker (or a present-day Dick Vitale), he did his best to make the mundane seem astonishing.

He ignored the notion that close counts only in horseshoes and hand grenades. If a driver ventured into the high line at CMS on a qualifying run, Bill would hype the moment by screeching, "HE'S IN THE WALL..." and then, when there was no crash, he would add, "...almost!!!"

I thought of Bill as I pondered NASCAR's warning to Hendrick Motorsports that the cars of Jimmie Johnson and Mark Martin were being closely scrutinized to make sure they were legal after the Dover and Kansas races.

Martin had won the first race in the Chase for the Cup at New Hampshire and had finished second to Johnson in round two, at Dover. Following the Dover race, the No. 48 and 5 cars were taken to NASCAR's technical center in Charlotte.

The same cars went back to Charlotte a week later, after Tony Stewart won, with Martin seventh and Johnson ninth. By this point, things -- already a little fuzzy to me -- became blurred beyond reason.

Why were the cars taken to Charlotte in the first place? Is NASCAR's post-race procedure at the track inadequate in some way? What exactly do inspectors do to the cars in Charlotte that they cannot do post-race in the inspection site at the track?

Martin's crew chief, Alan Gustafson, revealed that Martin's car has been impounded and taken to Charlotte every time the car has won a race this year. Maybe I haven't been paying close enough attention, but is that now standing operating procedure for NASCAR? Does that happen to every race-winning car?

Did they impound Stewart's No. 14 and take it to Charlotte? If not, why not? If so, did it "almost" violate any rules?

What about the seventh- and ninth-place finishers? Are they routinely stripped and cavity-searched? If not, why were the 5 and the 48 targeted? Is NASCAR profiling?

Regardless, the language used to explain the procedure sounds like something Bill Connell would have appreciated. According to David Scott's lead paragraph in his story of Oct. 2, "Jimmie Johnson and Mark Martin didn't break any rules during their 1-2 finish last week at Dover, Del., but they've been told by NASCAR they nearly did."

Figuratively speaking, they were in the wall...almost.

Let's give NASCAR the benefit of the doubt and suggest that what they're doing here is intended to be kind of like in basketball, where, quiteoften, referees will carry on a dialogue with players, suggesting things like "Watch the hand checking" or "Clean that up" or some similar instruction. It can help keep the game under control without turning it into a free-throw-shooting exhibition.

Unfortunately, NASCAR's actions are not under the radar. It screams for attention -- and it cannot help but raise questions about the legality of the cars that are being closely scrutinized.

In the context of a NASCAR culture in which micromanagement of the most minute rules is resulting in weekly "rap sheets" and fines for the most trivial of offenses, and against the background of a world motor sports culture in which a Formula One team has admitted tampering with the course of a race in order to influence the outcome, the actions of NASCAR officials toward the two Hendrick cars during this championship playoff seems to me a curiously negative thing to do.

Gustafson and Chad Knaus, crew chief of the 48, are smart guys. All NASCAR officials have to do is turn thumbs up or thumbs down. If the tolerances are very, very close, they could, like a good NBA or NCAA referee, remark, "You're right on the line there. Careful."

That's all that would be necessary. If one of the cars should subsequently be found to be in violation of that specification or even an unrelated one, the officials could give the thumbs-down signal. They might add, verbally, "I warned you," but that would be optional.

Without any doubt, NASCAR has been subject to considerable skepticism about its officiating over the years.

Just as clearly, some of the things it is doing nowadays will increase, rather than retard, that skepticism.