September 2006 Archives

It looks like Kevin Harvick has lost his patience with Burney Lamar.
After starting the season so promising with a second-place finish at Daytona, Lamar is out of the No. 77 Busch Series car for KHI and Bobby Lanbonte will be in it for the remaining Cup and Busch Series companion races.
"KHI and Dollar General had high expectations for the No. 77 when the season started," said Kevin Harvick, co-owner and CEO of Kevin Harvick Inc. "Both Dollar General and KHI have been very patient throughout the season. This is a performance-based business and unfortunately we have not seen the level of improvement or the results we had hoped for."
Harvick said Lamar will be back in the No. 77 car for the Busch Series race at Memphis Motorsports Park on Oct. 28. Labonte will be in the car for the other five remaing Busch Series races starting Saturday at Kansas Speedway.
"In an effort to evaluate the performance of the No. 77 team and get a jump start on the 2007 season, a change had to be made. We felt like we received good direction and feedback when Jeff Burton stepped behind the wheel of the 77 at New Hampshire in July," Harvick said. "We look forward to learning even more with Bobby over the remainder of the year, to continue building a solid foundation and make this team stronger."

David Stremme, a driver for Chip Ganassi Racing, was part of the Goodyear tire test at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama. He will have a new teammate next year, Juan Pablo Montoya, a former Indy 500 winner, CART champion and Formula One driver from Columbia who will be moving over to NASCAR.
Stremme said his team will be using some of the information to prepare Montoya for his ARCA race at Talladega in October.
"I know they are talking within the company of Juan Pablo making his ARCA start here and trying to get some speedway experience and other stuff," Stremme said. "So we are gathering data for that along with the Cup team. But there is not a lot of data to grab, it’s pretty smooth."
Stremme's reference to Montoya sparked the interest of Ryan Newman, who was also taking part in the test for his team, Penske Racing South.
“Is his name Juan Pablo, or Juan?� Newman asked Stremme.
“He told me Juan Montoya," Stremme said. "Somebody called him Juan Pablo, so . . . “
“I don’t want to aggravate him at the first race in Daytona and start calling him JP," Newman said.

NASCAR and Goodyear made a conscious decision to exclude the Cup drivers in the Chase from testing the new surface at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama on Tuesday and Wednesday. Six drivers were able to test their tires at Talladega. They were David Gilliland, Brian Vickers, Martin Truex Jr., David Stremme, Ryan Newman and Travis Kvapil.
The sentiment among the drivers who did test was that the Chase drivers don't have much to gain from being included.
“You’d have to let them all come test, or not," said Gilliland, driver of the No. 38 Ford for Robert Yates Racing. "I feel like they made the right decision. None of us are in the Chase, and you can’t let one or two of them and not the rest. So I think they did is what is most fair."
Vickers agreed.
"I don’t think Chase guys should be testing during the Chase," said Vickers, driver of the No. 25 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports. "I think it is an unfair advantage unless you take all 10 of them, so I think it worked out great.�
Truex said the drivers in the Chase are there for a reason and it wouldn't matter if they were allowed to test at Talladega.
"The guys that are in the Chase are there because they run good every week," said Truex, driver of the No. 1 Chevrolet for Dale Earnhardt Inc. "They are going to bring cars here that are proven from past races with them. So if a few of them came, I don’t think it would change anything. They are all going to come here and run well like they do every time.�
Vickers has three teammates in the Chase: Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch and Jimmie Johnson. Truex has one teammate in the Chase: Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Six drivers will be taking part in a tire test for Goodyear at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama on Wednesday. None of the drivers are in the Chase. Talladega was resurfaced and the test is being done to try out the tires on the new track.
The drivers taking part in the test are: Martin Truex, Jr., Ryan Newman, Brian Vickers, Travis Kvapil, David Gilliland and David Stremme.
Truex is a teammate of Dale Earnhardt Jr. at Dale Earnhardt Inc. Vickers is a teammate of Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch and Jimmie Johnson at Hendrick Motorsports. Earnhardt Jr., Gordon, Busch and Johnson are all drivers in the Chase.
Talladega will host the fourth race of the Chase on Oct. 8.

Jeff Gordon made the biggest jump in the Chase standings, going from ninth place to fourth.
For Sunday's race at Dover International Speedway in Delaware, Gordon's team is bringing a new chassis to the track.
“This car has been ready for months, we were just saving it for the Chase,� Gordon's crew chief Steve Letarte said. “It’s a ‘sister’ to the car we won with at Chicago with a similar aero package – a package that has been successful for us this year.�
Gordon has four wins in 27 starts at Dover in his career. He is also the active leader in laps led at Dover with 2,197.
But his past three races at Dover have produced mediocre results. He hasn't finished in the top 10 in his past three races, including a 12th-place finish in June.
His latest win at Dover came in 2001, when he led 381 of 400 laps.
“We’d love to have another day like that,� Gordon said. “But I don’t mind leading only one lap – if it’s the last one.�

The way Kaey Kahne was talking after the race at New Hampshire International Raceway, he wasn't satisfied with moving up two places, from 10th to eighth, in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Chase for the Championship standings.
He said he had a top-10 car and could have made up some more ground on series leader, Kevin Harvick.
“We didn't qualify that well, but we worked our way into the top 10 in the first half of the race," said Kahne, driver for Evernham Motorsports and the only Dodge driver in the Chase. "Then, we had a tire going down and had to make an unscheduled pit stop under green. That put us two laps down, but we overcame that, got those laps back and we were running in the top 10 with 50 laps to go. On the last pit stop, we got blocked in and had to back up, so that cost us a couple of spots in track position. I still thought we could get a top 10, but the car was just too tight at the end and we couldn’t go anywhere.�

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is coming off a 13th-place finish at New Hampshire International Raceway, the first race in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series Chase for the Championship. He is seventh in points, 81 behind Kevin Harvick of Richard Childress Racing for the lead.
“We’re fine. It’s still early in the Chase, and anyone who’s already counting out Jimmie (Johnson) and Kyle (Busch) is a little foolish. Everybody is so quick to want to cross people off the list, but you can’t do that," Earnhardt Jr. said. "There are a lot of points to be distributed in nine races. I was frustrated (Sunday after the New Hampshire race) about finishing 13th when I knew we were so much better. I was disappointed, but let me tell you, if that’s our one bad race, then we’ll contending for the championship. I’ve got a great team, and I have a lot of confidence in them. They want to win this championship as bad as I do.�
The drivers behind Earnhardt Jr. are Kasey Kahne, who moved up to eighth, Johnson, who led the Cup standings for most of the season, and Busch in 10th, 146 points out of first.
Next up is Dover International Speedway in Delaware. One of Earnhardt Jr.'s 17 career wins has come at Dover. He won the fall race there in 2001.
His most recent Dover race in June, he started 11th, led one lap and finished 10th.
“We’ve been hit-or-miss at Dover – sometimes we’re great, sometimes we’re not," Earnhardt Jr. said. "But we’ve won there, so there’s always confidence we can do it again. I’m looking forward to going back with Tony (crew chief Eury) Jr. and seeing how much better we can be. We qualified fourth and were strong there last year, but a loose wheel at the beginning of the race ruined our chances to win. We had to make a green-flag pit stop, lost a couple laps, and that was all she wrote. But the car was good, so I know we’ve got good notes to go off of. If we can keep the car turning, we’ll be fast. We’ll be good.�

Tony Stewart crashed his primary car in practice Friday for the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series race at Richmond International Raceway. And it may be a good omen for a couple of reasons.
Stewart will have to use his back-up car in race for only the third time in nearly four years.
The first time Stewart had to use his back-up car in a race, he won at Chiacagoland Speedway in 2004. The next time it happened, a year later in Chicagoland Speedway, he finished fifth.
The crash on Friday will force Stewart into a car that has only three starts. But the car has three very good starts.
In the spring race at Martinsville Speedway in Virginia, the car started third and won the race, leading five times for a race-high 288 laps.
In its only other start, the car started 25th and finished seventh at at Richmond in the fall 2005 race.

The FanZone took up a lot of parking spaces that used to be available at the race track. Before the race, Gillian Zucker, the president of the California Speedway, said she saw a man putting up a handwritten sign that read "Wolfgang Puck stole my parking." Wolfgang Puck opened a new restaurant in the FanZone called Apex last weekend.
Zucker said she approached the man and offered to take him to lunch at Apex. Afterward, the man went back to his sign and took it down.
"That says a lot about how much fans appreciate what an incredible offering this is," Zucker said.
Zucker has been around NASCAR tracks for a number of years. In that time she has learned that International Speedway Corporation, which owns California Speedway and a number of other tracks across the country, has a stroller policy. No strollers are allowed in the track grandstands. It's never been a tough policy to enforce because Zucker said she never saw a stroller at a race track, until Sunday.
She said she saw a significant number of strollers at the race track and it made her reconsider the track's stroller policy.
Strollers are still not permitted in the grandstands, but they will be allowed in the FanZone.

In his post-race news conference, Dale Earnhardt Jr. said Turns 1 and 2 at California Speedway were like parking lots. It might have been Junior's best career finish at California Speedway -- he finished second in Sunday's race -- but he was not a fan of the traffic that built up in the first two turns of the race track.
Gillian Zucker was asked is she plans on making any alterations to the track.
She said she talked to Dale Jr. about the layout of the track. She has also talked to NASCAR officials and team owners about their views on California Speedway. She has visited three tracks this year to see how they have modified their layouts.
But for the time being, Zucker said she is not going to make any changes to the track.
"If we were to find something that we think would create a difference here, I think we will explore it," Zucker said. "What I do know is I am not going to make changes to a 10-year-old race track especially after the kind of race we had (Sunday night) unless we know that it will make California Speedway the most competitive NASCAR track in the nation."

Gillian Zucker, the president of California Speedway, said the FanZone was a big reason the NASCAR races drew such large numbers in attendance. It wasn't quite sell-out crowds, but estimations were between 95,000 and 102,000 for Sunday's race.
Of the things Zucker said fans liked most about the FanZone were:
1. The quality of entertainment provided.
Of course the time I spent in the FanZone, I saw two jugglers dressed like Uncle Sam on stilts and a band I never heard of playing songs I didn't know.
2. The restaurants.
I didn't spend enough time in the FanZone to eat at any of the restaurants and as previously stated, it would have taken me an hour just to get a table at Apex, the new Wolfgang Puck restaurant.
3. The shade structures, which Zucker described as incredibly welcome.
And by my account, either incredibly well-hidden on incredibly small. I am still not sure where any of them are.
4. The lawn areas were "very, very popular" Zucker said.
And very, very tiny. Although I did see plenty of room for people to sit and listen to the band no one ever heard of. And there was an incredibly large television broadcasting the band playing. I have to say I was very impressed by the size of the television. But then again, it's hard to find much wrong with big-screen TVs.
5. The highlight was the sea lions.
Not seals as previously mentioned in another entry. Highlight or not, I still feel sorry for the sea lions that had to withstand 110 degree temperatures and being surrounded by NASCAR fans.
Zucker said she heard some complaints as well. Some fans said they were not able to access the merchandise trailers early enough.
"We'll look at opening the gates earlier next year," Zucker said. "And also looking at offering a free opportunity for people who don't have race tickets" to enter the FanZone to buy merchandise.
I saw a few more problems in the FanZone, but Zucker had a different perspective.
"Very few hiccups, if any," she said.

My oldest son has decided he wants to be a Jimmie Johnson fan. He was a Tony Stewart fan, but for some reason he has decided to change allegiances.
He has a No. 20 Tony Stewart car. Now he wants a No. 48 Jimmie Johnson car. Like any good father, I promised I would get him one. Little did I know that it would lead me on an adventure that would rival any Indiana Jones pursuit.
After walking through the new FanZone at California Speedway, it made me wish he was still a Tony Stewart fan.
If I had to use two words to describe the new FanZone they would be: hot and crowded.
Word was that the wait for a table at Apex, the new Wolfgang Puck restaurant in the FanZone, was an hour. Guess that's good from a business standpoint, but not so good from the fan standpoint.
Honestly, if Apex was serving sawdust, people would have waited an hour for a seat just to get out of the sun.
The two things the FanZone desperately needs are trees and ash trays.
There were a few fledgling palm trees planted throughout the FanZone, but they will never be big enough to give enough shade for the smallest NASCAR fan.
Speaking of the smallest NASCAR fan, he smokes. Every NASCAR fan smokes. The FanZone may be the last place in California where smoking is not only permitted, but encouraged. Ash trays would have at least provided a place for the smokers to put their cigarette butts.
And whoever thought it was a good idea to have seals in the FanZone should be fined and flogged by animal control. It was hot enough walking around the FanZone in T-shirt and jeans. I can't imagine having a thee-inch layer of blubber on top of that. I can come close to imagining, but I have lost a lot of weight over the past couple of years and my blubber layer has shrunk considerably.
Talk about animal cruelty. These poor seals were forced to have their picture taken with race fans for $15 apiece, to get prodded by race fans for $20, then get a chance to relax in a plastic foam pool that looked more like a portable Jacuzzi than anything else.
It was enough having to walk around a bunch of smelly, sweaty, smoking race fans. But then to have to see and smell a couple overheated seals was a little too much.
I did finally make it to the Jimmie Johnson trailer to buy my son his new race car. They had to have been the longest lines of any of the trailers in the FanZone. Makes me wish even more than my son had stayed a Tony Stewart fan. Perhaps I can change his mind before the next race in February.
At least by then it will be cooler and not so unbearable.

There are few places I would rather be than at a race track. But when I usually go to a race track, I end up in the media center.
This being the opening weekend of college football, we were watching a lot of football games on TV while waiting for NASCAR drivers to qualify and race at California Speedway.
Needless to say, being in a roomful of people from the South, it was not a pleasant environment.
The Pac-10 football teams made it very difficult to enjoy the company of my fellow journalists, especially those who call Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia home.
Tennessee thumped Cal. Auburn rolled over Washington State. It took USC nearly two quarters to score a touchdown against Arkansas. ARKANSAS!
The only argument I could make was that Oregon looked good Saturday only to be reminded that it was against Stanford.
At least by the end of the afternoon we all agreed it would be good for every team in the country if Georgia Tech beat Notre Dame. That is every team but Notre Dame.
Luckily the Busch Series race began before the Georgia Tech-Notre Dame could end and I didn't have to listen to the insufferable Georgia Tech fans who double as NASCAR writers and broadcasters.
Thanks Pac-10 for showing up Saturday.

Clay Andrews has a soft spot in his heart for the little guy. He has created a way that might eventually give the little guys of NASCAR a chance to compete with the mega-teams.
Clay Andrews Racing, the team that had David Gilliland as its driver when it won the NASCAR Busch Series race at Kentucky Speedway in June, announced the formation of an alliance that will give young and aspiring drivers and teams access to the resources to compete at the top levels of NASCAR.
Andrews, who founded Clay Andrews Racing and Corona-based Hype Manufacturing, said by creating the Clay Andrews Racing Alliance Partners, single-car and low-budget teams will have the opportunity to compete against the likes of Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr.
“I created this because I love the sport,� Andrew said. “I’ve talked to independent teams and owners and came up with a concept to compete. I am giving opportunities to young drivers that would have never had the chance. We are constantly looking for young talent because I know it’s their dream to race a Cup car.�
Key Motorsports, which runs a NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series team with Ryan Moore as driver, joined the alliance. Rich Rubenstein, the vice president of operations for Key Motorsports, said joining the alliance is what his team needs to make it to the next level.
“We’ll give opportunities to other Ryan Moores and bring development drivers through our program to give them the technology and support to become better drivers and compete with the big names in racing,� Rubenstein said.

NASCAR driver Robby Gordon and Robert Yates Racing have been in discussions regarding a merger for several weeks. Gordon said Friday that the merger consisted of his buying Robert Yates Racing and making it a three-car team next year.
"We had funding and sponsorship in place for the 88 car," Gordon said. "We have our car funded for the 7 car. I wanted to buy half of his two cars. That was the deal that was proposed. So whatever you want to hear on the other side of the street, the deal was I wasn't going to do it unless I could own half of those two cars."
In what can best be described as on-again, off-again discussions, Gordon and RYR have a developing relationship. For the moment talks are off. But if Gordon has a good run at California Speedway, talks may spark up again.
Gordon is running his own one-car team in the Nextel Cup Series. He gets his engines from Dale Earnhardt Inc, which uses Chevrolets. RYR is a Ford-powered team and that may present a problem with the potential merger.
"The only thing I can say is that I've had a great relationship with Chevrolet," Gordon said. "Obviously I've had past relationships with Ford. If you were to look at the teams out there, Chevrolet has done a great job. They have the best teams in the sport. When you are racing Chevrolets, you are up against Hendrick, DEI, RCR and Gibbs. Heck, you look at those cars and half those cars are in the top-20 positions egvery Sunday. They have done a really good job building their teams.
"I can say, from a business side of things, right now I'm parking right between the two Robert Yates cars over here. So it is very easy for us to say, with a little bit of luck, if we improve as much in 2007 as we did in 2006, I could become the second Ford team pretty easy. For me to become the second Chevrolet team, we have a lot of work to do."
Roush Racing and Robert Yates Racing are the top two Ford teams in the Cup Series.

Mark Martin was asked if he thinks his team owner Jack Roush feels guilty about not winning a championship together. Martin has been runnuer-up four times. But if Martin can be in the top 10 in points after the race at Richmond International Raceway, and be part of the Chase, he will get another chance to win a Cup championship.
This might be Martin's last chance. He is expected to stop racing full time on the Nextel Cup Series after this season. Then again, 2005 was supposed to be his last year in the Cup Series.
Martin said one of the reasons Roush doesn't want to see him go is because then Roush would have to admit he's getting old.
"I think Jack wants to hang on to what we have because we had it for so long and that holding onto it means that we're not getting old," Martin said. "That might be part of it too. I don't know. Jack's a great guy. He's a friend for life and it means a lot for him to be in here fighting to keep me in rather than pushing me out."

I made the comparison that Kyle Busch, the sophomore driver of the No. 5 Chevy for Hendrick Motorsports, is like Robinson Cano, the second-year second baseman for the New York Yankees. Mainly the comparison was that Busch is a relatively inexperienced driver for a team that has proven winners and a championship history.
But Busch was asked if he sees himself more as a Jay Cutler, the rookie quarterback for the Denver Broncos.
"Oh yeah, definitely," Busch said. "He came in there and played well. He was playing very maturely and doing a bunch of things right, not making any mistakes."
Busch added that he sees similarities in that he and Cutler are young and talented.
"He threw an interception, but you're going to have that every now and then, especially being as young as he is. He's not even into his first year yet; he's still in the pre-season. So I think that there are a lot of traits there with me."