Obviously there is nothing else interesting in the NASCAR realm to report, because my NASCAR news alerts blew up my mailbox this week with the Kevin Harvick vs. Carl Edwards “fight”.

While photographers were there to watch the happy couple get into their domestic dispute, this is the only released photo of the incident:

Yeah right! I’m not special enough to have that picture!

To break it down, Harvick was bitter about the Talladega wreck last week and said post race,

“I know that his fans won’t be very proud of him sitting back there riding around like a pansy, If he had been racing all day, maybe he would have known how long the front of his car was.”

Edwards thinks he’s still in high school and started passing nasty notes around to Harvick saying “thank you”  and “I was really trying to screw up everyone’s day. Love, Carl.”

They finally met up in the garage’s this week and tried to scrap it out.

I say we just put them in an octagon and let them go at it. My money is on Carl, I’ve seen what’s under that fire suit! (Not in person, but I can only imagine!) Harvick better run, Carl will have a big yellow shell for dinner! Some of the other guys agree with me too…

“I’m going to go with Carl, with his build. But I still think Harvick is a pretty good scrapper.” Kyle Busch says. Should I be scared that Kyle Busch mentioned Carl’s “build”?

“It would be tough,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. said. “Kevin never backed down from anybody. But you know that Carl is pretty tough. It’d be quite interesting.”

A member of the media asked Harvick if this whole dramatic fiasco was just a ploy to get into Carl Edwards’ head, to which Harvick replied,

“That’s not very hard to do,”

That gives me hope! I would like to be in his….ahem…head!

I think it’s safe to say that it was a good weekend for Tony Stewart and a bad weekend for Regan Smith and Carl Edwards.

Stewart won his first race at Talladega, so there’s lots to drink to because he has come in 2nd place 9 times at that race track. What a way to pop your Talladega cherry!

With all the cars that were taken out of the race, I almost thought that the last lap of the race was going to be a scene out of “Talladega Nights” and Tony Stewart and Regan Smith would jump out of their wrecked cars and run towards the finish line and…well if you’ve seen the movie, I don’t need to go into detail.

I must admit, I totally forgot the rules for passing because I was too busy cheering and throwing things for Stewart to win, so I really thought Regan Smith had it there in the end.

Sports Illustrated explained that if you pass below the yellow line to improve your position it is a pass through penalty, since it was the last lap of the race, they sent Regan Smith’s ending position to the end, which was 18th.

However TheStar.com explains that “NASCAR also says that if a driver is forced – repeat: forced – below the yellow line, and makes a pass, the pass shall stand.”

So…confused. So what are the REAL rules?

Maybe it’s the woman in me, but a big part of me feels bad for Regan Smith, it’s not like he really had anywhere else to go but below the line, he was forced down there, at the same time Stewart was blocking and protecting his position, but that’s racing!

I just didn’t want to sound partial towards Stewart, but seeing that he is my driver, I’m going to sound like it no matter how much I justify it to myself.

On another note, did someone tell Carl Edwards that if you bump draft someone too hard that it’s not like the video games, they will get turned around? Someone needs to take away his game console and stuff it up his bum. (Call me Carl, I’m just the girl for the job!)

I tried to shoot my boyfriend in the head thinking we was going to be like a zombie and rise right back up again because that’s what they do in the video games.

Out of all the people to screw up the bum hole, it had to be his own Roush teammates, Greg Biffle and Matt Kenseth and half of the points contenders for the Sprint Cup and then some including Dale Earnhardt Jr., Travis Kvapil, Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch, Michael Waltrip, Dave Blaney, Juan Pablo Montoya and Reed Sorenson.

Carl Edwards definitely gets the “Here’s Your Sign” award this week along with this quote from him:

“I was worried about the idiots when you come here and I was the guy that caused that one,” he said.

DDDDUUUUUUUHHH!

The top 12 NASCAR “Race for the Chase” contenders presenting David Letterman’s “Top 12″:

Lordy, lordy, lordy. Kyle Busch said “ass” Haha anyways, I found these fun little videos and photos from The Fast and the Fabulous (a wonderful NASCAR blog by Valli) and just had to share for all you ladies out there.

The video above and the photo below was from “Chase Media Day” which shows the top 12 NASCAR Race for the Chase contenders.

I love seeing the NASCAR guys out of their element…and in suits none the less. One, it’s extremely attractive and two, it’s humanizes them, it shows the public that they really are normal human beings. Probably for the same reasons that I love seeing my favorite singers dressed in normal street clothes. It humanizes them and even for a moment, takes away from the “celebrity” factor.

Which is probably why I’m so into this photo:

Although, speaking from a degrading woman’s standpoint, I think Tony Stewart could clean up a lot better. I’d love to see him wearing something like what Denny Hamlin is wearing. Just a personal reflection.

When it comes to favorite drivers, if I had to choose between Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards, I would choose Carl Edwards. If I wanted to sound juvenile, and someone asked me to put my favorite NASCAR drivers in favoritism order….it would be Tony Stewart, Carl Edwards, then Kyle Busch. And let me also say that my favoritism list does not go in the order of which NASCAR driver I would sleep with first, that’s a completely other list.

Now that I’m done being juvenile…how bout that Bristol race?

I personally did not watch the entire thing. My little cousin wanted me to take her to a Jonas Brothers concert. Yeah, I said Jonas Brothers. I did however, wear a old school Dale Jr. #8 Budweiser hat to the race because I didn’t feel like doing my hair, and I guarantee you…I was the only one wearing NASCAR gear in that sold our arena of screaming little girls.

By the time I got in my car to leave the concert, I turned on my Sirius Satellite Radio and the screen rolled across the top 5 finishers. Ugh!

Luckily for me, they played it again today…you know, for all the NASCAR fans that went to the Jonas Brothers concert, since I know there’s a lot of you out there!

So the recap for you Jonas Brothers fans (I hope you all know at this point, I’m totally joking!) Busch lead 415 consecutive lapsBristol Motor Speedway, the first laps were the first moments of the what is now Busch vs. Edwards rivalry as they were already bumping and pushing along the way. Then at the end, the same situation happened and Edwards got away with the win. After Edwards’ victory, he started to do his cool down lap and who comes out of nowhere and bumps his car…you guessed it…diaper baby Busch.

“It’s one of those deals where I couldn’t get by him, I couldn’t get by him, and I just had to ask myself, ‘Would he do that to me?’ ” Edwards said after doing his trademark backflip off the car in Victory Lane. “And he has before, so that’s the way it goes.”

I agree with Edwards, if Kyle Busch had the opportunity, he would have probably wrecked someone else for the win, plus someone needs to tell diaper baby Busch that it’s called RACING. I havn’t watched NASCAR long, but what I have seen from the old school style of racing…I like the rough and tumble style of racing, the type of racing that Edwards and Busch did Saturday night. It’s the type of entertainment NASCAR needs these days to keep people interested.

Denny Hamlin is the same way as Kyle Busch, when things do not turn out the way they want it to, their interviews end up being negative, like a “Oh we got second place, we should have got first…”

For the sake of sounding valley girl, LIKE OMG! YOU WON SECOND, YOU ARE A FRIGGIN’ MILLIONARE what’s the problem? Not to mention, the negativeness of a second place finish must lift the spirits of the crew members and the people that bust their butt for you and you are whining about a second place finish.

Watch Carl Edwards when he does interviews with media, if he’s wearing sunglasses, he does the respectful thing and pulls them up on his head when he talks to them. I’m a woman, and body language like that is very commendable.

Maybe it’s just my demeanor of being happy for what I have in life, and maybe that principal does not apply to NASCAR, but it just proves my point that I am a fan of Kyle Busch when he is in a race car, once he gets out of the race car and starts talking…he’s the douche bag I loved to hate last season.

Looks like Tony Stewart had a point when he publicly degraded Goodyear about their tires back in April.

The word of the week for the Indianapolis race was…TIRES!

The durability of the Goodyear tires did not last long against the abrasiveness of the track and the new Car of Today (aka Car of Tomorrow) which called for a very interesting and circus-like event.

In 2005, AP explains that F1 and Michelin learned this lesson, “when three-fourths of the field refused to compete in the United States Grand Prix because of tire concerns. Indy took a hit, the race never recovered and F1 isn’t currently racing in this country.”

“The difference between NASCAR and Formula One is Formula One thinks of it as a business — they don’t think about the fans, they don’t think about the show, here they do. NASCAR will do whatever is possible to put the show on in the best way possible.” said Juan Pablo Montoya, former F1 driver turned NASCAR driver.

There were caution flags every 10-12 laps for the safety of the drivers. 52 of the 160 laps were run under caution. The longest green flag run was 13 laps. Even Goodyear had an emergency shipment of tires that were reserved for Pocono sent to Indianapolis Motor Speedway in case teams ran out of tires.

After all the tire dust was cleared…literally, Jimmie Johnson was victorious against close heat from Carl Edwards and Denny Hamlin.

And there’s nothing more delicious than kissing rubber covered bricks and then kissing your significant other, but if my man just won me a hefty paycheck, I’d kiss the butt of a horse!

“Every lap. Every lap I was concerned about it,” Johnson said. “Every corner, for that matter. You could almost feel the tire life being taken out of it, if you leaned too hard.”

Other drivers were also not happy with the tire debacle:

“It’s embarrassing and it’s disappointing. I’ve never seen anything like this,” four-time Indianapolis winner Jeff Gordon said.

“Didn’t see much of a race,” Matt Kenseth said. Yeah you didn’t Matt because your tire blew up the entire back half of your car. If Sunday’s race was supposedly no one’s fault, someone better tattoo this statement to the back of his non-existent back window.

“It’s just unacceptable at this level,” Brian Vickers said.

“Ridiculous” was the word out of Ryan Newman’s mouth.

Don’t worry boys…we still love you!

I’m sure worse could be said from the drivers about the race, but if they want their cars to pass inspection their lips are probably glued. Even Tony Stewart was surprisingly calm about his comments on the whole situation, what kind of peyote was he smoking? And why doesn’t he share?

So is it NASCAR’s fault or Goodyears fault? After all, Goodyear is the only provider of tires for NASCAR (through 2012 none the less) and NASCAR should have possibly taken a more pro-active role in the situation.

If Goodyear made parachutes and I jumped out of a plane with one of their parachutes, I’d be dead. So to completely blow off the fiasco and pen it as water under the bridge would be complete anarchy.

In April, Goodyear tested tires with three drivers: Dale Earnhardt Jr., Brian Vickers and Kurt Busch but the Car of Tomorrow had never raced at Indy and the weight stability shifted more toward the right side of the car with less down force.

“It’s just the package. Something’s different about the package, and we kind of need to understand that.” Greg Stucker, director of race tire sales for Goodyear said.

Um so why wasn’t this understood back in oh, I don’t know…APRIL!

When it really comes down to it though, I say sh*t happens and Sunday’s race was no exception. If I had to choose between watching a boring 400 mile race or watching monkeys scramble around like chickens with their heads cut off, then I’d vote for the monkeys and chickens….they were probably luckier than that bird that ended up flying under and out of Jeff Burton’s car on one of the re-starts.

NASCAR did end up apologizing for the circus that was the Indianapolis race and are working on a solution to the problem to avoid history from repeating itself.

If anything good came out of this race, I didn’t have to take a shot of liquor every time they mentioned Kyle Busch…and I stayed sober.

Your news snippets from the NASCAR world from yours truly, the Race Kitten.

With only eight races to go before the chase is officially underway, Kyle Busch is in the lead points standings with 6 wins this season. If there were twelve Kyle Busch’s, he’d probably be in all top twelve spots.

 At last weekend’s race, Martin Truex Jr. got dicked…I mean docked 150 driver and 150 owner points for bringing an illegal car to Daytona. Truex’s car failed an initial inspection at Daytona when its roof did not conform to the approved template. This most likely ruined any chances for him to make the chase, putting him 18th in the standings.

In other Dale Earnhardt Inc. happenings, Aric Armorola signed with DEI to drive the #8 car full-time while Mark Martin will drive for Hendrick Motorsports. Didn’t Mark Martin say he was going to retire in 1995? “It’s hard to step away from it,” he says.

Tony Stewart will end his contract with Joe Gibbs racing a year early. He will announce at the end of this week what his future plans entail. Maybe world domination?

 This weekend’s Nationwide and Sprint Cup Races at Chicago Land Speedway will be the first nighttime race of the season with their new lights installed. This is the 10th track on the NASCAR schedule with the ability to host night races. Get your nighttime JLo sunglasses on!

 At this weekends Chicago Land race, Carl Edwards will showcase a special paint scheme of at least 8,000 Office Depot associates signatures from around the world.  “I’m excited to have so many Office Depot associates represented on the race car in such a creative and personal way,” said Edwards. I’m sure those signatures will be just as readable as the 70,000 fan signatures that Dale Jr. will try and squeeze on his car for the Talladega race.

Former NASCAR driver, Hermie Sadler signed a contract to commentate for TNA (Total Non-stop Action) Wrestling. “I am a longtime pro wrestling fan and a true supporter of TNA Wrestling; I really believe in the product. It has been a lot of fun, truly an enjoyable experience working with the superstars of TNA Wrestling,” he says. How about he just commentates the “Kyle Busch vs. Whomever Kyle Busch Pisses Off That Week” matches every week?

 Denny Hamlin says he and is team is just not performing up to potential. “It’s kind of the place where I thought we would be or maybe a little bit worse than where we’d be. We’re in the Top 10 in points, which is important for us. Right now we’ve just got to try to get a little bit more secure.” “I think we have a C-plus,” he said. “A lot of guys would love to be where we’re at right now, but I feel as a team I expect a little bit more from myself and from the team. They’re doing everything they can. If you throw luck and everything in it we get a C-plus. Based on performance I feel like we’re a B-plus or so.”

Way to boost the confidence of your team Denny! Maybe you should ask Dario Franchitti how he feels about it?

 

“Not to take anything away from (Joe Gibbs Racing), but a monkey could win in that car.” - Clint Bowyer, reacting to Denny Hamlin’s win in the Nationwide race.

Bitter much Clint?

 Chip Ganassi wants a “Chase or Bust” from driver Juan Pablo Montoya.

Maybe that monkey that Clint Bowyer was talking about could drive for Montoya?

 

Jimmie Johnson is leaning towards McCain for President. “I have to think McCain. I think our core fan base being strong Republicans like they are, that’s going to be the first choice. I also think his credits in history and what he’s done for our country, certainly for our country, a lot of those things will be fully noticed by our fan base,” said Johnson at a reception before addressing the National Press Club. “My wife and I have an apartment in New York City, and there are plenty of Democrats running around the city who are junkies for NASCAR. It’s a big sport, it really is.”

Ironically enough, Barack Obama is suddenly interested in NASCAR and will supposedly be campaigning at a future event because that’s where the “white working-class votes are.”

In the words of Austin Powers…”Riiiiiiiiiiiiight“

Let’s try to sift through the mess that is contract extensions, driver swaps and musical cars….

 

Confirmed Driver Status’

 

Greg Biffle¹ has confirmed he has re-signed a 3 year contract extension with Roush Fenway Racing. “Certainly I’m very excited to announce that we’ve done a multiyear extension with Roush Fenway,” said Biffle. “3M has stepped up, they had a multiyear deal to start with, but they came and re-upped, so to speak, recommitted to being on the car for those races. It was a long process, I weighed, certainly, all of my options out and it felt like the 16 car is where I really wanted to spend my next three years driving. A lot of things went into making a decision on where I was going to be. One was Ford’s commitment to the racing program and supporting us technologically … ” his teammate, Carl Edwards has re-signed until 2011.

Elliot Sadler has signed with Gillette-Evernham Motorsports until 2010.

 

Petty Enterprises has signed Bobby Labonte through 2012.

 

Casey Mears announced and confirmed he will leave Hendrick Motorsports at the end of the 2008 season.

 

Aric Almirola will drive the No. 8 Chevrolet for Dale Earnhardt Inc. full-time next season.

 

“I’ve signed up with R.C.R. [Richard Childress Racing] for three more years,” Clint Bowyer said Friday at New Hampshire International Speedway. “You’ve got to live up to what you did last time, and there is a little bit more pressure,” he said. “But it is what it is.”

 

On that same note, Richard Childress Racing has added a fourth Sprint Cup car to the team, but it is yet unconfirmed who will drive the machine.

 

 

Unconfirmed Driver Status’

 

Reed Sorenson driver for Chip Ganassi Racing which will leave the #41 car open for a driver. Sorenson is mulling a contract extension, but nothing is currently set in stone, “I expect everything will be worked out in the next week or two,” he says. Sorenson is not the only suffering team as Juan Pablo Montoya and Sorenson have already changed crew chiefs this season, the third driver Dario Franchitti has also had his share of trials and tribulations. “I’m not happy running where we’ve been at and, hopefully, everybody else here isn’t either. As a driver I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished a lot of what I want to do. I want to win races and contend for championships.” Sorensen says. “I still love racing. I feel honored to be here and lucky to do this as a living. Most of the people in this garage are huge competitors and when you’re not challenging for a good finish, it definitely wears on you. I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot, but I feel now it’s time we accomplished some things at this level.”

 

Martin Truex Jr. could possibly leave DEI to replace Ryan Newman at Penske racing. Ryan Newman could go to the Haas CNC team that Tony Stewart will possibly run in which Newman could be a co-owner and driver.

 

It is rumored that Mark Martin is leaving DEI driving for HMS for Casey Mears’ former #5 car so Aric Armoriola can race the #8 car full-time. The Mark Martin move makes sense to some fans due to his experience with driving some NNS races for the team.

 

In the same turn, there was also the rumored route that Mark Martin will leave DEI and drive for HMS (Casey Mears former #5 car) part-time with Brad Keselowski so they can slowly wean Keselowski in the Sprint Cup. Some find it hard to grasp Martin driving full-time because he enjoys doing part time.

 

Another rumored possibility is that Casey Mears is going to Richard Childress Racing to fill in the fourth car that was reported to be made for Sprint Cup racing. Some find it hard to see Mears fitting in with Burton and Harvick though. Other opening for Mears could include DEI where Truex Jr. left off or Ganassi where Sorenson left off. His competition for any of these possibilities could come from Scott Wimmer, David Stremme or Reed Sorenson. Confused yet?

 

 

Most of the rumored speculations are revolved around Tony Stewart² ending his contract with JGR early, (Chevrolet wants to help buy Tony out of his contract with JGR) to join Haas CNC racing with 50% ownership. Mind you, he is looking for ownership somewhere so the possibility is not out of the realm. The other unconfirmed possibility is Tony Stewart ending his contract one year early to go to Hendrick Motorsports. The big question is though, would NASCAR really allow the powerhouse that is Gordon, Johnson and Earnhardt Jr. becomes an even bigger powerhouse with Stewart in the mix? It would become a monopoly, like Microsoft is to the technical world.

 

If Tony leaves JGR, the next rumored possibility is that young racing phenomenon, Joey Logano will take his place and will take his sponsor (Home Depot) to which Home Depot will be offered a cheaper deal with Logano then what they had with Stewart.

 

There’s no denying that Stewart is looking for a position where he is owning a race team/cars. Stewart has not confirmed any speculations. I do predict that an announcement in regards to Tony’s decision will come sooner than later with the situation of Casey Mears leaving HMS and the speculations and rumors flying rapid more than ever around what Tony will do.

 

It is a tossup as to what will really happen, It will unquestionably be fascinating to see how the soap opera part of NASCAR plays out. Hopefully the soap opera realm of this NASCAR story will not trickle over and effect the performance and driving statistics of these driver’s playing the “musical cars” game.

1. Photo from AP, Modified by Kitten [↩]
2. Photo by Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR, Modified by Kitten [↩]