Some Richmond weekend miscellenia:
*** Two stories out of the Richmond weekend warrant comment. First is the story that two of Michael Waltrip's sponsors may want out of his team, and right now. That this would be the case is hardly surprising since one had to question the sanity of these sponsors sticking with Michael Waltrip to begin with.
The other story is that the inspection process for the Car Of Tomorrow "is a joke." Given the wholesale failure of the project in every other angle, why would inspections be different? It also raises questions about who's really legal out there with these things. Of course Robin Pemberton was out there with the spin that "everyone is doing a good job." Yeah, they suddenly decided to stop trying to cheat the inspection rules.
Then there is a potential bidding war for race teams with Chevy factory contracts expiring after 2007. While it is doubtful Hendrick, RCR, and Gibbs will do anything beyond signing new deals with Chevy, it adds more to the DEI/Yates soap opera.
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Has the sport seen this level of domination since Carl Kiekhafer's mid-1950s rampage through the Grand National series? To date only three races - Daytona, Fontana, and Texas - have been won by teams other than Hendrick Motorsports, and there seems little realistic prospect of change this season. While Kevin Harvick's strong run bodes well for the RCR fleet, the Richmond 400 was notable for how minor the threat to a Hendrick sweep really was.
The Car Of Tomorrow races have been a Hendrick monopoly, and while this Richmond race saw some good dicing up front, by no stretch can the COT earn any praise for that, with team after team fighting push once again.
It all added up to another Hendrick weekend.
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