New Hampshire Qualifying - Blaney Bellows, Dodge Dips

The 2007 New England 300 begins the post-Montoya-breakthrough era of Winston Cup and Montoya celebrated with a strong fifth-place qualifying effort; it was a pretty good day for Ganassi/SABCO as well as Reed Sorenson timed third. That, though, wasn't the news item of Friday, as Dave Blaney bagged the pole, his first since the 2003 Carolina 400 at Rockingham and the first for Bill Davis Racing since Burton won the pole at the 2002 Richmond 400 (and eighth overall).

That Bill Davis Racing bagged the pole is an interesting irony, as it was five years ago in this race that BDR last won at the Winston Cup level; Ward Burton survived a multitude of problems up and down the field for the win, and also noteworthy was a superb effort by his teammate of that season, Hut Stricklin, who ran in the top eight all day. The other irony is that Ward Burton, forgotten but not gone from Winston Cup, made the race for Morgan-McClure Motorsports, a surprise given the team's competitive hopelessness.

Kurt Busch, a former NHIS winner like Burton, timed second as part of a radically uneven Dodge performance in qualifying. Busch matched his car number with second; his Penske teammate Ryan Newman also did that trick by timing 12th. Ganassi/SABCO rounded out its fleet as David Stremme timed 24th, while Ray Evernham's fleet slotted Elliott Sadler into 23rd. From there, however, the Dodge boys were dismal in qualifying - Kasey Kahne timed 29th and Scott Riggs missed another race for Evernham; Bobby Labonte's hoped-for momentum from Sears Point didn't show up as he timed 32nd and teammate John Andretti, who's run extremely well here with some frequency over the years, was a dismal 40th.

John W. Henry and company displayed Carl Edwards' Ford at Fenway Park before the Red Sox-Rangers game (won 2-1 by the Sox) but that didn't translate into much in qualifying - Edwards timed 22nd, one of just three Fords (Robby Gordon at 16th and David Gilliland at 27th were the others) in the top-thirty. Half of the field's bottom-12 were Fords, including former winner Ricky Rudd at 42nd.

Toyota, however, had it worst of all even with Blaney's pole. The CIFL seized the woebegone and bankrupt Springfield Stallions after they forfeited a scheduled road trip to the Marion Mayhem in Ohio; Toyota may want to do the same with Michael Waltrip's organization as Mikey and Dale Jarrett went home, joining both Red Bull Toyotas - Brian Vickers actually made the race but got busted with a too-low left-front corner and thus went home.

This leaves the Chevrolets, and the top two Chevys of Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson of course made the top-10, while Dale Junior and Martin Truex timed well for DEI.

Some More Truth About Iraq

I've updated and thus reposted this particular post several times as interesting new articles come along that are worth adding on. There is yet another superb piece worth adding, as you will see at the end of this post -

There is a reactionary myopia about Iraq and it gets examined here. It's worth examining because reactionary myopia is used to justify opposing cleaning up the Middle East for real - "we've made the violence worse," is the standard line, never mind that it was worse then than it is now, and there is the caveat that now we're taking down the bad guys.

Of course hypocrisy can be found in Iraq and elsewhere, seen here. And the (dis)-Honorable Carl Levin gets a needed comeuppance on facts, to go with this older big-picture view that remains required reading.

But, as if there isn't enough idiotic thinking about Iraq, we get foolishness from a normally level-headed Senator about a surge he needs to better understand in several areas.


There is also one bigger truth that needs to be understood - we are indeed winning in Iraq, and have been for a long time. This is ultimately why all the talk about timetables for withdrawal and so forth are so malicious - they are in total denial of the reality that the war is being won.

Barack Obama As Terry Glenn

A repost from June 19 is needed to begin this post:

Remember Terry Glenn? He was the New England Patriots receiver who became a spoiled child when Bill Parcells, the coach who drafted him, left. Pete Carroll was unable to get the increasingly unruly wideout to behave, and finally Bill Belichick suspended him after playing just two games in 2001 - against the San Diego Chargers, during which he caught the first ever touchdown pass thrown by Tom Brady, and later against the Cleveland Browns. Following his suspension, Glenn made a bizarre TV interview in which he claimed to be suffering from chronic depression and insisted nothing was his fault - "There were some things I had to fight and had to battle with....I'm not just gonna lay down and say, 'hey, you can just go ahead and suspend me and do whatever you want,'....things happened that weren't my fault."

Terry Glenn never took responsibility for his actions and thus got sent to Green bay for one season before rejoining Bill Parcells in 2003, this time with the Dallas Cowboys.

The analogy is worth making because Barack Obama is acting like Terry Glenn in his unending refusal to accept responsibility for things going wrong. Those who insist character doesn't matter in leaders are wrong, because Obama shows he can't lead.

Follow-Up: Obama's inability to lead shows again by his kid-gloves treatment of the United Church of Christ's attack on Israel and by his utter ignorance of the reality of Israel's battle against "Palestinian" aggression.

Montoya Wins - So Now What?

Juan Montoya stretched his fuel amid the short-pitting and fuel mileage strategies common to road racing, and won the Sears Point 350 of 2007. He becomes the third non-American racer to win a Winston Cup race - Italian-born Mario Andretti and Canadian Earl Ross are the others - and his win is the first for Ganassi/SABCO Racing since October 2002 with Jamie McMurray - and for supreme irony we have the fact that McMurray, in his present run with Jack Roush, is the one who ran out of gas out of second place dueling Montoya. The return of Ganassi-SABCO to victory ends a nearly-five year run where just ten teams monopolized Winston Cup wins - between the 2002 and 2007 wins by Ganassi/SABCO, only Hendrick, RCR, DEI, Joe Gibbs, Morton-Bowers (now Robert Ginn Racing), Roush/Roush-Fenway, Robert Yates, Ray Evernham, Penske South, and the now-defunct Cal Wells team broke through to victory. In a further irony, it is also the first Winston Cup win for sponsor Texaco-Havoline since the 2002 Sears Point 350, won by Ricky Rudd in Robert Yates' #28.

Montoya has now won in CART, IRL, F1, and two touring divisions of NASCAR, and the question is begged ---- now what?

When Montoya won in BGN in Mexico, some felt it would ignite momentum for Montoya to improve his rookie Winston Cup season. Instead, Montoya, who'd been Mr. Irrelevent most of the time before that win, slipped back to irrelevency but added to his baggage with several on-track bullying incidents - it is telling that Montoya tried to swerve Jimmie Johnson aside in the Sears Point race and Johnson pushed back. His runs on ovals have for the most part been awful, with little passing and a seeming lack of understanding at times on how to attack ovals.

His next road race is at Watkins Glen in mid-August, and until then Montoya has the daunting task not only of adapting to ovals on a consistent basis, but also winning the hearts of a fanbase not wrongly feeling cast aside for notional marketing bucks for Brian France. He hits New Hampshire for the first time at the end of June and then returns to Daytona.

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The big story early in the Sears Point weekend was the cheating scandal involving Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson's cars. Brian France - future Los Angeles Raiders owner? - made a point of stating that NASCAR will crack down hard on alterations to the COT. But there isn't much reason to believe him given how far ahead of NASCAR are its top race teams in the technology curve and also given NASCAR's notoriously lax punishments against big teams for cheating.

It leaves one wondering if something will turn up at NHIS this weekend.

Silly Season Gets Downright Hilarious

One sometimes has to wonder how seriously one should take rumors in NASCAR. Silly Season has been a longtime staple of the sport, but some of the rumors of recent have been downright bizarre, though they also have some plausbility. This compedium of recent rumors runs that gamut. There's the story that Joe Gibbs Racing is switching from Chevrolet to Toyota for 2008 - one has to wonder how plausible this one is given JGR's closeness to GM over the years, but there's something about it that makes it hard to dismiss.

Then there is the rumored arrival of a Winston Cup date at Kentucky Speedway and a second date at Las Vegas. There's plausibility here because NASCAR is in a no-win situation with Kentucky's lawsuit and also because the self-imposed limit of 36 races for the Winston Cup season is no longer enough; there is also the fact that the dream of NASCAR in New York City and the Pacific Northwest is a pipe dream. A Kentucky date may also explain NASCAR's apparant consideration of moving the Mason-Dixon 400 to April.

My favorite of the new rumors is that Brian "Chuck Sullivan" France will buy out Al Davis and move the Oakland Raiders back to LA. Let's face it, Brian France is not qualified to run NASCAR and should remove himself from the sanctioning body and go somewhere else, like the NFL; the NFL also needs Al Davis to just go away.

Speaking of just going away - don't give Jacques Villeneuve a Winston Cup ride. We don't need him or Paul Tracy or anyone else like them.

More disturbing is the rumor that NASCAR will go to spec engines; a test at Martinsville is scheduled of a spec engine. I know of no series where spec engines improved anything and I know of no support anywhere in the sport for the concept of spec engines.

Yep, Silly Season is getting downright hilarious.

Iraq Situation - Not Hopeless, But Still Serious

This big-picture look at Iraq is necessary because it realistically looks at the difficulty we face there but also notes how "situation hopeless, but not serious" isn't a realistic view of things. It is especially necessary because a lot in Congress and elsewhere are falling for Al Qaida's Tet-like bluff - making themselves look stronger than they in fact are, and thus making Iraq look like a lost cause instead of an improving opportunity.

Incredibly, George Will, a columnist who should know better, has fallen for this absurd premise based on a conversation with George Smith, a Senator from Oregon. Will's June 17 column relating this story never made much sense and was baffling. Smith talked about how in September he and other Republicans were ready to try and effectively cut off funding for winning the war - as if a surge that has not been finished would somehow fail by then.

This is why Congress should never get involved in war decisions, because they're not qualified to make them - especially since Congressional ignorance of the war is a threat to the success of operations such as this one.

Dance Between The Raindrops

It's always a shame when circumstances interfere with what should be a good race weekend, and the weather that was supposed to be good for the Pocono 500 turned out to be a pain. Now Pocono has had a history of rain interferences - in 1972 a hurricane pushed USAC's Pocono 500 Indycar race from June to the end of July when USAC stock cars had the Pennsylvania 500, leading to the Twin 500s. Rain hit NASCAR's events here in 1974, '75, '79, '82, '86, '91, '94, 2000, and 2002.

The rain for this Pocono 500, though, also brought some issues in terms of NASCAR's handling of it. From about 2 PM to 3:20 PM the track was dry other than some weepers; it seemed the racecars could easily have been brought out and run some laps to further dry the track and the weepers, and some green-flag laps could have been run. It was clear to all that the rain was not strong enough to prevent any race action from getting in, but it seemed NASCAR wasted a lot of time that could have been used to get some green-flag racing in before they eventually did.

There is of course also the issue of NASCAR's absurdly tardy starting times to begin with. Race broadcasts usually begin around 1:30 but the races themselves usually don't get the green until about 2:45; why NASCAR can't have some 1 PM starts with no lengthy prerace shows remains a mystery. If it's for West Coast audiences, I wonder just how important they really are given that the proposed Kitsap Speedway is effectively dead.

NASCAR's handling of the rain delay left a lot to be desired. Then there were circumstances in the race itself. A tardy caution came for Robby Gordon's incident, then no caution flew when Jimmie Johnson shredded a tire, and then the yellow finally flew just as Ryan Newman was on the verge of passing Jeff Gordon, a pass he'd certainly have completed in the old rule of racing to the flag.

It all combined to marr what should have been a great race at one of the sport's most grossly underappreciated speedways. Some of the up-front competition was good in this one and it could have been even better.

So the Pocono 500 wrapped up the way it did. One hopes much better comes Pocono's way at the start of August.

One Other Note: NASCAR and Pocono wrapped up renewal for the 2008 season during the weekend, with two Winston Cup dates locked in. You didn't actually believe that rumor about Pocono losinga date, did you?

NY Times Reports Inaccurately On Iraq?

Say it ain't so, Joe!

Yep, the NY Times is at it again with regard to the recent surge of American forces, claiming that less than a third of Baghdad is secure. Of course their report contains numerous falsities - and the source of their report gets skewered here - and betrays a continued lack of understanding of taking the offensive.

The NY Times seems likely to highlight a recent Senate Intelligence Committee report on prewar intelligence on Iraq - because that report goes along with many liberal assumptions about the war that aren't so.

Mason-Dixon 400 Miscellenia

The Mason-Dixon 400 was rained out for Sunday, with Monday the rescheduled day. With the wait before the green flag flies, some miscelleneous observations:


**** Why is it always a shock when a bad rules package proves its weakness year after year? NASCAR testing is suddenly considered "out of control," but the fact is it's been a problem for years, and is the inevitable spawn of the biggest mistake NASCAR has ever made. NASCAR first began limiting testing in 1990 and one year into this policy teams were protesting, with Harry Hyde providing the best argument against limits on testing - "What kind of plays would Broadway put on without rehersals?"

The more NASCAR tries to restrict testing, the worse it makes the problem, and the new angle of rival tire companies getting involved in testing looms in the sport, with a potential removal of exclusivity clauses in sponsorship contracts in the offing in the wake of the AT&T brouhaha.

One needs to ask why it's any of NASCAR's business to police testing at all. A key failing of the sanctioning body is that more and more of what it tries to police it has no business getting involved in.


**** With Dover at 400 miles we got a few comments about how much better is supposedly is that this race is 400 miles, and how some other rtacks should shorten their races. This is the ADD brigade talking again; the reality is that longer-distance races like 500 milers and Charlotte's 600-miler are a better test of machinery and racers and are more competitive than 400 milers.


**** It's another SpecCar/COT race, and given waht we've seen in the first five, the notion that we'll get better racing with this car still gets pushed by acolytes of the COT despite the reality that they remain wrong.

Continued Revisionist History About Iraq

First off, a repost from April 13 is needed:

Carl Levin has never conducted himself with glory in his senatorial tenure, and we get another look at his disgrace as his revisionist history campaign against the Iraq campaign continues with his continuing denial about Saddamite Iraq's alliance with Al Qaida. Of course revisionist history in the making continues with Joe Biden's idiotic rhetoric about recent US successes.

This repost is a good segue into another area of quasi-revisionist history, the Iraq Survey Group report. A good look at some key areas of that report is worth a look.

Libby Libby Libby Gets The Label Label Label

First off, a repost from March 8, 2007 is in order -



Lewis Libby was convicted of perjury. The problem, though, is that the entire case against him rested on a tenuous standard of perjury plus a gross misuse of authority by the Justice Department - he was convicted, basically, of providing accurate information to someone.

Yes, it was a bizarre trial, but this is the Bizarro World of modern Washington and it figures that the Democratic reaction further falsifies the reality of the trial. Of course Broadway Joe Wilson will get a movie made about him, precisely because he is the liar of this situation, having worked (with his wife Valerie "Pass The Buck" Plame) to sabotage the effort to defeat Saddam Hussein and Islamo-Arab imperialism.

So Lewis Libby gets labeled a perjurer by the MSM because he told the truth. Welcome to Bizarro World.


This repost is necessary because this story is getting even more absurd and the basic competence of the present Director of Central Intelligence now needs to be questioned.

Sizing Up Winston Cup At One-Third 2007

Twelve races have been run of a 36-race season, and we've thus had plenty to digest as the second third of the 2007 season gets underway at the Mason-Dixon 400 at Dover. There has been some good competition, a lot of controversy, and it all enters the summer months of the campaign. So a team breakdown may give us some idea of what to expect with the run to the season's playoffs:

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HENDRICK MOTORSPORTS CHEVROLETS - #5, 24, 25, 48 - The sport's powerhouse, Hendrick just keeps on winning, having already won nine races between its four Chevrolets; the 600 win by Casey Mears is only the eighth time in nineteen years the #25 has won. Hendrick's roll has to cool off and fast for anyone else to have any consistent shot at wins.

ROUSH/FENWAY RACING FORDS - #6, 16, 17, 26, 99 - With a win at Fontana, Roush is the only Ford to win anything this season but with a pending disbanding of one team per NASCAR's new ownership limits, things have begun cracking, notably with Greg Biffle's #16 effort between a change of crew chiefs and some rather dismal performances. The surprise of this group has been Jamie McMurray, who has rallied from last year's dismal showing to contend for a playoff spot, while the bust so far as been David Ragan, uncompetitive almost everywhere.

JOE GIBBS RACING CHEVROLETS - #11, 18, 20 - They've done everything except win, so one can expect them to break out of that skid soon. Tony Stewart's frustration, though, has been building and one should keep an eye out here. The surprise here has been J.J. Yeley, who has struggled for much of his time with this team but has begun to show some more consistency and was boosted by his stellar run at Charlotte.

RCR ENTERPRISES CHEVROLETS - #29, 31, 07 - The only other organization to have won this year, RCR has all three of its cars in the playoff roster, but has yet to show the same muscle it showed in 2006. Kevin Harvick in particular has been a disappointment after his stellar triumph at Daytona.

ROBERT GINN RACING CHEVROLETS - #01, 13, 14 - The surprise of this season, Ginn Racing has infused the former Reed Morton-Nelson Bowers outfit with new money, engineering, and strength. It first showed in Mark Martin's victory bid at Daytona and that #01 remains solidly in the top ten in owner points, pretty much a top-ten runner whenever Martin drives it in his part-time schedule of this season. However, this success hasn't translated well for Joe Nemechek or Sterling Marlin, who've shown only bursts of muscle and look increasingly tired as far as their racing goes.

PENSKE RACING SOUTH DODGES - #2, 12 - Here is something a little hard to believe right now - with twelve races run Ryan Newman has four top-tens - given how poorly he's run it's astonishing he has that many. Newman simply has fallen off the racing map since 2003 and the changes in his crew that have occurred so far aren't helping. Kurt Busch has run better but has never been able to show enough consistent muscle to be a points threat - only as a race-win threat.

EARNHARDT, INC. CHEVROLETS - #1, 8, 15 - Dale Earnhardt Jr. has officially washed his hands of his step-mom's organization, which means someone is going to suffer performance-wise when Junior finally decides on a new ride. Given the comparative spottiness of this effort's performances - Junior and Martin Truex have combined for eight top-tens and are in the top-16 in points after twelve races but haven't shown enough muscle to improve that effort - one has to wonder whtether DEI can get anything going for 2008. Rookie Paul Menard has been simply an irrelevency so far.

PETTY ENTERPRISES DODGES - #43, 45 - Given how deep a performance hole this effort was in, Robbie Loomis clearly was going to need years to get it going, and right now it's clear he's gotten this effort on the right path. The #43 is of course the team's flagship and will get the focus, but the struggle of the #45 since Loomis came back was very frustrating in 2006. 2007 began with more of the same, but lately, with Kyle Petty ready to hand over the wheel to others for parts of the year, the #45 has gotten some muscle - Chad McCumbee will drive at Pocono and John Andretti gets an overdue additional shot with this organization for several July races, a fit that should work decently given how well Andretti worked with Loomis before. It's a stretch to consider any kind of Chase effort; the focus needs to be on winning some races and also eventually re-fielding the long-shuttered third car to accelerate catching back up to the big guns.

RAY EVERNHAM MOTORSPORTS DODGES - #9, 10, 19 - Here is a sick statistic - Ray Evernham Motorsports has a combined three top-ten finishes so far and has only one car - Elliott Sadler's #19 - in the top-20 in owner points. For all of his success as a team owner - 13 wins 2001-6, led by Kasey Kahne's victory binge of 2006 - Evernham's team has never really struck me as a powerhouse along the lines of other big teams in the sport, and it's obvious that whatever setup sweet spot they found in 2006 is gone with no one seemingly having any idea what to do now. One has to wonder if Kahne is a one-shot wonder, and also one must question whether Scott Riggs can get anything done.

GANASSI/SABCO DODGES - #40, 41, 42 - Maybe Juan Montoya wasn't a good idea after all. Not only has Montoya shown very little muscle despite a top-five and another top-ten, he's done a lot to alienate his fellow racers and doesn't seem to be learning anything nor contributing to the team's technology curve. David Stremme is the surprise here with two top-tens.

AIKMAN-STAUBACH CHEVROLET - #96 - Little was expected here and little has been delivered.

ROBERT YATES RACING - #38, 88 - Ricky Rudd is proving the mistake people should have seen coming, despite a terrific effort at the 600. Rudd has contributed nothing else of worth to this effort, while his young teammate David Gilliland has been even worse despite a top-five finish. Given rumblings that Yates will cash out and quit, one has to wonder if this team has anything left in the tank.

TEAM TOYOTA - Bill Davis' #22 is highest in owner points at 36th. This is how bad it's been for the Toyota fleet, but Charlotte with the superb effort of Dieter Mateschitz's #83 of Brian Vickers and the competitive run of BDR's #36 of Jeremy Mayfield was the kind of turnaround that can spark an effort. They have to make races, however, to build momentum, and that's been a struggle all year. They at least have potential to get more momentum, something not to be said about Michael Waltrip Racing, a team that fails to make races on a consistent basis, to the point that its sponsors may jump ship by July.

WOOD BROTHERS FORD - #21 - Bill Elliott gives this team champions provisionals to burn for awhile, and his encouraging effort at Charlotte may surprisingly give them even more. This, though, is about all they have left as far as any kind of competitive hope.


So as the sport enters its summer swing, a lot of teams are trying to get some kind of effort going to knock down the Hendrick juggernaut. That, though, is a tall order.

Winston Cup Gets Split?

It's an idea the sport has had in the back of its collective mind for many years - the idea that the Winston Cup Series needs to be split into two divisions to cover more racetracks and more race teams. Now it's getting more attention with more Winston Cup teams and the problem of speedway fratricide. The quasi-official debut of the idea was the late 1990s when T. Wayne Robertson first proposed a divisional structure for Winston Cup racing, but rumors of consideration of a divisional structure date back well before that - I remember the rumor circulating among Busch North competitors around 1991.

How might a divisional structure work? Ostensibly it would involve an East-West split with the present Chase format eventually becoming a true playoff format.

While presently there seems little enthusiasm for a divisional format, one has to admit it does address some of the sport's more pressing issues - the fact that too many teams are being stiffarmed by the sport's qualifying format and the sport has sacrificed racetracks ostenibly to make room for bigger markets yet has accomplished nothing in that regard. Certainly addressing these issues is of great importance to the sport.

One, though, has to wonder if a divisional structure is the way to go.

COT's Bizarre Version of Logic

The COT doesn't run at Charlotte this weekend, but its presence looms large noentheless, and the non-logic behind the COT and with John Darby in general helps explain why so clear a mistake has continued.

NASCAR Exclusivity Clauses May Lose The Draft

NASCAR appears to have suffered a setback in the continuing AT&T lawsuit. While this deal may not be over yet, my suspicion is NASCAR won't win this battle, and that it may begin a process where exclusivity clauses in sponsor contracts may be out the window.

One should hope so, because such clauses have had a stifling effect on sponsorships. When Nextel signed on as series sponsor they got an exclusivity clause written in aimed at rival telecommunication companies such as Cingular and AT&T, who were nonetheless grandfathered in given they were already established car sponsors in the series. It became an issue recently with the merger of AT&T and Cingular and with Jeff Burton's team in particular.

This flap potentially can reach further than just the sponsors in question, though, for exclusivity clauses apply to numerous other sponsors and potential sponsors. The most prominent exclusivity deal in Winston Cup right now is in tires, and one can certainly imagine a scenario where rival tire companies may try to enter the NASCAR scene if NASCAR can't maintain an exclusivity clause in tire deals.

One really should hope for such a scenario, for there are plenty of teams, in Winston Cup but more so in BGN and other series, in need of sponsorships that are at least partly deterred by exclusivity clauses, and certainly with the technology advantage enjoyed by Hendrick Motorsports at the present time, if a tire deal becomes an area where exclusivity is eliminated, the sport's competitive dynamic can be changed as was the case in the past.

The AT&T deal may not be over yet, but one should hope it forces the end of exclusivity clauses and opens the door for more sponsors that rival existing sponsors - partiuclarly in tires - to enter and compete.

The Feminazi Fraud

We await feminism's campaign against Islamo-Arab female headdresses, a symbol of the gender kristalnacht that is part and parcel of Islamo-Arab imperialism. And I must have missed Ashley Judd's passionate denunciation of sharia, the terrorist code of law.

COT Numbers Don't Tell The Story

I knew this would happen. We now have in T.J. McCarthy a writer citing NASCAR scoring loop data to make a COT race look more competitive than it actually was. McCarthy compiles scoring loop data on "quality" passes and shows where there have been three races where there were more "quality" passes with the COT than with the "older" flush airdam/spoilered cars.

Scoring loop data is inherently deceptive because it counts as "quality" passes any kind of position change in the top-15, even if lapped cars pass cars running in the top-15 - which happens a lot at Darlington as cars short-pit and get fresh tires on the track's notoriously rough surface. There is always position passing and lapped cars interfering with lead-lap cars outside the top-ten; it's in the top ten that passing matters most, and at Darlington the top ten hardly changed hands all race long and was usually spread out over nearly half the track, a pattern seen at all the other COT races so far.

And as far as lead changes go, the COT hasn't made any kind of dent in the sport's Dead-Lane Era. 21 lead changes in a 500 mile race is hardly impressive unless the lead bounces around several times a lap, as has happened at places like Pocono - the 1990 Summer 500 had 21 official lead changes and over a dozen unofficial ones, including four lead changes on Lap 117 alone and three on Lap 180 - but which manifestly didn't happen at Darlington or any other COT race. NASCAR counted 673 "quality" passes at Darlington - but there were only 21 lead changes, and nowhere did the lead change more than once a lap.

This is where scoring loop data is worse than useless. First of all, these stats are compiled for all those fantasy geeks that have permeated pro sports' fanbases like poison over this decade - that hilarious NFL Network ad with the fantasy geek who can't pronounce T.J. Houshmenzedah's name isn't entirely exaggerating what fantasy geeks are about. Second, as McCarthy is doing, NASCAR is using this data to make its races to be better than they actually are.

"Give it time," McCarthy claims. "The smartest people in racing are working on a solution." McCarthy makes the classic mistake of flattering John Darby, Brett Bodine, Gary Nelson, and others involved with this project as smarter than they actually are. The COT has gone through over a year of testing and now five races and it has shown zero improvement. That fantasy-geek data cited by McCarthy doesn't tell the real story, which is that passing is down with the COT, as the car cannot turn, pushes worse in dirty air than the older car, and is hamstrung from improvement by its fundamentally unsound design. You can't get good racing out of a racecar design with a bulky roofline, short nose, gapped airdam, long rear deck, and use of a wing.

There was also a lot of nonsense about how "tough" the COT was, though that gets debunked here. Few noticed how much more sensitive to spinning out the COT proved to be at Darlington - when McCarthy starts talking about how the leaders all slapped the wall and kept going, "tell me that isn't old school." No, it isn't, because the COT resisted turning. Not being able to turn is not old school.

The COT "has lost 30 to 40 percent of the handling," noted Jimmie Johnson after the Southern 500. With so little passing at any of its races despite Tom McCarthy's pathetic attempt to use deceptive scoring loop data to argue otherwise, the car has had enough time to prove itself, and it has failed.

MSM Wrongs And Rights In Iraq

Believe it or not, there are MSM types who get it right in Iraq, and some of them are shown here. Where the MSM still gets it wrong, though, is shown here.

NASCAR 1998 Redux

The 2007 Winston Cup season has now run events at Daytona, Fontana, Vegas, Atlanta, Bristol, Texas, Martinsville, Phoenix, Talladega, Richmond, and Darlington, and only three of these eleven events have been won by cars other than Hendrick Motorsports. It is a near-monopoly not seen since Carl Kiekhafer all but annihilated the 1955-6 seasons with his Chrysler 300s; it also brings to mind a more recent episode of Hendrick dcomination, which began in ironic fashion.

The 1997 NASCAR season had been a transitional year, with the debut of Texas and California Speedways, a second date at New Hampshire, and the reconfiguration of Atlanta International Raceway. For 1998 there were numerous changes in the garage area - Ford teams were debuting the Taurus, an egg-shaped racecar replacing the long-nosed MN12 Ford Thunderbird. Among Ford teams, Roush Performance was expanding to five cars with the debut of Johnny Benson's #26 and the purchase of Mark Rypian's #97 Pontiac with driver Chad Little. Robert Yates racing also had a new face - USAC racer Kenny Irwin, who'd won twice in NASCAR's Craftsman Truck series in 1997 and had run a dramatic eighth in a satellite Yates Ford at Richmond the previous September. Rusty Wallace and Penske Racing, meanwhile, welcomed a teammate, as Michael Kranefuss, former Ford Motorsports honcho and now a team owner, merged his #37 Ford with Jeremy Mayfield into the Penske organization, renumbering the car #12.

A bigger change for all the teams also came for 1998. With speeds at the reconfigured Atlanta layout over 195, NASCAR tested a restrictor plate there, a plate larger than the one used at Daytona and Talladega - the Atlanta plate was reportedly 1.25 inches versus the roughly 7/8-inch used at the superpseedways. It was a virtual repeat of the experience of late-summer/autumn 1993 when NASCAR tested a 1.25-inch plate at Charlotte and the test car (Ken Schrader's Chevy in 1993) ran wide open all the way around with no discernable reduction in speed. Persuaded by driver and crew chief input, NASCAR shaved spoiler and airdam clearence from the cars for Charlotte in October 1993 to reduce corner speeds by forcing drivers to lift for the corners. Spoiler was shaved to five inches in heigth and airdam clearence increased to five inches. This 5&5 rule collapsed in its first race when no one could race hard and Ernie Irvan led all but 33 laps en route to an embarassingly easy win.

For 1998, however, NASCAR threw away what it had learned five years earlier and went with the 5&5 rule again, apparantly believing that the cars, now generating more downforce than 1993 models, could now handle a reduction in downforce.

The first order of business, however, was the Daytona 500, and despite early challenges from Sterling Marlin and Bobby Labonte, the 500 became a showdown between Dale Earnhardt and the Penske Fords. Earnhardt had long been NASCAR's most controversial driver, popular with a strong percentage of the fanbase but hated by a greater percentage and holder of the dubious distinction of having a fan club dedicated to opposing him in Fans Against Dale Earnhardt.

In 1996, however, he was seriously injured at Talladega, and despite recovering 1997 turned into a poor season. New crew chief Larry McReynolds had come over from Robert Yates' team in what had been considered a blockbuster trade, but the 1997 season had failed to scratch the win column. The lowlight of 1997 came in the Southern 500 when Earnhardt passed out on the opening lap and had to be taken to the hospital during the race. A battery of tests failed to determine why Earnhardt had passed out, and the mysterious incident was not repeated.

Now in the Daytona 500 he held a strong lead for over half the race, and as Bobby Labonte clawed to second, a spin erupted down the backstretch with some three to go and Earnhardt easily won the race to the flag. A scene unthinkable barely two years earlier then occurred - not only was the crowd cheering loudly, but rival crewmen lined up to shake Earnhardt's hand as he went down pit road to victory lane.

It was RCR's first win in the Daytona 500 - and Earnhardt's only win that season.

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Jeff Gordon then won the Carolina 400, a surprisingly competitive race that some felt was a vindication of the 5&5 rule. Las Vegas Motor Speedway then debuted on the Winston Cup tour and Mark Martin dominated to the first win of the season. The Atlanta 500 then saw several hard crashes, injuring Mike Skinner and Derrike Cope. John Andretti, driving the Petty #43 Pontiac, won the pole and led early before an admitted mistake by crew chief Robbie Loomis dropped him to 20th at the end. His future teammate Bobby Labonte, meanwhile, overhauled Kenny Irwin for the win.

By the Virginia 500 the 5&5 rule had become a source of controversy and five drivers had won the season's first seven races; Hendrick and Roush were rapidly becoming the season's dominators, but were being chased closely by Penske Racing even though they hadn't broken through yet. Bobby Hamilton, driving the Morgan-McClure #4 Chevrolet, won the pole, and the ensuing race turned into a rare break from the dominance of the Hendrick, Roush, and Penske cars. He domianted the race but past halfway got into a sensational shootout with John Andretti, an old adversary now driving the #43 Hamilton had won with the previous three seasons. The two of them raced nose to nose for the lead for nearly ten laps and got into a close duel in the final 100 laps before Hamilton rode off to the win. In victory lane Hamilton pointedly noted how the cars pushed worse in traffic than the previous year, an opinion that would slowly find greater outlet as the season went on.

In an exciting World 600 Jeff Gordon took on tires under a late yellow and rocketed to the win, and from there on he began beating down the rest of the field. He won at Sears Point in a surprisingly ferocious duel with Hamilton, then erupted to wins at Pocono, Indianapolis, Watkins Glen, and Michigan; the Michigan win was especially disheartening to others because Ernie Irvan led 120 laps from the pole and then Mark Martin held a late lead, but Gordon skipped a late tire change and rocketed through the field for an easy win, pulling away from cars that had outrun him all day and had taken on tires under the late yellow.

Mark Martin finished second in that race days after his father, Julian Martin, died in a plane crash. Martin managed to win at Bristol and dedicated the win to his dad, but at New Hampshire a week later fell in behind Gordon after late pitstops; Gordon did not take on tires and Martin did, yet in the run to the finish Gordon pulled away from the cars that took on tires, a win that set off the ever-irritable Jack Roush on a campaign to expose crew chief Ray Evernham as a cheater. Lost in the hullabaloo was the age-old Goodyear practice of playing favorites on tire deals - a favoritism touched on by team owner Andy Petree a year later in noting how he was being stiffarmed on tires for test sessions. Whether this played a role in Gordon's surprising wins remains a mystery, but that Gordon couldnot take tires and outpull cars that did take on tires remains implausible.

It also meant the effective end of the 1998 season's competitive phase, as Gordon ultimately racked up 13 wins and clinched the title with three races to go. Hendrick Motorsports wound up with 14 wins total that year - Terry Labonte's Richmond win was the only other Hendrick win - against Roush's nine. Yates won three times while Joe Gibbs and Penske each won twice. RCR, Morgan-McClure, and Ricky Rudd each won once.

That October the death-knell for the 5&5 rule was sounded when Terry Labonte publically noted that the racing had become "boring," and the rule was dropped for the season-ending Dixie 500 and a postseason exhibition race at Motegi, a strikingly competitive affair in which Dale Earnhardt Jr., fresh off his first BGN title, fought nose to nose for the lead with Jeff Gordon and Mike Skinner held off Gordon for the win.

What began with a Daytona 500 win for RCR became a monopoly for Hendrick Motorsports. Such was 1998.

The Junior Soap Opera

It's become the most intensely-monitored contract squabble in racing since Darrell Waltrip's prolonged divorce from DiGard Racing in 1980. Dale Earnhardt Jr. may be on the verge of quitting the organization owned by his mother-in-law Teresa Earnhardt over his demands to own 51% of the organization, and Hendrick Motorsports may have an inside edge toward hiring him because of their engine program.

That anything involving Junior could receive as much attention as it does is remarkable, but then seemingly anything involving Junior has become a #1 story in NASCAR, from the enraged crowd reaction after Brian Vickers took out Junior at Talladega to the often-absurd level of adulation he receives at any moment. I'm not sure Junior for his part isn't a little embarassed by it all; after seeing him at NHIS a few years back he seemed a little overwhelmed to be as popular as he is when discussing matters in a postrace press conference.

If Junior does leave DEI for Hendrick, it seems a certainty that Casey Mears, the latest sacrificial lamb to the #25, will be fired. What happens to DEI after that remains a mystery, since virtually everything about the organization has revolved around Junior's racecars. Given the organization's uneven performances this year, losing Junior is a potential blow from which they may not properly recover.

The way this soap opera has gone, about the only thing missing are Anthony Geary and Genie Francis facing down evil John Colicos. Rest assured, whatever the next step involving Junior is, the racing world will know about it whether it wants to or not.