BREAK-UP: Robby Gordon is gone. Give Morgan-McClure the ?What Were We Thinking In The First Place? Award and put the next guy in the seat. Gordon went out at Darlington with a bang, of course ? hitting everything in striking distance. I am confident that this was Gordon?s last dance in the Winston Cup Series. Let him go back to the Whine and Cheezers of Indy Car racing, where, when you hit something you are required to say, ?Pardon me.?
Bobby Labonte?s shot of a repeat seems to be fading away. He needs to have two or three spectacular runs these next few weeks if he'll have any shot at all?. Same goes for his associate Tony Stewart. That camp is off to an unusually slow start. Ditto the Roush Raiders and the Penske Posse. DEI looks strong with Park, who will pop at least three more wins before the year is done
Now in his fifth season with RCR, Mike Skinner still can?t find the handle. And after seeing what Harvick can do in, what should be, similar equipment, it makes you wonder if it?s the Indian or the arrow.
NASCAR has killed the Busch Series. The rule changes they made in the off-season were designed to spiff up the competition. What it did, was cost the teams a boatload of money that they didn?t have budgeted with their sponsors. At least ten teams closed their doors and now NASCAR is struggling to fill the fields on Saturdays. It was just a few years ago when about 30 cars would go home from Daytona. Several teams have told me that NASCAR has called and offered hotel rooms and free tires to some teams who were questionable about showing up at Bristol
Now they?re left with Kevin Lepage and Larry McClure says he thinks Lepage will bring a lot of excitement to the team. Their equipment is rumored to be old and antiquated and they are not able to keep up with the Yates? (or Roush?s, or Gibbs, or Childress, or Hendrick or Davis). Kevin Lepage is probably not the answer. Although he?s a capable driver, the team has a lot of rebuilding to do. They continue to say they are working through their problems and expect to be contenders soon, but that is unlikely. Being so far from Charlotte hinders the team from getting the top people in the key positions for their race team.
Wallace has long considered Bristol his favorite track -- he's won nine times here, including a season sweep last season.
Normally he would feel like the favorite heading into Sunday's Food City 500 because so few drivers like the high-banked, .533-mile, concrete layout.
But Harvick is trying to change that by sending out a message that he too loves Bristol's bullring and would like to prove it with a victory here. He won his first Winston Cup race, in Dale Earnhardt's car, two weeks ago at Atlanta and won a Busch race at Bristol last August.
"I personally love Bristol because it reminds me a little bit of Bakersfield, Calif., where I grew up racing and where I cut my teeth on a half-mile, high-banked race track," he said.
"It's probably my most favorite track on the whole circuit. I don't understand why everybody that's building new race tracks doesn't build more like Bristol."
More tracks like Bristol is the last thing the rest of the drivers want. With it's tight turns and high banking, the bumping and banging between cars starts as soon as the green flag drops.
If Johnny Benson had his way, NASCAR would never race at Bristol.
"Bristol is a place that I don't particularly care for practice, I don't particularly care for qualifying and I don't particularly care for racing there," Benson said.
It will be difficult for him to get it at Bristol, though. This has been Wallace's track of late and few have even challenged him here. He's won four of the five last races at Bristol and five of the last 10 poles.
"From day one, I just loved the track and it's been a stronghold for us through all the years," he said.
To him, Bristol is almost like home. The track is a replica of the short tracks he started out on in the early part of his career and he's got tons of friends in the area because of the five car dealerships he owns in Northeastern Tennessee.
"I've always said, the track really suits my racing style, heads up and flat out," he said. "And we've always had one of our biggest fan bases right there in that part of the country and with our car dealerships just down the road, its like a home track feeling we get every time we race at Bristol."
Five races into the 36-race season, Burton is 36th in points and has not finished better than 18th. History won't make him go faster, but the next three races - Bristol, Texas and Martinsville - are places he's raced well the past four years.
Burton, a South Boston native, will take anything to turn his luck. He crashed in the season's first three races. A sour engine slowed him at Atlanta. He ran well last week at Darlington until his pit crew failed to prevent a tire from rolling across pit road. The ensuing penalty caused Burton to lose a lap, and he finished 18th.
"I'm very displeased with where we are in points," said Burton,
