For all the great driving, great teams and great cars out there this year, there is only one who has all that AND great luck — Kyle Busch. And that is why he’s kicking everyone’s keister this year.

More than anything else, luck — the only quality no driver can master, purchase, nor even sufficiently woo — has determined the fate of the 2008 NASCAR season. Winnie, the NASCAR Goddess of Fortune, is one hot and fickle lady; she deals it out how she sees ‘em - a view which is inscrutable to the rest of us.

Let us consider the following turns of Winnie’s Wheel this year:

- Last year the Chevvies of Hendrick Motorsports could do no wrong; flip that coin this year for them. Now Joe Gibbs Racing is king, ruling both the Sprint Cup and Nationwide roosts. And Toyota, a car that could win no races last year, can’t stop winning them this year.

- The Number 20 car this year is probably the luckiest car ever. It wins no matter who’s in the driver’s seat.

- Green seems to be an especially lucky color this year, especially festooned on Kyle’s green Interstate Batteries No. 18 Toyota. The AMP cars of Dale Earnhardt Jr. (second in points) feature green designs.

- Remember those unlucky Goodyear tires, which Dale Earnhardt and Tony Stewart derided with such heat after Atlanta? A bad, bad tire they said, not safe for plebian road driving, much less a Sprint Cup race. Yet somehow Goodyear’s bum luck passed on to the cars themselves, derided now as terrible to drive — like cement blocks without wheels — safe but mostly responsible for the bad fortunes of so many drivers this year.

- Jimmie Johnson gambled on fuel strategy to win his only race of the year at Phoenix. Similarly, Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s only victory of the season was due to a lucky gamble on fuel (astonishingly lucky; his car ran out of gas as soon as it crossed under the checkered flag). Of course, fuel strategy looks great when it creates a win. Carl Edwards’s fuel strategy turned out to be bum luck at Martinsville, losing the race on the last lap when he ran out of fuel.

- Michael McDowell was very lucky to walk away from that crash at Texas, smacking the wall at full spin and then tumbling over and over and over and over and over. Everyone says it was the generic car that saved his ass, but I think he watches the tape and crosses his heart for Winnie.

- Perhaps the most consistently unlucky driver this year has been Tony Stewart. Despite having arguably the best team and the best car out there, a crapstorm of bad luck has fallen on Tony: accidents, flat tires, broken parts, bad weather, even the flu. Smoke is surely this year’s Job, crying “How long, oh Lord!” as he sits dejected in his stalled Home Depot car. I hope Clance is correct in her most recent astrological prognostication, and Winnie spins Tony’s fortunes around the other way.

- Jeff Burton was hot early in the season but of late the dice have gone cold, resulting in finishes of 15, 13, 12, 37 in his last four races.

- Kurt Busch was astonishingly lucky to win at New Hampshire. This was no mere matter of preparation meeting opportunity, as he said after the race: Tony Stewart’s bum tire (it blew with three laps to go) plus bad weather put Kurt in the catbird seat where previously he was in 22d place in the standings. His luck was so weird that the race finish was like an episode from “The Twilight Zone.”

- Kasey Kahne, who was too far down in the rankings to qualify for the All-Star race, had lucky hunky-enough looks — an accident purely of birth — to get the popular vote for placing in the race anyway, won it, and has gone on to race as fiercely as those piercing blue eyes of his.

Drivers are a superstitious lot; they know how much Winnie plays in their eventual fortunes (or lack of them) to hedge all of their bets. Why do you think that so many of them trot out such jaw-droppingly beautiful wives and girlfriends to the races? Why else? They’re good luck charms, rubbed every which way both the night before and just prior to getting into their cars on race day as an appeal to Winnie.

Individual drivers have unique superstitions. A sick 6-year-old girl gave Dale Earnhart a penny, which he glued to his dashboard as he went on to win first Daytona 500. David Reutimann always puts his gloves on the same way — left hand first, and hi 6-year-old daughter tapes his heat shields if she’s at the track. David Ragan picks up pennies off the ground and puts them in his left shoe because his dad does that.

Other drivers have superstitions to ward off bad luck. J.J. Yeley makes sure black cats never cross his path. If he sees one, he’ll drive the other way.
$50 bills have a cache for bad luck; Humpy Wheeler signed and gave one to Dale Earnhardt Jr. before qualifying for the Coca-Cola 600; Earnhardt rejected the bill and went on to qualify sixth. Kyle Busch didn’t take the bill and made sure nobody on his crew did, either, and won the pole in the race.

What has all of this to do with great cars, great teams, and exceptional racing talent? Nothing. But it seems to have everything to do with what makes racing so addictive. Winnie the NASCAR Goddess of Fate is the penultimate track bunny, standing by her man in ways that no amount of skill will ever come close to.

Perhaps this hearkens back to the whiskey-running nights of NASCAR’s roots, where runners in jacked-up ‘39 Fords rubbed a rabbit’s paw swinging from their rear-view mirror as they raced up and down and round moony Appalachian roads, chased by stern black cruisers. Hot car and consummate skill were less than half of the equation back then, and drivers knew it. They got through because Winnie (or Tammie back then) sang them through on their car radios.

If Winnie loves a racer, he can do no wrong. She hovers over the fortunate as they race like a Faith Hill, angelically opening ways through the press of roaring metal, turning the wheel just right or left to avoid catastrophe. And for the unlucky she reveals her other side, standing in their way Gretchen Wilson all jacked up for a butt-kickin’, legs wide, hands on her hips, her eyes glowering through the darkness out back of trashiest redneck roadhouse beyond the last lights of town.

Who can woo Winnie? I doubt anyone can. It’s her race. She picks her winners. Maybe she’s stay with Kyle, or maybe she’ll jump in someone else’s car. The rest of the boys are right now performing their ablutions to her, stroking these soft curved rabbit’s feet, whether it hangs from their rear view mirror or is tucked inside the panties of their fantastically beautiful loves.

We have no way of knowing which way Winnie will turn her wheel at Chicagoland. We suspect that her romance with Kyle will continue. But she’s a moody dame. She is what makes racin’such a thrill.

(note: this post also went up today on my blog over at Clance’s wonderful Church of the Great Oval networking site. If you haven’t been by there, check it out. It roars.)

Posted by BadGroove

The press conference made all the speculation official today. Tony Stewart is leaving Joe Gibbs racing at the end of this season to form what will be called Stewart Haas Racing. The new driver/owner Stewart claims this step is “a huge turning point in my career.” No details were given as to future car number, sponsors, crew chief or the second car’s driver.  It was also announced that crew chief Greg Zipadelli will stay with Joe Gibbs Racing and to which Stewart claimed this was not a “divorce” between the two because they will remain friends.  Gibbs Racing will have a separate press conference sometime on Saturday.

Well at least something right came out of the million rumors in regards to “Silly Season” as most have been calling it.

It turns out that Tony Stewart won’t really put on a cape, leap tall buildings with a single bound, stop a speeding bullet and clone himself 43 times so he can race against himself for a Sprint Cup championship.

As reported by AP, he will however, be let out of his contract with Joe Gibbs Racing early to explore his much desired opportunities to own a race team.

Last Thursday at Daytona International Speedway, the headline even before the first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series practice session was that Martin Truex Jr.’s #1 DEI Chevy was taken by NASCAR because the COT templates didn’t fit his roof correctly, which as a result sent him to a backup car. Oh boy that’s big in the penalty department and it was as on Tuesday as Martin Truex Jr. found out that he and his owner DEI was penalized 150 driver and 150 owner points, both the crew chief and the car chief suspended for six races and Manion was fined $100,000 (From NASCAR PR),

That penalty is right in line with what NASCAR had handed down earlier this season with the two Haas-CNC Racing cars. Personally though, first, I really don’t understand why for the second time NASCAR has to hand down a penalty of 150 driver and owner points penalty, when 100 driver and 100 owner points was enough last year and second, with being docked 150 driver points in my opinion, this will most likely keep the #1 of Martin Truex Jr. out of the Chase for the Sprint Cup Series Championship.

Was this penalty fair or would 100 driver and 100 owner points be better?

Randy Moss will be entering his first NASCAR race as a team owner when he runs the #81truck at  Kentucky Speedway on July 18. Willie Allen, last year’s Craftsman Truck Series Rookie of the Year will be his driver.

Moss said that his involvement is all about love and passion:

“But I am not jumping into NASCAR because of the color of my skin. It’s about the love and passion I have to win and about being a fan with an opportunity that has come my way”

Moss has jumped in with both feet, buying 50% of the Morgan-Dollar race team and renaming it Randy Moss Motorsports. It seems like he knows what he is doing, and we wish him the best of luck. You can find more information in this David Poole article from the Charlotte Observer.

With Mark Martin signing for two years with HMS to drive the #5 car full time next year, and perhaps to share a ride with Landon Cassill or Brad Keselowski in 2010, the rumor mongers are running out of options for Tony Stewart. It seems that his only options now may be the #12 car for Penske, if Ryan Newman goes elsewhere, or maybe the #40 team for Ganassi. Or maybe he could just stay with Gibbs. Rev Jim explores the options one more time:

Stewart is already rumored to be signing with Haas/CNC, where he will be part owner and drive a car for the chronic backmarker, and wave some kind of magic wand that will suddenly make a top forty team a top ten team. While he is doing that, he is also rumored to be driving for Hendrick Motorsports in the number 5 car, since it has been announced that Casey Mears will no longer be driving the car next year. That alone should generate more rumors concerning Mears in the #40 car next year, even if Stewart is supposed to be in that car next year, according to rumor mongers, who have yet to explain how Smoke will be in the #5 car if that is where Mark Martin is supposed to be for 2009…read more

That item is tagged as “Satire and Humor” so we should take it with a grain of salt.

Over at Trouble in Turn 2, Mike has some “Friday Notes:”

A brief history of the #40 car. Once upon a time there was a driver named Sterling Marlin. He was hired to drive a racecar full time for Chip Ganassi/Felix Sabates Racing (This was before they changed their name to Chip Ganassi/Felix Sabates Mostly Riding Around)…read more

Have a Happy Independence Weekend, and enjoy the race!

Daytona is by far the most recognizable track on the NASCAR schedule, and they’ve certainly let us know that this week, as there’s been a ton to talk about as we’ve made the transition from Loudon, NH to start gearing up for the Coke Zero 400. Here’s just a few highlights of what we’ve had going on over at www.doyounascar.com, just incase you missed any of it:

Monday - Moss Motorsports Set to Debut #81 Truck at Kentucky - Randy Moss scheduled a Thursday press conference at Daytona to announce his plans to debut Moss Motorsports on July 19th at Kentucky Speedway, with details still to be determined.

Tuesday - Why Mark Martin Could be the Key to the Silly Season Domino Theory - Learning that Mark Martin was out of the #8 car at DEI next season and that he could be making an announcement this weekend at Daytona, DYN covered the bases. We presented multiple paths that Mark could head down for 2009, and also layed out the groundwork for how the rest of Silly Season would play out for each scenario.

Wednesday - Only a Matter of Time Now for Dave Rogers - With all of his recent success this season as Crew Chief of the no. 20 car for Joe Gibbs Racing in the Nationwide Series, DYN states why we will see Dave Rogers working in the Sprint Cup Series again no later than 2010.

Thursday - Race Preview for Coke Zero 400 at Daytona - DYN has modified our typical fantasy preview segment to bring you in-depth coverage of this weekend’s favorites - and, not-so-favorites - to win the race. We still offer our fantasy projections for the race and even have video coverage of last year’s finish in the Pepsi 400.

Friday - With Ganassi Folding the #40 Team, What Will Become of Some of the Others? - Our weekly “Loose in Turn 3″ segment revolves around the folding of Chip Ganassi Racing’s #40 car, and focuses in on whether or not it will go onto effect some of the other teams such as Yates Racing or Michael Waltrip Racing.

Once your done checking those stories out, be sure to keep coming back throughout the weekend as we will continue to follow all of the action throughout the racing weekend.

“I dream of Daytona,” today at NASCAR This Week, is my own rave about the race this weekend. Too long and loud and proud perhaps but hey, someone’s got to sing this song, in full volume to the dream.

There’s surprisingly a lot going on this week in the NASCAR world. I wouldn’t even know where to begin and my brain is about to burst!

First off, I posted recaps and comments on both the Nationwide Series and Sprint Cup races from New Hampshire last weekend. I also add fuel to the fire by discussing the feud that was Juan Pablo Montoya vs. Kyle Busch.

The “Ride With Dale Jr” Contest is still going on, now there is another great contest to meet Tony Stewart. Also, at this weekend’s race at Daytona you could get a FREE Coke Zero if one of the 13 driver’s sponsored by Coca Cola wins the race.

Tony Stewart will be on ”Driven To Hunt” this weekend on ESPN and Dale Jr. will be on “Shifting Gears” The entire time schedule and rerun times are posted.

As if I wasn’t already bursting with the news and updates listed above, I try and sort out the mess that is NASCAR driver’s playing musical cars. Who’s re-upped their contracts and who is exploring other oppertunities. It’s a confusing mess!

As always, I will be recapping the races this holiday weekend and brush up on my PhotoShop skills because the Juan Pablo Montoya/Kyle Busch boxing photo was a 10 minute slap together creation, but turned out a nice little touch either way.

EVERYONE HAVE A SAFE AND HAPPY 4th OF JULY and enjoy race day!

Regards,

Race Kitten

While the outcome of Sunday’s Lennox Industrial Tools 301 may have been disapointing for many of us, it reminded us of how hard it is to actually win a race in NASCAR. A team that has the best car and the best driver for a given race doesn’t necessarily come out the winner, and we saw that at Loudon.
The teams that stayed out during the caution with around thirty laps to go were merely expecting to get a good finish. They knew they wouldn’t be able to beat the cars that had been running so well all day–those of Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, and Jeff Burton, for example– and expected to be about four laps short on fuel if the race had gone green for the scheduled distance, but they took a gamble that many teams take at nearly every race. The results that came of the gamble were better than expected, with Kurt Busch winning the race, Michael Waltrip second, and JJ Yeley third.

It would be fun to think about what might have happened if the rain hadn’t come down, but it is really pointless to do so, in much the same way it would be to think about what would have happened if it had started raining fifteen minutes earlier.

It was disappointing to see the race end the way it did, but what happened happened, and we got to see yet another way a race is won.

For those who missed the race, or perhaps wish to relive the experience, Rev’Jim’s RantsnRaves has the race “Live on Type Delay:

There are a lot of fast cars making their way up through the field. Besides Stewart, who is now running in thirteenth, having gained fifteen positions from his starting spot, Jeff Gordon seems to finally have a good car to start with and has made it into the top ten…read more

There are also some thoughts on the Nationwide series at Rev’Jim’s in the post “Dave Rogers, Jr Celebrates Hometown Victory“

Thank you for visiting NASCAR Bloggers FT Digest

by Badgroove / crossposted here

Just to let those of you know who might have missed it when it was on PPV, The Prelude to The Dream- the dirt track charity race that attracts racers from all genres of racing will be airing on SpeedTV July 5th, 2008 at 1:00 pm eastern time. Racers from Cup to NHRA and everything inbetween show up to Tony Stewart’s Eldora Speedway in Rossburg Ohio are drawn to play in the dirt and to compete for nothing more than bragging rights and a big trophy. Proceeds from the Prelude benefit Victory Junction Gang Camp II (to be located outside of Kansas City). It was a fun race to watch and its worth DVRing just to see Kyle Petty kiss the winner. Seriously. He kissed the winner.

You can read my first thoughts on the Prelude here. SpeedTV also has a great online photo gallery if you are interested.

You can also find information about The Victory Junction Gang Camp and The Tony Stewart Foundation by clicking on the respective links.