Happy Friday everyone. Habbajeeba, we made it through the week! Today In Nascar History Dec. 4, 1964: Bobby Marshman, the 1961 Indy 500 co-rookie of the year, dies on this day from injuries he sustained in a tire test in Phoenix. Marshman made two starts in NASCAR, finishing eighth in the second Daytona 500 qualifier in 1964 and 35th two days later in the 500. His 500 ended after 17 laps when his Holman-Moody Ford overheated. Marshman started the 1961 Indy 500 33rd and finished seventh, sharing rookie honors with Parnelli Jones, who finished 12th after leading 27 laps. Quote of the Year There's an unwritten rule in NASCAR: Thou shalt not take on Dale Earnhardt Jr. --Terry Blount/espn Quote of the Day If the fans are going to go through the trouble of clicking online every day to get this award for you, to get you to win it, to hope you win it, I understand how important it is for me to accept it in person. -- DALE EARNHARDT JR. Countdown to Daytona 72 Bits and Pieces Earnhardt Jr. Gives Up Partial Ownership Of JR Motorsports By Greg Engle CupScene.com Editor Earnhardt was in Las Vegas, site of this week's champion's celebration, to accept his seventh consecutive Most Popular Driver Award. He talked with reporters afterwards about his season and the future of the race team he owns with his current NASCAR Sprint Cup boss Rick Hendrick. Besides the ownership revelation Earnhardt said the JR Motorsports team, which competes in NASCAR's Nationwide Series, was in 'dire need' of sponsorship and in fact at this point won't even be able to run an entire season with driver Kelly Bires who took over for Brad Keselowski who is heading to Penske Racing next season. Longtime sponsor GoDaddy.com is moving to the Hendrick Motorsports No. 5 Sprint Cup series with driver Mark Martin. Tommy Baldwin Racing Tabs Bliss To Drive No. 36 By NASCAR Media Release Bliss, a 44-year old native of Portland, Ore., has 476 combined starts in NASCAR'S three national series with 15 wins, 89 top-five finishes and 181 top-10s. "Mike brings a lot of experience to the table and next year, we're stepping everything up," Baldwin said. "He gives us the best chance to qualify for the Daytona 500 and get ourselves in the top 35 in points after the first five events of the 2010 season. I'm very excited to have him on board along with our sponsor, Wave Energy Drink." McDowell, who closed out the 2009 season for Tommy Baldwin Racing, will still play a vital part of sponsor Wave Energy Drink's future marketing plans. McDowell is slated to drive in select Cup Series events in a Wave Energy Drink-sponsored car in 2010. TRG And Labbe Part Ways By NASCAR Media Release In a statement the teams said TRG appreciates Slugger's dedication in its first year as a Cup organization where he helped guide the team to 35 consecutive starts and TRG's first top-10 finish in the Sprint Cup Series. TRG Motorsports added that it will, as planned, compete full time in 2010 with Bobby Labonte behind the wheel of the No. 71 with TaxSlayer.com on-board for a good portion of the season and is currently in negotiations with several top-level crew chiefs. Johnson, Knaus Win Top Sporting News Awards By Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service/Bill Marx Jimmie Johnson, the first driver in Sprint Cup Series history to win four consecutive championships, is the Sporting News driver of the year, the magazine announced Thursday. Johnson won seven races in 2009 and led 2,238 laps, both series highs. He has 47 Cup wins in 291 starts, a 16.2 winning percentage that ranks sixth all time. Here is the complete list of Thursday's award winners: Ren departs KHI to pursue management opportunities New crew chief for Hornaday could come next week By Staff and Wire Reports KERNERSVILLE, N.C. -- Kevin Harvick Inc has announced that Rick Ren, crew chief of the No. 33 truck driven by four-time Truck Series champion Ron Hornaday, has left the organization to pursue management opportunities within the sport. "Ron [Hornaday] and Rick [Ren] have been a powerful combination the past few years in the Truck Series," KHI co-owner Kevin Harvick said. "With success comes opportunity and we wish him well in the next step of his career. We have put together a solid foundation with our Truck Series program from top to bottom. "The guy behind the wheel is the catalyst of everything that has turned this into a championship- Harvick said an announcement regarding Hornaday's crew chief for 2010 could be expected as early as next week. Hornaday has won two of the past three Truck championships and is the first four-time champion (2009, 2007, 1998, 1996) in Truck Series' history. NASCAR.COM's Dave Rodman says talk in the Truck Series garage near the end of the season positioned Ren with part-time Truck Series competitor Kyle Busch, who has considered launching his own Truck operation for more than a year. Kyle Petty to be part of TV sports show with former pro athletes By SceneDaily Staff HLN and Turner Sports have announced the premiere of a one-hour special "With All Due Respect", featuring HLN anchor Robin Meade, TNT NBA analyst Charles Barkley, TBS Major League Baseball analyst Dennis Eckersley and TNT NASCAR analyst Kyle Petty. The trio will give opinions on topics ranging from sports to world news, entertainment and current events. The program will premiere on HLN on Dec. 20 at 10 p.m. EST. "Charles, Dennis and Kyle have diverse interests, and their perspectives reach beyond sports," said David Levy, president of ad sales, distribution and sports, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. "We look forward to bringing them together with Robin Meade for an exciting year-end show." The program will include interaction and questions from the live studio audience, along with questions from fans submitted through CNN iReport, the network's user-generated news community. Petty is a veteran of NASCAR racing who now works as a race analyst in the NASCAR on TNT studio. Tony Stewart, Juan Pablo Montoya brush off Homestead incident, potential rivalry By SceneDaily Staff LAS VEGAS - Fans hungering for a rivalry brewing between Tony Stewart and Juan Pablo Montoya will be sadly disappointed to learn that the two have already brushed off their incident at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Stewart and Montoya were involved in a series of incidents in the NASCAR Sprint Cup season finale. After a warning from officials, the incidents culminated with Montoya hitting Stewart's Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet and knocking it across the grass during the race. Montoya was then penalized two laps by NASCAR officials. Thursday, Montoya laughed off the incident, saying people had made more of it than there was to it. And Stewart indicated that he deserved the final hit. The drivers left the season-ending race without comment, but talked about the incident Thursday in Las Vegas as they prepared for the annual NASCAR NMPA Myers Brothers Awards ceremony. "It's funny," Montoya said. "Actually we were talking about it yesterday. I was talking with Tony yesterday and we were laughing about it. It's crazy, like all you guys [in the media] make a big deal out of nothing. It's not the first time we got together. Last time we saw each other in qualifying afterward and we were laughing about it, after Texas my first year. And here we saw each other and ... it's like when it happened, he knew it was coming. It wasn't a surprise. Come on." Stewart didn't dispute that account at all. While he says that he considers himself to be good friends with Montoya, it is that relationship which led him to know that retaliation was coming. Stewart said that when he made earlier contact with Montoya, cutting the tire on the driver's Earnhardt Ganassi Racing Chevrolet, he actually did more damage than he meant. "I wasn't trying to cut his tire down or get him in a wreck like that, I just was trying to door him and was a little frustrated with what was going on," Stewart said. "He knew that and he knew it when it happened that that's not what the intention was. I also know Juan and Juan and I are good enough friends that no matter how good of friends we are, if you put him in that kind of a situation, you're going to get it back. So when I saw him, I knew what was coming. It's like I told him yesterday, I said I didn't try to even really get away because I knew it was going to happen and it was like I just tried to make the best out of it." Therefore, he said, he knew that Montoya was coming. And he didn't have an issue with them sorting things out that way. "I didn't have a problem with that at all," Stewart said. "What I did ended up being five times worse than what it was intended to be. Especially on the last race of the year like that, you don't want to wreck anybody. So like I said, that wasn't my intention and when that happened it was like, 'Well, I've got that coming.' " … I knew it was coming and I knew I deserved it." A conversation concerning the NASCAR banquet in Las Vegas By Lee Montgomery/scenedai The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Awards Ceremony is scheduled for tonight at Wynn Las Vegas. We all need to remember Wendell Scott Ryan McGee/espn.com December 1 has come and gone. So, did you catch the Wendell Scott Day parade on TV? Did you read all the remembrances and stories in the papers and on the Net? Of course you didn't. Because they didn't happen. The truth is, no one is completely sure what to do with December 1 each year. Do we celebrate it? Do we look back and shake our heads with guilt? Do we just treat it like every other "On this day in NASCAR history ..."? On December 1, 1963, on a rough-hewn dirt track in Jacksonville, Fla., 42-year-old Wendell Scott became the first -- and so far the only -- African-American racer to take the checkered flag in NASCAR's top series. Sort of. Scott wrestled his '62 Chevy around the half-mile Jacksonville Speedway Park for the scheduled 200 laps and drove by the flag stand in first ... but there was no checkered flag. He went by again. No flag. One more time he roared by. Still no flag. Instead, living legend Buck Baker was flagged as the winner and his famous No. 87 Pontiac was directed to the makeshift Victory Lane to receive his trophy, a check for $1,000 and a kiss from the race queen. "I knew I had won that race," Scott later recalled telling the NASCAR officials. "I had lapped Buck Baker three times!" During the pre-loop data era when race scoring was dicey at best (usually a handful of guys hash-marking lap counts between cigarette drags), post-race protests were standard operating procedure. Scott immediately filed a protest with the sanctioning body, arguing his case while Baker celebrated in front of a crowd of about 5,000 spectators. For four hours NASCAR officials checked and re-checked the scoring sheets. That was just enough time for Baker to load up and head back home to Charlotte with the race winner's trophy tucked under his arm. It was also enough time to let the grandstands empty. Years later Scott liked to say, only half-jokingly, that everyone moved so slow in order to ensure that he didn't get a chance to kiss that lily-white queen. Finally, to a crowd of no one, NASCAR official Johnny Bruner declared that Scott was indeed the winner. One of the scorers had missed four of Scott's laps, so instead of finishing third, one lap down, he had actually finished first, two laps ahead of Baker. The official box score says that Scott took the lead from Richard Petty on lap 176 and led from there on, all the way through lap 202, two more circuits than he was required to run. His response, with any elation he may have felt now sucked out of him, was "Just give me my damn check." He got it, but what he didn't receive was the trophy. "Someone took off with my trophy," he told the local paper. "I wish I had gotten it for winning the race." Five hundred miles to the north, Franklin Scott, the second of Wendell's five children, had played in a high school football game and was getting on the team bus to head home. A teammate jumped on for the ride back to Danville, Va., and shouted to Frank that his father had won a race down in Florida. "The guy was a jokester," Frank explained to me in 2006. "So I didn't believe him. By the time I got home I realized it was true. I was so excited for Daddy but I was so disappointed too. I never missed his races. Even when I was in college and later when I was teaching and coaching [at nearby Laurel Park High] I used to hustle back and forth to wherever Daddy was racing. I was the crew chief, tire changer, do-everything- Later that month, on December 29, Scott received his trophy before the Sunshine 200 in Savannah. But instead of the shiny brass cup that Baker was awarded for his "win" at Jacksonville, Scott's reward for the actual victory was little more than a slightly-polished wooden stick fastened to a base that bore no inscription whatsoever. The symbol of the greatest moment of his 13-year Cup Series career was proudly displayed in the Scott family den -- it still is -- but was overshadowed by what he'd received for lesser achievements, like all the wins on little Appalachian short tracks and his NASCAR Virginia State Sportsman championship. One day he will be inducted into the sparkling new NASCAR Hall of Fame. This year he was among the 25 nominees for the inaugural class. But until that day comes, and it is still a few years away at best, that rudimentary memento will have to do. "I can't even look at it, it's so pathetic," admits Wendell Scott Jr., the racer's eldest son, who served as co-crew chief with Franklin (they were known as "Brother" and "Frankie") and raced for a little while himself, though never in NASCAR's top series. In recent years he has served as a mentor in NASCAR's Drive for Diversity program. But that role hasn't kept him from speaking out when it comes to calling on the league to honor his father, or help take care of his mother, who took care of the family on the road when restaurants and hotels wouldn't serve them. "Daddy never raised hell about it like he could have. It hurt his feelings. Just like it hurt his feelings that Buck Baker never even suggested giving him the real trophy. But he never complained about it publicly. He just wanted to race." He did race. A lot. Scott made roughly 500 Grand National starts (the official records show 495, his sons claim it was 506) and more than 700 Modified Series starts. And he did it all as an independent, building his own rides and sharing pit stalls and pit crews with fellow independents. He was such a renowned wrench man that several powerhouse teams tried to hire him as a mechanic. But he preferred to keep plugging along behind the wheel, despite the weekly obstacles thrown in his way by everyone from fellow racers, to promoters, to NASCAR officials, to even, yes, the Klan. "There was some trouble along the way," Wendell's wife, Mary, told me back in 1998. "But there were also a lot of racers and teams that helped us out without anyone knowing." She referred specifically to Ned Jarrett, Richard Petty and Tiny Lund as people who would "accidentally" leave factory-supplied tires, engines and parts around for Scott to "find." In 1990, many of those racers came to Danville for Scott's funeral after he passed away of spinal cancer. "That always meant a lot to me because it was a sign of respect for my husband as a racer and a man. That's all he ever really wanted." And each year when the calendar hits December 1, that's exactly what we should pause to give him. Smoke hands out 'Stewies' to most memorable of '09 By Official Release LAS VEGAS -- Winners of the third annual "Stewie Awards" were announced Thursday night by two-time Cup Series champion Tony Stewart live on Sirius XM Radio. The 2009 Stewie Award winners were decided by fans around the country who voted for the best, boldest and funniest moments of the season. Winners in 11 categories were honored. Among the evening's highlights was the presentation of the Stewie Lifetime Achievement Award to team owner Rick Hendrick and the awarding of the Golden Stewie to racing legend David Pearson. The winners of the 2009 Stewie Awards: "Feels Like The First Time" Award • Kevin Harvick gets first win in his own Nationwide Series car on March 21. Best Original Drama • 50-year-old Mark Martin makes the Chase in his first year with Hendrick Motorsports. Best Original Comedy • Denny Hamlin vs. Brad Keselowski: Keselowski spins Hamlin into the wall late in NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Dover on Sep. 26. After the race, crews from both teams get into a pit road skirmish. Best Vocal Performance • Tony Stewart "in awe" of Jeff Gordon post-race at Kansas. (Oct. 4) Smokey Yunick Award (Best Engineering and Special Effects) • Mark Martin's No. 5 and Jimmie Johnson's No. 48 cars for not being illegal, yet causing a media frenzy in September after being warned by NASCAR that they were "getting too close to the tolerance limits" set forth by NASCAR. Bonehead Move of the Year Award • Kyle Busch destroys his Nationwide Series guitar/trophy at Nashville in true "rock star fashion" on June 6. "I Got Dumped" Award • Marcos Ambrose loses Nationwide Series race at Montreal on last lap to Carl Edwards by misjudging final turn on Aug. 30. Hal Needham Award (Best Stunt Sequence) • Carl Edwards wrecks on the final lap at Talladega in the spring (Apr. 26) and sends the car flipping into the catch fence. Edwards gets out of car and runs across finish line to complete the race. Best Driver2Crew Chatter Exchange • Juan Montoya penalized by NASCAR at Indy for speeding on pit lane on July 26. Golden Stewie Award • David Pearson "Stewie" Lifetime Achievement Award • Rick Hendrick Guests on Thursday night's program included 2009 Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson; Chase drivers Mark Martin, Jeff Gordon, Kurt Busch, Denny Hamlin, Greg Biffle, Juan Montoya, Ryan Newman, Kasey Kahne, Carl Edwards and Brian Vickers; legendary drivers David Pearson and AJ Foyt; plus Kevin Harvick and Rick Hendrick; and celebrity Robin Leach. Popularity, responsibility go hand-in-hand for Junior Going to Las Vegas for award shows a lot about the man By David Caraviello, NASCAR.COM LAS VEGAS -- It would have been difficult to blame Dale Earnhardt Jr. if had he not shown up. He could have kicked back in his new house, hung out with family and friends, and had somebody else accept his seventh consecutive most popular driver trophy for him. It almost would have been understandable -- what driver would want to jet all the way across the country for one day, receive an award unrelated to performance, and face another round of questions about what it's going to take to turn his program around? No, it wouldn't exactly have been proper, but after his miserable, snake-bitten 2009 season, it would have been easy to fathom why the guy might have wanted to steer clear of this Champion's Week altogether. And for an instant there was the question of whether he had, after his name was announced during Thursday's Myers Brothers award ceremony, and a few long seconds passed without any sign of Junior in the showroom of the Venetian hotel. But then there he was, picking his way past all those Chase drivers and their entourages and making a long walk toward the stage. "They stuck me up there in the top row," he joked. Well, when you're in a room full of title contenders and you finish 25th in final points, that tends to happen. This was a quick Las Vegas trip for Earnhardt, who was heading home right after the event. No craps, no poker, no regaling in the festivities surrounding teammate Jimmie Johnson's fourth consecutive title in NASCAR's premier division. But he had to make an appearance. Four years ago, after the first time he missed the Chase, he sent a videotaped message of thanks to New York. He won't make that mistake again. "I learned my lesson," he said. "If the fans are going to go through the trouble of clicking online every day to get this award for you, to get you to win it, to hope you win it, I understand how important it is for me to accept it in person." Make no mistake about it, Earnhardt understands and appreciates the meaning behind the most popular driver award. Only three men have won it seven or more times, and the other two are Bill Elliott and Richard Petty. In his speech in the Venetian showroom, he used words like "honor" and "pride." Junior is a driver who well understands his sport and his place in it, and realizes that a large degree of responsibility goes along with his fame -- hence, a 3,000-mile trip to Las Vegas for roughly 30 seconds on stage and 20 minutes with the media. "There's a big sense of, did I earn this? Did I deserve it, because of my family name?" he said. "My father gave me a hell of a gift in popularity. My job has been to try and be an asset to the sport. To try and maintain that gift, and its integrity, and the name my father has built, the respect that it has, the Earnhardt name and all that. There are a lot of emotions that kind of run through when I accept the award." Earnhardt's appearance was but a small part of a larger program that honored award recipients who would otherwise get lost in the pomp and circumstance of the formal Cup banquet. There was Joey Logano, accepting his rookie of the year trophy, and giving thanks to mentor Mark Martin. "I only hope I can wheel a car like him when I'm his age in 2040," the 19-year old said. There was radio broadcaster Barney Hall, receiving the Myers Brothers award for lifetime achievement. There was championship crew chief Dale Inman, receiving the Buddy Shuman award for significant contributions to NASCAR. There were sponsor-driven awards that led to some rather curious winners, like Juan Montoya as driver of the year and Darian Grubb as crew chief of the year and Jack Roush as problem-solver of the year. "As part of the management team at Roush Fenway [Racing], I feel somewhat complicit in the problems we had to overcome," quipped Roush, who had three of his five drivers go winless on the season. Johnson, as expected, backed up the truck, receiving a slew of honors and the check-filled envelopes that go with them. Seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong sent a videotaped tribute. "You just have three more to go," the cycling legend said. "Good luck." Johnson seemed more concerned with how cold it was in the theatre, and used some of his rarely-seen championship muscle to get a stern message across. "The temperature in here is unacceptable, For Earnhardt, the work is well under way to get him back to Las Vegas next December for reasons that have nothing to do with his popularity. Car owner Rick Hendrick has already made changes, moving the former lead engineer of Mark Martin's No. 5 car to Earnhardt's team, and tasking Alan Gustafson and Lance McGrew -- the respective crew chiefs of the 5 and 88 cars, which are housed in the same facility -- with merging those operations to the same seamless level of the 48 and 24 programs of Johnson and Jeff Gordon. "That's my focus for next year," Hendrick said. "I'm committed to that 88 car. The other guys are running well and they know the things they've been doing. I've met with Lance and Alan and Junior, and you're going to see a big difference in that team next year." Earnhardt certainly hopes so, especially after an awful 2009 campaign full of failures and breakdowns and shortcomings. Before, Hendrick said, Gustafson had his guys in the 5 outfit, and Tony Eury Jr., Earnhardt's former crew chief, had his guys on the 88. They were two separate teams under the same roof. "Now, we're swapping guys around," Hendrick said. "We're trying to make one big team with two cars." That means Gustafson, who helped Martin to a second-place points finish this year, will play a role on the 88. There are other changes, too, in areas like shocks and engineering. Thursday, at least, Earnhardt sounded optimistic. "I hope it makes us better," he said of the changes. "It should make us better. I feel good about it. I think that as an entire unit the 88 car could have been stronger. We had the resources. There was a broken link here and there. Hopefully we've got that fixed and we'll see the results on the race track." What that link specifically was, he wouldn't say. "I don't want to bring a lot of light to them," Earnhardt said. "They're commonplace changes, but anytime we do anything with our team it really puts everybody in a spotlight, and these are individuals that work in the sport that don't care to be in the spotlight. I really don't want to do that to any of the guys I've been working with in the past that I won't work with in the future. Because they're good guys." Earnhardt knows a little something about living in the spotlight, and truth be told handles it better than many others would in his situation. Even Hendrick will admit that Earnhardt's enormous popularity puts pressure on everyone associated with him, a nine-time championship car owner included. "I knew that when he came, that I'd be answering more questions about what's wrong if he wasn't successful," Hendrick said. "That's just kind of part of the deal. But I have a very good relationship with him, and I really admire the guy that lives inside that wants to please a lot of people but carries a tremendous burden on his shoulders. It's not one I would want." And yet, Junior hoists that burden onto his shoulders every time he walks out his front door. Which is why he knows better than anyone that he needs to reach a point where his production and his popularity are more in line. Which is why he came to Las Vegas for a few hours to accept an award that had nothing to do with success or failure on the race track. Which is why leaving the frustration of 2009 behind must be as easy as flipping a page on a calendar. "It's going to have to be," he said. "It's basically the only option I've got." The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer. Popularity not enough for Earnhardt Jay Hart/yahoo.com LAS VEGAS – He landed in Las Vegas on Thursday morning, stayed just long enough to accept his seventh straight Most Popular Driver award, then hopped on a plane headed back home to Charlotte, N.C. And who can blame him. Sticking around Sin City any longer would only serve as yet another torturous reminder that he's the answer to one of those SAT questions that ask, which of the following isn't like the others? A. Jimmie Johnson B. Mark Martin C. Jeff Gordon D. Dale Earnhardt Jr. Friday night at NASCAR's annual Champions Banquet at the Wynn, Johnson will be feted for the fourth straight year as Sprint Cup champion. Martin and Gordon will be there, too, accepting accolades about their own successes having finished second and third in the standings, respectively. At some point in the evening, Rick Hendrick will be applauded for becoming the first team owner in NASCAR's modern era to finish 1-2-3 in the standings. Meanwhile, Earnhardt, the lone Hendrick driver who didn't earn a seat at the ball, will be 2,200 miles away, dutifully counting down the hours on 2009 – the worst in his Cup career. Junior didn't win a race this season, didn't come close to making the Chase – he finished 25th in the standings – and seemingly every time he did have a good thing going, something would inevitably go wrong, be it a blown tire or a blown engine, all of which beat the confidence out of him. The conflict between the two – popularity and poor performance – is not lost on Junior. In fact, it's precisely why he travelled across the country to give a thank you speech that lasted exactly 54 seconds. "There's no way to thank the fans for what they put themselves through to enjoy our sport – what they go through financially through travel and what not," he explained. "All I can do is go to the race track and drive my tail off trying to give them reasons to be excited. "My father gave me a hell of a gift in popularity," he continued. "So, my job has been to try to be an asset to this sport and maintain that gift and its integrity and the name my father has built." While Junior certainly was handed a gift, it is very much a burden, too. Hendrick understands this. He's experienced it firsthand, saying earlier this year that he wouldn't want Junior's popularity for all the money in the world. But managing Junior's popularity and the responsibilities that come with it is part of the deal Hendrick signed up for when he brought Earnhardt aboard prior to the 2008 season. This is why Hendrick has publicly declared Earnhardt as his top priority in 2010. It's not enough to just reorganize the 5 (Martin) and 88 (Earnhardt) garage to make sure those teams work in tandem as well as the 24 (Gordon) and 48 (Johnson) garage do, as Hendrick has done. And it's not enough just to shift the lead engineer from Martin's team, Chris Heroy, over to Junior's team. Hendrick also has to play the P.R. game, giving Junior Nation a reason to step back from the ledge. "If you don't win, and we don't have two or three cars in the Chase, I'll be answering questions like, 'What happened to you guys? What's wrong?' " Hendrick explained. "You magnify that by 10 with him. You've got all his fans. You got his father's legacy. He's dealing with all of that, plus he comes on board with guys that are four-time champions, and he's measured up there, too. "I really admire the guy that lives inside, that wants to please a lot of people. But he has to carry a tremendous burden on his shoulders, and it's not one that I would want." Hendrick promises there will be "a big difference" in Earnhardt's team in 2010. Junior didn't sound quite as certain. His confidence took quite a beating in 2009, leaving him to hope that a simple flip of the calendar will bring renewed hope. "It's gonna have to," he said. "That's basically all the options I've got." Whatever happens in 2010, Earnhardt will likely be back in Las Vegas a year from now. How long he'll be required to stay in town is another question. And while there would be no shame in winning yet another popularity contest, Junior has reached the point where his legacy is all but defined. Time is running out for him to make it about more than just being really well liked. Passing Lane A NASCAR BLOG BY Mike Hembree LAS VEGAS – The signature moment of Thursday's NASCAR Champion's Week schedule in Las Vegas was almost a "Take that, New York City" kind of statement. In the center of the famous Las Vegas Strip, in the shadow of some of the city's tallest hotel-casinos and tourist landmarks, Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson performed a historic burnout of epic proportions Thursday afternoon as the highlight of the day's Victory Lap. To make an understatement, New York had not embraced the Victory Lap, the annual city-street tour of the series point leaders through town. It cost more than $1 million and a ton of aggravation to shut down part of Gotham for a few race cars to parade along a short route. It simply became too much of a hassle. Las Vegas, on the other hand, embraced the concept, stopping traffic along Las Vegas Boulevard so that Johnson and those who followed him all season could motor down the Strip in front of thousands of onlookers. Thousands stopped on pedestrian bridges and crowded around intersections to watch the event, which stood out as loud and colorful even in this city of neon overdose. When Johnson reached the intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard and Spring Mountain Road near the Wynn hotel/casino, host of Friday night's awards banquet, he put down a long and smoke-filled burnout in the middle of the crossing, spinning the No. 48 Chevrolet several times. It went off virtually as scripted. There probably were some people backed up in traffic who didn't entirely appreciate the moment, but it was a cool welcome to Las Vegas for NASCAR and its top drivers. NASCAR tries to shine in Vegas, but Danica steals the show again Greg Engle/nascarexamine When NASCAR made the decision to move its annual champions banquet to Las Vegas from New York after 28 years most applauded the decision.
Well, that's all for today. Until the next time, I remain, Your Nascar Momma Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!"
"Don't come here and grumble about going too fast. Get the hell out of the race car if you've got feathers on your legs or butt. Put a kerosene rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up there and eat that candy ass." -Dale Earnhardt - 1998 |
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