Gassing game

Fuel-mileage gambles make for intriguing finishes

You know, few things sound duller than a "fuel-mileage race." It just doesn't convey the same sense of excitement as, say, a "runnin' wide-open drag race." It conjures up images of guys calculating things with slide rules and pacing nervously, and not much else.

There was some talk on the broadcast Sunday at Pocono about whether they're good or bad for the sport. Well, we've had three of them in the past three weeks, and I've got to tell you, I love 'em. The reason: they reinforce that stock car racing is a team sport, and they give us a chance to partake in one of the great pastimes we as fans enjoy: second-guessing.

The team sport stuff is obvious. You've got to have a solid crew to build and service all aspects of the car. The second reason is more compelling to me. One thing NASCAR doesn't give us that all other sports do is a chance to dissect the results. You can break a baseball game down pitch by pitch, or a basketball game possession by possession. And when a manager brings in a new pitcher to face a tough hitter, you know there's a lot riding on that particular decision. But after a race, you can't point to something and say, "That's why they lost, because that part of the car there should have been slightly more convex." And when a crew chief calls for a tire pressure adjustment, you can't really appreciate the possible consequences unless you're driving the car.

But when you introduce fuel mileage into things, you force teams to make decisions. (I'm also a big fan of uncertain weather. Remember the Daytona 500, how everyone had to figure out when the rain was coming and plan their pit strategies accordingly?) Ask Matt Kenseth, who was one of the few cars to top off late on Sunday. "When we came down and got fuel there was only three of us on pit road, so, I don't know, we've been a little conservative on the gas mileage thing," he said. "We had a second- or third-place car and finished 13th with it. You just can't do that. You give away too many points. When you play conservative, that's when you get bit. They said that's all the fuel we had, but, I don't know, everybody else made it and got some cautions so we need to look that over."

Sunday's race had everything a great sporting event should: plenty of action and a building sense of drama, thanks largely to the fact that we knew some people were gambling on gas and some were playing it safe. Let's hope we get the same thing every week.

Brendan Gaughan. Give it up for Allen Iverson's former roommate at Georgetown (not kidding), who ran the fastest Truck race ever and is in a flat-footed tie atop the standings.

Ricky Rudd. A good news, bad news weekend. He ran his 700th straight race, but his engine blew up and he finished 39th. I checked the numbers, and unless I did the math wrong (always a safe bet), he has 23 wins, 183 top 5's and 322 top 10's in those 700 races. That's astonishing. He's been in the top 10 in almost half of those races. If you average those numbers out over 20 races (which is what we've run so far this year), it comes out to 0.7 wins, 5.2 top 5s and 9.2 top 10s. Compare that to Michael Waltrip's 2003 season through 20 races: one win, six top fives, eight top tens, which puts him sixth in the standings. So Rudd has put up the equivalent of a sixth-place season for the past 22 years. Not too shabby.

The Joe Gibbs motor guys. Everyone has bad days, but it's not every day both of your cars lose their power. Tony Stewart, who lost his third engine of the year, finished 37th and dropped five places in the standings, and Bobby Labonte (who hadn't lost an engine all year) went out shortly thereafter.

Bobby Hamilton Jr. vs. Mike Bliss. Some good yapping last week after Hamilton spun out Bliss. Well, turnabout is apparently fair play in the Bliss household. He gave Hamilton, who sat on the pole and led 31 laps, a tap in the back on lap 63 and sent him into wall.

Jeremy Mayfield vs. Robby Gordon. You know what I love? When someone says something like, "I don't want to say anything bad about her, but she's a terrible human being." So I particularly enjoyed Mayfield's post race comments after a run-in with Gordon. "We had clearly passed the 31, and he just got into us. I never whine or say anything like that like most of these guys do," he said, before going on to do just that, "but he did it and it was uncalled for."

"We're going to drive a factory KIA car in 2005." Tony Stewart puts those rumors regarding his future to rest.

Nothing more pleasing than opening the mail and reading "Hey Mark, Jenks, from Tungsten74. I've been on tour with another band down south for the past month but now I'm back so I thought I would chime in on the Vegas mascot." (Loyal readers will remember we're soliciting ideas for a mascot for the Las Vegas Speedway.)

"My first thought was Slottsy the slot machine. Pretty straight forward. Then I thought about card playing as well as the slots and realized there's really only one man alive who can play a gambler. Kenny Rogers. I'm sure he loves Vegas and wouldn't mind all the comps he gets when his face (as The Gambler ) appears as a hologram on all the new Las Vegas Motor Speedway tickets, hats, and T-shirts. He could do the National Anthem, the "Start your engines" bit sung to the tune of Lady and he could join up with the TNT crew and give updates from the pits. 'Hi, Kenny Rogers here, live from the Labonte pits. Fatback, I'm just checking in to see what condition your condition was in.'"

Capital idea, Jenks. For those of you who don't remember (or, more likely, never read about them in this space in the first place), Tungsten74 are the official prog-rock band of the Tracking NASCAR column. (Not to be confused with State4, the official somber electronic band of the Tracking NASCAR column. One day I hope to unite the two bands and play a show, or better yet, a series of shows in which they alternate opening act and headliner like David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar did. I gotta know...who do you guys prefer, Dave or Sammy?) Jenks has other questions that will be addressed at a later date.

As for other Vegas suggestions, Nick from Cheyenne says: "I would think it depends on what kind of racing happens at the track. Is there limited passing? Do the cars stay in the same positions (slots) for most of the race? The mascot could be a slot machine. Do only the characters of the sport win at Vegas? How about a card for the mascot. Do brightly painted cars perform better? Neon lights for the mascot. Is the track known for loose cars? The mascot could be a ... ahh ... loose ... uhm ... maybe I shouldn't travel down that road." Very clever, Nick.

Steve lives in Vegas, so we should listen when he suggests "Lola, that Nextel-yakkin', NASCAR-smackin' queen of carbon monoxide and paint-trade'n, stock car racin' showgirls. You know, the one with the eight-foot-high 'helmet' and the skimpy racin' suit."

Steve also notes "this 115-degree heat is starting to get to me."

Finally, Roger, who lists his hometown as "Northern Virginia" sent in a handy top ten list.