Happy Tuesday everyone.

Today In Nascar History

February 3, 1944: Marv Acton is born on this day. Acton starts 14 Cup races in three seasons (1971, '74, '77). His final two starts come in 1977 for Rod Osterlund in Osterlund's first year as an owner. Acton's best finish, 11th, comes in June 1971 at Greenville-Pickens Speedway in Greenville, S.C.

Number of the Day

We are counting down the days until the 51st running of the 2009 season-opening Daytona 500 on February 15. Each day we are highlighting a number that corresponds to the countdown number:

12: The fewest cars to start a Cup race. It has happened seven times, including three times in 1964, the last season a field that small started a Cup race. All seven races were 100 miles on half-mile tracks. Only the 1959 race was on a paved oval. Here are the small seven:

12 Days and counting to the Daytona 500

Use it or lose it…Boogity Boogity Boogity

http://msn.foxsports.com/nascar/story/9146776/Boogity-Boogity-Boogity----Use-It-or-Lose-It?

Bits and Pieces

Said teams up with Carter for Daytona 500: Carter/Simo Racing is proud to announce that Boris Said and James Hylton will now team up and prepare to qualify for the 2009 Daytona 500. Said will pilot the #08 Ford, while Hylton will pilot the #60 Dodge. Both cars must make the field on speed, or through the "Gatorade Duel" qualification races. In addition to the Daytona 500, Hylton will also race the Lucas Oil Slick Mist 200 ARCA Remax Series Event. Full and Partial sponsorship opportunities are still available visit EM-Motorsports.com for more info.

No Daytona 500 for Marlin, but other Cup races: Two-Time Daytona 500 winner, Sterling Marlin, doesn’t have a ride for the Daytona 500. “Everything has to end sometime,” says Sterling Marlin, 51. “Nothing goes on forever.” Last year he just missed cracking the lineup in his qualifying race. This year he won’t even get to try. “I thought I might have something lined up but it didn’t work out,” Marlin said earlier this week. Marlin will still be in Daytona doing some PR work for Coors Beer, with a possibility of landing a ride in the Nationwide Series. Despite the Daytona disappointment, Sterling is not hanging up his helmet in the Sprint Cup Series. He is scheduled to run “12 to 14” races this year, sharing a ride in James Finch’s #09 with Ken Schrader and Mike Bliss. He will also run some races at Fairgrounds Speedway, where he won three championships from 1980-82. His son Steadman will run the full Fairgrounds schedule while daughter Sutherlin plans to compete as a rookie on the quarter-mile track. Sutherlin agreed to attend Columbia State if her parents would let her race.(Nashville City Paper)

2010 Camaro to pace Daytona 500? The 2010 Camaro will be the 2009 Daytona 500 race’s official pace car per an advertisement found by many readers. See the image and more at camaro5.com.

Official NASCAR Viewing Party of the Daytona 500 in NYC: the 4th annual viewing party of the Daytona 500 live in HD on a14-foot Big Screen at ESPN Zone in Times Square [at 42nd Street and Broadway -1472 Broadway, (212) 921-3776] in New York City is scheduled for Sunday, February 15th from 1:30pm/et until the conclusion of the race. Chance to win a trip for 2 to the 2009 Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway by competing in a virtual racing tournament. Competition begins in the Sports Arena on the 3rd floor at 1:30pm, space is limited. Tailgate Toss competition to win 2 DreamSeat recliner seats in the front row of the Screening Room to watch the race; plus a $40 voucher for food and non-alcoholic beverages. Competition begins in the Sports Arena on the 3rd floor at 1:30pm, space is limited. This event is free and open to the public. Table service requires a minimum charge of $10 per person per hour. For more information you can go to: www.espnzone.com/newyork.

TV Rights available for NASCAR HOF: NASCAR has announced who will be eligible and how the voting will be conducted for the NASCAR Hall of Fame, which is scheduled to have its first induction ceremony in May 2010, but no decision has been made yet on the awarding of television broadcasting rights. As part of its contract with the City of Charlotte, which will own and operate the hall of fame, NASCAR owns all broadcast rights for the event. NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston said the induction ceremony is not packaged in the current television deal and the negotiation process on the rights is just beginning. Fox, Speed, TNT and ABC/ESPN are the current NASCAR television partners as part of a racing contract that currently runs through 2014, an eight-year deal worth a total of $4.48 billion. Obviously, Speed, which is owned by Fox, would love to have that hall induction ceremony programming. “Speed is totally fired up about working on programming covering the inaugural NASCAR Hall of Fame induction ceremony,” said Speed President Hunter Nickell. “In fact, the brainstorming has long been under way, and we are in the process of developing a specific approach to this historical event.” An ESPN spokesman said the network also would be interested in the induction ceremony. And TNT, whose parent company Turner owns NASCAR.com, also could play a role in the negotiations.(SceneDaily)

Get Well - Martha Earnhardt: Martha Earnhardt, mother of the late Dale Earnhardt and grandmother of Dale Jr., fell last Thursday in her Kannapolis, NC home and broke her left leg above the knee. Been told Mrs. Earnhardt is doing well but is in long for a long recovery. Martha and Carol Gordon Bickford [Jeff Gordon's Mom] are coming out with a new cookbook.

Report: TV ad buyers hitting the brakes on NASCAR

Decline anticipated after Daytona

ThatsRacin.com Report

Advertising sales for NASCAR's season-opening Daytona 500 on Feb. 15 appear to be on par, Fox Sports tells Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal, but projections for the first two quarters of 2008 are about 25 percent below last year's level.

A Fox source told the publication the network is still asking $550,000 for 30-second spots, which it got for last year’s season-opening Sprint Cup race. But several other sources put rates in the $350,000 to $450,000 range, according to the report on the Sports Business Journal site. Additionally, one source said, Daytona 500 spots at the higher rates include additional placement in prerace and postrace shows.

Rates for 30-second spots during other Cup races on Fox are down marginally, the Strreet & Smith account said, and are in the $75,000 to $125,000 range .

Fox carries the first 13 Cup races of the season.

At what point does point-swapping get too silly?

By David Poole/charlotteobserver.com

I’ve been a supporter of NASCAR’s top-35 rule since its inception. I think it’s a fair way to make it more likely the teams that commit to running a full schedule are protected from missing races because of the vagaries of qualifying.

That’s not a very popular position among some fans, who’re under the incorrect impression that putting only the fastest 43 cars each week is the best way to run the NASCAR railroad. It has never been done that way in this sport, not for any significant period of time, and it never should be in my mind.

But the top-35 rule is hard to defend when NASCAR allows the kind of gymnastics that seems to be going on with owner points this offseason.

It’s reasonable for there to be an orderly way for teams to transfer points when it changes drivers. It’s fine with me if Yates Racing wants to take the points earned by David Gilliland and Travis Kvapil last year and give them to Bobby Labonte and Paul Menard – as long as Yates Racing has the same number of top 35 spots for this year as it earned last year.

If Richard Childress Racing wants to start a fourth team, that’s fine. But RCR had three teams in the top 35 last year and that’s how many should start this year in it. If Childress wants to put Casey Mears with the No. 07 team and have Clint Bowyer go to the new team, that’s fine. But Bowyer needs to go hard in the first five races to get into this year’s top 35 and not get an exemption through some kind of elaborate deal.

It doesn’t look as if we’re going to have a Daytona 500 entry list until Friday, and according to Bob Pockrass of SceneDaily.com a lot of stuff will be going on up until the last minute. Nobody knows more about this points tomfoolery than Pockrass.

Pockrass says that somehow Phoenix Racing has secured a top-35 spot for Brad Keselowski in the No. 09 Chevrolet. Apparently that’s comes from one of the total of six slots that Dale Earnhardt Inc. (four) and Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates (two) had at the end of last year and now control as the merged Earnhardt-Ganassi team.

Teams aren’t supposed to be allowed to have a financial interest in more than four teams. You can field a fifth car for someone who plans to run as a rookie the following year, but the plan supposedly was for Keselowski to run seven races – the maximum allowed for such a prospect – in a fifth Hendrick Motorsports car.

Then came word Keselowski was going to run 10 more for Phoenix. So he’s a rookie in training for two teams? And he’s going to run Daytona with an “affiliation” with Earnhardt-Ganassi, supposedly, even though we all know he’s in the Hendrick pipeline?

Pockrass also says that teams are sniffing around trying to “buy” the points earned by the now-defunct No. 22 team at Bill Davis Racing. The assets of that team were bought by people who’re keeping the engine-building part of the company going, but they’re not racing the 22. That should be that. If points aren’t for sale, then don’t let them be sold.

If Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing wants to run John Andretti in a fourth car with the points from the 15 car last year, that’s OK. Earnhardt-Ganassi should have four spots because they had six and four is the maximum for one team.

That means the points from the 22, the 01 and 41 from last year should be out of the picture, period. That would put Marcos Ambrose in the 47 (with Michael McDowell’s points), AJ Allmendinger in the No. 44 (with the No. 10’s points) and Sam Hornish Jr. in the No. 77 in the top 35 to start the season. And that should absolutely be that.

Briefly

Rockingham Speedway has added another event to its schedule, the Cherry Bomb 200 on July 4. The doubleheader will have the Frank Kimmel Street Stock cars, which raced in the Polar Bear 150 on Jan. 1, running 100 laps beginning at 10 a.m. That will be followed by 100 laps for the American Speed Association’s late model series. ... Sports Business Journal reports that Fox Sports’ projections for NASCAR advertising sales are about 25 percent off of last year’s pace. Three of the top five advertisers on NASCAR telecasts last year were Ford, Toyota and General Motors at a total of about $44 million. All expect to spend less this year. ...Robert Auton, the father of Truck Series director Wayne Auton and Sprint Cup official Buster Auton, died Sunday at age 75. Known as “Hoot” by most in the NASCAR community, the elder Auton was a long-time NASCAR official himself. The funeral will be held on Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. at Springs Road Baptist Church in Hickory.

It's your turn to direct NASCAR on the tube

By David Poole/charlotteobserver.com

I watched the Super Bowl telecast Sunday with a different perspective than a lot of folks because I am sort of related to somebody who was in the NBC production truck.

Drew Esocoff, the unbelievably talented director of "Sunday Night Football," was directing the show Sunday and I thought he did another remarkable job. Drew is married to my wife's cousin Katrina, so maybe I am a hair prejudiced. But this is the guy who also did the swimming at this summer's Olympics in Beijing. This guy does not play around.

The cool thing about Sunday's broadcast, I thought, was that NBC had all of the critical replays from all of the angles necessary for the officials -- and America -- to see that most of those crucial calls wound up being made properly.

That sparked a discussion on Sirius NASCAR Radio this morning about what kind of innovations you see in other sports on television that you would like to see done for NASCAR broadcasts. Two suggestions really sounded good to me.

The first stems from the 360-degree technology that's now being used on football telecasts. During a play, the action can be stopped and the viewer can see what's happening from every angle around the player or point on the field that's involved. A caller pointed out just how cool that would be to show during or in the immediate aftermath of a crash during a stock-car race. I agree with that.

The second suggestion involved pit stops. Television will do a three-shot of three different cars making pit stops at various points on pit road. But since one car gets to pit road before the others, it's hard to compare how the pit stops stack up head to head. The caller on the radio show today said he would like to see pit stops replayed in sync -- from the moment each car stops in its pit stall -- and replayed side-by-side so he can see which crew gets around the car first or does the best job getting to the car when the pit stop begins. I also think that's a good idea.

What different things would you like to see? Now don't say no commercials, because that won't happen in the real world. But is there something you've seen you'd like to see more of, or something you've seen that you'd like to see less of?

 Leaving the Winter of Discontent Behind

S D Grady· Frontstretch.com

Are you ready?

Normally at this time of the year, I’m hovering at the TV set in total anticipation of the pre-race countdown. I hunger for glimpses of new paint jobs, the familiar ring of the announcers’ voices, and the reassuring flutter of a green flag in the February afternoon.

But this year is different. While the offseason plodded by to the tune of Christmas Carols and depressed shoppers, our nation’s ecomony bit the big one. Big banks ate little ones, Detroit’s Big Three turned into the Three Blind Mice … and companies stopped spending altogether.

As the money dried up, it even seemed that NASCAR couldn’t help but join in the general sense of loss and desperation. Team after team disappeared, merged, reformed, and finalized their intentions for the upcoming season…leaving this fan befuddled and not a little uncertain.

I know who will be driving the usual Top 10 cars— Dale Jr., Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick, Carl Edwards, and even Mark Martin are all set up in rides that I will be able to identify. But what of those second-tier teams? Poof! In a cloud of smoke, they have been divested of familiar paint schemes, owner’s names, and crew chiefs to be lost in the morass of the American Recession.

Not only that, I was given no opportunity to test my toes in the waters of the upcoming season through the usual January testing at Daytona.

I am…uncertain.

However, optimism is my friend, and it is times like these that I remind myself of one of the reasons that I follow the trials and tribulations of NASCAR: I’m a fan of fast machines. I know that even if the familiar faces of the Cup Series vanished and were replaced by an entirely new cast, I would still tune in for the drop of the green flag.

So on February 15th, there will still be an afternoon full of excitement no matter who’s driving which car. 43 cars will attack the high banks. They will bump and bang three-wide, change tires in thirteen seconds — you might even find one taking a spin coming out of Turn 2. Engines will roar, and the car on the pole will likely drop to the back — power to the front — and hover in midpack as restrictor plate magic keeps him honest. We, as fans, will complain about penalties, remember better days, and smile when the one we cheer for makes the move.

And most importantly, for those few short hours, I will be in a place where my co-workers aren’t facing layoffs, my mortgage isn’t being bought by yet another bank, and my property taxes aren’t rising faster than sin.

When all is said and done, NASCAR is my escape. Imperfect, occasionally boring, often irritating — but mostly the sport that makes my weekends a better place.

Gentlemen, start your engines.

Uncertainty may equal excitement

Ed Hinton/espn.com

There is a swirling sense of urgency and suspense about going to Daytona that hasn't been this palpable in many years.

"Anybody who says they're not nervous about the start of this season is lying," says the driver who best articulates the pulse of NASCAR, Jeff Burton. "Or they're just arrogant. One of the two."

Fifty miles north of Cape Canaveral, there'll be a hard landing from way up high.

NASCAR is coming back to earth.

It's been too far out, far too long. Now the crashed economy has knocked some sense back into it.

"We were on such a rocket ride there for a while," says team owner Rick Hendrick, "that people just kept paying more money and more money. It was like there was no tomorrow.

"But now we've seen tomorrow."

The morrow looks tempestuous, the waters uncharted.

And therein lies the thrill.

Teams have foundered. More may follow. Survival is the order of the day. Upstart teams financed with dreams rush headlong into the vacuum of the hard times, scavenging equipment and out-of-work personnel, seeking new fortunes.

There is a Wild West feel to it all. The Marshall Tucker Band plays in the back of my mind, apropos of the last era when NASCAR times were this bad/this good.

And there's fire on the mountain
Lightning in the air
Gold in them hills and it's waitin' for me there.

Welcome back to NASCAR as it was meant to be -- the NASCAR the public fell in love with in the first place.

Not enough people have been around long enough to remember this: The tougher times are, the better NASCAR gets.

Stock car racing was born of the Great Depression, and NASCAR was organized amid the economic downturns following World War II.

And always, the more unknowns, the more charged the atmosphere around the garages.

Without offseason testing, the suspense over who'll come out on top, when, for how long -- and who might suddenly fade -- will linger, maybe grow, well after the Daytona 500.

So the plot should thicken as the season progresses.

The test ban "could affect the latter part of the season even more than the early part," Burton says. "Right now you can kind of race on what you did at the end of last year. But if you're still racing in May on what you did the end of last year, you're in big trouble."

Things won't be totally unrecognizable for new-era fans. The rivalry between Jimmie Johnson and Carl Edwards remains at crescendo from the end of last season. They finished 1-2 in the standings, and they start 1-2 as preseason favorites -- though with Edwards on top of most polls, which has Johnson a little baffled, since he'll be going for an unprecedented fourth straight Cup.

And "Wild Thing," Kyle Busch, lurks after a disastrous autumn, promising to stir things up again at the very least.

The top 20 cars are still solidly financed, so the fan who can still afford a ticket, and the laid-off fan who must stay home and watch on TV, won't notice any difference at the front of the pack.

Up there, "I think it's going to be as competitive as it's ever been," says Kevin Harvick. But, "I think there'll be some stuff mixed up in the back half of the field, with the new teams and the old teams."

That's where things get interesting -- and whence self-reliance and grit emerge and move forward.

"I do think it's going to get back to the die-hards who really want to do it," Hendrick says. "I think you'll see some people running out-of-pocket because they want to race."

"Everybody who's ever dragged a race car to a track knows you don't do it for money," says Dale Earnhardt Jr., a man who came out of the most famously hardscrabble lineage in the game.

For all the offseason gloom-and-doom reports of teams' folding or merging, "We've had 15 new teams in the various national divisions [Cup, Nationwide and Trucks] come through the R&D center to get registered and certified," says NASCAR chairman Brian France.

"While [times are] difficult," France acknowledges, "we're starting to get some interest from some new team owners who thought the mountain was too high to climb at one point."

The lower entry threshold "is going to bring in some new owners," says Harvick. "It's an opportunity to get your Cup team started and try to make it work."

From these freer, livelier, more desperate entries may come the next Coo Coo Marlin, the next Hoss Ellington -- the next rugged individualist who is out to race, finances be damned. Maybe there is even the next Richard Childress, the very embodiment of what NASCAR used to be, the common man who starts with nothing but guts and determination.

With triumph in ordeal as the very soul of its appeal, NASCAR never could stand more than moderate success. As it hurtled headlong uptown, to the big markets and the giga-bucks these past 12 or 14 years, it grew so fat, so self-certain, so arrogant that it ran away and left its core fans angered and embittered, and the eyes of its new fans glazing over.

Now NASCAR is turning around, looking for something it finally realizes it dropped along the way in its hurry: the common folk.

The common folk in the grandstands, and the common folk in the garages.

"With a lot of the cutbacks, without the testing, it's giving us extra time to get back more to the fans," says Jeff Gordon, once the epitome of NASCAR's elite, who has parked his private jet and has been flying commercial lately. "And I don't see why we shouldn't. They're the ones who built this sport up to what it is.

"And we all appreciate them very much."

That may come as a news flash to legions who felt left behind, priced out, forgotten.

Ticket prices are tumbling down. Not only is the Feb. 15 Daytona 500 not sold out, but backstretch grandstand seat prices have been cut almost in half, from $99 to $55. Company-wide, International Speedway Corp.'s 12 tracks have permanently lowered the prices of more than 150,000 seats, the cheapest ticket being $25 at Phoenix.

Even Bristol Motor Speedway, whose August night race has for decades boasted the toughest ticket in NASCAR -- and one of the toughest in all of sports -- is running special promotions.

Hotels and motels are loosening their vise-grip gouging on rates, which, believe it or not, hurt teams as badly or worse than they hurt fans.

"Historically, hotels have charged our teams and the ticket holders two or three times what they'd charge for a normal, non-race-weekend stay," says team owner Jack Roush. Managers have also demanded "three- to five-day minimums, and that's been a real hardship.

"But we understand they're starting to get off some of that."

"Hotels are not going to have full houses," says Hendrick, "so they're going to have to have attractive rates."

In the garages there'll be harder work done by fewer people, but the precedent -- the deep recession of 1974 to 1976, the nearest thing NASCAR has seen to the current times -- says there'll be a more cheerful, defiant, can-do spirit.

Thirty-six years ago the storied Wood Brothers ran 18 races and won 11 of them with David Pearson as their driver, "and we did it with five people working on the cars," says team manager Len Wood.

Now, compared to other teams, "we think we're down to nothing," Wood continues, "but we've got 43 people."

And that's with the Woods cutting back to a 12-race schedule, a necessity they kind of like: "We're kind of going back to our roots," says Len. Bill Elliott, their driver, knows how to work on the chassis himself if necessary. And, says Wood, "I'm looking for a fabricator who can change tires, a jack man who can change a transmission, things like that."

There'll be fewer waves of private aircraft on Sunday mornings bringing in dozens of ringer athletes to pit the cars. There'll be more guys who turn the socket wrenches on Fridays and Saturdays, then run the air wrenches on Sundays.

All told, what lies ahead is a simpler, poorer, leaner, maybe dearer, more exciting NASCAR -- replete with fans whose priorities are straighter.

"In the U.S., in the world in general," says Gordon, "we were all living a little bit too much in Fantasyland. Not everybody, but a lot of us.

"And I think this is going to get us back down to reality and give us a fresh start."

And so for the first time in a long time, February at Daytona is what it ought to be: a time of beginning again in NASCAR.

You can feel the urgency and the energy -- the fire on the mountain, the lightning in the air.

Spending a day on the set with Dale Earnhardt Jr., commercial star

Bruce Martin/si.com

MOORESVILLE, N.C. -- It's a picture perfect Friday afternoon, yet Dale Earnhardt Jr. is tucked away inside his private garage, which on this day has been darkened for a GoDaddy.com commercial shoot, one of the sponsors that will be on his Chevrolet during the 2009 season.

The garage is nestled away in the Iredell County countryside, behind iron gates and beyond a sign on the driveway that says "Dirty Mo' Acres." Off to the right is a high-banked go-kart track that would be the envy of any kid growing up. And still under construction is a huge mansion that will soon be home to NASCAR's most popular driver.

While the house may be lavish by everyday standards, there are other drivers in the series who have built bigger, more elaborate homes, according to Mike Davis, a close personal aide to Earnhardt. "You have to remember," Davis says, "that for most of his career, Junior has lived in a two-level modular home. So this is something that he's been waiting to build. It's going to be nice, but it won't be as elaborate as one might expect."

Hmmm.... a modest mansion for someone with $30 million in the bank.

"I'm real excited about getting my house done," Earnhardt says. "I've never really built a house before, so this has been an interesting experience. It's going to be fun when it is done. There are a lot of cool things that I've added. The basement will be a lot of fun, with a pool table and a poker room and a music room. That's going to be a lot of fun down there."

The sanctuary will give Earnhardt a place to escape the demands that come from his popularity, even though it's his ease in front of the camera, his off-the-cuff comments and his Generation X appeal that makes him the idol of the "Junior Nation."

On this day he sits in front of a film crew of 30. Earlier in the day, he and his young driving protégé, Brad Keselowski, shot a commercial featuring Candice Michelle of World Wrestling Entertainment working under the hood of one of the GoDaddy.com-sponsored Chevrolets. In another commercial, every time Keselowski goes to speak, he is cut off by Earnhardt, who describes the advantages to GoDaddy.com and finally tells the frustrated second fiddle, "Brad, you've got to be a lot faster."

When the director tells Keselowski to show more emotion, his response is, "It's hard when you only got one word."

That's because in this script, Earnhardt is the star.

"I just get in there and get 'er done," Earnhardt said of shooting commercials. "I don't know if we are better than a lot of actors, but when you do it enough and do it enough times, you don't take it too seriously. You go in there and have fun. You need to be yourself.

"Half the time I enjoy doing these things and the other half of the time I'd rather be laying around, [goofing] off. I get those days once a week if I'm lucky. That's when nobody can find me or bother me."

But Earnhardt, the businessman, understands how important it is to his sponsors to get their value out of such an arrangement.

"You can see [GoDaddy.com] getting involved more and more in all kinds of different things and we were the lucky group to pair up with them when they wanted to get more involved in NASCAR," he says. "It's good for the perception of our program to have them involved with us because it fits our mentality and personality.

"We try to do all of these commercial shoots in January when we have time. And this year, without testing and not having to go to Daytona, that's been a lot more fun for me."

Earnhardt is a big fan of not testing at Daytona even though he competes for a team (Hendrick Motorsports) that has all the resources to make testing worthwhile.

"You aren't going learn anything in a test that you haven't already learned," Earnhardt said. "We've been testing cars at Daytona for 30 years and they have figured out about everything there is to know. If we quit testing it saves an individual car $1.5 million. That's a lot of money.

"But I'm looking forward to going back to Daytona. I think we'll be all right. We didn't run well in the Daytona 500 for some reason. I made some mistakes in the lines that I chose at the end of the race, but I should have been stronger all day.

"For the rest of the season, we got all the stuff, we got all the tools, we got no excuses. We've got a great team. We've got more than most people take to the race track. We'll be all right."

While Earnhardt steals the spotlight, Keselowski, who has been a star in the NASCAR Nationwide Series and will run selected Sprint Cup races this season, is able to learn what it takes to be a star on and off the track by the way Earnhardt projects himself. Keselowski was Earnhardt's choice several years ago and so far is living up to expectations driving for Junior's Nationwide Series team.

"My expectations for Brad are to have the same season he had last year," Earnhardt said. "It's going to be hard to beat the Cup guys, but if he can win some races and be up there battling with them and making a case for himself, I'd be happy as Hell."

Earnhardt would also be happy if less were expected of drivers. Case in point. At a recent round-table discussion involving the track promoters of Speedway Motorsports Inc. (SMI), several stressed that they'd like to see drivers do more to help the fans and the tracks in order to sell more tickets at those facilities.

Upon hearing that during a break in his commercial shoot, Earnhardt fired back with a message of his own.

"The race track owners want drivers to do more? Yeah, right. They need to go back to work," he said. "They forgot what it's like to sell tickets. That's their problem. They ain't had to sell tickets for a long time and none of them remember how or knew how or ever learned how.

"They need to get back to working hard and doing their promotions and putting packages together for race fans. They don't want to cut the ticket price but they probably should and get these hotels to quit gouging these people. They can dump that responsibility on drivers all they want but the responsibility really lies in their hands to sell race tickets and they have to get creative in doing it. We already do a lot. We do [bleeping] plenty and they are full of [bleep]."

Earnhardt believes the risk versus reward for a driver offering his opinion often leads to ridicule. That is why some drivers don't open up to the fans and the media.

"There are a lot of great guys in this sport," Earnhardt said. "We do what we do, man. We race as hard as we can race. I don't know what else we can do. I'm not going to be a part of no circus. I'm out there going to race and that is what we do. The cars drive the way they drive and we are driving them as hard as we can and get side-by-side and make it a show. We're driving our butts off.

"I've just got to get it done this year and make it happen."

If Earnhardt can make it happen on the track as easily as he makes it happen filming commercials, then he should have a very successful 2009 season.

The Yellow Stripe

After NASCAR's Worst Winter Ever, Hope Springs Eternal In 2009

Danny Peters· Frontstretch.com

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…”

Charles Dickens — A Tale of Two Cities

It has been, very much, a winter of discontent for NASCAR.

With money scarce, extensive layoffs have cast a grim pallor across an industry already suffering the ramifications of the global economic crisis. Big brand names have left the sport — some, like AT&T, due to the category exclusivity deals put in place by the governing body itself — and fresh corporate cash infusions are scarcer than Michael Waltrip victories. For a sport that is quite literally fueled by sponsorship dollars, the recession has hit hard – mighty hard.

The problems helped cause a second Silly Season which has bordered on the absurd. Who would have predicted when Elliott Sadler signed a two-year extension to pilot the No. 19 car back in May he would spend his offseason — immediately prior to his wedding, no less — invoking last ditch legal measures to save his ride? In more profitable times, the nine-year veteran would have simply cut his losses and sought a seat elsewhere. But the harsh reality of this offseason’s ratio of seats available to drivers looking — not to mention the fine late-season form of A.J. Allmendinger in the No. 10 GEM car late in the year — put the actions of the amiable Virginian into stark context.

Of course, GEM is now RPM as part of the merger-mania which dominated the off-season news — changing the landscape of the sport irrevocably. This winter’s marriage of convenience between Ganassi and DEI came about, ostensibly, for both teams to survive, while GEM’s “merger” with Petty Enterprises was just a polite way of saying “gobbled up.” Sure, the brand name remains above the door to the shop, but that’s nothing other than a no brainer piece of branding. With Ray Evernham well and truly out of the picture, it’s the Gillett family who are — no pun intended — firmly in the driver’s seat.

One glimmer of optimism, however, was the welcome news that the Wood Brothers didn’t fold, convincing Bill Elliott out of his planned retirement and back behind the wheel one last time for a partial schedule of 12 races. With sponsorship from Motorcraft for nine of the dozen, further races might be added to the schedule; but for now, the fact that an historic old team has survived to fight another day is positive enough in this bleak winter.

Overall, though, you get my point. It’s not been pretty since we wrapped things up at Homestead in mid-November; so, a return to green flag action can’t come soon enough for our beleaguered sport. You know things are bad when even the relentless optimist himself – Darrell Waltrip – is concerned. On a broadcast of Pre-season Thunder DW was overheard, in an unguarded moment he thought was off camera, talking about his worries for the post-Daytona drop off in field sizes. Yet despite all the doom and gloom and the ritual spleen venting on websites and message boards — the length and breadth of the NASCAR internet universe — there is still much to look forward to in 2009. Hope does spring eternal; and I, for one, can’t wait.

Storylines abound at every level. Can Mark Martin make one last improbable charge for the Championship that has eluded him for the better part of three decades? Will Jimmie Johnson do what no one has ever done before and win an unprecedented fourth straight title with his own unique brand of metronomic Chase efficiency? Can Jeff Gordon turn around what was, by his own very high standards, a hugely disappointing season (his first winless year since his rookie season in 1993) and finally grab a fifth crown?

Will the inimitable and incomparable Kyle Busch join his brother to become just the second pair of siblings after Terry and Bobby Labonte to win NASCAR Cup titles? Could Carl Edwards shed the bridesmaid tag – appropriately enough, given he got hitched this offseason – to win his first crown and Jack Roush’s third Championship? Might Junior delight his legion of adoring fans and finish top of the pile when the checkers flies at Homestead? And let’s be fair here; if that were to happen, many of NASCAR’s problems would be solved overnight on the back of the Champion’s merchandise sales alone.

Is there going to be a new name in the 2009 Chase field? Will this be the year when the likes of David Ragan, Brian Vickers, and Juan Pablo Montoya, to name but three, show that they belong in the elite class of drivers? Could Bobby Labonte put it all together and get back to the top of the heap? Which of the twelve drivers who made it in 2008 will miss out on a coveted spot in 2009? Could Tony Stewart wheel his way into the Chase in his first year as owner/driver? And if Tony can, it stands to reason Ryan will have the horsepower to make it as well.

And then there are other… less serious… concerns.

Which pair of drivers will have a ridiculous, unnecessary, but deeply amusing public spat? What’s the over/under on Smoke appearing in the NASCAR hauler in the first month of the season? Will we see a worse Victory Lane celebration than Kurt Busch’s infamous snow angel two years ago at Bristol? Who will give the best command? (It’ll be hard to top actor Brendan Fraser’s effort at Chicagoland this past July, though). How many races will it be before someone calls Joey Logano overrated – my money is on Harvick, by the way. And if the 18-year-old phenom does prove the second coming of Casey Atwood, at what stage does his moniker revert from Sliced Bread to Burnt Toast? Will any driver embarrass himself in a commercial more than Kasey Kahne’s pink heart firesuit and dancing? (The signs on this one, by the way, are optimistic after the driver of the No. 9 Bud Chevy revealed no new ads have been shot this offseason). And while we’re talking TV, will NASCAR Wives — TLC’s planned “reality” show featuring Delana Harvick, amongst others — ever air?

So, on the eve of NASCAR’s 61st season – the start of a seventh decade – there are still plenty of reasons to look on the bright side of life. For the teams, the slate is wiped clean, every driver has zero points, and the story of the year ahead is just waiting to be written. Even Jamie McMurray is super optimistic, saying on Pre-Season Thunder that anything but a Chase berth would be a big disappointment. Heck, I’m even looking forward to seeing Digger on FOX; and I never, ever, thought I’d find myself saying that. The long winter is on the way out, and it’s time for some racin’.

Let’s get those engines started, gentlemen.

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