"I don’t regret anything that I did in racing. I mean, that’s why I am able to carry on with life and not have to worry so much about going back to racing.”
--Jerry Nadeau

"I'll be the first to admit that we had a lot more exposure over the last five or six years given to us that's sort of out line compared to what we've won and how we've run. I'm obvious to that - I'm not an idiot. So its good to get into Victory Lane every once in a while to back up the exposure and the hype."
--Dale Earnhardt Jr.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What's wrong with Jeff Gordon?
Mark Decotis


Notes and quotes from a racing weekend:

OK, so Dale Earnhardt Jr. won Saturday night at Richmond to cement his legitimacy as a Nextel Cup racer, and he and cousin and crew chief and fellow "junior" Tony Eury are in the groove and laughing at each other's jokes and so on and so forth.

And OK, Kevin Harvick was third and ticked off because he didn't win, but he and owner Richard Childress are in the groove and laughing at each other's jokes, and Harvick and Childress have a new contract to work together through 2009.

And OK, Junior is sixth in points and charging hard and Harvick is fifth and doing the same. But from this computer the biggest story to go down Saturday was perhaps the one that attracted the least notice: Jeff Gordon finished 40th.

That's right, 40th, completing only 286 of 400 laps thanks to engine problems. He slipped three places to ninth in points. The finish was his lowest of the season and his fourth of 21st or worse in 10 races. Gordon's road to NASCAR title No. 5, which appeared to be somewhat rough and crooked at the outset of 2006, now looks serpentine and downright mean.

What makes things even more confounding is that two of Gordon's teammates -- Jimmie Johnson and sideways sophomore Kyle Busch -- are first and eighth in points, respectively, while Brian Vickers is an unsurprising 19th.

Perhaps Rusty Wallace was correct when he questioned Gordon's commitment a few weeks ago. Gordon retorted with strong words of his own, questioning Wallace's constant meddling as a driver. But the time has come for Gordon to let his results on the track speak for him. Right now, they aren't.

SURVIVOR STORY
Jerry Nadeau continues to recover
By Greg Engle
Cup Scene Daily

 
In 2003 he was on top of the world.

The 33-year-old Danbury Connecticut driver had won a race in the top tier series of NASCAR, driven for such famous teams as Hendrick Motorsports and Petty Enterprises and finished as high as 17th in the points. He’d begun the 2003 season as the new driver for MB2 Motorsports along with their sponsor the US Army and looked to have a very bright future.

Then came May 2nd. The MB2 team had qualified 12th for the weekends race and were running in the top three during a practice session at Richmond International Raceway, when Jerry Nadeau’s career and very nearly his life, came to an end.

Nadeau slammed into the wall in the worst possible way; driver-side first between the first and second turns. He was airlifted to Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center in Richmond in critical condition with head, lung and rib injuries.

He’s spent the last three years recovering from his near fatal injuries. Nadeau is now a team consultant for Clay Andrews Racing in the NASCAR Busch Series. He also lends his support to former NASCAR driver Ernie Irvan and the Brain Injury Association of America.
 
Nadeau talked with Wendy Venturini for a recent edition of NASCAR Raceday on SPEED about his long recovery and his future:

For Nadeau, his recovery to this point seems longer than the three years on the calendar.

“Probably more … it seems like an eternity,” Nadeau said. “I have been stuck in this phase for the last, like you said, three years. I’ve just kind of lost track. You wonder sometimes if it is ever going to get better. But you know it is … I’m functioning. I can talk. I can walk. I just can’t race.”

Nadeau still has lingering effects from the devastating crash, he still has limitations or side effects.

I think the biggest thing is the whole left side of my body is still numb to this day, “he said. “It has been like that for three years. Really, I guess you can say, as sharp as I used to be.

Now as he begins his third year of recovery, Nadeau seems to resign himself to the fact that his condition may never improve further.

“ I don’t think it’s going to get that much better,” Nadeau said. “I think …what they are trying to explain to me is that the first two years, two and a half years is when you are as good as you are going to get. And anything after two and half years is going to be small increments.

You know, one day it’s like a light switch. Your light switch, right now, is off. One day it will turn back on. Well, I am still kind of waiting for that light switch to turn back on.”

Despite his injuries and long recovery, Nadeau has no regrets.

“Not at all,” he said. “I don’t regret anything that I did in racing. I mean, that’s why I am able to carry on with life and not have to worry so much about going back to racing.”

Nadeau remains optimistic about his future, but still has a hard time answering the most basic question; will he ever race again.

“Probably not, “Nadeau said. “But you know, I’m 36 and it’s like god why so young? What do I do? I don’t know. There are some days that I feel like I could go out and at least test or do something. I don’t know.“

Do you finally feel like you can look on the other side of it and say, ‘Yeah, I did overcome it all and I survived it’? Venturini asked him.

“Yes and no, “Nadeau replied “I was busy at the time (of the accident), I was making money. I was doing everything that I had to do. People were happy and then all of a sudden it was like, it all stopped. And I do regret some parts where I got stuck in the trap in racing. I forgot about everything else. I surrounded myself just around racing. And I just cleared everything around me. And then when the wall happened, then I started realizing ‘Wow, there’s more than just racing, there’s life.’

I can’t make anything come back from that accident. All I try to do is make it better … I try to make my life a little better. I used to be so intense with racing and now I’m just going with the flow. It’s not as fun, but it’s not as difficult either. I mean it was pretty difficult in racing. You are always intense and you always have things you have to do, and now I’m just going with the flow.”

Hamlin calms nerves in duel with Dale Jr.
By Seth Livingstone, USA TODAY


RICHMOND, Va. — Denny Hamlin's quest for his first NASCAR victory wasn't impaired by the 19-stitch cut on his left hand at Richmond International Raceway over the weekend.

It was his right foot that was acting up in the final laps as he chased his buddy, Dale Earnhardt Jr., in the Crown Royal 400.

"When I took the lead from 29 (Kevin Harvick), I literally felt my heart beat in my foot, shaking on the gas pedal," said Hamlin, who called the Virginia homecoming "by far the biggest race" of his career. "I could feel myself lifting off the gas pedal down the straightaway because my foot was shaking so hard."

The NASCAR rookie, who hails from nearby Chesterfield, Va., stayed in front of Harvick on Saturday night but settled for second place, his best finish in a Cup Series points race.

"I'd definitely rather run second here than I would at the Daytona 500," Hamlin said. "This is a race we spend a lot of time focusing on. It doesn't pay any more points, any more money than any other one. But to have the hometown crowd cheering you on is a big deal."

Dueling Earnhardt down the stretch was new, yet strangely familiar to Hamlin, who drives for Joe Gibbs Racing but has a long-standing relationship with Earnhardt.

"There's no other person I'd rather be racing there at the end," Hamlin said. "We became friends before I even became a NASCAR driver. He invited me to come to his motorhome in Daytona the year that he won there. It was the first time I really hung around a NASCAR driver."

Since then, Hamlin and Earnhardt have raced each other countless times on the computer, though never as closely on the track as Saturday.

"Every time I've raced him in video games I've won," Earnhardt said. "If I wasn't going to win, I made sure he lost."

But Earnhardt admitted after Saturday night's victory that "a little part of me wanted to see him get the win here."

By recent standards, the Richmond race was clean when it came to the lack of banging among front-runners. When he went low in a last-ditch attempt to slide past Earnhardt with five laps left, Hamlin made a concerted effort not to contact the ever-popular driver of the No. 8.

"I felt like maybe I could get a really good bite on the bottom when I got beside him and maybe nudge him and keep him from pulling away," Hamlin said. "But the last thing I wanted was to wreck Dale Jr. I've got a fairly decent fan base now. I didn't want to kill it."

"He would get under me but wouldn't get into me," Earnhardt said. "I've known Denny since we raced late models. It was fun to be able to race him on this Cup level."

Driving with extra padding on his steering wheel, Hamlin said his injured hand was stinging after the race. He cut the area between his pinkie and wrist during a footrace with teammates around his hauler last Wednesday.

Stewart's Strong Start Cause for Concern
By JENNA FRYER
AP Motorsports Writer
 
 
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- Here's the good news for the 42 drivers trying to dethrone Nextel Cup champion Tony Stewart: He finally had a bad race, failing to lead a single lap in Richmond and never showing enough muscle to challenge for the victory.

Now the bad news: He still finished sixth.

Stewart's off to an uncharacteristically strong start this season, one that his rivals can't help but notice.

If they aren't yet worried about it, they should be.
 
"He's a big concern because that team typically doesn't hit its stride until midsummer," four-time series champion Jeff Gordon recently admitted. "But this year, he seems to be overachieving right now. That's really scary because if Tony still has a hot streak in him, he's going to be very, very tough to beat."

Before Saturday night's race in Richmond, Stewart was the only driver to lead at least one lap in every race this season. He was on a streak of four consecutive finishes of third or better, and had flirted with victory in all nine races.

The only disappointment of the season had been an engine failure in California, and it came late when the race was his to lose.

The strong start has moved Stewart to second in the standings, just 55 points behind leader Jimmie Johnson and way ahead of the pace he set in his previous two championship seasons.
 
Through 10 races last season, Stewart was seventh in the standings and 297 points out. And he was 10th at this point of his 2002 title run.

So what's with the early surge? Not even Stewart knows the answer.

"I wish we knew and I wish we could turn back the clock eight years and start every year this way," he said.

If he could, there's no telling how many championships Stewart might have won by now. But if he can keep up this current pace, he'll be very hard to beat when the Chase for the championship begins in September.

Stewart remains a realist, knowing that he's far from a lock to become the first driver since Gordon in 1997 and 1998 to win consecutive titles. His fortunes could change with the slightest wobble of the steering wheel, a bad batch of tires or one misplaced part in one of his motors.

"Anything can change week to week, and there's no guarantee that I am going to be good for the next two months," he said.

But he can't overlook his body of work in his first seven Nextel Cup seasons. When the weather turns warm, Stewart has traditionally heated up as well.

"Looking at history, we've always been consistent the middle part of the year and the last part of the year is our strongest," he acknowledged. "That's happened seven straight years, so there's no reason to think we won't do it again this year."

Should he pull it off, Stewart will have to be recognized as one of NASCAR's all-time greatest drivers. He's on the long list already, earning his position with 25 victories and two championships in seven seasons.

But Stewart's slowly pulling away from the competition and establishing himself as the best in his class right now.

Some may argue that Gordon is still No. 1, but that theory would be based on his previous work. After all, Gordon missed the playoffs last year and was forced to watch from the sidelines as Stewart ran away with the title.

And all of Gordon's championships were won before Stewart's first title, with three of them coming when Gordon was clearly in a class of his own. His talent was untouchable, and his team was revolutionizing the sport with an emphasis on engineering, technology and an efficient pit crew.

Gordon was at the top of his game, and only a handful of drivers could challenge him week in and week out.

Stewart, meanwhile, won both his titles in today's ultra-competitive NASCAR, when 30 or so drivers have a decent chance of winning every week. The competition is equal, the resources the same and just the slightest edge can move a driver to the top of the leaderboard.

His skill is unquestioned, and he's won at every type of track in NASCAR. He's also won at every level and every form of racing.

And, less than a month away from his 35th birthday, he's not lost a bit of his edge. He proved that two weeks ago in Talladega, when he was leading the race with nine laps to go only to be shuffled back to 12th place one lap later.

In the frantic final eight laps, Stewart worked his way back through traffic and was on winner Jimmie Johnson's rear bumper in the final turn. Had Johnson not used a huge block to hold him off, Stewart would have won the race.

Instead, he settled for his sixth runner-up finish at Talladega in 11 races.

He was pleased with his performance, nothing more. For Stewart, the ultimate competitor, it was just one notch in a 36-step march toward greatness.

"There's nothing to get excited about right now," he shrugged. "We're running well at a time of the year we traditionally haven't. We're leading laps. I'm happy about that. But we've still got to keep it perspective, and the fact is the championship is not won right now."

Richmond
A wild night at Richmond leaves us asking some big questions
By Mark Spoor, NASCAR.COM

 

... how does a monkey get a pit pass?

That's right -- Tony Stewart brought his pet monkey, Mojo, to pit road for the pre-race activities.

When I was going to journalism school, I can promise you the thought never even entered my mind that I'd ever write a sentence with both "monkey" and "pit pass" in it. Thank you, Tony. I can now cross that little gem off my life's to-do list.

Did you see the monkey paw away the TV camera, as if to say, "no comment?" They say pets take the personality of their owners. I never believed it until that moment.

... what in the world was Todd Berrier thinking?

Since Kevin Harvick was as tight-lipped as a spy stationed in Timbuktu on Saturday night, I doubt we'll ever really know why his crew chief inexplicably decided Harvick should stay out -- alone -- on Lap 288 while all of his competitors went for four fresh Goodyears.

We did hear Harvick say something about fuel mileage, but as the FOX guys said, it's about tires, not fuel mileage. It's possible that the team thought its car was so dominant that new tires wouldn't matter -- and for a while they didn't. Still, and I very well may be missing something, it appeared that there was little to gain by the move and a whole lot to lose, especially when your car is so dominant.

I mean, for a lot of that race, Harvick could have been on cruise control and still led. So why take a chance?

The good news is that Harvick is still white hot, if he doesn't let this small setback -- he finished third, after all -- carry over to Darlington.

... how does one play six sports in high school?

In the "10 Laps with ..." segment Saturday night, Elliott Sadler told Chris Myers that he played six sports in high school.

How do you do that?

Let's see: There's football, basketball and baseball. That's three. Probably track is four. Soccer and volleyball, maybe? Perhaps he was one of these guys that got a spot on the girls field hockey team because his high school didn't offer a boys field hockey team.

Does any school offer a boys field hockey team? Wouldn't lacrosse fill that void?

And to do six sports, you'd have to play more than one during a season. Weren't there scheduling conflicts? Obviously, Sadler had to be cultivating some sort of a racing career along the way. When the heck did he study?
 
... does anybody actually karaoke anymore?

Myers then asked Sadler what song he sings when he does karaoke.

Excuse me, but is it 1989 again? Who still does this stuff?

Are there still businessmen who have a few too many on a trip to Tulsa and wind up singing Against All Odds in a key not known in western music while draping their arms around each other in a way that screams, 'I shouldn't have had that last rum and Coke'?

While we're at it, who's the Karaoke King of NASCAR? My bet's on Myers.

... what was on the line when Denny Hamlin was racing guys -- around his hauler -- and busted his hand open?

What's next? A stirring game of Duck, Duck, Goose? Imagine having to go to the infield care center and explain why your hand is sliced up like roast beef.

So what were you doing to the car when this happened?

Uh, nothing. You see, I was racing around my hauler. My tire changer said, 'Last guy to do five laps is a rotten egg and ..."

Uh ... OK.

...does anyone still have a dial on their television?

With 13 laps to go Saturday night, Mike Joy told viewers, "Don't touch that dial."

I think the last time there was a dial on a TV I was watching, Captain Caveman was running around with the Teen Angels and my parents didn't need to take out a loan to fill their gas tanks.

... could any local tracks afford to do Nextel Night?

Darrell Waltrip suggested Saturday night that when the Nextel Cup Series runs on Saturday night, local weekly racetracks should just put a big screen in the infield and show the Cup race while the other races are going on.

"I'd have Nextel Night," Waltrip said matter-of-factly.

We've all been to plenty of these weekly racetracks. Has anyone ever been to one, save maybe Eldora, that could afford this? Some of the ones I've been to can barely afford benches for the fans to sit on. If they could afford it, then they're not paying the drivers enough.

How about fans TiVo the race and support both, hey D.W.?

... can NASCAR please hire the U.S. Marine Drum and Bugle Corps to do the national anthem every week?

Memo to all future national anthem performers: That is how it's done. Respectfully yet powerfully, with absolutely no improvisation.

After all, it's not karaoke.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.