Hot 20

As we head into Charlotte, there is a birthday to note and a milestone to recognize. Dale Earnhardt Jr has celebrated his 39th birthday, and on Saturday night he will run in his 500th Cup start. It is a track he has yet to win on, a track that launched his Cup career back in 1999.

As a kid I followed Cale Yarborough and as an adult the man I watched was Dale Earnhardt. As the damn chilly winds of today reminds me, it is some distance from the Carolinas to Alberta, Canada. These boys loved working on cars but, as my father can attest, my mechanical ability isn’t worth spit. A lot of good ole boys love to hunt, but I do not. I doubt I would have ever had a chance to hang with these guys even if I lived just down the road from them.

They are the top two in the Chase, the top two in the standings, and they are the two hottest drivers over the past ten events. Sweet timing. Matt Kenseth, the 2003 champion, is truly having a career year.

So, what have we learned lately? Well, if one cheats, one must not do so in a fashion that allows them to be quickly caught. Caught by everybody. Caught on scanners, radios, and in full view of millions at the track and watching on television. Nothing good can ever come from that. That is, if one decides that they must cheat in the first place.

Sometime over the next ten weeks, at one of ten tracks hosting the Chase, Clint Bowyer will be sailing along. He will feel a sudden nudge in his left rear quarter-final, just a touch but enough to cause him to feel the car getting out from under him. Bowyer will try to save it, and come close in doing so but, alas, his car will find the wall. His race and his Chase hopes, done in an instant.

It is a good thing for many that the Chase is decided over the first 26 races of the season, not just what they have done lately. Not so good if you are Kurt Busch or Jeff Gordon.

It would appear that Tony Stewart is not the only dog who can bark in the SHR dog pound. Gene Haas not only has a share of the team, but his own money to spend on sponsorship, and he was not going to spend it on Ryan Newman. Kurt Busch was his man, and he got him. It might not have been what Stewart wanted, but without a sugar daddy of his own, Newman got shown the door and Kurt found himself a new team for 2014.

Some watch soap operas, but I once watched wrestling. I understood a rewritten biblical verse because Stone Cold said so, I smelled what the Rock was cooking, and Mick Foley had multiple personalities while making a star out of a sock puppet. While I loved the comedy of their sports entertainment, I loved the behind the scenes stories even more.

Juan Pablo Montoya, winner of the 2000 Indianapolis 500 among eight CART victories, winner of the 2003 Monaco Grand Prix among seven Formula One triumphs, but a winner of a single Cup race at Sonoma and another at the Glen in 239 starts. That, in a nutshell, is why Montoya was hired and why he will soon be fired as the driver of the #42 Target team of Chip Ganassi.

Where there is Smoke, there is an ambulance. Three Sprint races, three wrecks. A 19-year old driver got carted away with a back injury after Stewart caused a July 16th crash in New York. He flipped five times in a race July 29th in Ontario. Now we have this one where the flashing lights were for Smoke himself in Iowa.