The NASCAR Hall of Fame that is under construction and scheduled to open in Charlotte early 2010 has kicked off a Commemorative Brick Paver program. Yes, you too can have your own “exhibit” within the Hall inscribed with your witty pearl of wisdom you thought up all by your lonesome after about the seventh beer and the tenth wreck watching the Atlanta race.

I wonder just how many of the following phrases will eventually be found walking along the bricks?

• Earnhardt Forever!
• Earnhart Forever! (bound to be a few who can’t spell)
• Earn♥ 4ever! (please folks, have some dignity!)
• Richard Petty is the KING!
• Go Jeff Go! (or Kyle, or Jimmie, or Tony, or etc, etc)
• Ricky Bobby Rules!
• Gordon Sucks! (or Busch, or Johnson, or Stewart, or etc, etc)
• Rubbing is Racing! (better be at least one!)
• Your Message Here (somebody trying to be funny for the hundredth time)

The choice of brick sizes are either 8” x 8” with six lines of text or 4” x 8” with three lines of text. There is also an 8” x 8” logo brick available that a fan can select among different logo choices. What is interesting is the current roster of logos that are available for order:

Current Stars: Bobby Labonte, Carl Edwards, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Dave Blaney, Denny Hamlin, Elliot Sadler, Greg Biffle, Jamie McMurray, Jeff Burton, Jeff Gordon, Kasey Kahne, Kurt Busch, Kyle Busch, Mark Martin, Matt Kenseth, Robby Gordon, Sam Hornish Jr., Tony Steward, Michael Waltrip.

Past Legends: Alan Kulwicki, Benny Parsons, Bill Elliot, Bobby Allison, Buddy Baker, Cale Yarborough, Charles Farmer, Chuck Brown, Curtis Turner, Dale Earnhardt, Dale Jarrett, Darrell Waltrip, Davey Allison, David Pearson, Donnie Allison, Ernie Irvan, Glenn Fireball Roberts, Harry Gant, Jack Ingram, Jimmy Spencer, Junior Johnson, Larry Pearson, Lee Petty, Ned Jarrett, Neil Bonnett, Ralph Earnhardt, Randy Lajoie, Richard Petty, Ricky Craven, Rusty Wallace, Terry Labonte, Tim Flock, Tommy Ellis.

Teams: DEI, Michael Waltrip Racing, Petty, Roush Fenway, Wood Brothers, Stewart-Hass.

Tracks: Atlanta, Bristol, Infineon, Las Vegas, Lowes, New Hampshire, Texas.

Two-time champ Jimmie Johnson isn’t a current star but Sam Hornish Jr. and Dave Blaney are choices for a current star? Legendary Jimmy Spencer? A legend in his own mind perhaps! Mikey, who did you bribe for your logo?

Finally, no Daytona but thank goodness New Hampshire made the track list!

Whoever came up with the above list is a few bricks shy of a load! 

The latest trend in education these days is to do away with grading systems in order to build on students’ self-esteem. The problem with this idea is that individuals are no longer recognized for excellence as everybody is rewarded just by trying to do the job.

Starting with the 2009 Budweiser Shootout, NASCAR will mirror the above concept of no longer rewarding for excellence by having the top six teams of each car manufacturer compete instead of 2008 pole winners or past Shootout champions.

While this certainly benefits Roush-Fenway as all five of their Fords will compete (even Jamie McMurray), popular drivers Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman will be excluded next year because they will be moving to new teams next season. This means also that 2008 pole-winners Joe Nemechek and Patrick Carpentier are out of luck next year, unless one of them replaces Newman in his number 12 Dodge, which isn’t very likely. However, newly announced Gibbs Racing driver Joey Logano, who is replacing Stewart, is assured his place in the Shootout even though he starts racing Cup for the first time at Richmond in September!

The Shootout eligibility change is to occur primarily because Coors awards the pole winner of each race now instead of Anheuser-Busch. But rather than having Budweiser lose the Shootout after 30 years of sponsorship, NASCAR opted to change the rules of eligibility. This is yet another instance of NASCAR bending to the will of a big-money sponsor rather than improving the sport for the fans or keeping things fair for the race teams.

This is as about as petty as the AT&T and Sprint debacle of last year. Brian France, this Bud’s for you! You certainly paid enough for it.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway track chairman Tony George said Tuesday in an interview in The Indianapolis Star that the track surface is not to blame for last Sunday’s race fiasco.

They’ve run on it. The problem is solely theirs [NASCAR’s], and by that I mean it theirs to figure out. It’s not going to come with anything we do to the track. Figuring it out will only come with getting the car and tire combination right, and that requires actually spending the time and effort to do something about it. The track won’t change next year, so if they want to come back, they better figure it out because I don’t think the fans want to come back and see that.

NASCAR vice president of competition Robin Pemberton agrees that the track is not to blame. NASCAR did not have open tests at Indy this year because it said the crew chiefs did not select it when polled last season on where they wanted to test. Chad Knaus, crew chief of the Lowes team, stated that Indy is a “very individual-type racetrack” and they prefer to test at tracks where you can use the information to apply at other tracks.

NASCAR is working on revising their testing policy for the next season and while Pemberton did not guarantee a full-field test at Indy, he made it sound very likely given the pressure the organization has been getting lately.

Meanwhile, Goodyear posted a statement on their racing website.

In April, Goodyear staged a tire test at the track with three drivers (Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Brian Vickers and Kurt Busch) that resulted in the tire brought to Sunday’s race. The focus of the tire test was to improve treadwear. A number of right-side compounds were evaluated to address the treadwear, but none of the drivers were comfortable with the reduced level of grip of those compounds. The decision was made to use the same right-side compound as was used in 2007 because its performance under race conditions was a known quantity. The compound was paired with a revised construction and a softer left-side compound.

However, actual tire performance in a 43-driver field in real-world race conditions on a new car is always going to be different than in a test. Sunday’s race was held in essentially new conditions. Although this surface has always been very abrasive, it has always “rubbered in” on race day. In other words, as the race progresses, rubber from natural tire wear effectively sticks to the track, making the surface less abrasive and improving tire wear. That didn’t happen on Sunday.

Certainly, Sunday’s race results are not what Goodyear wanted nor what it expected and we are committed to working with NASCAR and Indianapolis Motor Speedway to correct it. As an industry, we will solve this problem and we’ve already started that process.

And round and round it goes. Don’t look for that refund anytime soon if you were there. Nobody’s picking up the tab on this one.

Now that the tire dust has finally settled from yesterday’s race, let’s look at what I feel was the biggest damage done to the sport of Cup racing, sacrificing driver safety for the goodwill of the fans. That NASCAR had to resort to bringing out 6 competition cautions due to tire issues was a shame and I expect Chris covered that issue with his article. However, my thoughts are that if NASCAR was bringing out the competition cautions due to safety issues, then they should have expanded on that by not changing the field during the pit stops.

Granted, when out of 160 laps 52 were ran under caution that makes for fewer on-track opportunities to pass and extend leads but the pit road shuffling is risky enough during a “normal” race without having to add pressure on the teams with numerous mandatory caution pits. When drivers are moving up 10 or more positions during pit stops, you can bet there were a lot of short cuts taken that all the officials couldn’t catch as they were busy staring at the tires with cords showing through them. There was one televised instance when a FedEx pit crew member just behind the wall was trying to catch a runaway tire that was knocked out of the tire changer’s hands by Reed Sorenson’s car when that car was exiting pit road too close to Hamlin’s car. The camera followed the injured crew member and was showing him getting his arm tended to by safety officials.

I feel that the field should be frozen when the competition cautions are brought out so that nobody gains anything or loses anything. Does it make for a more boring race? Certainly, but it makes for a safer race. There were probably other injury instances that ESPN wasn’t able to catch but then again that was probably because of ESPN and not for lack of instances. Maybe Dr. Jerry needs to be back on the track instead of being up in the glass towers.

I realize that NASCAR has to have a show for the 200,000 fans that were at the track in addition to the television/radio audience and I also understand that the race at Indianapolis is only second to Daytona 500 as the event of the racing season. However, in the attempt to put on the show, NASCAR lost sight again of the long-term goals of doing right both by the fans and the race teams. If driver safety is such an issue, then stick to the guns on that by freezing the fields during competition cautions. To do otherwise might result in what the Formula One drivers did back in 2005 at Indy when Michelin could not guarantee the safety of their tires. 14 of the 20 starting drivers just pulled off the track prior to the drop of the green flag. Unfortunately, that killed the popularity of Formula One in the U.S. after that race. I believe NASCAR wants to avoid that by providing a race to the fans at any cost but the drivers have to be wondering if the cost isn’t getting too high. Isn’t the Car of Today proof of that as it is?

Current Race performance - Daytona, 7/5/08

Current Race performance - Loudon, 6/29/08

Current Race performance - Infineon, 6/22/08

Current Race performance - Michigan, 6/15/08

Current Race performance - Pocono, 6/8/08