2/3/02……… There are fifteen drivers who have qualified for the Bud Shootout this coming Saturday night at 8 PM. The FOX network will be airing the event for those of us who will not be able to attend.

Those fifteen drivers won pole starting positions in races during the 2001 season. A few of the drivers won multiple poles, to top driver among them to accomplish this feat being Ryan Newman, who won six poles during his rookie season. Also having a good rookie season was Jimmie Johnson, who won four poles.

Joining the rookies by winning four poles was NASCAR’s most popular driver for several years running, Bill Elliott. Former champion Jeff Gordon was next in line by winning three pole starting positions. Tony Stewart, Ricky Craven, Sterling Marlin, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. each get honorable mention by winning two pole starting spots each.

The rest of the field can be seen at my 2002 Pole Winners page. You will note that there are four former winners of the Busch Clash/Bud Shootout who are also eligible for the event bringing the total number of drivers up to nineteen.

I don’t have any information at this time concerning Geoff Bodine. I’m not really sure if he will have a ride for the event. Nothing has been publicized to that effect. All of the other drivers have rides, although some of them have changed cars and teams since you saw them race last season.

Ryan Newman, the top pole winner will be driving the No. 12 ALLTEL Dodge for Penske Racing, instead of the Ford that Penske has been fielding for the last several years. Tony Stewart will now be driving the No. 20 Home Depot Chevrolet for Joe Gibbs Racing, instead of the Pontiacs that Gibbs has been fielding.

Ricky Rudd, the 2001 pole winner at The Glen, will now be driving the No. 21 Motorcraft Ford for the Wood Brothers Racing organization, instead of the No. 28 Havoline Ford for Robert Yates Racing. Todd Bodine will be driving the No. 54 Army National Guard Ford for BelCar Racing. Travis Carter has partnered up with Sam Belnavis to create the new team after Belnavis and Tinsley Hughes disbanded BH Motorsports. The disbanded company was supposed to have been the first minority owned team in Winston Cup Racing, but it dissolved before the season began.

The last driver on the list that is driving for a different team is 1989 & ’90 Busch Clash winner Ken Schrader. Schrader is now driving the No. 49 BAM Motorsports Dodge. The sophomore team had a series of drivers last season, starting out with Shawna Robinson, but couldn’t get their act together. They hope to build the team up to a competitive level with the veteran driver Schrader. We certainly know that Schrader isn’t what one would call a winning driver of late, but he does have many years of experience to offer the new team. I look for some top 15 finishes from the team by the end of the season.

2/9/03……… We all know that it’s a common practice for Jimmy Spencer to feud with people. After all, it’s just his nature, and that’s all there is to it. This time however, he has gone up against one of the giants in auto racing, Chip Ganassi.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that there are hard feelings between the two, at least on Spencer’s part anyway, he’s the one who got fired near the end of last season. As far as Ganassi’s feelings are concerned, he had to endure the season with the hapless non-consistent performance of Spencer. So go figure, who really got the dirty end of the stick?

At any rate, Spencer has filed suit against Ganassi, claiming over $600k in salary damages as well as percentages of souvenir sales and collectables for the last two quarters of last year. Spencer’s suit revealed that his deal to drive for Ganassi paid him $1 million a season, plus 45% of prize money and 50% of the No. 41 Target souvenir and collectable sales. He claims the $600k that he’s suing for now makes up the difference between his salary with Ganassi and what he’s getting from Jim Smith to drive the No. 7 Dodge. That means that he’s telling us that his deal with Smith is for $400k to drive the No. 7 Dodge for the 2003 season. The 45 to 50 percent deal for prize money and souvenir sales in common place with most teams.

Naturally, as with any lawsuit, Ganassi says that Spencer is full of hogwash. He claims that he and Spencer didn’t have a signed contract, just a handshake deal. He claims that he and Spencer couldn’t agree on terms and a written contract was never finalized. He also disagrees with Spencer’s comments about ignoring the problem, claiming that he made a special trip to negotiate with Spencer and that Spencer didn’t show up for the meeting.

None of this is any surprise, any and all disputes are usually full of accusations and some stretching of the truth from both sides of the spectrum. On another front, Spencer claims that Ganassi has sabotaged his Busch Series ride with James Finch. It came to pass that Ganassi is helping Finch out financially during the 2003 season, and Jamie McMurray, Ganassi’s driver for the No. 42 Dodge in Cup, will be driving the No. 1 Yellow Freight entry that Spencer has recently driven for Finch. Spencer claims that part of the deal between Ganassi and Finch was that Spencer would not be driving for Finch. Stay tuned for future developments on this one, it could get nasty.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. was happy to see victory lane at Daytona in February. Racing in only his second Bud Shootout, he manages to hold of a hard charging Jeff Gordon to take the long awaited checkered flag for the first time in 2003.

Junior seemed to take a page or two from Sterling Marlin’s book, racing from worst to first. The starting positions were the luck of the draw, and Junior ended up with the last spot on the grid along with the second place finisher Jeff Gordon who started 18th and ended up finishing second to Junior.

It was no surprise to see pole sitter Geoff Bodine in the garage after three laps, he has about as much business being out there as Darryl Waltrip does. Hey, when you’re done, you’re done, why prolong the agony……

Lots of drivers put on a good show, and some didn’t put on a show at all. We hardly heard Kevin Harvick’s name mentioned during the short 70 lap event, as well as that of Todd Bodine. Some of the drivers had problems, like Dale Jarrett and Rusty Wallace. Neither one of the veterans were happy with their rides for the race. Veteran Mark Martin was another sleeper. He was in the hunt just one time after the mandatory pit stop. He was first out of the pits because he didn’t take on any tires, but his lead was really short lived. He soon fell to the back of the pack into obscurity.

Daytona 500 qualifying was rained out on Sunday, they will be attempting to go again at 1 PM on Monday, February 10th. I’ll have an update on it Monday evening.

The twin 125 qualifying races will be run on Thursday, February 13th at 1 PM Eastern and will be aired by the FOX network………

2/17/03……….. There wasn’t much of a problem settling the dust when the Daytona 500 finally ended. It was a complete washout, with race winner Michael Waltrip celebrating his second 500 victory in the rain. Waltrip has now taken three of the last five Daytona races. His critics claim that it’s too bad that he isn’t able to win on any other track in over 530 starts in Winston Cup racing. The thing here is that his teammate can’t help him to victory at any other track, like he can at Daytona.

Sterling Marlin didn’t disappoint anyone this season by not being the focal point of controversy in the Great American Race. No, he didn’t work on his car during a red flag this year, he made the ungodly journey below the forbidden “Yellow Line” that NASCAR is so up in arms about. Seems like they always have to have something to make an issue of, and the last couple of years it’s been the painted line separating the racetrack from the infield apron.

Well, in the past we all know that there were some drivers who didn’t have brains enough to know that you can’t drive on the apron and then back on the track on the banking. This type of move will upset the racecar and take out half of the field in the process in the ever popular “Big One.”

Last season they initiated the “Yellow Line Rule” to prevent the big wreck from happening due to a driver coming off of the apron onto the banking. There was controversy last year with Johnny Benson getting black flagged and going a lap down for driving beneath the yellow line. He was forced down there by another competitor, but lost a lap anyway. This season NASCAR president Helton took it upon himself to clarify that any driver who forced another competitor below the yellow line would also be the recipient of a black flag and a pit road stop in their pit box. I should interject here that last year the rule read that a driver would be penalized for going beneath the yellow line to improve his position. If he didn’t improve his position, it was in NASCAR’s digression whether to penalize him or not. This season, they stated that there would be a penalty regardless.

As per usual, NASCAR didn’t back up their ruling. Marlin was forced beneath the yellow line and the driver who forced him there didn’t get penalized. Marlin lost a lap and his chance to compete for the win, while the perpetrator in question ended up finishing fourth.

NASCAR claimed that Marlin passed several positions while his left side tires were below the yellow line. This is true, he actually moved up to the fifty position while being forced to go below the yellow line to keep from running into the back of a slower car. He stated that if he had checked up he would have been hit from behind. Much to his chagrin, the car behind him checked up for the slower car and didn’t get hit from behind. So, Marlin was on his own, again, and the driver of the car that forced him into that position got off without a penalty.

The top ten starters and how the finished:

1. Jeff Green -- No. 30 Chevrolet – finished 39th
2. Dale Earnhardt Jr. -- No. 8 Chevrolet – finished 36th
3. Robby Gordon-- No. 31 Chevrolet – finished 6th
4. Michael Waltrip -- No. 15 Chevrolet -- finished 1st
5. Ricky Rudd -- No. 21 Ford – finished 15th
6. Todd Bodine -- No. 154 Ford – finished 18th
7. Sterling Marlin -- No. 40 Dodge – finished 17th
8. Tony Stewart -- No. 20 Chevrolet – finished 7th
9. Jeff Burton -- No. 99 Chevrolet – finished 11th
10. Jimmie Johnson -- No. 48 Chevrolet – finished 3rd

Next week race number two on the 2003 schedule is the Subway 400 at the North Carolina Speedway at Rockingham, North Carolina. The event will be televised live by the FOX network on Sunday, February 23rd at 12:30 PM EST. Qualifying for the event will be televised live by the SPEED channel on Friday, February 21st at 1:30 PM EST.

Last season’s winner of the Subway 400 was Matt Kenseth. He was followed across the finish line by Sterling Marlin, Bobby Labonte, Tony Stewart, Ricky Craven, Jeff Burton, Jeff Gordon, Rusty Wallace, Bobby Hamilton, and Kenny Wallace.

Ricky Craven was the pole winner with a speed of 156.008 MPH. There were 10 cautions for a total of 57 laps. The 393 lap race ended under caution.

2/23/03……….. The ridiculous International Speedway Corp. hype and bull corn is mostly over with at Daytona for another season, and now we can get down to the business of stock car racing for the next nine to ten months. While we’re on the subject of the ‘business’ of racing, I’ve heard some pretty grim rumors lately. One major publication in the South is saying that NASCAR is close to going down the tubes.

Of course, we all know that the Busch Series is in big trouble, it has been for a few seasons now. The scuttlebutt claims that there are only about 20 full time Busch Series teams left now, and some of them are getting to be questionable. NASCAR’s new inspection process is said to have discouraged a couple of teams enough to where they loaded their cars on their haulers and were headed home from The Rock until the Busch officials talked them out of it.

The idiots in Washington, DC that keep crying for war are crippling our economy so bad that it’ll take a couple of decades to revive it. Of course, the war proponents will all tell you that the former administration is responsible for all of our economic problems, so there’s no need to even go there. Why some moron would want war over peace is beyond me. The Iraqis can’t hurt us over here, I think it’s just an ‘oil’ thing to line someone’s pockets with money………

The economy as it stands now is really bad for stock car racing. It’s hard to pry sponsorship money out of corporations that are facing the same financial uncertainty that all of us are. One little buzz in that direction concerns the Subway Corp and the International Speedway Corp. that is owned and run by the France family who also owns NASCAR. It seems that Subway wanted to sponsor a Winston Cup team, but ISC talked them out of it in order to garner the sponsorship for themselves. It looks like the France’s are looking out for themselves, as per usual, and to hell with anyone else….. Nothing like biting the hand that feeds you, the France’s have always been good at that…….

The Rock……… ended up a lot better than it started out. The US Army, along with the pea brains from NASCAR allowed the full pre-race program to proceed without regard to human life or limb. The parachute drop in front of the fans went on as planned, but didn’t end up as planned. Three or four of the paratroopers were severely injured when the wind caught their parachutes and slammed them into trucks and motor homes. One paratrooper broke his ankle on the racetrack right in front of terrified race fans who had to watch the NASCAR/ISC debacle. What a bunch of morons!

Dale Jarrett lasted out the young Gun Kurt Busch to take the lead and the checkered flag. Busch drove a masterful race though, reflecting on his off-season anger management classes. He didn’t lose his head through all of the bumping, banging, and hard racing.

The top ten starters and how they finished:

1. Dave Blaney -- No. 77 Ford – finished 10th
2. Johnny Benson -- No. 10 Pontiac – finished 13th
3. Mark Martin -- No. 6 Ford – finished 7th
4. Sterling Marlin -- No. 40 Dodge -- finished 40th (overheating)
5. Bill Elliott -- No. 9 Dodge – finished 32nd
6. Ricky Craven -- No. 32 Pontiac – finished 4th
7. *Jamie McMurray -- No. 42 Dodge – finished 5th
8. Rusty Wallace -- No. 2 Dodge – finished 6th
9. Dale Jarrett -- No. 88 Ford – finished 1st
10. Bobby Labonte -- No. 18 Chevrolet – finished 16th

Finishing second two weeks in a row for the season’s first two races put Kurt Busch in the driver’s point’s lead with 345. Dale Jarrett’s victory moved him up eight spots to second with a -31. Jimmie Johnson still remains in third with a -33 while Mark Martin moved up one spot to fourth with a -39. Michael Waltrip’s 21st place finish dropped him back four positions to fifth with a -54.

Next week race No. 3 on the 2003 schedule is the UAW-Daimler/Chrysler 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The race is slated to be televised live on Sunday, March 2nd by the FOX network at 2:30 PM EST. Qualifying is slated to be televised live by the FOX Sports networks on Friday, February 28th at 5:30/6:00 PM EST.

Last season’s winner of the race was Sterling Marlin. He was followed across the finish line by Jeremy Mayfield, Mark Martin, rookie Ryan Newman, Tony Stewart, rookie Jimmie Johnson, Dale Jarrett, Bill Elliott, Jeff Burton, and Jimmy Spencer.

Todd Bodine was the pole winner with a speed of 172.850 MPH. The 267 lap race lasted close to three hours, and had six caution periods for a total of only 25 laps.