Streaking RacinDeals

THE STREAK: Jeff Gordon has won two in a row. Will the streak never
end?

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: Well, it looks like Deborah Renshaw has
herself a Busch ride for next year, and a few races this year.

Why? Is it because she’s a great driver? Is it because she’s done everything
on a local level that a driver can do?

Nope.

Two reasons: The publicity she got when her and her teammate were
ganged up on in a protest at Fairgrounds Speedway back in July, and second, her
sex.

I like Deborah. I think she’s got a lot of potential. And who knows? She may
go out and burn up the competition. But I don’t think she’s ready. She needs
another year at the Fairgrounds. Heck, it’d be a step in the right direction if
she’d just lead a lap.

REFUNDS: If I’d gone to the Busch race on Saturday, I’d have demanded
a refund. Every time there’s rain at a race, they always talk about it being an
"official" race once they run half the laps plus one. That would have
been 75 laps. They "completed" the 74th lap and threw the checkers
then.

Of course, to even say they completed 74 laps is stretching it. NASCAR
started the race under yellow, so they could immediately start counting laps.

Jeff Burton said it would be "dumb" to bring all those people back
on Monday to run "300 feet." No Jeff, it wouldn’t be dumb, and you
wouldn’t be running 300 feet; you’d be running the other 73 laps you were
supposed to have run on Saturday. But since NASCAR gave you the win on a silver
platter, it’d be "dumb" of me to think you’d actually want to continue
the race that the fans deserved to have continued.

GOLDEN BOY: Last week I said that Sterling Marlin was on his way to
the championship. He’s having the kind of luck only champions have. I still
stand by that.

However, it seems as if the mainstream racing press has given the title to
Jeff Gordon. Of course the title race isn’t over, and my statements about
Sterling winning it are just what they are, statements by a Marlin fan rooting
for his driver. I guess even if Marlin does win the championship, he still won’t
get the respect he deserves and has earned. Every time Jeff Gordon has a
"streak", that’ll be the big news.

THE POT AND KETTLE THING: Jack Roush is upset, upset I tell you. Why?
Well, seems a tire changer on the #99 car was hired mid-season by Joe Gibbs. How
dare Gibbs hire someone away from Roush in the middle of the year.

In an unrelated move, Jack Roush has hired Paul Andrews away from DEI where
he was crew chief for Steve Park. Frank Stoddard seems to be the odd man out
(welcome to Roush Racing, Frank).

ASK HIS HAIRDRESSER: Will he or won’t he? Rusty Wallace was quoted
earlier this week as saying that he’ll pay Jeff Gordon back this Saturday night
at Richmond for Gordon’s Bristol bump and win move.

Now Wallace is saying
that there’ll be no paybacks. 

Uh, which is it? Either Rusty’s gotten a call from Daytona telling him to lay
off the payback talk, or the media are (as usual) blowing up something way out
of proportion.

STEWART’S MESS: If it turns out that Tony Stewart did indeed assault
a fan after the Bristol race, then he should be suspended from NASCAR for at
least the remainder of the year. There’s no room in this sport for people like
that.

KLEZ KRAZINESS: I routinely get about 100 emails a week with
attachments that have the Klez virus. Each one is detected by my virus scanner
and I delete the messages. This week, I’ve gotten two emails from people who
tell me that I’m sending them infected emails.

People, before you go out accusing someone of something, educate
yourself. One variation of the Klez virus spoofs the "From" address of
the email with a random email address it finds on your system. I get several
emails a week that are "returned" to me because they’re undeliverable,
and my system never sent them.