NASCAR - One to Go

ACK!!! Can we please have a NEW winner in Nextel Cup this season besides Harvick, Johnson, Khane, Stewart or Kenseth?? Maybe Bobby Labonte or Joe Nemecheck can come through for a surprise win at Homestead next week.

Anyway, a fairly competitive race Sunday. It was nice to see Mark Martin leading again, but a real bummer to see him fall short yet again. We got our usual dose of Mr. Stewart dumping yet another competitor. Let's hope Jaime McMurray delivers a nice payback next week. One thing that struck me (again) is how far Roush Racing has fallen this year. Greg Biffle can't buy a win this season, whereas he was a weekly contender last season.

Did someone pull at fast one at Robby Gordon Motorsports? What the hell has happened to that team down the stretch? Robby was well into the top 20 and now sits 30th in points. And here we thought Robby would be sitting pretty going into next year. He was leading races the first half of the season, nearly winning a few. Now? It looks like he hired Kenny Wallace to drive his car and finish several laps down each week. It's not looking pretty.

Misc. Thoughts:

• Did anyone even notice Ward Burton was at Phoenix?
  
• Word to Michael Waltrip: step it up a notch, will ya? I've been a big fan of Michael, even though he's never done particularly well. But this year has been embarrassing to say the least.
  
• Who else thinks Ray Evernham was chuckling when Jeremy Mayfield failed to qualify for Sunday's race?
  
• Speaking of, what the hell happened at the end of the Busch race Saturday? Looks like his sweetie Erin Crocker got booted pretty hard AFTER the Start/Finish line. But they cut TV coverage pretty quickly and didn't talk about it at all.
  
• I loved Juan Pablo Montoya's comments after the race. This is why he's going to be fun to have in the Nextel Cup garage: "It's tough passing these guys -- they seem like they don't see you, they just sort of play dumb....When you run up front, the guy up front runs a lot cleaner, a lot smarter. The guys in the back are just too dumb. I'm trying to keep the car in one piece and its very hard, because, yes, I am a rookie -- but no, I am not a rookie."