Hamlin: cooling off. Sorta. (LAT photo) MORE NASCAR PHOTOS

Hamlin ran into the back of Petty on the track and then Petty grabbed Hamlin's visor as he sat in his damaged car. Reflecting on the incident, Hamlin didn't apportion blame. "Even though he's not battling for a top-20 spot in points, he's not out there just collecting a paycheck," Hamlin said. "He's out there to race and he gets frustrated just like anyone else. I personally know that he got loose in front of me; I was right on him when I hit him. So there's really not a whole lot I could have done. There was a closing rate that was big. But I probably shouldn't have went after him. I should have just let it go as soon as he chose to hit my helmet. I should have just let it go and not gotten out of the car. It would have been no big issue, really."

AN HONEST MAN Carl Edwards had every right to feel mixed emotions after last week, when he won at Dover but suffered a 25-point penalty because his car was too low in post-race inspection. But Edwards, who grew up just 150 miles from Kansas Speedway, shrugged it off upon his arrival for this week's race.

And Edwards, who has the opportunity to become the first man in history to win both the NASCAR Nextel Cup and Busch Series in the same year, was refreshingly candid about how much taking both titles would mean to him. "Listen, there's probably not a five-minute window that goes by in the day that I don't think about winning both championships in one year," said Edwards. "That would be the ultimate achievement, I think, in American motorsports."

Busch reckons Villeneuve has set himself a huge task. (LAT photo) MORE NASCAR PHOTOS

SAY WHAT? Kyle Busch was shocked to learn that former Formula 1 and CART champion Jacques Villeneuve will attempt to make his NASCAR Nextel Cup debut next weekend at Talladega Superspeedway, one of the challenging places to race on the circuit.

"He's doing what? Holy cow, that's not good," Busch said when asked for his reaction to Villeneuve racing at Talladega. "You've got to start somewhere but the Cup Series at Talladega definitely isn't the place to start. I think he ran his first Truck race and did alright, ran well, and I think running more Truck races through the rest of the year - which I'm sure they're planning on doing - is going to be good, but to get ready for next year. I guess Talladega is the first test to get ready for next year."

HANGING IN THERE Kevin Harvick is 115 points behind Jeff Gordon after two races in the Chase for the Nextel Cup, but the reigning Daytona 500 winner professed not be concerned Friday at Kansas Speedway. "We're further ahead than where (Jimmie) Johnson was last year. We're only two weeks into the 10-week journey here," Harvick said. "It doesn't seem like anybody has really kind of stepped up and really had two good weeks so far. Everybody's kind of had trouble and we've had trouble both weeks so that makes us on the bad end of the trouble stick. You go out and you race as hard as you can and if we can keep the performance level at what it's been the last two weeks we'll get back in it but if have the circumstances go like they have the last two weeks we're in trouble."