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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
JENSEN: Food City 500 Blog UPDATED
Sunday’s Food City 500 at BMS was the fifth race of the 2008 season, so all guaranteed starting spots will go to the top 35 in 2008 owner points.
Tom Jensen  |  Posted March 16, 2008   Bristol, Tenn.
David Gilliland had his best finish of the season in the Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway. (Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images Photo)
Ned Jarrett will be flying the green flag for his son's final points race in the Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway. (Jerry Markland/Getty Images Photo)

SPEEDtv.com's Tom Jensen blogs the latest news heading into the Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway. Check back for updates and don't forget to leave your comments below!

Blog Post Sunday, March 16, 2008 at 7:28 pm ET

POINTING UPWARD With Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway being the fifth race of the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup season, from now on all guaranteed starting spots in races will go to the top 35 in 2008 owner points, not 2007 points as had been the case up until now.

In the top 35 following Bristol are J.J. Yeley (31st, 386 points), Jeremy Mayfield (374), Casey Mears (368), Dale Jarrett (367) and Sam Hornish Jr. (356). Jarrett, of course, ran his last Cup points race on Sunday and will be replaced in his No. 44 Michael Waltrip Racing Toyota by teammate David Reutimann. Michael McDowell will fill Reutimann’s former seat in the MWR No. 00. All three of Waltrip’s cars are now in the top 35 in owner points and will have guaranteed starting spots for the first time at Martinsville Speedway on March 30th.

“It will be nice to show up at a race track and know that we are locked into the race,” said Reutimann, who finished 20th at Bristol. “I haven’t known that feeling. The deal is that we have to keep moving forward in our points to insulate things. I’m proud of my guys and we left here without destroying a race car so that’s okay.”

Full-time teams outside the top 35 who will have to race themselves into the field at Martinsville in two weeks include some big names: Jamie McMurray (352), Dave Blaney (334), Dario Franchitti (319), Regan Smith (317) and Kyle Petty (296).

FAREWELL TO A CHAMPION It was a bittersweet day for 1999 NASCAR Sprint Cup Champion Dale Jarrett, who ran his last points race at Bristol Motor Speedway on Sunday. Jarrett had his whole family on hand, as he was feted in pre-race ceremonies for his many accomplishments on and off the track.

Alas, his race ended with a disappointing 37th-place finish. “Well, it wasn’t the finish I would have liked,” Jarrett said afterwards. “I’m able to go out with the best sponsor in the business in UPS and I would have liked to have had a better day for them, but I really can’t be too upset when you take into consideration the kind of career I have been fortunate to have.”

STRONG SHOWING One of the most impressive performances of the Food City 500 was made by David Gilliland, who finished a season’s best ninth in his Yates Racing Ford Fusion, an extremely positive result for a team in dire need of sponsorship. Gilliland’s car has only one race left with sponsorship from freecreditreport.com and teammate Travis Kvapil is sponsorless.

“This is a big confidence booster for everyone at Yates Racing,” said Gilliland. “This is just what we needed to try and bring sponsorship in to both of our race teams. Travis showed the potential he and his team have with the way he finished at Las Vegas and we did the same today. This is one of our last races for freecreditreport.com, so we need sponsorship and a run like we had today can only help.”

KAHNE KEPT A ROLLIN’ With his dismal 2007 season fast becoming a memory, Kasey Kahne continued his solid rebound at Bristol on Sunday, finishing seventh in the Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway. It was Kahne’s fourth top-10 in five races, tying him with Greg Biffle, Kevin Harvick and Dale Earnhardt Jr. for most in the series. “We were pretty tight all day,” said Kahne. “The car just wouldn’t turn as good as we wanted, but the guys did a great job on our Budweiser Dodge Charger all day in the pits. We came on strong in the end and did everything we could with the car that we had. The car was good - it just wasn’t a top-10 car at the end of the race. But we’ll take another top-10 finish that’s for sure.”

SOLDIERING ON Aric Almirola replaced Mark Martin for the first time this season in the Dale Earnhardt Inc. No. 8 Chevrolet, and he did not disappoint. Almirola finished eighth, which made for a happy result for he and the team.

“Awesome, just awesome,” said crew chief Tony Gibson. "Aric drove the wheels off that Army Chevrolet. We had a decent car, not a great one. But Aric drove both patiently and hard. He has talent. The team believes in him and he believes in us. He is in the future and we're just happy that he is driving our stuff."

“I had a good car with a lot of speed and didn't have to hustle it,” said Almirola. “It was a lot of fun out there and I want to thank the U.S. Army, DEI, Tony (Gibson) and all the guys on this team for believing in me. The pit stops were excellent all day."

Blog Post Sunday, March 16, 2008 at 9:10 am ET

RACEDAY IS HERE After heavy rains Friday and Saturday at Bristol Motor Speedway, the forecast for Sunday is cool and partly cloudy, with no rain expected, which is good news for race fans, who have suffered through two mostly miserable days.

But the drivers may face some challenges because of the weather. The heavy rains have washed all the rubber off the track, which means tire wear could be a real problem over 500 hard laps at Bristol. There are concerns among the drivers about the tires again, especially since this combination hasn’t been raced at Bristol before.

FLAG WAIVER Two-time NASCAR champion Ned Jarrett will waive the green flag to start today’s Food City 500, the final Sprint Cup points race that his son Dale will compete in. The Jarretts have been one of NASCAR’s premier families for nearly five decades, classy ambassadors to the sport that has meant so much to them. It’s little wonder the family is so highly regarded in the racing community.

“I have always respected him as a competitor, but the person that he is off the track and away from the race car to me is as good of a person as you are ever going to meet,” said Jeff Gordon of Dale Jarrett. “I like the way he handles himself. To me, he is just one of the great guys that you will ever meet. His legacy is going to be very broad because it performance, he has performed at a high level, he has won a championship, the Daytona 500 and he is just one of the greatest people you will ever meet.”

“He’s been strong, he’s been tough, he’s won a lot of races, and a championship and he’s done it the right way,” added Jeff Burton. “Dale’s done it on the race track; he’s been wonderful to race against. He races hard but he races fair. He’s done it the right way. He’s one of those guys like Mark Martin that you can look back and say, ‘That guy put a lot into it,’ and it’s hard to say a lot bad.”

GO OR GO HOME Today’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway has huge implications for a number of drivers on the edge of the top 35 in car owner points. Jamie McMurray is currently 31st, with Dale Jarrett, Michael Waltrip, Jeremy Mayfield, J.J. Yeley, Sam Hornish Jr., Dave Blaney, Dario Franchitti and Kyle Petty all within 101 points of him. Yeley starts the day 35th in car owner points, the final guaranteed spot. But the order surely will get shuffled today and anyone outside the top 35 after this race will have to qualify on speed at the next race in Martinsville. And depending on who’s in and who’s out, some teams could switch points within the team, as Kurt Busch and Hornish did for the first five races of the season.

Blog Post Friday, March 14, 2008 at 6:30 pm ET

PEACE NEGOTIATED Shortly before 6 p.m. Friday, Tony Stewart’s P.R. team issued a press release saying Stewart and Goodyear’s Stu Grant had met to calm the feud between the driver and the tire maker.

Stewart’s statement read as follows:

“I’m glad the weather gave us a break in the schedule that allowed us to meet this afternoon, and I appreciate Stu taking the time to meet with me. We’re hoping that Goodyear will now work with us a little better on the racing side of things and rely on our input a little more, because we are the ones driving the cars. It was a good meeting, but at the end of the day, it’s up to Goodyear to make it right. If having this meeting helps to make things better down the road, then this meeting was a success.

“My comments last week (following the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway) were made in frustration and made to get Goodyear’s attention. But what I overlooked when I made those comments was that they affected people who had nothing to do with the racing program. I want to apologize to the people who work in the factories and the union workers at Goodyear. We realize that they’re working hard just like everybody else, and we realize that Goodyear as a whole works hard too. But our comments last week were not meant to offend those people, because they’re not the ones making the decisions about the racing tires we use here at the track.

“A lot of the people that Goodyear brings to the track aren’t necessarily engineers and they don’t make the decisions on what compounds and constructions (of tires) that we’ll race on, but they’re the people who are here as early as the teams are and leave as late as the teams do because they’re here mounting and dismounting tires and unloading and loading trucks. A lot of those people have become friends over the years, and that’s another group of people we didn’t mean to offend with our comments. Our comments were strong to get somebody’s attention high up in corporate at Goodyear. It wasn’t meant to offend anyone else.”

Grant said the following:
“I was very pleased with the meeting that I had with Tony. It was an excellent meeting. It was constructive. It was extremely worthwhile to sit down and have a discussion with him. Tony was able to express his concerns and I listened to his concerns. I was able to explain our process, and we both talked about how moving forward, we can improve the process of developing tires for NASCAR Sprint Cup racing together.”

As it did last week, SPEEDTV.com will continue to follow this story as it develops.

MANNING UP Dale Earnhardt Jr. said Friday he has a lot of respect for how Tony Stewart has conducted himself since going off on Goodyear last Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway. “If you are going to speak out in any form about anything, expect to have two sides to every argument,” Earnhardt said Friday at Bristol Motor Speedway. “I thought what Tony did was respectable, not respectful. He has his own style and everyone knows that and you either don't like him for it or you like him for it.”

Earnhardt falls squarely in the “like him” category. “Me and him have stayed pretty good friends throughout our time in the sport,” Earnhardt said. “He did feel strongly about it and the thing that was great about that was he backed it up throughout the week. He never changed his tone. He even had (NASCAR President) Mike Helton on his radio show. He was very serious about it. It wasn't just him sounding off after an event. He had conviction in his stance throughout. So that was good for Tony and the best way he could have played that. For him to quit talking and not said anything the rest of the week, it would have lost all the energy in his argument.”

NO REST FOR THE WEARY Unlike most of his fellow drivers, two-time defending NASCAR Sprint Cup Champion Jimmie Johnson will not be spending a restful week off once Sunday’s Bristol race is concluded. Instead, he’ll be off with his Hendrick Motorsports No. 48 team testing at Milwaukee, Kentucky and Nashville.

And despite starting from the pole at Bristol because qualifying for the Food City 500 was rained out, Johnson still isn’t especially optimistic about Sunday’s race. “For whatever reason, this has been a track that no matter what I try or what set-up we put in the car, it just doesn’t click,” Johnson said Friday. “I’m missing a little bit and here, a little bit is a lot. So I’ll keep working at it. I’ll try every lane combination I can think of and every different way to use the brakes. Charge the corner, not charge the corner and go through all that again when we get on track (for practice) and just see where I find my best speed at and just work around that.”

SAME OLD, SAME OLD Gillett Evernham Motorsports driver Kasey Kahne said Friday that even though Ray Evernham is no longer running the race team he founded, it’s still pretty much business as usual at GEM.

“I think as far as the people at the shop and the way the shop is run – it’s not a big difference,” Kahne said at Bristol Motor Speedway. “ … Whether I see Ray or not, it’s the same now as it was two or three years ago. To me, he’s there – he still helps me with what I need. I talk to him once a week. I run into him, whether it’s seeing him out or he gives me a call, we talk every week and try and go over things. I think the shop side is a little bit different for those guys. They all have jobs and priorities and they’re working on them so I don’t necessarily think it matters a whole lot.”

BV LOCKED IN Brian Vickers will go to Martinsville Speedway in two weeks with a guaranteed starting spot in the field for his Red Bull Racing Toyota, the first time he’ll be locked into a race since he drove for Hendrick Motorsports in 2006. Vickers is ninth in NASCAR Sprint Cup owner points and is guaranteed to be in the top 35 no matter what happens Sunday at Bristol. To say he is relieved is an understatement.

““It’s going to be a huge relief and a tremendous step forward for Red Bull,” said Vickers. “To go through what we went through last year - I don’t think anybody anticipated it, but it definitely built a lot of character in the organization - what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. It will be really nice to not have to worry about it - to go to the race track and focus on race trim. … It will be nice to have that choice. It’s been a long time where we’ve come to the race track just gung-ho qualifying trim and you cross your fingers.”

Blog Post Friday, March 14, 2008 at 4:40 pm ET

DODGE BOYS HEAD TO DETROIT Penske Racing drivers Kurt Busch and Ryan Newman both visited Detroit this past week, Busch to receive a Dodge Viper and Newman to celebrate his Daytona 500. Busch was presented the red sports car for being the top-finishing Dodge driver in 2007 NASCAR Sprint Cup points, while Newman met with Chrysler LLC Chairman and CEO Bob Nardelli – a huge NASCAR fan from his days as Home Depot CEO – and workers at the company’s mammoth headquarters near Detroit. “It was like being in the Wizard of Oz,” Newman said of being joined by thousands of workers at the Chrysler facility.

Busch, meanwhile, picked up his red 2008 Dodge Viper sports coupe and visited the Chrysler plant where the Vipers are assembled. Busch was offered a blue Viper last fall, but he held out for a red one and got it – the 25,000th Viper built by Dodge, as it turned out.

GREEN PINCH-HITS Jeff Green practiced the Wood Brothers No. 21 Ford at Bristol and will be in the car for the rest of the weekend. Bill Elliott is expected to be back in the car at Martinsville in two weeks, but beyond that, the season is open. Since falling out of the top 35 in NASCAR Sprint Cup owner points last fall, the Wood Brothers have repeatedly said that they are strictly dealing with one race at a time.

“As we’ve done with Bill ever since we started this arrangement, I call him every week before finalizing our entry blank and ask him if he still wants to race for the coming week,” said team co-owner Eddie Wood. “When I spoke to Bill on Monday, he showed an interest in swapping out Bristol for Martinsville, so that’s what we did. Jeff Green has a good record here and we thought putting him in the car would give us our best shot at qualifying on speed. I think what he’s done in practice here today shows that we made a good decision. Unfortunately, when I saw the weather forecast I figured this was going to happen. I guess the most appropriate thing to say right now is that when it rains, it pours. This sort of typifies the way our season has gone so far.”

BRISTOL BASH Sam Hornish Jr., like a lot of NASCAR rookies, had a turbulent introduction to Bristol Motor Speedway, spinning his Penske Racing Dodge during Friday morning’s practice. Not surprisingly, Hornish said Bristol is unlike anywhere he’s ever raced before.
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