The Final Score

The first race of NASCAR's Chase for the Cup takes place in the wonderful state of New Hampshire, home to one of my favorite towns anywhere: Portsmouth. But I digress.

In the latest NASCAR video from the Newsday multimedia team of Katie Strang and Bobby Cassidy, various drivers talk about this weekend's race in New Hampshire.

Another video courtesy of the Strang/Cassidy team.

To help promote their 10-race playoff point system, called the Chase for the Cup, NASCAR brought the 12 drivers competing for the title to NYC yesterday.

Newsday's Bobby Cassidy and Katie Strang caught up with many of the drivers, and they've agreed to unveil their videos on The Final Score each week.

Here's the first:

About to head into the city to meet with Dale Earnhardt Jr., who is in New York this week along with the 11 other drivers involved in the Chase for the Sprint Cup - NASCAR's 10-race playoff system to determine this year's champion.

The NASCAR people offered us here at TFS an opportunity to interview Dale Jr., and of course we said yes. Thus, now I must leave you guys to prepare by reading his Wikipedia page.

Lewis Hamilton was stripped of his victory in Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix.

Rather than trying to translate British into English or figure out what a chicane is, here's what the UK's Telegraph said:

The McLaren driver won the race on the track, but was later given a 25-second penalty. He was judged to have gained an unfair advantage by cutting a chicane while disputing the lead with Kimi Raikkonen. That dropped Hamilton to third place and gifted victory to his closest title rival, Ferrari driver Felipe Massa.

Stewart, a three-times F1 world champion and former grand prix team owner, believes the race stewards made a mistake. “I was more than surprised by what happened,” he said, “and I really don’t think Hamilton did anything wrong.

More here.

Random drug testing is likely to be expanded for the 2009 season, chairman Brian France said.

I guess that was bound to happen once former truckie Aaron Fike (pictured) admitted that he was using heroin during races.

Here's a Charlotte Observer story via thatsracin.com.

How's this? Here I am at the U.S. Open in the media center (waiting for the night session to begin), blogging about NASCAR and I have the Yankees game on my tv.

Anyway...

Here's the deal with NASCAR - the league placed Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards on probation for the next six weeks in the wake of their post-race altercation Saturday night at Bristol.

You remember the incident. I blogged about it here.

Here's the two-time champ's answers to YOUR questions.

Continue reading "NASCAR month special: Q&A with Jimmie Johnson" »

Your time is running out to ask NASCAR's two-time defending champion Jimmie Johnson a question. I'll be talking to him tomorrow. So make sure to leave a question.

Make sure to submit your questions for Jimmie Johnson.

We have nine questions posted here, another nine here and one here.

We're talking to Jimmie tomorrow morning, so time is running out.

Get those questions in!

Carl Edwards won last night at Bristol, his second straight victory, third in four weeks and sixth this season. But this one came with some controversy.

I didn't see it because I was watching another Carl, but from reading the stories here's what I gathered. Edwards couldn't pass Kyle Busch, who led for 415 straight laps. So Edwards nudged his bumper on lap 470, and that opened enough room to get by him.

So is that move acceptable? What do you say? Here's Edwards' explanation: "I couldn't get by him, and I just had to ask myself, `Would he do that to me?' And he has before, so that's the way it goes."

Apparently Busch disapproved and let Edwards know about it by bumping his car during his cool-down lap. Edwards responded by "driving the nose of his car into the right side of Busch's," according to The Associated Press story.

Pretty cool stuff, I must say.