Since the announcement, there have been mild rumblings about fellow F1 driver Jacques Villeneuve looking at options in NASCAR – mentioned in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram – as well as IRL driver Danica Patrick.

Used to be that F1 was the ultimate destination series; the top drivers in the world, no matter where they were from, wanted an F1 ride and would serve their time for a shot at it. NASCAR seems to have stolen some of that thunder.

But it’s easy to get carried away with it, too. Montoya currently sits sixth in the F1 points standings, and over the course of six full seasons, sixth has been the worst he’s finished in points. So there’s no denying that he’s a talented and successful driver.

At the same time, Montoya isn’t Michael Schumacher, Kimi Raikkonen, Rubens Barichello or Fernando Alonso. F1’s biggest names aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, unless one of the NASCAR mega-teams is willing to pay Schumacher’s salary. (He is the single highest-paid athlete in the world.)

Villeneuve, unlike Montoya, has an F1 championship in his resume. But that came in 1997 and, since then, he’s finished in the top five in points only once – in 1998. He raced only three times in 2004 and didn’t record a point, and hasn’t finished in the top in points in four years – an also-ran by F1 standards.

Some have called Montoya’s pending arrival in NASCAR the sports’ biggest coup ever. There’s validity to that, but stock-car racing has never been much for coups. Most of the drivers there came up through the ranks of stock cars; the Cup series has always been the top of the heap for them. Other drivers with open-wheel backgrounds came long before they reached F1 level: Tony Stewart jumped ship long before the IRL’s resurgence in popularity, and Jeff Gordon ran in the Busch series before beginning his Cup career.

Moreover, NASCAR isn’t the worldwide phenomenon that F1 is. NASCAR is making headway into Canada and Mexico, but F1 remains supreme throughout Europe and the rest of the world.

Montoya is the most recognizable name to jump to NASCAR, and that jump has created ripples throughout the auto racing world. But the rest of the world’s racing talent has yet to beat a path to NASCAR’s door; when it does, that will signal NASCAR’s arrival as a world power.

Until then, it will have to be satisfied with being North America’s dominant force.

He said the person , who police did not identify, ran from a vehicle police believe was driven by one of the suspects wanted by ATF agents.

Agents seized more than 50 guns and a “good amount” of drugs, Campbell said.

Police are using Potomac High School as a processing center for those arrested.

More information on the drug bust is expected to be available following a 4 p.m. press conference today in Woodbridge.

The brief was no more than a few paragraphs, basically listing the winner and runner-up, along with how Greg Biffle finished. Biffle is from Vancouver, Wash., just across the Columbia River from Portland.
The 6 p.m. news, which had plenty of time to find out all it needed to know about the race, had nothing in its sportscast. Instead, it was all about the World Cup final and the Wimbledon’s men’s final (or gentleman’s final, if you prefer the tournament’s official language).
Of course, that was only one station, KOIN, Portland’s CBS affiliate. Perhaps the other stations had a mention.
That shouldn’t be taken as a slam on those news operations. Their goal, as is ours, is to cover the news that most interests their readers and viewers. And NASCAR just isn’t much of a priority, just as viewers here in Prince William wouldn’t much care for extensive coverage of the TrailBlazers or Oregon State or the Triple-A Portland Beavers.
Still, it’s interesting to compare and contrast how news values change in different regions, at least for me anyway.
But I can only imagine the howls of protest we’d get if the Cup race were reduced to a brief — understandably so.
• As I said, keeping up with the latest in NASCAR wasn’t always easy in the Northwest. But I did at least see a headline or read about each of the following: Tony Stewart climbing the fence after winning at Daytona; Matt Kenseth fuming after Jeff Gordon punted him at Joliet; UPS moving sponsorship to Michael Waltrip Racing; the impending move of former Formula 1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya to Ganassi’s No. 42; rumors and denials of Danica Patrick moving to NASCAR.
We’ll cover those issues, particularly the latter three, in the coming days while looking ahead to the Loudoun race as well.