There’s been plenty of good stuff written during the past few days about Cup teams that must race to get into each week’s event. The top 35 in owner points are locked in, obviously, but from there the rules are less familiar.

If the bad weather that has enveloped the east coast hangs around, qualifying at Atlanta will most assuredly be wiped out. Given that strong possibility, SceneDaily has already calculated who will make the race and who won’t.

The big names, of course, are in no danger. But SD predicts that, if qualifying is rained out, Kenny Wallace, Mike Bliss, Jeremy Mayfield, A.J. Allmendinger, Kevin Lepage, Michael Waltrip, Ward Burton and Scott Wimmer would head home early.

That would be a tough pill for all eight of those drivers to swallow, but even tougher for Allmendinger and Waltrip, members of the fledgling Toyota operation who expected to be doing far better by now. Allmendinger has yet to start a Cup race, and Waltrip’s only appearance in one ended with a 30th at Daytona.

Those guys desperately need a spark to get their season on the right track. But it looks like they won’t have that chance until they get to Bristol.

• BUT HEY, THEY’RE NOT JUST DRIVERS: Jeff Burton was asked about Duke, who lost to VCU in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament last night. Specifically, according the transcript, the questioner wanted to know what kind of defense the Blue Devils were playing when Eric Maynor hit the go-ahead jumper with a second left.

“Obviously we weren’t playing defense that last possession,” he said.

“He had some big shots and heck, he was unstoppable,” Burton said of Maynor. “That was neat to watch that. As a Duke fan it wasn’t so cool but I still have an appreciation for somebody wanting the ball and he wanted the ball and when he got the ball he did some cool stuff with it. I have a lot of appreciation for that but it was not a good outcome.”

• UPDATE ON FRANCE: Back on SceneDaily, they’ve got a quick blurb that former NASCAR chairman Bill France Jr. is alert and resting in a Daytona hospital. That’s certainly a lot better news than we heard yesterday, which sounded much more dire than today’s update.

• One won, the other didn’t. Yet questions still persist for both.

Mark Martin continues to be badgered by questions about whether he’ll run at Bristol. Martin is running a part-time schedule for Ginn Motorsports; but he’s currently leading the Nextel Cup points chase three races into the season.

That leads many to believe he’ll reconsider and run the full season, despite what Martin says.

“I don’t have any desire to race Bristol at this time,” he said at California, days after his close call at Daytona.

“Absolutely not,” he said at Las Vegas when someone asked if he’s reconsidering.

Living where we do, partaking in the daily buffet of political jabber, it’s impossible not to see the parallels between Mark Martin and ... Al Gore.

Gore’s stock is sky-high after his Oscar win for An Inconvenient Truth. Amid a muddled field of Democratic presidential contenders, some believe Gore should parlay his on-screen success into a run for office.

“I have no plans to return at this time,” Gore said in May, a sentiment that hasn’t much changed.

Sound familiar?

Martin and Gore are hot. Both say they won’t run. Many remain skeptical.

Though the circumstances around them are similar — if you don’t mind taking a leap of faith that a Nextel Cup championship is, on some level, par with the presidency of the United States — the similarities end there.

Martin is clearly the cooler of the two. Only in the rarest of instances would a politician be considered cooler than an athlete. Besides, Martin is a hip-hop fan and merely being a racecar driver brings a formidable level of coolness by itself; think of all the accidents he’s walked away from over the years.

Gore is cool in a scholarly way, which is to say not very cool at all. (Before I get lambasted, scholarship is cool in its own way, I know — says the one who slacked in school.) Regardless of that, now may be the time to strike if he wants to make a presidential run — except that he’s given no indication that he wants to.

Two men in the spotlight, both running counter to what their fans and the media want.

Unless they change their minds.

So I’ll fill in the gap, with a few thoughts about what’s out there at the moment.

Fox gives us Mike Joy, Darrell Waltrip and Larry McReynolds. Each have their moments. I like Joy’s low-key play-by-play. But by doing that, he defers to Waltrip and McReynolds, which isn’t always a good thing.

I can’t ever escape the feeling that Waltrip and McReynolds create more drama than is really necessary. It’s impossible to question their enthusiasm, certainly, but after how many years now, I’ve about had my fill. We can do with the out the near-constant theatrics.

And that’s what I do like about ESPN’s Busch team of Dr. Jerry Punch, Rusty Wallace and Andy Petree. I’ve not had a chance to hear them very often, but I do like what I have heard: minimum fuss, pretty good information.

Of course, we should expect that from Punch. With the exception of Allen Bestwick — who I thought was superb in the booth with NBC, though he later moved to pit reporter and now does the same for ESPN — I would take Punch over any other broadcaster out there to call a race.

Clearly, the scope of this topic is limited, since there are only a handful of broadcasting teams that cover racing — unlike the hordes of folks working on a normal NFL weekend.

My favorite sportscaster of all-time, any sport, is Verne Lundquist. I would love to hear him call a race, but I can’t really see that ever happening. Traina makes reference to this clip from one of the best college basketball games in history, showing Lundquist’s ability to know when a moment speaks for itself.

My favorite is a clip from the Masters two years ago: Tiger Woods’ miraculous chip. His call shows true passion, not the contrived sort that we’re often subjected to on Fox.

Maybe his pole at Daytona meant he had finally turned a corner. Or maybe not. Though he managed an eighth-place finish in the season opener, he’s not finished in the top 20 in the two races since.

Moreover, he’s again raising concern among veteran drivers.

“I don’t know what the 38 was doing,” said Kasey Kahne, who wrecked out of Sunday’s Las Vegas race after tangling with Gilliland. “First off he’s hard to pass. Then you get by him and he’s two laps down and he starts battling. I let him go and he still didn’t pass me. I have no idea what he was thinking, but that’s the way it goes.”

Juan Pablo Montoya — technically a rookie, but we all know better — said Gilliland got in his way after Montoya went a lap down to eventual winner Jimmie Johnson. But Montoya’s words weren’t nearly as pointed as Kahne’s.

It’s hard to be too critical of Gilliland in this instance, given that the track and tire combo were a problem for all of the drivers, regardless of skill and funding levels.

At the same time, it’s not hard to believe that Gilliland might not have many friends in the garage. Any goodwill he might have could get used up quickly.

• OVERHEARD — BUT NOT WHERE YOU’D EXPECT: The folks at LiveATC.net, a Web site for flight and air traffic enthusiasts (of which I am one), posted a clip of an incident earlier this month.

Delta 412, a Boeing 737 flying from Phoenix to New York, came in for its landing at JFK. Upon touchdown, however, a tire blew. Though the plane taxied to the gate without incident, there was some debris to clean up on the runway. An alert pilot from Aer Lingus heard the pop, noticed the unusual smoke and alerted the JFK tower.

Air traffic controllers kept all the affected planes informed. But there was little they could do until airport workers ensured the runway was safe for traffic; that led to some downtime.

Here’s the transcript from one of those quiet moments (which is a rarity for a place like JFK):

Tower (to the Delta pilot): I want to see your maintenance guy get out there, jack it up, fill it with fuel, four fresh tires and a Coke for the driver in, uh, 14 seconds.

Delta pilot: I’ll let ’em know.

Unidentified pilot 1: NASCAR country.

Unidentified pilot 2: Think Daytona!

Tower: Boogity, boogity, boogity — right guy?

I’m trying to imagine the Aer Lingus pilot saying “Boogity, boogity, boogity!” on takeoff clearance. He must’ve thought we’re all crazy.

“Some of the worst conditions I’ve ever been a part of,” said Jeff Gordon.

“I almost spun out on the straightaway, that’s how hard the tires were,” said winner Jimmie Johnson.

Indeed, it’s been quite a while since we’ve seen this level of griping from Cup drivers. But we knew Sunday’s race at Las Vegas was going to be this way, particularly after a disastrous Busch race on Saturday: The 12 cautions (one every 17 laps, on average) were four more than the previous track record; after wrecking out, Greg Biffle compared it to driving on black ice.

And this is with the Busch cars, which are more forgiving than Cup cars.

With such low expectations for quality racing, we tuned in to see the main train wreck on Sunday. And we weren’t disappointed. Robby Gordon, who hasn’t always endeared himself to his fellow competitors, didn’t make any new friends with a careless pass that took out two other cars. Bobbing out of the treacherous Turn 4 seemed to happen to at least one car on every lap.

All of the wrecks, the impossibility of door-to-door racing and the countless near-misses left us with this: a Johnson win in which he was never threatened during the final few laps.

All that in the name of better racing?

If you want to point a finger of blame, you’ll basically need your whole hand. Was track owner Bruton Smith ill-advised in ripping up a newer facility that was, by most accounts, fine as it was? Did Goodyear drop the ball, bringing an especially hard tire to what is essentially a new track — even after it did the same thing at Charlotte last year with equally ugly results? Did the testing sessions, regulated by NASCAR, fail to accurately mirror race conditions?

Yes on all accounts, but with a few caveats. The consensus among drivers is that once the track surface as a year to cure in the desert sun, the racing will be more palatable next year.

Goodyear may not have known what to expect from the track, so it brought the hardiest tire it could — knowing that making such a tough tire would also substantially reduce grip.

In his post-race comments, Johnson gave Goodyear a pass and put the blame on NASCAR’s testing procedures.

“To show up and not test what you’re going to race, is where all the frustration comes from. I do understand that Goodyear wants to build a strong and safe tire and not everybody is going to agree with building a hard tire. But if we can test it, I think we’ll find a way to be comfortable,” Johnson said. “On Friday when we were out there, I was afraid to hold it wide open down the straightaway. I could spin the tires ... even today in the race, I was inside of the No. 01 car and we were racing real hard. With the side drafting he did pulled me sideways and I almost spun out on the straightaway. That’s how slick the combination of the new track and tire is. We need to get some data on that so I don’t feel like I’m going to bust my butt out there.

“I know Goodyear is working very hard, but we’ve got to bring the right tire. I don’t know how we get there — if it’s more tire testing or bringing more cars to the track for tire testing. Right now they bring three cars to the track. Something needs to be addressed to where we know we’ve got the right tire. The sport is too big to be making last-minute changes. We need to focus on getting it right for the new surfaces.”

We knew this was going to be a rough weekend. Hopefully, it will be the last of its kind and we can get back to some more normal racing.
Hopefully.

“Somebody said that Goodyear might bring a harder left side tire to Charlotte,” Jeff Gordon said, “[and] I am going to have a long talk with those guys or take them to dinner or something.”