• He has been successful at Richmond. He has three wins at the place, the most of any track outside of Talladega. He had engine troubles (shocker) at last fall’s race, relegating him to a 30th-place finish, but his worst finish in the 10 races before that had been 20th.

• His team has been successful at Richmond as of late. In 2005 and 2006, then-Hendrick driver Kyle Busch accounted for the only real success at Richmond — he had four top-five finishes in the four races in those two seasons — but since then, the rest of the organization has caught up. Jimmie Johnson swept Richmond a year ago. In the fall race in 2007, Johnson, Jeff Gordon and Busch qualified 1-2-3.

In the wider picture, one I failed to account for last week, Richmond presents a better opportunity to win than Talladega did; I was swayed by our look at the unpredictability of certain racetracks, only to find they weren’t so unpredictable after all.

But Sunday proved to be anything but predictable, with all of the ‘wow, what’s he doing here’ guys finishing in the top 10 (Juan Pablo Montoya, David Ragan, Brian Vickers, Travis Kvapil and Casey Mears). So maybe our predictability study has been shot to hell. Oh well.

At any rate, Richmond will be easier to guess. The better teams will do well there, as you might expect. The chances for the random guys to dot the top 10 are reduced compared to Talladega and Bristol.

So dare I do it again?

Yeah, I will. Junior wins this week.

• MY, HOW TIMES CHANGE: The Associated Press has a nice feature on the wire about former Formula One driver Scott Speed taking up stock cars. He’s got an ARCA win already and has fared well in forays into truck racing.

Funny, I remember a different tune when Speed was on the way up at Toro Rosso. He was the American who ran his own way and had no interest in running stock cars. His future was in open-wheel racing.

But when that future dried up, stock car racing was still an option. Now, to be fair, the AP story makes no claims that he’s in love with the sport. Who knows, perhaps he really has changed his mind and is a stock-car fan now.

Either that or getting a new job changes your outlook.

(Photo by Glenn Smith/Associated Press)

I was at the baseball game because I had volunteered to help out my colleague, Dave Utnik. Over the course of my 33 years, I’ve seen all but two National League teams play: the Cubs and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

(Quick aside: That’s one of my little joys in life, tallying the number of teams I’ve seen live at some point. Now it’s down to the Dodgers in the N.L.; in the American League, it’s a few more: Tampa Bay, the Angels (yes, I refuse to acknowledge their preference to identify with L.A.) and Texas. In the NFL, I’ve seen every NFC team but San Francisco and every AFC team but Cleveland, Cincinnati, Denver, Kansas City and Oakland.)

But early on, it became obvious that I would be disappointed I wouldn’t see the race as it happened.

At 2:22: “Jerry Bonkowski: Barney Hall, esteemed play-by-play announcer on Motor Racing Network, said today could be the greatest race ever at Talladega. Didn’t give a reason, but an interesting perspective from a veteran of over 50 races here.”

At 2:55: “Bob Margolis: There’s some unbelievable racing going on at the front of the field, even this early on. This could be one of the most competitive Talladega races in decades.”

At 3:04: “Bob Margolis: This race is turning out to be a lot more racier than last fall’s event.”

[Expletive].

And it didn’t disappoint, apparently. I’ve seen a few highlights and it looked like it was one great race to watch — a sharp contrast from some of the races we’ve seen in the past few years.

What strikes me as interesting is that how quick it took to get decent racing back on the superspeedways, considering this is the third race in the COT on one of the megatracks.

I really thought it would be more of a progression, where the events got incrementally better. I figured this level of competition would be somewhere on the horizon in 2009, perhaps in the fall Talladega race.
But look at the folks who were running near the front of the pack for some part of the race. All of these drivers led multiple laps: Michael Waltrip (4), Paul Menard (3), Elliott Sadler (3), David Gilliland (2) and David Stremme (2 while filling in for Dario Franchitti). In all, 20 drivers led at least one lap, exchanging the lead 52 times. That’s one lead change every 3.5 laps.

That’s what racing should be.

• HEY, IT’S RACE WEEK: The Cup tour comes to Richmond this weekend. We’ll be taking a day off — likely Tuesday — to accommodate the change in schedule to cover the Saturday night Cup race.

Plus, Tuesday gives us a wonderful chance to sit around and do nothing but play Grand Theft Auto IV, the latest installment in the thrilling, but controversial, series from Rockstar North.

The appropriate disclaimer: It’s not for the young or the faint of heart. I know you may be 13 and dreaming of playing the game, but trust me on this: It’s probably too mature for you.

I was a wiseass at 13 too, and wanted to be grown up. But the reality of it is this: Growing up sucks. Enjoy your youth and innocence while it lasts. This whole adult thing is way more mundane than you think.

(Photo by Greg McWilliams/Associated Press)

He’s been linked to a possible deal with Haas-CNC Racing, which fields the Nos. 66 and 70 Cup entries. The appeal for Stewart lies in reuniting with Chevy, a 50 percent stake in the organization and that Haas-CNC gets its equipment from Hendrick. The former two are particularly enticing to Stewart, pictured at right with Dale Earnhardt Jr.

That makes sense, yet it’s hard to look at it all and not scratch your head.

Now in its seventh year in Cup, Haas has had all of one top-five finish; that came last season when Johnny Sauter — who recently returned to the organization, replacing Jeremy Mayfield — was fifth at Richmond’s fall race.

There have been a cavalcade of drivers passing through the cockpit, most of them fringe drivers. The only driver with any sort of gravitas in Haas’ history was Ward Burton, who spent a season-plus there early in the company’s history.

Owner Gene Haas is three months into a two-year federal prison sentence for tax evasion.

And I’m not buying SI’s Tom Bowles’ comparison to Darrell Waltrip. If you didn’t get to the story, Bowles writes that such a Stewart move would be parallel to Waltrip’s move to then-fledgling Hendrick Motorsports in 1987. Waltrip may have recognized Rick Hendrick’s business savvy, but Haas-CNC has no such strong ownership at present. Its owner is in jail.

But if Stewart is really ready for a change, as Bowles suggests, there is little opportunity in the Chevy camp.

Richard Childress is entering a fourth car next season, but a sponsor (General Mills) is already in place. No one’s yet sure if Home Depot will want to follow Stewart to wherever he lands.

Hendrick doesn’t have an opening for another year; Casey Mears, like Stewart, is signed through next season. But Mears has not kept pace with his teammates; while they run for titles and wins, Mears has been the forgotten man. This season, in particular, has been disastrous.

But there lies danger for Hendrick as well. Let’s say for a moment that Hendrick finds a way to satisfy Stewart’s desires of team ownership — a la Earnhardt Jr. and JR Motorsports a year ago — and puts together a package that entices Stewart. He would have to buy out Mears’ final year to get Stewart in the fold next season. That would mean, for the second straight year, Hendrick got out of a contract early for greener pastures.

With Kyle Busch, it was a little more convenient; Busch was, well, himself and had worn out his welcome. That’s not the case with Mears, a good soldier by all accounts whose finishes just haven’t been up to par. That Mears remains very good friends with Jimmie Johnson must also be taken into account.

In this hypothetical, Hendrick would have to worry about a fracturing of the team concept that his organization has mastered.

But, for Stewart, the prospects after Hendrick and Childress deteriorate quickly. The only mid-level team is Dale Earnhardt Inc., whose stock remains in fluctuation. After that, you get to Haas-CNC and Furniture Row Racing, the single-car entry with Joe Nemechek. But since the sponsor also owns the racing company, there seems little opportunity for ownership there.

So, if Stewart really is looking for something different, there aren’t many places to find it. Maybe a ride with Haas isn’t so bad from that perspective.

Still, it takes a while to wrap the mind around this scenario.

• WE’VE GOT A BUSY WEEKEND ahead. We’ll be up in Ashburn for the NFL Draft — thankfully shortened in the never-ending first round — and taking in the Cubs and Nationals on Sunday afternoon.

So we won’t be here tomorrow. If time (and space) allow, I may try to get something written over the weekend and get it posted; hopefully something on Talladega, perhaps some leftover thoughts on Stewart.

No promises on a post, but a promise that I’ll do my best to get one up on Saturday.

(Photo by Ken Sklute/Associated Press)

So let’s bring this around to NASCAR. Forget the minor inconveniences of legally-binding contracts for a moment; let’s say Yates Racing is on the clock, picking the driver they’ll employ for at least the next three years.

Who would they take? A pretty easy call, I think.

This is my list of how a NASCAR draft would go. Now it may be easy to think this is simply the list of Cup’s best drivers; it’s not. NFL teams don’t simply draft the best player available. Certainly that happens frequently, but character, positional need and how a player fits into a scheme also matters. With that in mind, my draft will rely on several factors: winning (the most important, obviously), reputation, fan base and the ability to sell a product and represent a company.

(Let me also say that only in the course of research did I discover that our friends at Yahoo had conducted much the same exercise. I have not looked at their story for guidance, nor was I aware of their story when I started typing this. I promise. We’ll compare the two at the end.)

Now hush. Mike Helton is walking to the podium.

“With the first pick in the once-a-decade NASCAR Draft,” he booms, “Yates Racing selects ... Tony Stewart.”

A no-brainer. Stewart can win on any track at any time, his knock as a slow starter notwithstanding. Moreover, when he gets hot, no one touches him; streaks of three straight wins aren’t uncommon.

If you can stand the occasional outbursts, which may be appealing for a fair number of his fans, then Stewart’s a deserving top pick.

Helton’s back, sauntering across the stage. Hey, this sure does move a lot faster than the NFL Draft.

“With the second pick, Red Bull Racing selects ... Carl Edwards.”

Another solid choice. The affable Edwards is a heck of a driver, too; he runs very well — and wins frequently — on the Cup circuit’s most populous track, the mid-banked, 1.5-miler. He’s a solid citizen, especially if you overlook the one incident that’s marred his character, the run-in last season with teammate Matt Kenseth. But all has been quiet since.

“With the third pick, Petty Enterprises selects Jimmie Johnson.”

It shouldn’t be surprising that Johnson, here, slipped to third. His driving ability is unquestioned; but his two championships from the past two seasons have as much to do with crew chief Chad Knaus, an inescapable part of the operation. Still, Johnson has won at any and every type of track during the past two seasons. He falls to the third spot because, occasionally, he comes across as a bit robotic.

“With the fourth pick, Furniture Row Racing takes Dale Earnhardt Jr.”

A smart pick for the Denver-based startup, which lends instant credibility. Earnhardt is the country’s most popular driver; as such, he gets picked apart more than anyone else. His driving acumen has been questioned, though he’s proven this season he can take good equipment and make it sing. He’s on the verge of ending a losing streak; we think it’ll happen sooner, not later.

“With the fifth pick, Michael Waltrip Racing selects Kyle Busch.”

A brash youngster, Busch — like his real-world teammate, Stewart — can win anywhere, anytime. But he can be more of a headache, lashing out and bashing people but without the cachet of Stewart. Rick Hendrick was happy to trade Busch for Earnhardt.

I’ll spare you the analysis, but the rest of my top 15 would look like this (and you can guess which teams get which drivers):

6. Jeff Gordon.
7. Kasey Kahne.
8. Greg Biffle.
9. Clint Bowyer.
10. Matt Kenseth.
11. Kevin Harvick.
12. Jeff Burton.
13. Denny Hamlin.
14. Kurt Busch.
15. Juan Pablo Montoya.

I think that’s a pretty solid top 15. If you picked any three of those drivers, you’d have a pretty darn good organization.

And now that I’m finished, we’ll see how Yahoo’s draft turned out: The disagreements are mostly minor; there’s no way I would draft Johnson first unless he brought Knaus with him, as we mentioned above. Hamlin was a bit of a reach at eight — though he’s got tons of potential, he’s still the third man at Gibbs — as Martin, now in a part-time role at DEI, at 12.

(Photo by Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press)

It may not happen with Patrick, either, though we certainly hope differently — the same as we did with Mears.

My wife and I, taking a break in our new-but-still-cluttered living room, were talking about Patrick’s victory.

“I bet her sponsors are happy,” she said.

And that got me wondering: Did they?

Patrick, at right with Helio Castroneves, is the most recognizable — and, therefore, most marketable — person in the IRL. To your average fan, she’s probably more recognizable than many Cup drivers.
DanicaMania has certainly waned since her strong run in the Indianapolis 500 a few years ago. But she made an impression that day to the general population, an impression that largely remains, even if it’s not as strong as it once was.

I hoped to prove a point to my wife. She’s a converted racing fan and she tries hard to learn what’s going on; so I relate this story not to belittle her, but simply to prove the point. Plus she usually hangs around to watch the Cup races with me; open-wheel races are less prominent on our TV.

“Name me one other driver in the IRL,” I said.

“Can you give me a minute?” she replied. After a minute, she said, “Doesn’t one of the Andrettis run in the IRL?”

“Yeah,” I said, “Marco. But you knew who Danica was even before this weekend.”

She admitted that she did.

As such, my guess is that her sponsors were plenty happy with her as it was. That she won is wonderful for them, giving them a fresh round of DanicaMania exposure. She appeared on CNN this morning, which ignores all but the biggest sports stories. She was wearing, of course, a Motorola polo shirt.

But her story runs a few parallels with Mears: running for their circuit’s best organization, notable in equal parts for driving ability as for things entirely beyond their control — Patrick’s good looks and the Mears’ family’s history in auto racing.

Where Mears has fallen short — his average finish in the 32 races since the win at Lowe’s is 17.06, with four top fives (none higher than fourth) and nine top-10s — Patrick can succeed. Andretti Green still gives her the best equipment in the IRL; as such, her finishes have trended upward.

In the past calendar year, since just after the 2007 race at Motegi, she’s started outside of the top 10 just seven times and has 11 top-10 finishes. (A quick word of caution that a direct driver-to-driver comparison may not work; there are 43 cars at the start of every Cup race while no more than 26 drivers started the IRL’s first two events this season. This weekend, of course, the former Champ Car drivers competed in Long Beach while the IRL mainstays were in Japan. Instead, we use the numbers as shorthand for a more general comparison.)

Whether she does remains to be seen.

• TRYING TO WATCH SUNDAY’S Nationwide race in Mexico City was brutal. I figured it would go quickly and hunkered down on the aforementioned living-room couch.

But those two long red-flag periods were enough to test anyone’s patience. By the time the race finally ended, we had matriculated upstairs to put together a new dresser (man, am I domesticated). The TV sat on the floor. My wife was kind enough to relay the information that Kyle Busch had won.

• OUR NEW PLACE is still in a disastrous state: boxes everywhere, little sign of organization. Tomorrow, we have some people coming by to help us get set up — mainly one guy who will take a look at our ailing fridge — so I won’t be here.

I’ll be back on Wednesday, just in time to talk about one race that will surely be more exciting than Mexico City: Talladega.

(Photo by Katsumi Kasahara/Associated Press)