The fastest car in that second practice session? A.J. Allmendinger’s seventh lap, at 178.679 mph (4.9 mph faster).

What a drastic difference. If it’s hard visualizing 5 mph, think about it like this: When you’re watching a race and the leader is struggling — maybe it’s ill handling, maybe it’s old tires, maybe it’s an engine gasping to hold on — and you’ll hear the announcers make reference to the second-place car being a full mile per hour faster.

In no time at all, there’s a new leader. It may only take a handful of laps, even at the short tracks.

If that doesn’t work, try this: Reed Sorenson ran the closest time to Burton’s record, and Sorenson was 32nd fastest. (That alone should tell you something.) Sorenson’s lap time was 28.298 seconds; Allmendinger’s was 27.522, a difference of just over three-quarters of a second.

So let’s say for a second that Allmendinger runs a race at that speed, running only against Sorenson and his speed. In about 36.5 laps — just under 50 miles — Allmendinger would pass Sorenson and put him a lap down.

Granted, racing doesn’t happen in such a vacuum with such a distinct lack of variables. But think about it like this: Only at the shortest tracks, Martinsville and Bristol, do drivers remain on track and go a lap down within the first 100 laps.

Things like that simply don’t happen at tracks a mile and bigger.

Such a drastic increase in speed has the chance to make a treacherous racetrack even more so. On Friday, Kasey Kahne said he expects to see 43 different Darlington stripes.

“I think every car on the track is going to hit [the wall]; it’s just how hard everyone is going to hit it,” Kahne said. “It’s a pretty tough track. It’s fast. It’s really going to be tough to pass. I think the key is mainly how hard you’re going to hit it, that’s a big thing.”

Kahne went on to say that he expects a lot of single-file racing since passing will be such a challenge.

That seems to be a word of caution, but hopefully we won’t be in for 367 laps of follow the leader. But that remains to be seen.

Maybe Monday will bring a positive post; maybe it won’t.

At this point, it’s rather difficult to tell.

(Photo by Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Certainly, the closing laps in Richmond were noteworthy for a number of reasons; unfortunately for Bowyer, getting his second career Cup victory wasn’t one of them. A restrictor-plate-style wreck, Denny Hamlin’s fall from the top and Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s meeting with the retaining wall were the stories of the night.

If ever there was a metaphor for a guy’s career, this is it: As the crowd is drawn to the big names and their fortunes, Bowyer slips by.

At his own organization, he’s overshadowed too. Jeff Burton led the points until the checkered flag at Richmond and has been one of Cup’s most consistent drivers for years. Kevin Harvick has a Daytona 500 win to his credit, but his combustibility is always worth keeping an eye on.

And then there’s Bowyer. Richard Childress Racing’s other driver.

By performance alone, he’s at least the equal of his teammates. Burton has two wins since the start of the ’07 season, as does Bowyer; Harvick has the controversial Daytona win as well as a victory in the non-points All-Star race.

During last year’s Chase, Bowyer was the only driver to keep any sort of pace with the Jimmie Johnson/Jeff Gordon Hendrick juggernaut. At the end, Bowyer was no factor, but he hung in the game longer than nine other drivers (almost all of whom had bigger names and bigger Q ratings).

This year, Bowyer is part of the surging Childress organization. All three drivers are in the top five in points — Burton is second, Bowyer fourth and Harvick fifth — an impressive statement for any team. Bowyer is also leading the Nationwide points race too.

Say what you will about Bowyer’s win at Richmond; it can’t be argued that it was fluky. He certainly gained from other’s shortcomings; if Hamlin’s tire stays intact or Busch doesn’t get loose in Turn 3, we’re writing an entirely different post today.

But the facts are what they are. Bowyer wound up celebrating after the race while 42 others weren’t so lucky.

By now, however, Bowyer’s driving acumen can’t be described as fluky. In a year and a half, he’s shown us he can drive. It shouldn’t be long before he moves from the shadows into the spotlight.

(Photo by Gary C. Knapp/Associated Press)

The team took on an unknown rookie, David Gilliland, who made a name for himself by winning a Busch race at Kentucky with an unsponsored, part-time team. The other ride was filled by a cast of drivers last season – Ricky Rudd, mainly, with support from Kenny and Mike Wallace. This year, the team settled on Travis Kvapil.

Gilliland’s car now has sponsorship, from FreeCreditReports.com. Kvapil’s team is still in search of sponsorship. They’re as much an underdog every week as a two-car team can be.

But look at the standings: Kvapil is 19th, Gilliland is 20th. That’s still pretty far away from Chase territory, but both Yates drivers are ahead of Matt Kenseth, Casey Mears, Kurt Busch, Sadler and Jamie McMurray (despite his recent upswing).

That both men are in the top 20 in points is nothing short of impressive.

Granted, Yates is getting an awful lot of help from Roush Fenway, the only other multi-car team in the Ford camp. The two have a combined engine shop, and Roush is lending support to find sponsors as well.

But that shouldn’t detract from what Kvapil and Gilliland have done.

Heading to Richmond, Gilliland had a streak of four top-15 finishes in five races. He would’ve had a chance to extend that streak were he not one of the drivers involved in the big Turn 3 wreck. His car took almost as much damage as Patrick Carpentier’s; it sat, turned around, against the wall leaking all manner of fluids onto the track. His night was finished; he came in 41st.

Kvapil really opened some eyes with a sixth at Talladega. But he also had a top-10 finish at Las Vegas (eighth), and his lowest finish in the past five races was 22nd.

Perhaps those numbers don’t sound great. But don’t put the same level of expectation on Kvapil and Gilliland that you might put on Dale Earnhardt Jr. or Kyle Busch or Jeff Burton.

What the two of them, Yates and their teams have done is impressive, indeed.

• UPDATED to add a photo. That’s all.

(Photo by John Raoux/Associated Press)

Other pro sports do swings all the time. West coast baseball teams come east for a week or longer at a time, and vice versa. The PGA Tour’s Western Swing took a month and a half, visiting La Quinta, Calif.; Torrey Pines in San Diego; TPC Scottsdale; Pebble Beach; Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, Calif.; then a stop in Mexico and off to Marana, Ariz.

So it should be no surprise that NASCAR has a swing of its own. The only question is why it happens in May.

Likely, it’s just a product of schedules — NASCAR’s own and the wishes of television execs. But it seems a night swing would be better served in June or July, giving drivers a break from the brutal summer sun (and, here in the east, the oppressive humidity).

Certainly there are infrastructure issues that would make it well nigh impossible. Of the tracks that host races in June and July, only Daytona is really equipped to host a night race. And it does.

Pocono doesn’t have lights. Neither does Infineon. That pretty much puts the brakes on any sort of night racing, unless teams are willing to replace those decals with actual working lights. Which they’re probably not.

So putting a night swing in the middle of summer would require a vast revamping of the schedule, which simply won’t happen. You’d have to find dates for all of the Northeast tracks (Pocono, Dover, New Hampshire) and the only place they can go is back, since the spring weather can be notoriously fickle. Remember the CART race in 2000 in now-defunct Nazareth? The race date was in early May and the event got snowed out. (I’ll never forget that time, since the snow happened only days before my grandmother passed away.)

• SPEAKING OF FICKLENESS, I stumbled upon a cool video over at YouTube; it’s Kevin Harvick during last year’s fall Talladega race.

In less than five laps, Harvick goes from being one of the many to one of the leaders — second place, in fact.

And as quickly as it comes, it’s gone. Soon he and Robby Gordon (I’m pretty sure it’s Gordon in front of him) are under attack from the low and high grooves and they blend back into the pack.

Fascinating viewing. And it’s easy to see why spotters get worn out at that track too.

(Photo by Ronald Martenez/pool photo via Associated Press)

For all that Earnhardt had to endure, Hamlin had the greater disappointment.

Earnhardt’s winless streak is now better than two years; and at one of the tracks where he’s been most successful, he had his best chance to win.

That didn’t happen, largely because of Busch’s aggressiveness. We can’t know whether Busch would have passed him eventually; but at that point, Earnhardt was able to rebuff each of Busch’s passing attempts inside. And there were only three laps left, so time was running short for Busch.

I still firmly believe a win is coming, and soon, for Earnhardt. If you look at the first graf I wrote for today’s paper, I made reference to teams and drivers putting themselves in a position to win.

Earnhardt has done that often enough this season. Eventually it’s going to pay off; it has to, if for no other reason than sheer odds. One of these times, he’ll have the best car and he won’t get wrecked.

As the season goes on, Earnhardt will get his win somewhere.

That’s why the disappointment would seem to be more overwhelming for Hamlin. There are only two races at his home track each year; for literally 95 percent of the race, he was the driver to beat.

On Friday, Hamlin had said that winning the pole at Richmond was equal to a race win some-where else. So you can imagine what a race win at Richmond would have meant.

Before his tire went south, he had proven himself dominant. Even when the occasional yellow bunched up the field, Hamlin was able to pull away, building leads of multiple seconds. Yet it was all undone in the final 20 laps, when Hamlin’s car become nearly undriveable.

So there’s another person who won’t be sending love notes to Goodyear.

He’ll only have one more chance to win at Richmond this year. But his performance should make him a favorite for the fall race; he’ll also get the benefit of a less aggressive race, when only a few drivers enter the race with a chance of making the Chase. In order to preserve their points, the race usually seems to be a bit tamer.

No matter what Hamlin may say, it’s hard to see him simply brushing off this loss.

(Photos by Dan Currier [Earnhardt] and James Wallace/Media General News Service)