So, with that in mind, we’ll look ahead to some other stuff happening today: Richard Childress Racing announced that both Jeff Burton and his sponsor, AT&T, have signed a contract extension.

This comes a day after NASCAR announced it was countersuing AT&T for $100 million. AT&T had previously won a court decision allowing its blue-and-white globe on Burton’s Chevy, replacing the outdated Cingular brand, which had been bought by AT&T.

Besides the money, NASCAR is also seeking the right to throw out any communications company not named Nextel by 2008.

For our purposes, that last part is the most important part. Did AT&T and, to a lesser degree Burton, jump the gun by signing on despite the NASCAR countersuit?

To be certain, the countersuit is more broadly worded than AT&T’s original complaint. The latter dealt strictly with AT&T’s rights to change the logo on the No. 31, and whether AT&T qualified for the grandfather clause that allowed Cingular and Alltel to stay in Cup.

But instead of grandfathering, NASCAR wants complete control. Suddenly, there must be at least some concern at Penske; its relationship with Alltel could be in jeopardy if NASCAR wins the countersuit. (That said, it would seem silly for NASCAR to toss out Alltel, which has not given it nearly the headache that AT&T has.)

According to the AP story, NASCAR is alleging breach of contract, fraud and misrepresentation, and conspiracy to aid and abet wrongful interference with Nextel. That’s difficult to judge from the outside (and the little matter of not being very knowledgeable in contract law). Wrongful, and especially fraud, seem like awfully strong terms for this sort of suit.

There’s no question that NASCAR has been injured since the AT&T globe was put on the No. 31. At the very least, its series sponsorship with Nextel is devalued because its exclusivity has been compromised. If, for example, Verizon would buy Alltel, they’d now have every right to slap their logo on the No. 12. At least part of the reason Nextel spent so much money was to have that right of exclusivity. If you think Bud (or Miller Lite), Home Depot (or Lowe’s), Crown Royal (or Jack Daniel’s) or any other company with a competitor in the sport wouldn’t jump at the chance to kick their rival out, you’re crazy.

Nextel had to be a little more careful, however, because it was also dealing with existing team contracts that the series has very little control over. And Nextel, of course, did the right thing by allowing those sponsorships to be grandfathered in. (No one’s going to argue that AT&T and Alltel have a greater presence at NASCAR races than does Nextel.)

NASCAR had no choice but to countersue. There certainly had to be a ton of pressure from Nextel; NASCAR couldn’t just kick its feet back and cash the checks.

It’s hard to imagine NASCAR getting a complete victory in the countersuit, given the loss in the earlier round. It’s also just as hard to imagine NASCAR not gaining some sort of concession, either (by settlement or by ruling). It’ll probably be somewhere in the middle.

But for now, we’ll have to wait to see how it plays out. I still believe this is the single most important off-track story of the season in NASCAR, because nothing – not even that driver who has been named too often already – will affect the sport for the foreseeable future like this litigation.

—I MADE REFERENCE to trying out some NASCAR-themed wines a few weeks ago, namely a few selections from Childress Vineyards and a bottle of The Jeff Gordon Collection.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get my wine-tasting people together in time for this week’s race as I had originally planned. But we’ll get it done, probably sometime next month after I get back from vacation.

I’ve also mentioned on here that a few people with other sites have left comments. I promised I’d check their sites out, and I wanted you to know I haven’t forgotten about you. We finally seem to have made it to summer break, so I’ll have more time to do that sort of thing in the coming weeks.