Published: May 03, 2007 06:23 pm      

ON PIT ROAD: NASCAR is back to the future at Richmond

NASCAR moves to Richmond International Raceway in Richmond, VA, this weekend and also goes back to the "Car of Tomorrow."

Everyone remembers that the Hendrick Chevys dominated at Bristol, Martinsville and Phoenix in the COT’s first three outings.

Will that trend continue at Richmond, or will we finally see a non-Hendrick car in victory lane?

Among the strong contenders at RIR will, of course, be Dale Earnhardt Jr, Kevin Harvick, Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin, all Chevys.

Among the Ford contenders are Matt Kenseth and Greg Biffle. In the Dodge camp, it would have been Kasey Kahne if it were not for his nightmarish start.

The usual "go or go home" teams will be there again, and once more Michael Waltrip will try to get into his second race of the season in his 10th attempt.

Speaking of Michael, it seems every week he has a new idea on how NASCAR needs to change qualifying.

This week his idea was to have all the non-top 35 qualify all together. It seems that no matter what part of qualifying he goes out in, the other guys get a better time to go. Last week at Talladega, Michael went out early and had a pretty good time.

Michael was happy and his big brother up in the TV booth was dancing like a kid. “Looks like Mikey is gonna be in for sure this time,” sang Darrell as he was grinning from ear to ear.

Once again, among the last to qualify is Michael’s driver David Reutimann who bounced Mikey out of the race. To add insult to injury, Michael’s other driver, Dale Jarrett, who turned the slowest lap of the day, used his last champions provisional. He must now qualify on time, which he has only done once so far this year.

•On the local scene, Crossville Raceway hosted the Advance Auto parts Thunder Series Super Late Model show last week.

David Payne of Murphy, NC won the main event, the Plateau Spring 50, which was a nail bitter from start to finish with a hard-fought battle that included Crossville’s Randy Weaver who led several laps before a broken wheel ended his night.

The Sunoco Shootout for the Supers was won by Anthony White of Clinton.

In the Limited Late Models, Crossville’s Brandon Williams won for the second consecutive week. Probably one of the best races of the night after the Supers was the Mini Stock race won by Derrick Hutchings who battled the whole race with fellow Sparta resident Todd Spivey.

Crossville will have a full line-up of classes plus the Cruiser Cars Saturday night. Gates open at 4:30 with racing starting at 7 p.m. (CDT). For more information, call 456-5000.

•I-40 Dragway will have a testing and tuning session Friday at 5 p.m., and a two day program Saturday at 2 p.m. and Sunday at noon.

Super Pros pay $2,000 to win each day. For information, call the Dragway 484-0049.

•TRIVIA: Last week's winner was Steve Walker of Houston, TX who knew that the two winning Pontiacs at PIR were Bobby Hamilton and Tony Stewart.

The answer to last week's question was that Unocal 76 was the official Fuel of NASCAR prior to Sunoco.

If you watched Cup qualifying on the Speed Channel last Saturday, you heard Darrell Waltrip urge NASCAR to allow more cars to enter the races at the bigger tracks like Talladega.

During his urging of this, he mentioned that at the first race at Talladega there were 75 cars in the race. Darrell was way off on the facts. For a chance at a T-shirt or cap, how many cars started that first race at Talladega Speedway?

Send your answers to trivia@onpitroad.net by Thursday. Make sure to include your full shipping address along with a shirt size (m-xxl).