Along with my coffee this morning came the news that Kurt Busch has been fired by Penske Racing. Unless you’ve been prospecting for gold in Bolivia over the last few weeks you know about Busch’s tirade directed at veteran ESPN reporter Dr. Jerry Punch while waiting to do a live interview at the season ending Homestead race.

His highly profane rant was captured by a fan with a cell phone video and almost immediately hit the internet like a tsunami. The initial result was a $50,000 fine from NASCAR and the obligatory public apologies from not only Busch himself, but also Penske Racing and sponsor Shell/Pennzoil.

This incident was really just the final straw after more than a few times Busch was verbally abusive to his team and his crew chief over the in-car radio during events. And several times this year he has lashed out at pit road reporters. These were all picked up by the television network and replayed after necessarily bleeping out the multiple obscenities. It had gotten bad enough that crew chief Steve Addington decided he didn’t need to put up with that anymore and announced several weeks ago that he would be leaving the team at the end of the season.

As recently as this past Thursday, when asked by reporters, Kurt Busch scoffed at the idea of his job being in jeopardy. Such was his arrogance.

And now the hammer has dropped and, as a result of a joint decision between Penske Racing and Shell/Pennzoil, Busch joins millions of regular Americans on the unemployment line.

There is still one more year on his contract which reportedly carries a $10 million/year base salary, but I imagine there’s a “naughty behavior” clause in there somewhere that will take care of it.

The question now is where will Busch go? The only way Busch will ever drive for Penske again is if he rents one of those big yellow trucks. He certainly can’t go back to Ford and Roush/Fenway. He burned that bridge a few years ago. There are no other Dodge teams, and all of the well funded Chevy teams are full up, thank you. Basically there’s no room at the inn for Kurt Busch.

And in this writer’s opinion, it’s about time. Busch’s arrogance clearly shows a lack of appreciation for the privileged lifestyle he has been afforded. And that lifestyle comes with a responsibility. The responsibility to realize that you are indeed blessed and that it could be lost at any time. And you owe something to the many people, sponsors, and yes, the media that helped you get there. There are very few people who get the opportunity to drive for top level teams in NASCAR’s elite division. And there are hundreds, maybe even thousands who would like to have the chance to drive at that level just once. All they need are the right breaks.

Kurt Busch got those breaks and then began to assume that he was above all that and now reality has finally kicked him in the butt. Maybe this time it will get his attention.

The finale of the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup season will most likely be remembered as the most exciting and closest championship drive in the sport’s history!

In recent years it had become common for the points leading drivers to come into the final race with somewhat of a cushion. Needing only to finish in something like 15^th or better and the title was secure. The perfect example was Ricky Stenhouse in the Nationwide Series race on Saturday. So great was his point lead coming into the race that he only needed to finish better than 37^th! And that was taken care of when, early in the race, six cars dropped out leaving only 37 still on the track. Stenhouse couldn’t lose. In his five championship winning years, Jimmie Johnson never won the last race at Homestead-Miami Speedway because he never had to!

But things were very different on the Cup side at Homestead this year. After 35 races over a span of nine months, the two championship contending drivers, Carl Edwards and Tony Stewart, were separated by a mere 3 points with Edwards holding that miniscule advantage. There was only one way for Stewart to secure his third championship; win the race. Nothing else would get the job done. If Stewart finished second and Carl Edwards was third, Edwards wins.

Tony Stewart; “We said all week — we just go out and win the race, we don’t have to worry about what he (Edwards) did, and that’s what we did.”

And win it he did, but it was not easy. Again and again he lost valuable track position and had to come from the back. There was the debris that punctured the grill screen and by his own admission, “. . .was a miracle . . .” that it didn’t hit the radiator. But the repairs needed put him back on the track in 40^th place. Then there were two slow pit stops and almost running out of fuel on a third that, once again, placed Stewart deep in the field for the restart.

All told he had to pass 118 cars to get to the lead for the final 30+ laps. He was especially aggressive on restarts, at one point passing six cars in just two laps. He admitted to scaring himself a couple of times.

For years the fans have been asking NASCAR to design a points system that places more emphasis on winning. And while consistency was still important, at the end of this race, both Edwards and Stewart were tied with 2403 points. The difference was Stewart’s five wins (all coming during the chase) to Edwards one. Winning was the tie-breaker and made all the difference in crowning this year’s champion!

Tony Stewart has won championships in just about every type of car he has ever driven. Sprint cars, midgets, Silver Crown Cars, Indy cars, and now three times at the pinnacle of the NASCAR world. Only Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt, Sr., Jimmie Johnson, and Jeff Gordon, have won more championships in NASCAR’s premier division.

The last owner/driver to win a championship was Alan Kulwicki who did it in 1992. Kyle Petty, speaking on SPEED’s “Victory Lane” TV show after the race said that, back in the day, an owner/driver was the norm, not the exception like it is today. He then said that, given the way the sport is now, Tony Stewart may be the last owner/driver champion ever!

Stewart is this generation’s A.J. Foyt or Mario Andretti, men who can drive, and win, in a wide variety of types of cars and styles of racing and he summed up the year and the final race this way; “If this doesn’t go down as one of the greatest championship battles in history, I don’t know what will.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Has this been a great racing season, or what?  The championship runs in several series have been everything we hoped for.

After 35 races the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series has come down to two drivers who are separated by just three points! For so many years we’ve seen potential champions come into the last race at Homestead needing only to finish fifteenth or better, or twentieth, or whatever. Then they cruise around, staying out of trouble and making sure they race just hard enough to stay ahead of whatever position they need to win the title. In the five years of Jimmie Johnson’s championship reign, he has only led a total of 38 laps in the final races at Homestead.

When Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards take the green flag at Homestead next weekend they know they will both have to race each other hard to win the title.  And even if Stewart wins the race but Edwards is second, like they were at Texas, Edwards is the champion. Neither driver can take it easy and just cruise into this deal.

Over on the NHRA side things were just as close and just as exciting. Three of the four professional championships had yet to be decided. (Jason Line clinched the Pro Stock title at the previous event in Las Vegas.) But even better, the two nitro categories, Funny Car and Top Fuel, came down to the semi-final round where both championship contenders faced each other in what amounted to a one race, winner take all!

In Funny Car, Matt Hagen won over Cruz Pedregon by 4.096 to a rapidly closing 4.113 from Pedregon. The Top Fuel race was even closer with Del Worsham just edging out Spencer Massey .008 of a second! That translated into mere inches at over 320 mph. It was the first professional title for both Worsham and Hagen.

If that wasn’t enough, both of the newly crowned champions went on to win the event in the final rounds, Hagen even doing it while setting the low E.T. of the meet!

Whew!

Well, the 2011 racing season isn’t totally complete yet. We still have one more NASCAR weekend and Formula 1 still has one more race coming up in Brazil. But we have certainly seen some great racing in all forms of the sport, and certainly some close championships.

Of course, there has also been controversy and tragedy, but overall, this has been one great year to be a race fan, and I’m already looking forward to 2012.

I know, I know, Kevin Harvick, Matt Kenseth, and Brad Keselowski still have a mathematical chance to win the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship, but the truth is that that, barring something really strange, either Tony Stewart or Carl Edwards will win it.

Keselowski is 49 points behind leader Edwards, slightly more than one race, with only two races left to make up that deficit. It would take a complete meltdown of all four of the teams ahead of him to get him to the top. That’s just not going to happen.

And everybody behind Keselowski, including “Five Time” Jimmie Johnson, is out of it. But don’t cry for the 48 team. Five consecutive championships in NASCAR’s highest division is something that has never been done before and may never be done again. They’ve come to the inevitable end of that amazing run and there’s no shame in not winning number six.

For Harvick and Kenseth the path to the championship is steep, not impossible, but steep and getting steeper. The Stewart/Edwards 1-2 finish at Texas yesterday should be proof enough of that.

Tony Stewart has won half of the chase races so far, four of eight, and has pulled up to just 3 points behind leader Edwards.

Edwards only win this season came way back at Las Vegas, the third race of the season. Since the start of the chase, however, Edwards has been more consistent than Stewart. His 11^th place finish at Talladega being the only race he finished outside the top ten.

Stewart, on the other hand, has finishes of 25^th at Dover and 15^th at Kansas to take some of the steam out of the four wins and lower his average finish for the chase to 7.4 verses Edwards average for the chase of 5.6.

Carl Edwards has 14 starts at Phoenix with one win and an average finish of 13^th. He has run at Homestead seven times and scored two wins and his average finish there is 5.7.

Tony Stewart has 19 starts at Phoenix with one win and an 11.7 average finish. But he also has several wins in open wheel competition there before he became a NASCAR star and he calls Phoenix one of his favorite tracks. (Of course, the track has been changed now so all that could be meaningless)

Homestead is a different story for Tony. He has two wins in his 12 starts there and a 12.4 average finish.

So we go into the final two races of the 2011 season with two drivers, driving for two of the top teams in the series, separated by a mere three points, to decide who will be the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Champion.

Regardless of how things actually turn out, no matter if you are a Stewart fan or an Edwards fan, the final two races of what some people are calling the best NASCAR Sprint Cup season in recent memory, will certainly be interesting.

It’s never a good thing when you have to use a Sawzall to get your race car to fit back in the hauler at the end of the day. But for many Sprint Cup competitors at Martinsville this weekend, that’s exactly what they were faced with.

The Tums 500 at Martinsville on Sunday brought a brand new meaning to the term “beatin’ and bangin’”. They took “Have at it boys” to a whole new level. Kurt Busch called the race a “. . . demolition derby.”

There was no need for NASCAR to throw any of those “phantom cautions” for debris that they are so often accused of doing because there was no shortage of real debris to deal with.

Eighteen caution flag periods ate up more than one fifth of the race, 108 laps.

Former crew chief, now TV commentator, Andy Petree even used the old line on Brian Vickers stating that he; “. . . has hit everything except the pace car”. And the only reason he couldn’t do that was because he was never at the front. Indeed Vickers invoked the wrath of both Jamie McMurray and Matt Kenseth to the point that both men retaliated in kind.

After the race Kenseth had this to say about his run in with Vickers; “. . . He just kept driving in harder and harder and harder and he slammed me in the door at least five times and just ran me up in the marbles. I was just tired of it so I spun him out.”

For his part, Vickers was unavailable for comment as he wisely made a hasty exit from the premises after the race.

On the plus side, Tony Stewart made a strong statement about his championship intentions with this, his third victory in the chase. The Martinsville win moved Stewart up two spots in the standings to second, only 8 points behind Carl Edwards.

He left no doubt about it when he threw down the challenge to point leader Carl Edwards; “He better be worried — that’s all I have to say, he’s not going to have  an easy three weeks.”,  referring to the final three races of the season.

Stewart is a two time champion; he won the title in 2002 and 2005, and is the only driver to win a championship under both the old points system and the Chase points system. And it should also be mentioned that he is the last driver to win the title who is not named Johnson.

The final three races of the season, at Texas, the newly remodeled Phoenix, and Homestead should produce fewer wrecks. But as the points situations heats up, so too, should the excitement.

Edwards, Stewart, and third place Kevin Harvick all have a realistic shot at the title, with Brad Keselowski in fourth as the wild card that could change everything.  Championship hopes for fifth place Kenseth and everybody behind him are not very good. Jimmie Johnson, now 43 points back in spite of finishing second on Sunday, almost certainly cannot win his sixth straight title.

The famous Yogi Berra quote; “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over”, that has now become such a cliché is, however, never been more true. With only three races to go, the quest for the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship is definitely NOT over!

The only thing predictable about a race at Talladega is that it will be unpredictable. That it is often a four wheeled game of chess played at nearly 200 mph is not a new analogy.  Most of the racers spend the first 475 miles of the 500 mile race jockeying for position, testing different drafting strategies, and trying to stay out of trouble, waiting to see just what will develop.

Then, like an old fashioned Oklahoma land rush, the final 25 miles turns cunning into chaos, as plans go out the window and its all skate for the finish. This year’s version of the Talladega Two-Step was no different.

The race was particularly unpredictable for the 12 chase drivers. The first three finishers were all non-chase drivers. Winner Clint Bowyer, second place Jeff Burton, and a surprising third place finish for independent Dave Blaney. Brad Keselowski was the first chase finisher at fourth place. Carl Edwards 11^th place finish was still enough to maintain his lead in the points as former second place Harvick who finished 32^nd, dropped three spots to fifth in the standings. Jack Roush teammate Matt Kenseth is now in second place, 14 points behind Edwards.

The three Rick Hendrick teams that are in the chase, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Jimmie Johnson, and Jeff Gordon finished 25^th, 26^th, and 27^th respectively and most think that Johnson’s bid for an unprecedented sixth consecutive championship (-50 points) is over.

This was the first win for Bowyer in 2011 and, ironically, his last win was in this very race last year. His margin of victory over teammate Jeff Burton was a mere .018 seconds as the two raced side by side to the checkered flag. It was the sixth win of the year for Richard Childress Racing and Childress’ 100^th win as an owner in the Cup series.

And of course, in keeping with Talladega’s reputation for the bizarre, the small independent team of #78, Furniture Row Racing with driver Regan Smith had a day they would like to forget. First, with only eight laps to go, they endured a wreck that completely destroyed their car, and then the team’s hauler caught fire after the race while some fuel was being transferred into a storage tank. No one was injured and the fire was quickly extinguished, but the truck suffered enough damage that the team had to borrow a tractor from Team Penske to get their trailer home to Denver.   

Next the series travels to the scenic little short track in Martinsville, Virginia where maybe, just maybe, things will get back to predictability.

The devastating crash on the 12^th lap of the IZOD Indy Car race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway that resulted in the tragic death of Dan Weldon on Sunday was inevitable. It was the result of a starting field of 34 cars, the largest of the season, traveling at high speeds, on a relatively small track.

The Las Vegas Motor Speedway, designed for NASCAR stock cars, is a smooth, very fast track. Too fast for Indy cars according to some of the series veterans. Some claimed that it was “too easy” for rookies to reach the 225+ mph speeds the cars are capable of there.

Veteran driver Oriol Servia said; “We all had a bad feeling about this place, in particular just because of the high banking and how easy it was to go flat (out). We knew it could happen, but it’s just really sad.”

Most of the oval tracks that the Indy Car series races on are larger than LVMS or have less banking which reduces speeds. And the typical number of entrants is 24 to 28 cars. At Indianapolis, for example, they start 33 cars but the track is two-and-a-half miles around and has almost no banking in the turns. There is a lot more room for the cars to separate and for the fast cars to get away from the slower ones. But at Las Vegas the banking made it possible for all of the cars to run at similar speeds in large packs. At 225+ mph the drivers in those packs have no time to react to trouble.

The CEO of the IZOD Indy Car Series, Randy Bernard, was named to that post at the beginning of the 2010 season. He came from a similar post at Professional Bull Riders. He had absolutely no prior experience in racing and, in fact, the opening race of the 2010 season was the first auto race of any kind that Bernard had ever seen.

Mr. Bernard has no concept of what it’s like to drive a race car around a relatively short race track at speeds more than three times faster than he drives on the highway. He has no idea about the skill and experience it takes for a driver to negotiate traffic at those speeds. Bernard’s main focus since taking the job has been to increase the number of cars participating in the series. The decision to allow that many cars to enter a race on a track that size that produces those speeds was ultimately his.

And now the death of Dan Weldon is on his hands as well.   

The “Virginia is for Racing Lovers 300″ is the biggest short track late model race of the year and this year’s version produced one of the wildest finishes ever in the history of the race.

The race was hampered with 17 caution periods, but an incident during the final green-white-checkered attempt between eventual winner Lee Pulliam and leader Matt McCall had the Martinsville fans on their feet and hot tempers erupting in Victory Lane. At stake was the $25,000 first-place check and the legendary grandfather clock trophy.

McCall (51) and Pulliam took the white flag side-by-side

As the field went into Turn 3, Lee Pulliam, who had been running in the top five during the entire race, made contact with leader Matt McCall sending him sliding high and Pulliam shot into the lead. McCall then retaliated by spinning Pulliam in the third turn on the cool-down lap after the race.

“This is breathtaking and the biggest win of my career, I can’t think of a bigger stage to be on and get it (win). This is our Daytona 500. He (McCall) got into me going into Turn 1 on the final restart and I just paid him back going into Turn 3,” Pulliam said of the finish.

Lee Pulliam hugs a crewman after the victory.

McCall had a few words with Pulliam in Victory Lane.

“I went up to him and told him I will see him around,” McCall said. “I have got too much going for me on my other career in racing but I will remember this and I will see him again.”

Ron Hornaday, Jr. in the very first NASCAR Craftsman Truck race at Phoenix in 1995

“Hello, this is Dale Earnhardt.”

When Ron Hornaday, Jr. first heard those words on his telephone he thought it was somebody playing a prank on him. But it was no joke; Earnhardt was forming a team to compete in NASCAR’s newest race series, what was then known as the Craftsman Truck Series. He had seen what Hornaday could do while watching him race Winston West cars in the TNN Winter Heat races at Tucson Raceway Park.

Hornaday came from racing stock as his dad was a fixture on the West Coast NASCAR scene for many years. Ron, Jr started racing street stocks at Saugus Speedway just outside of Los Angeles and eventually moved up to the late models of the NASCAR Southwest Tour where he became the first driver in that series to win back-to-back championships in 1992 and ’93. During this time he also won 17 races in the old Winston West Series and was voted Most Popular Driver.

During the winter of 1994, The Nashville Network promoted a series of races for TV to give race fans something to watch during the long off-season. Held at Tucson Raceway Park in southern Arizona, these races proved to be not only a showcase for west coast racers, but also many drivers from the mid-west and east used these events to get away from the snow and cold. And it was there that Hornaday attracted the attention of Dale Earnhardt, Sr.

The first official race for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, and the new team of Earnhardt and Hornaday, was during the annual Copper World Classic at Phoenix International Raceway in February of 1995. Hornaday rewarded Earnhardt’s confidence in him by qualifying on the pole. Hornaday won four more poles and earned a total of six wins that year. And he finished third in the points behind Joe Ruttman and champion Mike Skinner.

This past Saturday, Ron Hornaday, Jr. scored the 50^th win of his NASCAR Truck Series career when he won the Kentucky 225 at Kentucky Speedway driving a truck owned by long time friend Kevin Harvick.

In between that first season and this 50^th win, Hornaday has had 295 starts and racked up four championships in the truck series. He has led more than 9,000 laps and won over eight million dollars.

In spite of that record, as of this writing, Ron Hornaday, Jr. doesn’t know if or where he will be racing next year. KHI has announced that they are suspending all operations of their truck team at the end of this season leaving Hornaday out of a job.

At 53 he is way beyond the demographic that most teams and sponsors are currently looking for. It would be a shame if, given his obvious talent and his record, Hornaday can’t find a ride for 2012 and beyond, but that is a distinct possibility.  

Nobody asked me but . . . .

With all the talk about NASCAR’s dwindling fan base, the Monday crowd that returned to Chicagoland for the rain delayed GEICO 400 was surprisingly large.

The win was Tony Stewart’s first of the 2011 season and couldn’t have come at a better time for his chances in the Chase.

Stewart has now won at least one race in 13 consecutive seasons.

The last NASCAR Sprint Cup Champion NOT named Johnson was Tony Stewart. Could he be the next?

Flat tires and bad pit stops made Kyle Busch look like anything but a Chase contender. His 22^nd place finish at Chicago dropped him from 2^nd to 9^th in points and seriously damaged his championship hopes.

Jeff Gordon also lost eight spots in the points and is now 11^th.

Gordon and Denny Hamlin have begun the Chase in a deep hole and the first thing they need to do is stop digging.

Once again Kurt Busch was heard on the radio berating his team for giving him such a bad car. If it’s that bad Kurt, just park it and let somebody else drive. There are lots of guys who would love to have your job.

The GEICO 400 worked out to be yet another fuel mileage contest. Maybe NASCAR should consider throwing a caution flag for a mandatory fuel only pit stop with 20 laps to go on all 1.5 mile tracks?

ESPN’s split screen during commercials was a nice idea but doing it when the cars were just cruising around under caution made it seem kind of pointless.

Next week the Chase moves to New Hampshire Motor Speedway where Stewart-Haas Racing finished 1-2, (Newman, Stewart) the last time the circuit was there back in July.

Jeff Gordon has more experience at New Hampshire than any other Chase contender. He is the only one of the twelve who has run in all 33 Cup races held at that track to date.

Ryan Newman, the most recent winner at New Hampshire, also has the most poles there, with five.

It’s still unknown who will drive the Wood Brother’s number 21 car next year. It’s between Trevor Bayne and Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. Apparently the decision will be made by Ford Motor Company and other sponsors. When did team owners lose this much control?

Dale Earnhardt, Jr. remains the only driver in the 2011 Chase for the Championship without a win. His third place finish at Chicago was his third best finish of the year following a second at both Martinsville and Kansas.