Sprint Cup N's & Q's: Tums 500

Notes, quotes & commentary after 501 laps around a Virginian paperclip.

I get what NASCAR is trying do, I really do.

They want these races to be dramatic, to make good television and perhaps provide a sense of danger to fans like ESPN's Ed Hinton believes they crave. It's no different than any other sport, movie or story -- dramatic moments bring eyeballs.

But at some point, NASCAR needs to get a whole lot better at not allowing a stalled race car to sit in peril at the start/finish line in the name of a dramatic finish.

That's what happened Sunday when John Andretti spun and couldn't get his No. 34 re-fired along the frontstretch at Martinsville Speedway on the final lap. It's also what happened just over a month ago with A.J. Allmendinger at New Hampshire.

Neither incident resulted in the hapless drivers being hit by the oncoming race cars, but the law of averages doesn't seem to bode well for their safety if these incidents turn into a regular thing. It's just easy to see how a driver back in the pack may misjudge a move, not hear a spotter or get turned while slowing down into the stopped race car.

NASCAR's right to allow a finish to play out as much as possible, but I just think they are taking "as much as possible" a little too far.

Jeff Gordon's crew chief Steve Letarte tried an 'experiment' early in Sunday's race that I'm still undecided about.

Gordon came to the pits on lap 46 under caution while leading and took on just two tires. He emerged from pit road still leading, but soon fell back in the leaderboard after the advantage of four fresh tires was immediately apparent and didn't start to make ground again until a lap 90 caution brought the field back to pit road.

Letarte, we can assume, was looking to find out if a two-tire pit stop would be a good tool to use later in the race for track position if necessary and found that its benefits would last all of about two laps if cars directly behind had four fresh Goodyears. After the call, Gordon led just eight more laps on the day and never led again except for a lap under green flag pit stops.

Should Letarte have made the move? In hindsight -- which we know is always 20/20 -- it's easy to say no because Gordon never really competed for the lead again.

But on the same note, the information turned out to be extremely valuable in determining if a two-tire pit stop could be a valuable asset for track position. It wasn't.

Live and learn, I suppose.

Surprisingly, Kyle Busch's fourth-place finish on Sunday was his best appearance at Martinsville since 2007.

Since that point, Busch has had three finishes at the short track of 24th or worse -- an anomaly for Busch considering his two best tracks over his career in terms of finishing position are the other short tracks on NASCAR's schedule, Bristol and Richmond.

The finish likely had no bearing, however, on crew chief Steve Addington's future with Joe Gibbs Racing in a role other than crew chief.

Did you catch Denny Hamlin's Twitter shout-out in the post-race interview?

Hamlin mentioned the fans of his Twitter account -- look him under http://www.twitter.com/DennyHamlin -- in his victory celebration and later tweeted "That's what I'm talking about!!! Whooo!! I told ya we would win another!"

Hamlin rolled out his official Twitter page a few weeks ago and has already surged to over 5,000 fans. Now if only the FanHouseRacing Twitter could get as much love...

Because I've yet to include a quote in this edition -- unless quotes from Twitter count -- of "N's & Q's", I'll leave you with my favorite driver saying of the Martinsville weekend, courtesy of Mr. Matt Kenseth.

"I thought I did a bad job and thought I ran into about everything," said Kenseth. "I had some issues on a couple of restarts and we struggled on our last pit stop, so all of those things considered, to finish 14th is really good."

Hey Matt: talk to Dale Earnhardt Jr. or Kasey Kahne -- I'll bet they feel the same way. A walk in the park 500 laps at Martinsville is not.