Nascar and Racing David Gilliland

Perhaps, you could say, Saturday's practice sessions had more twists and turns than the 10-turn road course they happened on.

An favorite, an underdog and a three-time champion were all involved in incidents that should have a good bit of effect on Sunday's 110-lapper at Infineon Raceway, and a rookie even got punted in the support race to accentuate a wild day.

All in a day's work, one would suppose.

During the NASCAR offseason - November to February - as the U.S. and world economies headed deeper into the tank, we heard a lot of gloom and doom about the future of America's most popular motor sport. Corporate sponsorship, the lifeblood of racing, is currently hard to come by and the '09 season opened with an unhealthy number of cars lacking high-dollar logos on their hoods.

Though I am no economist, I have, through all the naysaying, remained bullish on stock car racing. Harvard MBAs, correct me if I'm wrong, I believe when there is less money to spend, a wise strategy is to spend less money. And at risk of curmudgeonry, I believe the stock car economy, bloated through more than two decades of runaway success, has plenty of room to tighten the old belt.

Sunday's race at Texas Motor Speedway had a grand total of two cautions for actual on-track wrecks, and had David Gilliland not intentionally wrecked Juan Pablo Montoya, that number would have been cut in half.

First, the video:



I saw Montoya's crash live Sunday during our live blog here on the 'House, and immediately felt my stomach drop for how blatantly intentional Gilliiland's move was.

Who knew David Gilliland was that type of racer?

A huge wreck coming off of Turn 11 at Watkins Glen International Raceway put the Sprint Cup Series' Centurion Boats at the Glen under the red flag with just eight laps to go Sunday.

Nine cars were involved in the big crash that saw David Gililland and Bobby Labonte take some of the hardest hits the NASCAR world has seen at a road course in a long time. Labonte walked away from his car but will be transferred to a local hospital for further evaluation.

Bruton Smith and Speedway Motorsports Inc. won't be getting their hands on Pocono Raceway any time soon in his bid to make a race date available to his latest acquisition of Kentucky Speedway.

Rose Mattioli told The Associated Press on Tuesday there are no plans to sell Pocono, which currently has two Sprint Cup races, and there will be racing on the mountaintop for at least "as long as our grandkids live."

"It never was available; it never will be available," said Mattioli, who owns the track with her husband, Joseph. "My husband has stated that over and again. That's it."

The track is "entrusted" to the Mattioli's grandchildren, and because of that, the family isn't selling one of NASCAR's three remaining race tracks not owned by International Speedway Corp. or SMI.

However, the track did open on Tuesday for some scheduled Sprint Cup Series testing.

Teams, fresh off the 600 miles at Lowe's Motor Speedway Sunday night, headed to Pennslyvania for the test which runs through Wednesday evening at the three-turn wanna-be road course track

Tuesday, teams got in about 4 hours of practice until rain canceled activities for the day -- meaning many, many Sprint Cup drivers were likely bored out of their minds.

David Gilliland paced the session while Dario Franchitti made his first laps in a stock car after getting injured over a month ago at Talladega.

Former NASCAR champion has made it a well-known fact that he doesn't get along with Martinsville Speedway.

Sunday, he made it very well known that he just isn't very good at wrecking people intentionally without getting caught. Catch the first replay at 0:10:



As you can see, Kenseth's yellow and black DeWalt Ford suddenly swiped up the track directly into the right rear corner of David Gilliland's No. 38. Naturally, the No. 38 quickly spun up against the turn 2 wall.

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In addition to Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s well-publicized move to Hendrick Motorsports in the off-season, his personal team, JR Motorsports, merged operations with Hendrick for the Nationwide Series campaign.

That hasn't started off well at Daytona International Speedway.

Earnhardt Jr.'s No. 5 National Guard Chevrolet will start 19th Saturday afternoon in the Camping World 300 (1:15/ET ESPN2), but qualifying for the race has been about the only bright spot.

Prior to qualifying, Earnhardt Jr.'s No 5 was impounded Thursday night by NASCAR after they noticed illegal rear spoiler modifications. The crew had changed something about the decklid and spoiler after inspection on Thursday morning, and NASCAR wasn't happy.

Friday morning, the No. 5 was returned to the team minus a decklid and spoiler, forcing the team to unbolt the decklid and spoiler assembly from the team's backup car and transfer it to the primary.

Earnhardt Jr. wasn't too happy.

"Everybody tries to get a little bit on the cars and the rules and get in the gray area," Earnhardt said in a television interview. "Our guys were trying too hard on a car that didn't need it. The car's pretty good. We all learned a lesson and probably deal with penalties next week, which is pretty much standard. We'll be all right."

In other words, Earnhardt Jr. is ticked that his team is going to be fined and penalized for a race car that before the infraction could have won the race.

Other pre-race rules infractions included Michael Waltrip Racing's David Reutimann having his carburetor confiscated and drivers Cale Gale, Johnny Sauter, David Gililland, David Stremme and Kertus David having post-qualifying issues with their oil tank lids.

Ricky Rudd will miss his third consecutive race this weekend at Dover International Speedway. Rudd suffered a serious shoulder separation during a crash at California Speedway.

Kenny Wallace has filled in Rudd's No. 88 since that time and will continue this weekend with Dover's Dodge Dealers 400.

Wallace says that he is looking forward to running in the Dodge Dealers 400.

"I really have a love/hate relationship with Dover," he said. "I've had some good runs there, and those are the runs I always try to remember when we head there for a race. I really enjoy the track a lot, and I'm just waiting to love the track, but I really feel that I can do well up there in the car of tomorrow this weekend. For as much as I enjoy Dover, I haven't had the finishes that I should have so far, but I'm just going to keep on trying."

During his time in the RYR Ford, Wallace has posted unremarkable finishes of 28th and 34th respectively at Richmond and Loudon.

David Gililland, the other Yates driver, has only posted finishes of 22nd and 39th at the same events -- showing that the Yates machines aren't exactly up-to-par at the moment, however.

For Wallace's future, you've got to hope that Yates brings a better package to the Monster Mile this weekend.

It's not known when Ricky Rudd, who is retiring at the end of this season, will come back -- if at all -- from his injury.

Last year, when David Gilliland won his first ever Busch race in an unsponsored car at the spring Kentucky event, by the fall he was piloting Robert Yates Racing No. 38.

Stephen Leicht took his first Busch win at the same track Saturday night, but he's already racing for RYR and has Citifinancial as a sponsor.

Does that mean he gets an automatic Cup ride, too?

Doubt it.

But hey, he's a winner, right? I'm sure the party will be nice tonight -- mainly because he doesn't have to be at Michigan for the Cup race Sunday.

One minor issue though. Leicht is only 20, and underage drinking is wrong. Especially in the Busch Series. Wrong.

At least now, however, Leicht has the first win slump past him. He was the first non-Cup driver to win a Busch race in 52 consecutive races.

Busch Series point leader -- or the guy that's suffocating NASCAR's idea to not add the Chase for the Busch Series -- Carl Edwards led a race-high 96 of 200 laps before being caught up in a wreck with less than 30 laps to go on a restart.

He'll probably leave Kentucky with a 30-bajillion point lead, instead of 39-bajillion one. Darn.

It was a big night otherwise for non-Cup Busch regulars.