Nascar and Racing Kevin Harvick

TALLADEGA, Ala. -- Kevin Harvick and Casey Mears gave all the right answers in deferring to the boss' orders, but clearly neither driver was exactly overjoyed by Richard Childress' decision this week to swap their two crews.

"Everybody's positive about it,'' Harvick said, walking quickly to his team trailer after NASCAR Sprint Cup Series qualifying at Talladega Superspeedway on Saturday.

"When you own the company you have to make the decisions you think are right.''

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For for the first time in 2009, Kyle Busch left a race weekend without a race-winning trophy in hand and didn't appear a bit pleased with the way that happened.

Kevin Harvick nudged Busch's No. 51 in turn four at Martinsville Speedway and passed him for the lead with 10 laps to go in the rain-postponed Camping World Truck Series Kroger 250 to win the event, but not before Busch fell deep in the field.

While trying to straighten out a fender by brushing the infield wall under caution, Busch crossed the pit road commitment line and earned a penalty for not pitting. Busch was relegated to a 17th-place finish in the Kroger 250, and afterwards, dashed directly towards the track's exit to the motor home lot.

Chalk this one up as a homage to those nitwit NASCAR conspiracy theorists who think every race has a predetermined outcome, that Dale Earnhardt Jr. always gets the biggest restrictor plate and that every good racing story is a carefully scripted work of Daytona Beach's France & Family.

Yep, Lowe's Motor Speedway announced Friday that Hall of Fame wrestler Ric Flair will not only be on hand for the Sprint All-Star Race pre-race activities, but he'll serve as "honorary race director".

Somebody cue the black helicopters.

Two weeks ago at Auto Club Speedway, Kevin Harvick failed to finish -- snapping a streak of 81 straight races that the California driver had been running at the checkered flag.

Harvick was just three finished races shy of breaking the modern era record until a ruptured oil filter sent the No. 29 "streaking", if you will, into ACS' turn one wall.

This week, though, Harvick was featured on the Performance Racing Network's "Garage Pass" and delivered the news: the streak didn't have to end.

The setting for one of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series' more interesting subplots of the season hasn't been the race track, but on pit road.

Greg Biffle blamed a mistake there with costing him a win at California. Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon were guilty of miscues Sunday at Las Vegas.

And if not for Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s one-lap pit penalty in the Daytona 500, he's not a lap down racing desperately to get around Brian Vickers to earn the Lucky Dog pass ... and maybe the inevitable "Big One" doesn't go down that way but with another cast of characters.

A friend from Denver -- a new NASCAR fan -- called up the morning after the Daytona 500 disappointed and feeling like he got short-changed.

He said stopping the race 48 laps short felt like watching an NFL game being played in bad weather with the referees just deciding whoever was ahead in the third quarter got the win.

As I explained to him -- and as Daytona 500 winner Matt Kenseth has unfortunately felt obligated to explain on every talk show appearance he's made since earning his first 500 trophy -- everyone knows the game and Kenseth's team simply played it best.

Kevin Harvick has found the key to winning the biggest races at Daytona International Speedway: lead as few laps as possible. Harvick, who won the 2007 Daytona 500 after leading just four laps, led just one Saturday night en route to winning his first Bud Shootout.

His improbable win was just the tip of the iceberg on a wild, full moon Florida night as 28 of NASCAR's stars knocked the dust of the steering wheel in the season-opening exhibition.

In what has to be one of the more unusual -- or, at least, unexpected -- way to save costs for NASCAR's third-tier Camping World Truck Series, one driver acknowledged competitive pit stops might be gone for 2009.

According to an article over at SceneDaily, NASCAR is expected to announce a few more initiatives this week in a bid to help Truck teams stay solvent among one of the toughest sponsorship climates the sport has ever seen.

Pit stops, three-time Truck Series champ Ron Hornaday Jr., says, might be one of the key elements on NASCAR's cost containment chopping block, though the sanctioning body has yet to acknowledge such a possibility.