Nascar and Racing Nascar Media Watch

ESPN broadcaster Bob Griese has been suspended one week for a remark he made about NASCAR driver Juan Pablo Montoya.

ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz says Griese will not be working a game this week.

Krulewitz says ESPN has spoken to Griese and "he understands the comment was inappropriate."

During ESPN's broadcast of the Minnesota-Ohio State game Saturday, a graphic was shown listing the top five drivers in NASCAR's points race. Fellow analyst Chris Spielman asked where was Montoya, who is Colombian.

Griese replied he was "out having a taco."

He has twice apologized on air for the remark.

Montoya is declining to comment on Griese's suspension. He brushed off the remark Sunday, and said he'd never heard of Griese.

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Beginning with the 2010 Daytona 500, NASCAR fans won't have to deal with much variation in terms of start times for Sprint Cup races.

NASCAR and its three television broadcast partners announced Wednesday that they are moving to a uniform -- and often earlier -- drop of the green flag for races in 2010. It boils down simply to three options: East Coast races will start at 1 PM ET, West Coast races at 3 PM ET and night races at 7:30 PM ET.

Brian France, NASCAR's chairman and CEO, said the decision ultimately came down to going with what the fans wanted.

Typically, back-seat drivers are annoying and intrusive.

But when it's five NASCAR champions -- three crew chiefs and a pair of drivers -- doing the talking, well, that's a little different. At least that's what ESPN is betting on when it debuts an innovative race broadcast for Saturday's Nationwide Series race at Michigan International Speedway.

Instead of using a traditional play-by-play announcer, ESPN will have Ray Evernham, Andy Petree, Rusty Wallace (right) and Dale Jarrett calling the race in high speed stream-of-consciousness. Tim Brewer will weigh in from his usual perch in the "tech garage."

"It's going to be a different process for sure," said Wallace, the 1989 Cup Series champ. "I feel comfortable with it, I'm excited about it and when it's all said and done, it's either going to work or won't work and we'll see what happens."

After what the Charlotte Observer is calling a "loud confrontation" at a Manchester, N.H., hotel prior to last Sunday's Lenox 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, TNT play-by-play announcer Bill Weber won't be returning to the booth in 2009.

The network announced the move Wednesday, and also confirmed that Ralph Sheheen will continue in the replacement role for the final two TNT races this weekend in Daytona Beach and next at Chicagoland.

Sheheen did a bang-up job in his first coverage of a Sprint Cup race on Sunday, but the bigger question surrounds what exactly Weber did to force himself out of the booth for what will ultimately be half of TNT's NASCAR coverage.

I received the news that Charlotte Observer NASCAR writer David Poole had passed away of a heart attack Tuesday while I was on-hold waiting for Dale Earnhardt Jr. to call into a teleconference.

It didn't seem possible. I had just sat with David, 50, in the press box in Talladega, Ala. two days ago. I'd shared press boxes and media centers with him since he joined the NASCAR beat in 1997.

With all due respect to Earnhardt as the interview went on, all the talk of drafting, restrictor plates and metal fencing became not nearly as important as the day before, the hour before.

NASCAR fans, the point has been taken: April Fool's Day jokes just don't fly.

A day after many fans thought the NASCAR world as a whole was crumbling to the ground, we've learned that NASCAR fans just don't take kindly to false news reports in an attempt to be irreverent and humorous. The violator of the NASCAR people's trust was automobile magazine Car and Driver, and everywhere you looked on April 1, there was a reminder of their egregious error.

Jimmie Johnson, NASCAR's first Sprint Cup driver to win three consecutive championships in 30 years, made an appearance on NBC's Late Night with Conan O'Brien Monday. On the show, Johnson talked about his recently injured middle finger and made some interesting comments a tremendous 2001 crash he was involved in.



Without a doubt, Johnson's visit to the show took on some extra meaning after his finger injury required minor surgery just weeks before the 51st Daytona 500.

Never will a season go by in the NASCAR world without Speedway Motorsports, Inc., chairman Bruton Smith stirring things up.

Fans got a glimpse of that earlier this week during the annual Sprint Cup Media Tour hosted by one of his tracks, Lowe's Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C.

Smith, answering a question from a reporter on attendance issues, brought up an interesting point for the sport as a whole to consider.

Should NASCAR be putting local blackouts on races that aren't sold out?

Thanks to a new deal that the IRL IndyCar Series inked with the cable television network Versus in 2008, ESPN ended up with just five of the series' 17 2009 events after being the permanent home of the open wheelers for many years.

And, as a result, the Worldwide Leader ended up with a glut of talent for its broadcasting efforts -- forcing a few benefits into the hand of NASCAR television watchers.

Those benefits, as the broadcaster announced today with a press release, include expanded NASCAR roles for standard IndyCar lap-by-lap point man Marty Reid and longtime IndyCar pit reporter Vince Welch.

Reid, who I think is a much more exciting lap-by-lap guy than ESPN's Sprint Cup guy Jerry Punch (he reminds of the nearly always monotonous Joe Buck on FOX), will be taking on a more pronounced lap-by-lap role in the second half of the Nationwide Series season. In the past, Punch has been responsible for the majority of Nationwide and Sprint Cup broadcasts in the second half of the season.

And, as many of you know, 2009 won't be Reid's first Nationwide Series rodeo as the broadcaster has done a handful of races in the past two years in an effort to give Punch a break here and there.

Hopefully the old motto of "any publicity is good publicity" is ringing true this week for NASCAR fans after nearly every news outlet reported the same thing Thursday: NASCAR has settled a $225 million lawsuit over discrimination.

The case, filed with just as much if not more fanfare back in June, involved a former female official -- Mauricia Grant -- claiming sexual harassment, racial discrimination and other not-so-rosy things that happened during her tenure with NASCAR.

Grant was the first black female to serve as an official within the sport.

News of the settlement came via NASCAR and both sides are refusing to divulge exact figures financially, but a terms of the deal included neither side taking fault for the actions cited in the original lawsuit. And knowing that NASCAR suspended and then fired two officials named in the suit after an internal investigation earlier this summer, I'd imagine the sanctioning body realized it was in a case it couldn't win outright.

I'm sure there were a few faults in Grant's case -- they are almost necessary when you file such a large suit -- that harmed some of claims, but in the long run, this settlement indicates two things to me.