Nascar and Racing Nascar Testing

NASCAR announced Wednesday that for the 2010 season, it will again prohibit teams in its three national series from testing on any race track that hosts a national event.

In a slight modification to this season's rules, however, teams can hold test sessions on NASCAR-sanctioned facilities that host regional touring series.

Greenville-Pickens (S.C.) Speedway, Lime Rock (Conn.) Park, Colorado National Speedway (above) and Portland (Ore.) International Raceway are among a list of 14 tracks now able to host NASCAR teams.

How will this policy affect the Sprint Cup Series competition in 2010? It won't.

INDIANAPOLIS -- For all the talk of problematic tires and empty seats, the rubber held up and an estimated crowd of 180,000 showed up Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for NASCAR's Allstate 400 at the Brickyard.

Although a dominating performance by Juan Pablo Montoya made the race look like it might be a runaway, the former Indy 500 champ made a pit road mistake that allowed the dependable Hendrick Motorsports team to pounce with what turned into an exciting late-laps battle between 50-year-old pole-sitter Mark Martin and gracious but gritty Jimmie Johnson.

It started with The Look.

Two weeks ago, while covering the NASCAR races at Daytona International Speedway I walked around the garage asking Sprint Cup Series drivers, team owners, crew members, former drivers if perhaps Jeremy Mayfield deserved any "benefit of the doubt."

One by one they shot me The Look: raised eyebrows, incredulous expression.

"What doubt?" they asked.

Only a couple days earlier, a U.S. court had reinstated Mayfield's NASCAR eligibility despite the fact he tested positive for methamphetamine, despite sworn statements from fellow competitors that they were concerned for their safety should Mayfield return to the track.

OK, Brickyard fans, Jeff Gordon "guarantees" you a good race when NASCAR returns to the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the AllState 400 on July 26.

The four-time race winner Gordon promises the tire issues that ruined last year's Sprint Cup Series race -- and a lot of fan goodwill - will not be a problem this summer.

"I'm 100 percent confident, it's a dead issue," Gordon said Tuesday during a break in Goodyear's final tire test at Indy before the race. "The race might come down to a lot of different factors ... but it's not going to come down to a 10-lap shootout to see whose tires will last. I can promise all the fans out there, if they want to come to the Brickyard, they'll see a great race and be confident the tires are not going to be an issue.

"Trust me. And I hope that's going to go be enough for the fans."

NASCAR driver Jeff Burton said he felt a little like the great speed pioneer Chuck Yeager when he showed up at Indianapolis Motor Speedway this week for a tire test.

The 2.5-mile track's surface has confounded Goodyear Tire Company engineers and the result has frustrated the Speedway, fans and NASCAR drivers after an embarrassing debacle in last year's Sprint Cup race at Indy, when drivers had to pit about every 12-15 laps for new tires and the ensuing competition caution periods ruined the show.

Subsequent tire tests at Indianapolis to avert a repeat of the situation had shown little improvement. Until now.

CONCORD, N.C. (AP) -- NASCAR has a "town hall meeting" scheduled with its drivers next week.

The sport's longtime rival, Bruton Smith, held one of his own Saturday.

Smith, the outspoken, multimillionaire chairman of Speedway Motorsports Inc., ripped NASCAR for choosing not to disclose the banned substance involved in driver Jeremy Mayfield's suspension, for dropping record penalties on underfunded driver Carl Long and for the kind of racing created with the Car of Tomorrow.

Less than impressed.

That was pretty much the consensus of drivers following Wednesday's Goodyear tire test at Indianapolis Motor Speedway -- the sixth test since a tire debacle at the track during last year's NASCAR race resulted in no green flag runs more than 16 laps.

"The tires still are not ideal,'' said Ryan Newman, who represented the Chevrolet contingent in the four-car test. "I know Goodyear is still working on that. It is just a tough situation, man."

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Talk about your happy campers.

NASCAR should have canceled offseason testing years ago.

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.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- It may not qualify as a tire war yet, but Goodyear should be looking over its shoulder. The flares are flying.

The week before Christmas sports car champion Scott Pruett conducted a double-dog dare-you, top-secret test of Firestone tires on an ARCA car at Homestead-Miami Speedway. And more tests are certain to follow.

What's surprising is that outspoken Goodyear critic Tony Stewart wasn't the guy behind the wheel.