More from Kevin Conway on his run-in with Robby Gordon at Vegas

    Late Monday, NASCAR driver Kevin Conway released a statement further describing his run-in with Robby Gordon Friday afternoon at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

   Gordon was placed on indefinite probation by NASCAR for his role in the incident. Conway was not penalized. Conway filed a complaint with the Las Vegas Police Department on Friday night.

   Here is the statement in its entirety:

   “I don’t mind stiff competition, but I want to make sure the hard facts are told. First and foremost, I love being a part of NASCAR and have worked very hard to earn the privilege of competing in the Sprint Cup Series. On Friday night, Robby Gordon, who has a long history of issues in NASCAR decided to ambush me in the garage area at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, completely unprovoked. Robby even confronted Joe Nemechek, my car owner, on pit road during Cup Series qualifying shoving him and telling him that he was looking for me and going to assault me. We have many witnesses including a crew chief that signed a police report documenting the truth of his physical attack on me.

   "Situations like this are not good for our sport. It’s one thing if we were racing each other and I wrecked him or he wrecked me, that’s an entirely different situation. It’s very unfortunate that he chose to physically attack me to address his rage. Our fans, sponsors and NASCAR expect and deserve more from our competitors than this bullish, illegal behavior that was displayed by Robby against me.”

   To read the original story about the incident, go here.

Who's hanging out with Chad Knaus?

   So, who's been hanging out with Chad Knaus?

   Turns out, Danica Patrick. And it's yet another step in her NASCAR learning process.

   Patrick spent part of Friday's Sprint Cup Series practice at Las Vegas Motor Speedway standing atop Jimmie Johnson's hauler with Knaus, Johnson's crew chief, listening in on the communication between Johnson and Knaus during the session.

   "I've gotten to know Chad over the last year or so. Actually from Daytona last year, the first time we got together and went out to dinner. We get along really well. He told me I needed to get over to the Cup garage and check it out and that they had a headset for me and I could listen in," Patrick said.

   "For me, it's really interesting to hear the drivers to hear how they talk about the car and how they describe it. Also, potentially, being able to determine what things are important to the car and what you don't need to worry about.

   "It's just all learning for me. I wouldn't say I went and listened and felt I needed to make a change to the race car or do something completely different. It's just more knowledge and more education and how they talk about the car."

New policy doesn't ensure new winners

   So far, NASCAR’s new policy of limiting drivers to earning championship points in one series seems to have several unintended consequences.

   A grand total of zero points were earned by the drivers who won the first five NASCAR races of the season, including the Daytona 500.

   That may be a statistical oddity, but there also seems to be a growing uproar over how ESPN covers the emerging championship battle in the Nationwide Series, which is likely to produce many race winners this season not running for the title.

   Let’s be clear: NASCAR’s new policy ensures there will be a new Nationwide Series champion this season, but nothing it did ever guaranteed anybody new would win the series races so long as those who have been participating in it continued to do so.

   In other words, it’s perfectly possible for the Nationwide champion this year to have won zero races.

   Now, some seem to think ESPN is obligated to produce almost separate coverage of the drivers in each race running for the championship but perhaps not in contention for the win.

   That’s silly.

   Networks sign up to broadcast and cover races – not points standings. This week’s race is in Las Vegas, not this week’s championship battle.

   The last thing I want is for a network to feel compelled to produce and cover “fake drama” totally irrelevant to what is taking place on the track. We already have a Chase in the Sprint Cup Series for that, thank you.

   Fans don't buy tickets to sit in the stands, calculator in hand, to see how the points play out. They watch to see who wins the race.

   The new NASCAR policy may have changed who wins a series title but by no means did it guarantee new race winners or alter the way a race should be covered.

   If that’s what NASCAR wanted, it should have come up with a better plan.

Johnson odds on favorite at Vegas

   Jimmie Johnson, a four-time winner of the Kobalt Tools 400 event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway who has won the past five NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championships, is a heavy favorite to win in Sin City again this weekend.

   Although winless in the first two races of the 2011 campaign, Ed Salmons, Race and Sports Manager at the Las Vegas Hilton Super Book, has tabbed Johnson as the favorite at 9-2.

   The most recent winner, Jeff Gordon (who snapped a 66-race winless streak last weekend at Phoenix), is listed at 10-1 and Daytona 500 winner Trevor Bayne is posted at 100-1.

   Las Vegas natives Kyle and Kurt Busch are listed at 6-1 and 12-1, respectively. Kyle Busch currently leads the Cup standings.

You can't argue with this Kyle Busch

   Kyle Busch gets a lot of criticism for the way he handles bad situations and even situations many people wouldn't consider so bad, such as finishing second. Sunday's race at Phoenix appeared to set the stage for another 'bad Kyle' moment after he had a run-in with Carl Edwards on the track and lost his lead late in the race to eventual winner Jeff Gordon.

   But tracked down post-race on pit road by Fox, Busch offered the following response to a question asking about the incident between himself and Edwards:

   “It was a real big mistake on my part and the first person I have to apologize to is Carl Edwards, obviously for what happened there on the backstretch. It just got out from underneath me and we were getting bounced around like a ping pong ball there for a while. I got into him and just killed his day. I know he was frustrated and I could tell out there on the race track. I apologize, I don’t know how many times. It was unintentional, especially for the way we raced yesterday -- it was so good to race that way and put on a good show for the race fans. To have that happen, I know they had a good race car. All that aside, I can’t thank these guys enough for this Combos Camry. They did a great job this weekend bringing up a great race car off the truck. We had a fun time today. We came through a lot of adversity. We worked real hard, Dave (Rogers, crew chief) and the guys never gave up. The pit stops were good all day.  We kept battling through everything that was thrown at us. There at the end, Jeff (Gordon) just had a better car than us. I thought when I got out to a big enough lead, I thought I was going to hold him off this far and he just ran me down and flat out passed me. He was really, really fast and we couldn’t hold him back. It’s good to see those guys in victory lane.  Those are my old 5 guys. That’s cool if anything is good about today.”

   Say what you want, that was a comprehensive, rationale and level-headed response from Busch addressing just about everything (even what was not initially asked).

   This is what fans and media would like to see more often from Busch. No one expects anyone who loses to be happy. They would appreciate, however, the opportunity to hear Busch's side of the story. Most times he is not required to do so.

   Making the effort, however, does leave a more positive, lasting impression on everyone.

Finally, somebody gets to the point of this two-car drafting mess

   If drivers or even race fans don't like this reliance on two-car drafting that has dominated Speedweeks on the Sprint Cup Series this year, they need look no further to the drivers and team themselves for a large part of the problem.

   Everyone knew the track was repaved. Everyone knew that would change conditions. Everyone knew - or we thought - how important preseason testing was going to be.

   Yet, when it came down to doing the work on the track in January, most drivers and teams took a pass. They spent or no time whatsoever racing with most of their competitors on the track, let alone in two-car tandems.

   So, whose fault is that? Not NASCAR's.

   Tony Stewart illustrated this perfectly on Friday.

   Told of Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s suggestion that everyone needs to go to Talladega and Daytona and do a big two-day test and figure out how to change he two-car draft, Stewart replied:

   "If I remember right, when we came down for the open test (Earnhardt) did single car runs the whole time he was here so if he felt that way, why didn’t he do that in the test while we were all here together? 

   “We tried getting in big packs for three days down here and we couldn’t get people to quit doing single car runs and worrying about trying to make the race cars go fast. In the big pack you want master of your own destiny," he said.

   "I don’t know where he got that from because you have always been relying on the guy behind you so if you want to be the master of your own destiny, take the restrictor plates off. Figure out how to let us drive race cars again.”

   Stewart may not always address things in the best possible way. But on this issue he is dead-on. Ask the drivers who are complaining to look in the mirror for some of the blame if they don't like the conditions in Sunday's Daytona 500.

Going deep with Mark Martin

   I recently spent a good bit of time talking with Sprint Cup driver Mark Martin about his future in the sport, about what still drives him, how he sees his career playing out and the many different routes its taken over the last seven years.

   Much of the discussion was used for a story which will appear on ThatsRacin.com and CharlotteObserver.com shortly, but we discussed so many topics I wanted to share some of the answers that didn't make the story. They're below:
  

   You find yourself looking down the road? Ever thinking of not driving?

   Martin: I do think about it. In 2005, I had this feeling that all I wanted to do was go home and just sit on the couch because I hadn’t done that. That’s what I wanted to do. I did that and now I have a good balance of that – I get some couch time and some super-quality family time. But my passion is racing and I realize that there is going to have to be a transition and it will have to be a gradual transition from driving to my next involvement in racing. I embrace that but the people in the garage don’t take to me about that. Nobody in the garage wants to talk to me about anything I could do for them except drive their car. That’s the reality. That’s not me, that’s reality. That’s all they want to talk to me about. I am interested in getting involved in an organization where I can make a transition, but it may not work out. Most of the time in this sport, when you can’t drive any more, the sport has no use for you. You can name them – Ernie Irvan, Bobby Allison, you name it. If you can’t be a broadcast, which I can’t, there’s no use for you in this sport today. Unless you want to be an owner. I don’t want to be involved in racing bad enough to be an owner. That could change, too. Someone could present me with an opportunity like Tony Stewart had, which might or might not happen in my lifetime, then I would consider it.

   In a sport where no matter how good you are, you always lose more than you win, what is the most alluring thing about it for you? 

   That’s a complex question and it probably changes with age and longevity. For me today, having fans that support you in their enthusiastic way, working around people that admire and respect you and are excited to be associated with you, to be able to help them realize their potential and maybe their dreams is very rewarding. To work as one spoke in a big wheel is kind of fun – it’s kind of like life as I’ve known it. I don’t know if I would enjoy it if I wasn’t better than two-thirds of them out there still. I hate to make a statement like that but I can still hold my own. If I couldn’t hold my own against most of them then I don’t think it would be as much fun for me. I thought that was gone in 2005, too. I thought I was diminished at that time and I thought that was just the way it was. I didn’t know I could have the year that I had in 2008 or a year like I had in 2009 or for that matter, a year like I had in 2010, because there again I outran two-thirds of them.

   Can you envision a day when racing is not what you’ll want to do?   Racing still makes me happy. Brian Vickers (who returns to competition this season after missing most of 2010 with a blood clot problem) and I have something in common now. We have sort of shared the experience of looking the end (of our careers) in the face. That was one of my considerations in 2005. After experiencing that, I know now that’s not what I want. I could be anywhere in the world right now I want. I could be on any beach in the world. I want to be at the race track. I don’t do it because I need to, have to or anything else. I do it because I want to.  I appreciate it now more than I ever did. I took a lot of things for granted. There are a number of reasons you might quit doing something, one of those reasons is if what you do stands in the way of what you want to be doing. Racing did stand in the way of me doing what I wanted to do in 2005. So, I had to weigh that out. I was willing to give up the kind of schedule I had to be able to do what I wanted to do which was have some time away from racing with my son and with my wife and my family. 

   It’s doubtful that will ever come in my lifetime. There is a transition from what I do now to what I will do in the future, but it’s still most likely going to be racing until the end, much like a Richard Petty. It is possible that I find a new passion. I used to as a kid, my passion changed frequently. It just has really never waivered since I started racing in 1974. The only thing I was willing to do was give up my fulltime schedule to spend more time with family.

   Does racing still bring you the same fullfillment?   Racing still makes me happy. Brian Vickers (who returns to competition this season after missing most of 2010 with a blood clot problem) and I have something in common now. We have sort of shared the experience of looking the end (of our careers) in the face. That was one of my considerations in 2005. After experiencing that, I know now that’s not what I want. I could be anywhere in the world right now I want. I could be on any beach in the world. I want to be at the race track. I don’t do it because I need to, have to or anything else. I do it because I want to.  I appreciate it now more than I ever did. I took a lot of things for granted. There are a number of reasons you might quit doing something, one of those reasons is if what you do stands in the way of what you want to be doing. Racing did stand in the way of me doing what I wanted to do in 2005. So, I had to weigh that out. I was willing to give up the kind of schedule I had to be able to do what I wanted to do which was have some time away from racing with my son and with my wife and my family.