Can Stewart get revenge and a title?

   Obviously Tony Stewart and Brian Vickers may be seeing more of each other on the track given their run-in at Sonoma, Calif. From his comments, Stewart doesn't plan and letting anyone get away with much of anything in the coming weeks.

   Is that necessarily the best position for Stewart considering he still has a lot of work to do to secure a spot in the Chase for the Sprint Cup?  Jeff Gordon isn't so sure.

   "The only thing I'll say is if you're going to try to win a championship, those types of situations are, in my opinion, going to hinder you from doing that. If you start getting into a battle with a guy, especially if it's somebody that is not in championship contention, you know, then what happens is you're not going to win. It's going to be a lose for you and everybody," he said. "If it's somebody that's in the championship, then you guys have to figure out how to settle it, whether it happens on the track or off the track.

   "If you're that upset at what happened, and you see that guy again before the race is over, you're still upset, depends on how your fuse is. Some people have short fuses and some people have long fuses. I got into a battle with Tony Stewart before. That's not a guy I battle with anymore. We had our situation. I'm so glad that we resolved it fairly quickly. Nobody has more respect for one another out there than me and Tony because I've been on the other side of it with him when he can get mad. He's not a guy that you want to have gunning at you. He's a great race car driver, he's smart, he can get really mad. We'll see how this one turns out."

Hamlin wins 1st of season

BROOKLYN, Mich. -- Denny Hamlin won for the first time this season as he edged Matt Kenseth in Sunday's Heluva Good! 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Michigan International Speedway.

Kyle Busch, Hamlin's Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, was third. Paul Menard was fourth and points-leader Carl Edwards was fifth. Edwards now has a 20-point lead over Kevin Harvick.

Hamlin, who finished second in the Chase for the Sprint Cup last season, hadn't won since Texas in November 2010, 16 races ago. -- David Scott

Edwards takes Michigan Nationwide race

BROOKLYN, Mich. -- Carl Edwards won Saturday's Alliance Truck Parts 250 at Michigan International Speedway, outdistancing second-place and Roush Fenway Racing teammate Ricky Stenhouse Jr. in the process.

"We needed about a 15-lap run at the end going green," said Stenhouse, who takes over the points lead with the second-place finish. "We just weren't fast enough for Carl."

Reed Sorenson, who was the points leader entering the race, finished 11th.

Kyle Busch was third and pole-sitter Paul Menard fourth.

The Nationwide Series heads to Road America at Elkhart Lake, Wis., next week. -- David Scott

JGR teams changing oil pans

BROOKLYN, Mich. -- Joe Gibbs Racing's three Sprint Cup teams -- Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano -- didn't submit their oil pans for approval earlier today at Michigan International Speedway.

The JGR cars changed their oil pans to something legal by 12:30 p.m., when Cup practice started for Sunday's Heluva Good 400.

NASCAR spokesman Kerry Tharp said the oil pans will be looked at early next week at the R&D center in Concord and that the teams could face penalties. -- David Scott

Kyle Busch the center of attention?

   Is this a surprise? Kyle Busch had been the center of attention during this year’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series broadcasts.

   Interviewed longer and mentioned more frequently than any other driver on the circuit during the first 12 event telecasts of 2011, Busch parlayed the spotlight into $28.4 million of exposure value for his sponsors, $6.5 million more than the next most sponsor-potent driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr.

    According to research conducted by Joyce Julius & Associates, Inc. -- which has monitored every NASCAR race telecast over the last 27 seasons -- Busch’s sponsors were monitored for eight hours, 30 minutes, 39 seconds (8:30:39) during live and replayed coverage of NASCAR’s Daytona 500 through last month’s Coca-Cola 600. Additionally, Busch and the Fox TV crew verbally mentioned his sponsors on 95 occasions.

         Driver, Sponsor Exp., Driver Interviews, Value

1) Ky. Busch	8:30:39	95	$28,447,545
2) Earnhardt Jr.	5:36:54	18	$21,835,475
3) J. Johnson	8:09:27	41	$20,332,440
4) K. Harvick	5:25:07	120	$17,256,695
5) J. Gordon	5:26:12	31	$16,439,475
6) C. Edwards	5:32:30	72	$15,229,945
7) T. Bayne	2:16:48	23	$12,312,365
8) T. Stewart	4:39:04	8	$12,128,595
9) M. Kenseth	4:03:45	37	$11,314,500
10) C. Bowyer	4:28:44	39	$11,293,260

Yarborough, DW highlight '12 HOF class

Cup Drivers Cale Yarborough and Darrell Waltrip, modified driver Richie Evans, owner Glen Wood and crew chief Dale Inman will make up the NASCAR Hall of Fame's classic '12.
Yarborough was the first driver to win three straight Cup titles and finished his career with 83 victories.
Waltrip won 84 races and three titles.
Inman was Richard Petty's long-time crew chief and had 193 victories and eight titles, both records for a crew chief.
Evans won nine NASCAR modified titles in 13 years and eight consecutively from 1978-85.
Wood, part of the Wood Brothers Racing team, which has 98 victories.

Guess what? Probation's over!

   NASCAR had to issue a warning to drivers Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch early in Sunday’s 5-Hour Energy 500 at Pocono Raceway when the two couldn’t seem to get out of each other’s way battling for position.

   The two were on probation through this weekend for a post-race incident on pit road last month at Darlington, S.C.

   “It seemed like he was trying to make it awfully difficult on me,” Busch said of Harvick. “There’s a couple times where I just had to back off and wait, got back to him and tried to pass him again.

   “Maybe that shows his character and who he is, how he feels he needs to race on the race track. It’s not my fight. He’s trying to turn it into one.”

   "He knows he's got one coming," Harvick said when he was asked about the run-in. "I just wanted him to think about it."

   Did Harvick think Busch had?

   "Of course he did. It's all a free game now. Probation's over," he said.