Who committed a NASCAR murder?

   This week, A&E’s police drama, “The Glades,” filmed an episode for their second season, set inside the world of NASCAR. 

   The episode takes place at Homestead-Miami Speedway, as the show’s lead detective (actor Matt Passmore) does his investigation of a murder during a Ford 400 race weekend. 

   Sprint Cup Series drivers Tony Stewart, Carl Edwards, Joey Logano and Brian Vickers all play themselves in the episode, which also features the Nos. 18 and 16 cars and a fictitious No. 74 Cup teams.

   In the episode, which should air in late June, detective Jim Longworth investigates a NASCAR-related murder, goes head-to-head with NASCAR's top drivers, and takes a few laps around Homestead-Miami Speedway.

   For info on show, visit www.aetv.com/the-glades/.

Biffle to remain with Roush Fenway

   NASCAR veteran Greg Biffle has agreed to a contract extension with Roush Fenway Racing, the Observer and ThatsRacin.com have learned.

   An official announcement of Biffle's extension could come as early as this weekend at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway, sources said.

   As recently as April 1, Biffle said he was "90 percent sure" he would re-sign with Roush and hoped to have a new deal completed by midseason.

   Biffle said he's not had an overwhelming interest to test the free-agent market, in part because of the economy, but also because of how far Roush Fenway Racing has come from this time last year.

   While Biffle is currently 18th in Sprint Cup Series points, his teammates Carl Edwards and Matt Kenseth have already won races this season.

   During his career with Roush, Biffle has won the Truck and Nationwide series championships and finished as high as second in Cup standings in 2005. He has 16 Cup wins, 20 in Nationwide and 16 in Trucks.

   A team spokesperson on Wednesday said she could not confirm Biffle had agreed to an extension.

It's time to speed this process up

   It’s way past time for NASCAR to clear up the controversy about its method of patrolling speeding on pit road.

   NASCAR uses an electronic monitoring system on pit road consisting of scoring “loops” to determine average speed between spots on the track. If a driver exceeds the announced pit road speed plus a 4.99 mph tolerance, a computer flags the driver for speeding.

   The problem has been that no one other than NASCAR officials in race control are allowed to see the computer results in real time, all the time. Competitors are shown read outs after the fact if requested.

   In order to help squelch an uproar started by driver Jimmie Johnson’s complaints, NASCAR allowed a Fox TV camera in race control last weekend at Texas to show video of a speeder getting caught (in this instance Tony Stewart).

   In addition, earlier in the weekend, a NASCAR official posted a picture on his Twitter account of the pit road speeding monitor screen.

   Yet still NASCAR refuses to allow media or fans the ability to see every driver’s speed every time in real time.

   In its effort this past week to try to defuse the controversy, NASCAR only made the situation worse. By officials posting pictures on Twitter of the screen and allowing Fox to video an instance of speeding, all NASCAR did was show it has the capability to show the results all the time.

   In turn, that just begs the question: If NASCAR can show the speeding results occasionally, why can it not show them regularly?

   Some sort of competitive advantage has been the usual reason cited, but NASCAR itself trounced that excuse by making exceptions to its long-standing policy this week of not showing the speeds.

   The simple answer here is NASCAR doesn’t want to show the speeds.

   What is still lacking is a legitimate explanation as to why.

Gentlemen, start your radios!

   An interesting and relatively new dynamic debuted at the Daytona 500 this year - something NASCAR fans will likely hear a lot more of this weekend in Sunday's Aaron's 499 at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway.

   No, not talking about the two-car draft, specifically. Rather, it's the communication between what are supposed to be adversaries on the track that is now taking place in order make those two-car drafts work best.

   It's not just teammate talking to teammate. We saw Chevrolet driver talking to Ford driver, Hendrick drivers communicating with Gibbs drivers. All in the effort to be at the right place at the right time so that - surprise - only one of them can win the race.

   Somehow, that sounds counterproductive. That new dynamic was talked about Tuesday by Jeff Burton. Here is what he had to say:

   "We had a meeting this week talking about, you know, who you want to try to get on your radio, and it's pretty odd.  I mean, typically it's teams that try to communicate within the team.  But for a Childress car to be talking to a Hendrick car, or a Hendrick car to be talking to a Roush car, and a Roush car to be talking to a Gibbs car, we've never seen that.

   It's pretty interesting how that all is going down and who is going to who and talking and saying, can I put you in my radio.  And with the etiquette:  When do you go to a competitor's radio frequency?  All of that's a moving target.

   I don't know, I'm a fan of it because I think honestly it's safer doing it with one spotter and two cars.  I think it's actually safer. However, I'm not a fan of it because it's supposed to be us against them, you know.  We are not supposed to be working together.

   It's a little bit weird in the sense that we are competitors or talking to each other; on the other hand, from the safety standpoint I think it's the right way to go.  It's a pretty interesting time right now."

Bayne to run all-star race after all

    It looks like this year's surprise Daytona 500 winner will make an appearance in the May 21 NASCAR Sprint All-Star race after all.

   Representatives from Wood Brothers Racing, sponsor Camping World, Charlotte Motor Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway will be on hand for a news conference on Tuesday at the NASCAR Hall of Fame to announce a two-race sponsorship deal for Trevor Bayne's No. 21 Ford.

 

   Camping World's Good Sam Club will sponsor Bayne in this weekend Cup race at Talladega and the all-star race at Charlotte, sources confirmed to the Observer and ThatsRacin.com.

 

   Bayne’s win in the 500 guaranteed him eligibility for a chance to win the $1 million top prize in this season’s all-star event, but his Wood Brothers team did not initially have the funding to field the No. 21 in the race.

 

   While the Wood Brothers did expand their Cup schedule after Bayne’s upset win, the team was not planning to stretch its funds to cover a non-points race.

 

   The Wood Brothers were already scheduled to run the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, but at this time are not scheduled run the April 30 race at Richmond, Va., which would be the first race they miss this season.

 

Will Dale Jr. be satisfied with second?

   It's a difficult position to be in.

   Dale Earnhardt Jr. hasn't been to Victory Lane in the Sprint Cup Series for 99 races, yet on the surface it might seem he should be happy to finish second, like he did Sunday at Martinsville, Va.

   At the same time, if you seem satisfied with second, there will be those who question whether there is a "killer instinct" missing or some other magic key to victory.

   It's a no-win situation for Earnhardt - nothing new to him in his career. He has tried desperately to live a life and develop as a driver on his own while at the same time burdened by expectations driven by the memory of his very successful father, Dale Earnhardt Sr.

   After the race Sunday, Earnhardt Jr. did a good job trying his best to explain his internal battle of appreciating a good finish while at the same time still looking for more.

   Here is what he said: "I did. But I was just doing the best could I do with the car and trying to make the best out of the situation. We had an opportunity to win the race.  I'm disappointed that I didn't get the job done and it will probably bother me more and more as the night goes on.

   "But I'll probably think about it a million times what I probably could have done differently. You know, I think if I know what's best for me, I should probably have a good attitude about what happened today and probably go into the next race and use it as momentum and confidence, like any other good driver would do, instead of worrying about, you know, how close we came.  I should be thankful and grateful that I had the opportunity I had today and for the opportunity I got to work with the team I'm with and to even be here competing, and take this momentum and take what looks like to be a better start to the season than I've had in a while to the next racetrack and just keep trying to plug away.

   "We gained a lot of points on some guys that were around us today.  The 4 (Kasey Kahne) and the 56 (Martin Truex Jr.) had some trouble.  We just need to try to put some distance on some guys and get ourselves the opportunity to be in the Chase when the time is up. Steve (Letarte) is a good crew chief and he's going to give me more opportunities like this I feel."

A tiring problem develops in NASCAR

   It's becoming a tiring problem in NASCAR.

   Two out of the last three Sprint Cup race weekends have now included problems developing with new tires brought to the track by Goodyear. Basically, the new tires are producing unexpected results once the rubber meets the road so to speak - when tires are actually used on the track.

   At Bristol, Tenn., two weeks ago and again this weekend at Martinsville, Va., Goodyear brought new tires to be used by Cup cars to address problems that came up in last season's most recent visits to the respective tracks.

   That is absolutely the right thing to do. Goodyear is always working to address concerns teams have at each track and try to make the racing product better. Nobody around NASCAR - especially Goodyear - wants to see a bad product on the track.

   We don't know yet whether there will be a serious problem in Sunday's Cup race. It's possible the track could "rubber in" quite well in the Truck race and Sunday could go off without a hitch. At Bristol, NASCAR quickly decided to bring in other tires to be used for the race on Sunday.

   Even if Sunday's race at Martinsville works out great, there is still a disturbing problem that needs to be addressed. In both cases, Goodyear brought new tires to the track without any actual on-track testing done to it.

   I'm sure very good computer simulation programs were run and all the top people all agreed the right decision was being made. And there is absolutely no guarantee on-track testing of the tires would have predicted what happened at Bristol or Martinsville.

   Asked Sunday if track testing of the tire was the only solution, driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. said, "I don’t know what else you can do. How else do you put a tire on the track and make sure it works?"

   What I do know is this: The only way you can absolutely say you've done everything you could to make sure what you bring to the track is the right call is to have somebody run the tire on the track itself.

   It may not yield any different result. What it does do, however, is remove any doubt there was anything else that could be done to prevent problems in the first place.

   Isn't that the safer call?