I HAVE FIGURED IT OUT!!

How do you keep competition from getting close to your guys? If you are Rick Hendrick and, there are only a few guys out there who can make a legitimate challenge of your superstar drivers, Johnson and Gordon, what do you do?

Simple, you sign the competition to a 5 year deal and put them in a shitty car with a shitty team that hasn't done anything over the years. Not only can you dictate their direction, but you get to share in the revenue of licensing the sports most popular driver.

You may say, what about Mark Martin... To that I answer, simple, get Mark in the chase, he's never won a cup championship, ever. Likely, even if he is in the chase, he'd not win a championship anyway. He's a small liability to Johnson, whereas Earnhardt Jr is a larger threat to Johnson.

In this blawggers opinion, that is the deal. Hendrick cajoled Earnhardt Jr when he was at his lowest and badly needing change. He assured him life with Hendrick would be great, happy, and full of rainbow colored unicorns. Jr bit, hook, line, and sinker...

Kenseth wins...Again

I think Matt's new Crew Chief, Drew Blickensderfer, has brought some life to a team that seemed to have lost it a year or so before Robbie left. I think it is cool to see a Wisconsin boy do good. Good job, Matt! Was happy he held off Gordon, haha.

The race itself was pretty uneventful, read boring... Not a huge fan of that track (I don't know what they call it these days), too wide, too long, too flat. Yeah, it gives you lots of options for lines to run, but, that also means you can get all stretched out. The biggest action seems to be the battles of high-line versus low-line and seeing who gets the better run off a corner or who can slide job who.

Bummer that Harvick's streak of running at the end of every race ended at 81(?). Hendrick engines had some issues with Martin and Junior having valve issues.

I have to admit, I watched the end of the race from bed and was simply wiped out from not getting a good nights sleep the night before and bottling and brewing beer during the day. As much as I could pay attention to the race, I don't recall them mentioning Jeremey Mayfield much. Yeah, I know he was a couple laps down... He's got no big sponsorship that greases FOX's greedy palm, so not much mention of him. Was happy to see that with the late race attrition that he was able to move up 5 spots. I saw he was back in 40th spot and eventually finished at 35th. Now, I am no big Mayfield fan, but the way he is trying to make a go of it with all the money coming out of his pocket, not paying himself a salary, and seemingly fielding his crew with misfits who will work for little or nothing. I say misfit only as a dig against one of his crew members who failed a drug test. haha. That is not a blanket statement covering his entire team. I really hope he can get into the top 35 and stay there, comfortably, all year. Riggs, racing for Tommy Baldwin is another I would like to see do well. As for some of the others, like Nemecheck, Gilliland, and Allmendinger, I could care less. Nemecheck and Gilliland I really can't stand and Allmendinger rubs me wrong and comes off, to me, as an arrogant punk... Any one of them can finish 41, 42, and 43 every week for all I care.

On to Vegas. I actually got to do a couple laps around that track in a rental car when I attended the VMWorld party in 2008 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. That was fun! Andretti school instructors took us around the track in all kinds of decent cars with top speeds of about 100. Not like a real Richard Petty experience or anything, but still very cool. Especially when yer all hammered!! haha.

I still can't stand that effen Digger rodent that FOX insists on showing! Horrifying, that is all I can say! I wanna get an anti Digger website, haha, any ideas??

Best of Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Junior must be a walkin, talkin poop machine!! Most of these were taken by reading stuff on CaptainThunder.com with attributes to NASCAR.com.

"If you look down this pit road, my sign is pink and every other sign is pink so it's hard to see," he summized. "They're all about the same color."

"We had a pit stop where I was told the right-front tire was only an inch over the line," Earnhardt said. "I was held a lap for that and I don't feel like that was a fair trade. Maybe it's time to re-evaluate that rule."

"I got ran into and sent below the line. What the hell? I don't want to go down there, I didn't aim to go down there, and I got sent down there. What the hell am I supposed to do?" he quipped. "Then what am I supposed to do? Stay down there? No. I got to get back up on the race track.

"If he wasn't so damn reckless, we would have never had that problem, that would never happen. As far as I am concerned, it is all his responsibility."

"If he wants to come by the bus after the race and get his ass whopped," Earnhardt said. "I'll do it."

This is my personal favorite here...

"Matt won. Good deal. Congratulations. He always says that he wants me to tutor him on these plate tracks. He finally got his damn trophy and can give me some damn pointers."

Toyota Wins

That shrub sure can drive a car. Wonder if Jr was at all wondering, as he watched the rear bumper of the 18, if he made the right choice to go with Hendrick, hahaha. Kyle won the truck race, were it not for a shock failure in the Nationwide race, he likely would have won that. Then, he wins the cup race. 1000 miles of driving and two wins, not a bad weekend.

Good race overall! I like the way the new car behaves. They get slideways and it doesn't seem to snap around as the COY did. They don't seem to have as much aero issues. I always hated how you could get to within 10 feet of the car in front of you and cause him to slide up the track. That wing, splitter, bump stops, and radiator opening is messed up. But, I ain't no Engineer...

Wow, Tony Stewart is pissed at Goodyear! Did you catch his post race interview?? I bet the next 20 sets of tires he gets mounted by Goodyear will have issues, hahaha.

Tough luck for Edwards. Karma stuffs from last weeks violations, perhaps...

What's up with Jr's interviews these days? Is it me or is it he is just trying to tow the Hendrick company line and not be too animated in his interviews?? He seems like a monotone bot. Almost like he has a handler just off camera with a shock controller that is attached to Jr's sack and anytime he feels like just talking, he's gonna get his gonads lit up. He just doesn't seem the same. I dunno, maybe it's just me.