There’s word going around that you’re thinking about becoming a NASCAR driver. Please say it ain’t true. We know you’re a decent driver in the IndyCar Series and that you’ve won at least one race in the five years you’ve been there, but NASCAR?

We thought that with all your endorsements and the adulation afforded you, you’d want to stay there and build up your resume a little bit more, maybe even win an Indianapolis 500 race, before you decided to mix it up with the “good ol’ boys”. Have you considered coming up through the ranks to get a feel for what it takes to throw around a 3400 pound car as opposed to your own that weighs a mere 1565, or did you want to dispense with the Camping World and Nationwide Series altogether and just start at the top?

We imagine that NASCAR would welcome you. Just think of all the attention you’d get ... and the endorsements?

We would like to see women racing in NASCAR, too, but there are others, past and present, like Janet Guthrie, Louise Smith, Shawna Robinson, Erin Crocker and Chrissy Wallace who came up through the ranks, like their male counterparts, to develop their skills and pay their dues before they were mentally and physically prepared to take on such a demanding sport. Even with their experience, Erin and Chrissy are still trying to secure solid sponsorships and the A-list status that goes along with it.

It’s contract renegotiating time for you this year. Use the opportunity to sign on with your friends at Andretti Green for another year or two and prove to the rest that you have what it takes to be a NASCAR driver and not just a female NASCAR driver.

What was it about this 2.66 mile racetrack that resulted in a near catastrophe this past Sunday? SAFER barriers, roof flaps and restrictor plates were supposed to eliminate the bedlam of years past but Talladega still remains one step away from disaster in the minds of many. Will the answer lie in what’s done after someone gets killed or is there another way to avoid the inevitable before it’s too late?

In 1987, Bobby Allison earned a few frequent flyer miles when he went airborne and slammed into the fence not far from where Edwards did, which led to restrictor plates being mandated for Talladega and Daytona that same year. It brought the speeds down but in recent years the cars have been inching up toward 200 mph and beyond once again. In 1994, roof flaps came into reality to prevent further excursions into the upper atmosphere and in 2002, Talladega went through an extreme makeover when SAFER barriers were added to decrease the effects of wall impacts. That sounds great but there’s one wild card left in the deck and that’s the drivers themselves.

Like all living things on this planet, race drivers find a way around obstacles that are put in their way and the ones at NASCAR are more adept than most. We’re not talking about breaking the rules here; we’re talking about maximizing what you already have at your disposal. It became apparent in restrictor plate races that your ability to move toward the front of the parade required a “buddy” and a whole lot of bump drafting. Find one and you are good for an additional 5-7 mph. This tactic works fine as long as nobody makes a mistake. Get out of shape and you’ll send a sizeable number of your peers to the garage for the remainder of the day.

Cutting too fine of a line, late in the race can make you either a hero or the master of disaster and NASCAR had left it up to the drivers to establish an unwritten rule as to what was acceptable when one chose to engage in the art of bump drafting. It seems at this point that over-aggressiveness and risk-taking tends to override reason to the extent that the intervention of a higher power is needed to avert something no one would ever want to see.

It seemed unlikely that Mark Martin would ever stand a real chance of winning. After all, he’s 50 years old. Sure he has had a noteworthy past, sure he knows how to negotiate his way around the high banked turns of Talladega and Charlotte, sure he has the desire and sure he has some Hendrick prepared equipment to work with now but was all that really going to be enough to pave his way to victory lane, even once? The testosterone level alone that’s omnipresent in the NASCAR garage on any given day would seem sufficient to move those of his ilk to the back of the bus and keep them there with the rest of the field fillers like Cope, Marlin and Andretti.

Money can buy a lot of things and in the case of NASCAR; the coin of the realm is speed. After leaving Roush, Martin retired and then returned on more than one occasion to race with equipment that was marginal in preparation and short on funding. For a lot of fans it really didn’t matter, though. It was just good to see him back once again mixing it up with the kids. Little did they know that there was still a tiger lingering in the tank, waiting for a chance to reassert himself once the planets were in alignment and the moon was full and bright.

. . . Danny “Chocolate” Myers that is. I don’t always agree with the things I hear on Sirius NASCAR Radio but today “Chocolate” had some comments worth repeating from this afternoon’s call-in radio show. Once again, there was a controversy during this weekend’s Nationwide race in Nashville and it was no surprise that Kyle Busch was at the center of it. Keep in mind that Busch’s 19 year old teammate, Joey Logano, came in first and Busch, a dismal second or that’s the way it seemed during the post race interview, when Busch the Younger demonstrated his complete lack of charm, sportsmanship and social appropriateness. It was glaringly apparent that the driver of the #18 car was majorly “ticked” about coming in second and he made it abundantly clear that Logano didn’t deserve the win as much as he did.

Many of the callers today felt that Busch was out of line as well and “Chocolate” took up their cause, saying that if he (Busch) is going to accept the millions he’s paid and if he’s going to live in the house by the lake, then he owes it to the fans to live with the ups and the downs the wheel of fortune bestows upon him. Sure Busch has a right to his opinion and sure he has to live with the results of his behavior but if you can’t, won’t or don’t have anything to say that’s going to further your own career, zip it, and don’t do your best to minimize your own teammate’s accomplishments. Accept the fact that the kid flat out drove you and leave it at that.

Richard Petty had a few words to say on Fox’s “Sean Hannity’s America” program last evening when he appeared as a member on the show’s Great American Panel segment. When asked about this country’s desire to become independent from its ties to foreign oil, he stated, “It’s not that we don’t already have enough oil here to be self sufficient ... if they’d (the government) just turn us loose, we’ll do it” ... “It’s hard to change what we’re doing now because we’ve got used to doing it that way”. In regard to the deep bow Obama made (which the White House denies) when meeting King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at the G20 conference in London, Petty added, “it took a lot to get us where we’re at, and the U.S. got to be where it is by not bowing down to anyone ... we’re not going to give that up just to be friendly”.

Petty presented Sean Hannity with one of his signature cowboy hats at the conclusion of the program at which time the host said he was going to use it as a fundraiser for his favorite charity, Freedom Alliance, which benefits children who have lost family members through the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It was a welcome change to hear from an individual who views the world in terms of simple logic and common sense. The “experts” might learn a thing or two if they were willing to adopt this approach the next time they gather to address the issues this world faces.