We broadcast On Pit Row live from the Original Ginos Pizza and Grill in Toledo. It’s a great place for us and the show. There is a real racing atmosphere. And the pizza is the best. Seriously. But we get a great opportunity to talk to race fans during and after the show.

Last week, a fan brought in some pics he had taken during the 2001 Daytona 500. Wally is a Dale Earnhardt Sr. fan. There are some very cool shots of Senior alone at the track that fateful week. There are pictures of Teresa Earnhardt, Dale Sr with Dale Jr and Kerry Earnhardt. I really like the pic of Dale and Teresa Earnhardt holding hands. And the photo of Earnhradt Senior with his two sons. Enjoy.

If you use any of these pics, please give attribution to Wally for OnPitRow.com

The prelude to the Bud Shootout was the Lucas Oil Slick Mist 200, kick off race for the 2010 ARCA Racing Series Schedule.

Even if you’re not an ARCA fan, you surely had heard plenty leading up to this race. It was the first stock car race for Izod Indycar Series star Danica Patrick, and the hype has been incessant since mid December. No matter which side of the Danica fence you’re on, you had to be curious about how she’d do, right?

This was potentially the biggest showcase the ARCA Series has ever had. But on Saturday morning, I caught this tweet while scanning the Saturday racing buzz…

TheDalyPlanet “The ARCA race is a joke. We can kill drivers. They crash too much and don’t use common sense.” Jimmy Spencer on SPEED.

I responded… onpitrow “Really? Jimmy Spencer on crashing and common sense? Gimme a break

Spencer’s apparent slap at the ARCA Racing Series kind of ticked me off. But after watching another ARCA race on a restrictor plate track, I may be a convert to Mr Excitement’s line of thinking.

There are too many inexperienced drivers allowed to race in ARCA’s biggest events. The 2010 race was hard for me watch, even with the obligation to cover the Danica craze. And I am a big ARCA fan.

Congratulations to Bobby Gehrhardt on his sixth ARCA Daytona win. But the race just sucked. A wreck-fest, with too many cautions, too long in duration. The wrecks were bigger than they had to be - due mostly to inexperience, it seemed. There was no continuity to the race. I would say that there was too much testosterone and not enough brains, but I don’t want to insult the six female drivers in the field.

I know ARCA needs to race at the big tracks. That’s where their TV partners - and sponsors - want them to be. But this race couldn’t have been good for business.

Thankfully, Spencer was only partially right.

Photo credit: Round Girl Jen by BethAnne Heisler - OnPitRow.com

Despite NASCAR implementing rules designed to prevent owners’ points transfers, top 35 starting positions have been an abstract commodity for the past couple of years. Selling points from one team to another – the exact sort of thing that NASCAR has tried to block – has been circumvented by the new teams allowing the old owners in question to remain on the entry list.

Last year’s offseason was the worst. Think that Bobby Ginn had anything to do with Clint Bowyer’s No. 33 car last year? Does Theresa Earnhardt have anything to do with Front Row Motorsports? How about the former Bill Davis Racing – did Sam Hornish Jr. have more of a claim to that team’s owners’ points than Tommy Baldwin Racing, which had its old crew chief and a handful of its crew members?

That’s not, however, to say that this year hasn’t also been pretty bad. The latest transfer of points from one team to another is between Furniture Row Racing and Richard Childress Racing, which will allow the No. 78 to take the points from RCR’s fourth car. Childress will become an owner of the team, but FRR will continue to use Hendrick engines.

There’s also the creation of Latitude 43 Motorsports, established when Roush Fenway Racing had to sell off its fifth team to get under NASCAR’s team cap (a different embarrassing issue entirely). Because of the team cap, NASCAR allowed RFR to sell off its owners’ points and equipment to a new owner without having to remain on board with the new operation.

Confused? Angry? You’re not alone.

Plenty of teams have attempted to switch points within their organization, too, in order to give drivers better starting positions in case of rainouts. Last year, Juan Montoya and Aric Almirola of Earnhardt Ganassi Racing switched points early in the year. Yates Racing also messed around with its teams, to the benefit of Bobby Labonte and Paul Menard and the detriment of Travis Kvapil. This year, Richard Petty Motorsports may shift the points from its No. 44 last year to follow A.J. Allmendinger to the No. 43.

It’s funny that NASCAR allows this now, when two years ago, they refused to allow Michael Waltrip Racing to transfer David Reutimann’s points from the No. 00 to his new car, the No. 44.

The top 35 rule was originally designed to protect the fully-funded teams and their sponsors, guaranteeing them passage into the field, while start-and-park teams would have to earn their way in. On the surface, it’s a nice thought, as it gives the fans a better chance at watching a solid race. It doesn’t matter how fast a start-and-park car can run, nobody wants to see it pull back into the garage after ten laps.

But in 2007, when the Sprint Cup Series had 49 full-time, solidly-funded teams, and start-and-parkers were endangered species, the rule remained in place, and plenty of teams bit the bullet. Many of their sponsors either left their old teams for partial-season deals with the sport’s heavyweights, or left the sport entirely.

Combine that with the oft-cited economic woes that America currently faces, and we have about 39 full-time teams this year, fighting for 35 guaranteed spots and 43 spots on any given weekend.

Four of those teams will face a great disadvantage all season. Because they will have to focus far more on qualifying than the top 35 teams, who will have all weekend to work on race setups, their cars will not be as strong during the races themselves, leading to inevitably low finishes. As the mediocre and poor finishes pile up, they will fall further back from the top 35, as Kevin Buckler’s No. 71 car did last year, keeping them down for 2011.

Let’s face it: the old system – fastest cars make the field, provisionals for the slowest cars with the most owners’ points, DNQ’s for the cars that run out of provisionals – is still the best way of doing things. If Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon are slow one weekend, brutally slow, they shouldn’t be racing. The fastest cars ought to be the ones racing, right?

With everybody having to devise two setups on any given weekend, it improves the chances of making the race for the cars running limited schedules. Michael Waltrip, Max Papis, and Bill Elliott won’t have to put everything into qualifying the way they do under the top 35 rules. They would be doing the same work, on the same things, as everybody else.

And if these start-and-park cars pull off qualifying miracles – winning the pole, for example – they can capitalize by running the decals of the cars that failed to qualify, or attracting some other sponsors to help them run the whole race. Nobody wants to start-and-park when they’re qualifying in the top five.

One more thing: no more of this owners’ points transferring crap. You get the points that your team earned last year. It’s only fair. If you stop guaranteeing the top 35 into the race, it doesn’t even matter all that much anyway – everybody gets the same amount of provisionals.

I know my cries will likely fall upon deaf ears in the NASCAR compound, but it’s worth a shot. The top 35 rule is a nice thought, but its practice only causes problems when more than 35 cars are fully funded and running the entire schedule. It’s time we go back to the old system and forget this one, once and for all.

The NASCAR Toyota All-Star Showdown is always a gas to watch and a terrific way to say adios racing’s winter season.

Joe Gibbs Racing star Joey Logano won his second Showdown. He was the consensus favorite coming in. But it wasn’t Joey who stole the show this time.

NASCAR Drive for Diversity find, Sergio Pena started it all by taking pole on Friday - Logano was second fastest. That would have been good all by itself.

But I haven’t had as much fun watching a race in a long, long time. Pena and Logano raced bumper to bumper and door to door for the whole race. Repeated re-starts made Pena and Logano work hard. They raced clean. It was great stuff.

I can’t wait to see more of the 16 year old Pena. Maybe an ARCA season is in the offing.

Check out Joey Logano’s NASCAR statistics here.

Photo credit: Getty Images for NASCAR

So happy to see that

Just before the 2008 Darlington race, Denny Hamlin came up lame after a pick-up basketball game. We suggested back then that Joe Gibbs should ban Hamlin from any sport that required less than two balls (see question number 6). Did the coach listen? Uh, sadly, for JGR fans, nope. Denny tore an ACL and will have to deal with the injury for the duration of 2010. Hamlin says - no problem. But it won’t help.

Finally, Jimmie Johnson crashed. Unfortunately for all you Johnson haters, J J was driving his Grand Am car and not his Sprint Cup ride when he stuffed it in a wall. You all can only hope that this is an omen. I wouldn’t bet on it if I were you though.

NASCAR fans eagerly await the start of any new race season.  But 2010 may hold the imagination of what might be, more than any season in recent memory.  NASCAR has told drivers to be more aggressive on the race track and to return to more days of yore where a little contact and controversy were the more prevelant.

Will NASCAR continue to court the winds of change throughtout the season even if the going gets tough?  It is easy for the powers that be to give lip service to the new (old) way of settling the score, but will they back off as soon as one of its elite drivers suffers from the ignominy of defeat?  2009 was to be the year that drivers were allowed to speak their minds, but  that ended quickly when NASCAR dubbed those drivers as being negative.

NASCAR has set in motion the change over from the often lamented wing to the retro spoiler.  If the new (old) spoiler can give the car back to the drivers and let them race then it will have done its job.  If its return is only to satisfy the request to beautify the car and the actual on track product doesn’t improve then it will be time and money wasted.

NASCAR’s Managing Director of it’s R&D facility, Mike Fisher, was ON PIT ROW this week talking about the changes that are in the future of the sport.  Two topics of conversation revolved around fuel injection and alternate fuel use.  Fuel injection seems to be on the fast track for 2011 with the R&D Center working on its particulars.  One of which would have to be how to police its usage and its misuse.

The one thing that the carburetor has had going for itself has been its inherent simplicity.  It is easy for NASCAR to regulate; whether because of its simple design or its longevity.  Fuel injection opens up a new field for innovators to have their way with the system while NASCAR tries to stay a step ahead.

Alternate fuels; while righteous in its attempt to “green” up the sport would seem to be less of a priority for the NASCAR world.  The American public is not clamoring for a switch to alternatives for gasoline and until that happens NASCAR will not lead the way.

When asked if there would be any significant changes to the Cup car in the next five years, Fisher said with the changes to the COT and the new Nationwide COT, he didn’t foresee any large change in the near future.  You can hear the entire interview with Fisher at www.onpitrow.com

If the return to the spoiler and the new rough, tough driving style are a way to appease fans then why not go the next step and make the cars more remenicent of the street cars they are supposed to represent?  Let the controversy about which make has the advantage resurface.  Let team owners decide what make of car to run by its advantages of power and design.  Stories abound from the Sixties and Seventies about car owners that switched from one brand to another because of its more raceable configurations.

If NASCAR truly wants to give the sport back to its competitors and its fans then give the builders a chance to build and innovate.

photo credit: Ford Racing

We had some stirring

“Was Jack Roush correct in blaming the media for overly influencing fans negative opinions of NASCAR?

Steve and I debated it. Steve was strongly against the idea that media is to blame for NASCAR’s problems.

Special guest Terry Blount, veteran ESPN.com NASCAR writer was vehement in his disagreement, if Roush was blaming the media for almost anything. Blount’s main point was that he and the others on the NASCAR beat are journalists - not cheerleaders.

I took the other side. And I don’t often take the side of the Cat in the Hat. But, taking the Fast Lap question as presented, I said that I could see where the media does its share of dissing on certain aspects of NASCAR.

I do think that the media makes too big a deal about TV ratings and attendance. Those topics have little to do with the sport itself. There are too many stories that start; “Ugly COT the Cause of Sinking NASCAR TV Ratings”. That isn’t journalism. It’s speculation. And it is negative.

Then, tonight, I Googled Jack’s comments and found the original article by Joe Menzer on NASCAR.com. Most of Roush’s points were directed at “the communications box, the TV box” as Roush refered to them. And specifically to certain types of reporters…

“The complaints have come from reporters and the media that has maybe a vested interest — if you look at [announcers and former driving champions] Darrell Waltrip and Rusty Wallace and all the ex-drivers and ex-crew chiefs that are out there. It’s not unreasonable to say they’ve got some ax to grind over something that frustrated them in their careers when they were on the firing line. We need to reel that back in”

Jack Roush isn’t really attacking the media here. The guys he’s complaining about aren’t journalists. Roush may look at them more as “traitors to the cause” than as rogue media.

So I want to apologize for the way the question was framed during the show. The topic was ripe for debate and that was good. But Jack Roush didn’t really say what we inferred.

Photo credit: BethAnne Heisler - OnPitRow.com

It’s the second knee injury Hamlin has suffered in recent months from playing basketball. He had surgery in December to repair a torn meniscus in his other knee. With the season just about to start, however, Hamlin has decided to defer the necessary surgery to repair his other knee until the end of the year.

The repercussions of this story, because of the nature of Hamlin’s injury (considered catastrophic in many other sports), have a wide span.

A team spokesman said that Hamlin should have no problem driving the car, but driving hurt means that he won’t be the same caliber driver he normally is. Keep in mind that Carl Edwards failed to score a single top five finish last year after breaking his foot during a game of Frisbee.

An injury the nature of Edwards’ takes about six to eight weeks to heal. In any other sport, it would certainly be a cause for concern in an athlete, but after healing, the athlete should be fine.

Hamlin’s injury, on the other hand, can undo the entire career of some other athletes. At the very least, it’s a season-ending injury that should take about eight months to a year to be fully rehabilitated, and even then, the athlete will likely never be the same. All-world NFL quarterback Tom Brady suffered a torn ACL in the first week of the 2008 season, and didn’t return until the next year.

And we expect Hamlin to drive with this?

The worst feedback that can possibly come out of racing with an ACL tear is a flare-up of the old “drivers aren’t athletes” argument. “If they can race with an injury that is catastrophic to sports,” the naysayers will inevitably contend, “then what makes them a true athlete? None of these injuries were suffered during racing. They were suffered while the athletes played other sports.”

And seeing that these injuries were suffered while playing recreational sports, will team owners begin introducing stricter recreation clauses in athletes’ contracts? Already many athletes, in all sports, are prohibited from doing anything that could cause serious injury to them, or else they risk their contracts being voided.

Sure, deferring surgery until the end of the year allows Hamlin to race in the meantime. But there are plenty of other variables he has to consider. For one, deferring reconstructive surgery means that his rehab will have to go through 2011, meaning that if his driving is affected (and it probably will be), he could be out of contention for the good part of two years.

Hamlin is also reportedly a free agent after this season. What if he has a terrible year? Will he be as attractive to other teams - even as attractive to Gibbs - if he’s still nursing a pickup basketball injury?

There really isn’t a good reason for Denny Hamlin to drive through an ACL injury. It puts too much at risk. It’s smarter for him to properly rehabilitate the injury and come back stronger when it’s fully healed. Joe Gibbs Racing can certainly find a worthy candidate for fill-in duty until Hamlin returns.

Jamie will be teamed with Juan Pablo Montoya on the team likely favored to win the Rolex Daytona 24 Hours and he talks about it.

But I want to see a bass fishing match between Jamie Mac, Rocket Ryan Newman and Martin Truex Jr.

Watch the latest Fast Lap Show video and then tell us what you think of these quick queries related to NASCAR’s goofiest week of the year.

Turn 1 - How did NASCAR’s moving the banquet to Las Vegas work out?

Turn 2 - What was the highlight of awards week?

Turn 3 - What was the lowlight of awards week?

Turn 4 - What surprised you most from the banquet?

Tell us what you think in the comment section. But be fair. we had a time limit, so try to keep your answers Tweet length - 140 characters or less. I counting.