Junior had been in serious talks with both Joe Gibbs Racing and Richard Childress to drive for their teams, but in the end Hendrick won out. Much speculation as to why that was, but it’s probably just as simple as Junior going with the team that gives him the best immediate shot at winning a championship.

I imagine most Junior fans are happy to see him with a shot to drive a much more competitive car, but man, there have to be some heads exploding in the land of Junior fans as far as trying to wrap their head around the notion that Jeff Gordon is now a teammate and not the dread enemy.

“I’ve said the whole time, whether I like the car or not, we are going to do our best to be competitive. I don’t care what the car is.”

The COTs seemed to agree with Toyota as well, as they managed to qualify five drivers for the race, by far their best showing so far this season. A.J. Allmendinger and Jeremy Mayfield are making their first starts of the 2007 season, along with Dave Blaney, Brian Vickers, and Dale Jarrett (who actually managed to race his way in for once and didn’t have to use one of his rapidly dwindling past champion provisionals).

Noticeably absent, again, was Michael Waltrip, who didn’t qualify for the 4th straight week. Mikey is still stilling at -27 in points, after that whole rocket fuel incident at Daytona, and is struggling to find much of a silver lining so far. I mean, hell, I’m currently ahead of Mikey in the driver standings, with 0 points, and that’s never a good thing to be trailing me in the standings after five races.

The other big news is that despite much speculation otherwise by nearly everyone, Mark Martin made good on his word and is sitting out Bristol, sticking to the plans for him to race only a part-time schedule this year. I’d personally like to see him out there, making one last run for a championship, but good for him for easing out of racing to spend more time with his family, and to just take a break and enujoy life a bit. He’s got every reason to abandon that plan, so it seems all the more important to him, to be faced with the chance to make one last run but to turn his back on it for the things that are more important to him.

Put a sock in it, Mr. Pruett.

Yeah, I know. It sucks. This was your chance to shine, as far as having a fast car and a road course to show it off on, you’re getting a little long in the tooth and this may have been your last, best shot at grabbing a victory in NASCAR racing. Your own damn teammate got too aggressive and spun you out. Sucks.

But claiming that it was “lowdown, nasty, dirty driving” is pretty out of line and uncalled for. You left the door halfway open to let Montoya’s nose in to begin with, and then you moved down and tried to block him, knowing he’d stuck his nose in there, confident that he’d back off and not risk spinning out his teammate who was leading the race.

Montoya was definitely driving too aggressively there, especially with a teammate leading, so he’s not completely innocent. But that was pretty far from lowdown, nasty, dirty driving. And that’s ignoring the fact that he had a much, much faster car and plenty of laps left to pass you. If he didn’t pass you there, he was just going to pass you later.

Just guesstimating here, but I’d say that was pretty much a 50/50 split, as far as each driver’s responsibility for what happened. So how about manning up and accepting that, instead of popping off publicly about how much your teammate Montoya sucks?

The racing star will be selling season tickets at the speedway ticket window for an hour on March 13, letting fans get their tickets straight from Biffle or over the phone.

“I’m excited about the prospect of Greg joining our staff,” Kansas Speedway President Jeff Boerger told the Kansas City Kansan. “He’s had a lot of success on the track here and I fully expect him to have the same success selling our season ticket package.”

I know, I know, it’s just a silly publicity stunt, yada yada yada, but I still find it kind of odd. Do they really expect a huge crush of fans rushing to the ticket window, just because Greg Biffle is working there for an hour?

Not being a huge Biffle fan, I’d probably go out of my way to avoid the window he was hawking tickets at, but that’s just me.

As far as “highlights” from California Speedway, man that was a hard lick that David Reutimann took. Pretty hard to watch the in-car camera footage, too, especially at first when he was slumped over the steering wheel, not even moving.

Congrats to Brian Vickers for getting Toyota its first top 10 finish and for leading a few laps along the way.

‘Tis a shame that Happy had a tire go down there at the end, as it was shaping up to be another close finish the way he’d been reeling Kenseth in right before the last caution.

It’ll be interesting to see just how “part-time” Mark Martin’s schedule remains throughout the season, especially if he continues to sit near the top of the points standings. He can claim all he wants that he’ll stick to the plan of driving a limited schedule, but I’d bet you more than a few shiny American dollars that all of that will go out the window if he’s still in the hunt. And I don’t think anyone would blame him a bit if he waffled, especially given how well he’s running so far.

Blaney’s strong showing may give Toyota some hope, especially since he was mixed up in an early wreck but managed to rebound nicely. He never managed to really challenge Harvick but was good enough to grab second, ahead of Carl Edwards, Clint Bowyer, and Mark Martin.

NEXTEL Cup regulars dominated the action, grabbing the top 12 spots and 15 of the top 20, with Scott Wimmer the highest finishing Busch Series regular at 13th place.

Not exactly going out on a limb here, but give me some credit for not picking Tony, as the bulk of the masses are (and for good reason). I’d like to go with my heart and pick Junior but for whatever reason I think Happy is going to take the victory today.

Other random prognostications, in no particular order:

Sterling Marlin will do something stupid, like jump out of his car and tug on the sheet metal or drive too fast with a tire down until his car catches on fire.

Fox will continue to show that dumb 3D animated car feature for this race but realize it’s absolutely dumb and silly and drop it shortly thereafter.

It will be pointed out by the announcers 162,172 times that some drivers got in trouble during the week for rules infractions.

It will be pointed out by the announcers 162,171 times that it’s the anniversary of Dale Earnhardt’s death.

Robby Gordon will wreck but it will be someone else’s fault.

The Winners

Tony Stewart: Smoke is looking pretty dang fast and motivated so far, winning both the Shootout and his Gatorade Duel. If he can dodge trouble he’d have to be the odds-on favorite at this point to finally get the Daytona 500 win that’s been eluding him.

Robert Yates Racing: Regardless of where David Gilliland and Ricky Rudd end up finishing, it’s been a great week for RYR, rebounding nicely from a pretty disastrous 2006 season.

Juan Pablo Montoya: If anything he might have run too well this week, as far as setting expectations very high for his first full season in NEXTEL Cup racing.

Boris Said: He’s well on his way to proving that he definitely belongs in NEXTEL Cup racing, and not just on the road courses, either.

Joe Nemechek and Mike Wallace: Both were on the qualifying bubble and raced well enough in their Duel to make the big show on Sunday.

James Hylton: Yeah, he didn’t make the race on Sunday, but he managed to stay competitive in his Duel on Thursday, despite racing against some drivers one third his age who were piloting much better equipment and cars around the track.

The Losers

Michael Waltrip/Michael Waltrip Racing: I’m not going to spill any more cyber ink detailing the situation here. Let’s hope they run well (but not too well) in the Daytona 500 and we put all this rocket fuel brouhaha behind us as quickly as possible.

Evernham Racing: All their drivers got slammed for rules infractions, with assorted fines, suspensions, and docking of driver points.

Matt Kenseth: Kenseth rounded out the “cheater” crew, getting slapped with fines, suspensions, and losing drivers points.

Jeff Gordon: He’s more an unfortunate loser, as his car inadvertently ended up an inch too short in inspection after winning his Duel on Thursdsay, sending him to the back of the starting grid for Sunday.

Toyota: Not only did they have RocketFuelGate to contend with, but not a lot of oomph from their cars on the track.

Team Red Bull: Not a good debut, with both drivers (Brian Vickers and A.J. Allmendinge) disappointing on the track and not making the race on Sunday.

“We’ve got people’s attention now,” NASCAR competition director Robin Pemberton said Wednesday.

Waltrip, a two-time Daytona winner, lost his crew chief and team director right before the biggest race of the year. The two were suspended indefinitely after an illegal substance was found during inspection for the season-opener.

Waltrip, docked 100 points, will be allowed to participate in Thursday’s races that determine the field for the 500.

David Hyder, his crew chief, was thrown out of the garage and fined $100,000. Team director Bobby Kennedy also was kicked out.

Waltrip said he was “so sad and embarrassed” but tried to shift blame to an unnamed individual within his team.

“This is not the action of an organization, a manufacturer or a sponsor,” Waltrip said in a statement. “This was an independent act done without consent or authorization from me or any of my executive management team.”

You’re a nice guy, Mikey, if not the greatest driver in the world. You’ve carved out a nice niche for yourself and I think you’re an intelligent, likable person. My wife likes you, I like you, a lot of fans like you.

But that’s a pretty pitiful excuse and “explanation”, and doesn’t help your case any at all. Do you really expect us to not only believe that some renegade member of your team monkeyed with the car in the dead of the night but also that no one else happened to notice it? Despite all of that checking over and tuning up of your car before qualifying, do you really expect us to believe that something like that would somehow go unnoticed by everyone, except for the officials inspecting the car?

Aside from weak excuses and explanations, you’ve also apparently managed to draw the ire of other teams as well for breaking the unspoken rule that cheating and creative engineering is fine as long as you leave the engine, tires, and fuel alone.

Nice work, Mikey. Way to kick off the season on a high note.

• Robbie Reiser, crew chief for Kenseth, and Kenny Francis, crew chief for Kahne, were kicked out of Daytona International Speedway and suspended four races.
• Rodney Childers, crew chief for Riggs, and Josh Brown, crew chief for Sadler, were suspended for two races and will all miss Sunday’s race.
• Kahne and Kenseth were docked 50 drivers points apiece, while Riggs and Sadler lost 25 each.
• Reiser and Francis also were fined $50,000 each, while Childers and Brown were fined $25,000 each.

The suspensions were expected and are in line with Chad Knaus’ suspension last year for similar shenanigans, but docking the drivers points before the season even has started is unprecedented and guaranteed to raise some eyebrows.

I also apparently wasn’t paying much attention as I thought it was only Kahne and Kenseth that had run afoul of the authorities, but apparently Evernham Motorsports as a whole was looking for a little extra edge, as Sadler and Riggs also got hit with penalties.

As far as lasting effects, the suspensions likely won’t matter much, as Jimmie Johnson proved last year in Knaus’ absence, but losing drivers points definitely stings, especially for Sadler, who is more likely to be on the bubble of making the Chase than Kenseth or Kahne.

Obviously it’s way too early to know, as anything and everything will happen, but it’ll be interesting to see if those docked points ultimately play any role in who does or doesn’t make the Chase.

None of the stories I’ve seen so far mention any penalties for Michael Waltrip, who may have managed to grin and aw-shucks his way out of trouble, despite mysterious substances being found on his engine manifold.