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.

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.

Huddle House, a 420-unit nationwide family restaurant franchise with deep ties to the South, along with Front Row Motorsports have announced a partnership for the No. 37 Dodge driven by Bill Elliott at the Daytona 500 — uniting two Georgia homegrown icons into a powerful force for the opening of the Nextel Cup season.

Huddle House, fresh off an infusion of funding from its recently announced $124 million acquisition by Allied Capital, has signed on as the primary sponsor of racing legend Bill Elliott, giving the Huddle House brand extensive positive exposure to tens-of-millions of Americans who are known to be very loyal to the companies that sponsor their favorite drivers.

While there’s been increasing chatter in recent years that Elliott needs to hang it up and fade gracefully into the sunset, if he insists on turning laps I guess it’s good news that he’s got a sponsor. And I suppose it could have been worse and potentially more degrading, if it’d been the AARP, Ben-Gay, or Life Alert that stepped up to sponsor him.

Robert Yates has to be doing backflips of joy (carefully and gingerly, of course) after David Gilliland grabbed the pole for the Daytona 500, with Ricky Rudd right behind him. It’s not a shock to see Gilliland up there after his performance in the Bud Shootout on Saturday but I can’t imagine too many people out there picked Ricky Rudd to be on the front row with him. Rudd will have plenty of people pulling for him, though, as he’s definitely the feel-good story of the young 2007 season, roaring back after being out of racing entirely last year.

Joining the happy RYR drivers in the highlight circle were Boris Said, Sterling Marlin, and Johnny Sauter, all of whom weren’t guaranteed a spot in the race but locked down their entries based on qualifying results.

On the flip side of the happy coin, Matt Kenseth and Kasey Kahne both failed inspections, due to illegal holes drilled in various locations of their cars, ostensibly to improve aerodynamics. (Michael Waltrip had an engine manifold confiscated because of unidentified substances on it but was allowed to continue qualifying with a clean replacement manifold, although his car was then impounded after he qualified 24th.)

It’ll be interesting to see what action NASCAR takes against Kenseth and Kahne, as on the surface it seems pretty similar to Jimmie Johnson getting busted last year, when crew chief Chad Knaus took the fall and was suspended for 4 races. The fact that Jimmie went on to win the Daytona 500 didn’t exactly help out NASCAR much, as it made the slap on the wrist of suspending Knaus for 4 races look like exactly what it was, a meaningless slap on the wrist.

Unlike other sports, NASCAR is in a much tougher spot when it comes to doling out penalties, as major sponsors simply won’t stand for drivers to get suspended, especially for huge races such as the Daytona 500. Everyone knows that teams push the envelope as far as possible, as far as what they do to squeeze extra performance out of the cars, but that inevitable leads to a difficult spot when something is unearthed and cars get impounded, as NASCAR then has to publicly appear tough on “cheaters” without monkeying with their bread and butter, which is big-name drivers representing big-name sponsors, going around in circles for every single race.

The Toyota pack wasn’t exactly overwhelming in their debut in NEXTEL Cup racing, with David Reutimann finishing the highest at 14th. While Dale Jarrett and Dave Blaney are guaranteed spots, the other six Toyota drivers have to try to race their way in during the Duels on Thursday.

My own guesstimation is that the Michael Waltrip Racing Toyotas (Waltrip, Jarrett, and David Reutimann) will probably acquit themselves the best this season, and be reasonably competitive. They’ve got the most driving experience and past history of success, as well as some past champion provisional spots in Jarrett’s back pocket if they need them to make the field.

Bill Davis Racing is hard to figure, as they’ve got more experience as a team than Michael Waltrip Racing or Team Red Bull, but not quite the same talent in the driver’s seat, with Jeremy Mayfield and Dave Blaney driving. Mayfield is likely the wild card here, as far as how competitve the team will be, but it’s hard to predict whether he’ll bounce back from a tough year or continue to slide back in the standings, with all the turmoil of recent years taking its toil.

As far as Team Red Bull (which is fielding Brian Vickers and A.J. Allmendinger), who knows. Allmendinger is off to a bumpy start and the team seems resigned to  an up and down season for him (with likely more downs) as he gets experience in his first year in Cup racing. Vickers is obviously the best bet to post some decent results,  but he’s going to need some help. He’s obviously got the talent to make it happen, but Red Bull needs to step up and provide him with a consistently competitive car, something they’ve shown no real talent for doing thus far in their F1 efforts, despite splashing around a lot of cash.

A group of investors led by Boston Red Sox owner John Henry has completed a deal to buy a 50 percent stake in the Roush Racing NASCAR team, a person familiar with the negotiations said Friday.

Although team owner Jack Roush is selling half of the team to the Fenway Sports Group, Roush will continue to run the team’s competitive operations, according to the person, who requested anonymity because the deal hasn’t been announced.

Both parties have scheduled a Feb. 14 news conference at Jackie Robinson Ballpark, a minor league facility near Daytona International Speedway.

No word yet on exactly how much Jack got for the 50% stake, but I imagine it’s a goodly sum. As far as the potential fallout from the deal, I doubt it’ll have much immediate impact on the operations or on-track performance of the Rousch cars, as Henry appears content to let Jack continue to run the show (although ol’ Jack will have to find something new to whine about now, as far as not having enough money to both develop a competitive Car of Tomorrow program as well as compete with Toyota and its free-spending ways).

In the long run, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more deals like this happen. It’s becoming more and more common for owners of professional sports franchises to expand their empires into other adjacent sports (with owners and/or investor groups owning MLB, NFL, NBA, and/or NHL teams, in various combinations), and there’s no reason to think that NASCAR would be immune to that.

At a certain scale, professional sports conglomerates start to more closely resemble a media provider more than anything else, and the easiest way for them to increase their profits is to keep expanding outward, bringing to bear their marketing clout to bear in as many arenas as possible.

“The main factor is the ownership part,” Earnhardt Jr. said Thursday at NASCAR’s annual preseason media day at Daytona International Speedway. “It has nothing to do with money and nothing else really. … My father has been gone for five, six years now. I want majority ownership. That’s basically it.”

It’s pretty rare that tricky situations involving death, inheritance, money, and family would be pretty clear-cut, as far as the correct resolution, but I think this is one of those situations.

Give Junior majority ownership. It’s just that easy.

(Contact me for bank wire details as far as where you can send my consulting fee, Teresa.)

I’ll admit that I’m a Junior fan and would tend to side with him, even if it was less clear-cut, but there’s no logical reason to be stubborn and fight the fact that he wants to be in charge of DEI. From a sheer dollars and cents prospective, it’d be a huge mistake to force him out of DEI over this issue, as he’d just make Richard Childress a whole boatload of money if you do that, money that would have otherwise remained in your boat.

As far as the operations of the team itself and results on the track, DEI hasn’t exactly had a laser-sharp focus of late, and this year could be even more schizophrenic if they don’t resolve Junior’s status soon. Would Junior be a great owner and whip everything immediately into tip-top shape? Honestly, I doubt it, as I don’t think he’s really ready for that role and responsibility. But it also wouldn’t make things any worse, and he’d be pretty damn personally motivated to go out there and post awesome results on the track, if he did get a majority ownership stake.

The last piece of the pie is simply the family tradition of racing. Ignoring everything else, does anyone honestly think that Dale Senior would want to see Junior forced out, when his desire was to step up and run DEI? They obviously didn’t have the most copacetic, peaceful of relationships, but I just can’t believe that he’d be happy with the current state of affairs, especially if this culminates in Junior leaving for another team, or to start up his own.

Which is a really long-winded way of saying give Junior what he wants. It’s the right thing to do, from whatever angle you want to examine the situation.

While you might normally question the timing of the move, with Daytona looming large in just a few days (thank you, wee baby Jesus baby for the season finally starting), it wasn’t completed unexpected. Mears’ move to the #25 was likely to result in a new crew chief, which it ultimately did.

Lots of people are tabbing Mears as a Chase contender this year, so it’ll be interesting to see how quickly the team and crew chief can ramp up, as they won’t be given the leeway for disappointing results that other new teams normally might get.

The hauler, carrying two Nextel Cup race cars, crashed along eastbound Interstate 10 near a U.S. Border Patrol highway checkpoint west of Sierra Blanca. Border Patrol agents say the hauler crashed into a motor home, causing it to hit a tractor trailer, which then hit a second big rig.

One person was taken to an El Paso hospital, about 80 miles west of the crash scene, while three others were taken to area hospitals with minor injuries. Their identities and which vehicle they were in were not immediately available.