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"THIS IS BETTY JACK DEVINE, AND I APPROVED THIS MESSAGE:"

Welcome, gay NASCAR fans! Congratulations to the DeVine 91/2's own Jeff Gordon! It was Jeff's second consecutive restrictor plate track victory, but unlike the white trash beer can-tossing competition that ensued at Talladega, the fans at Daytona gave this great racer the acclaim he deserves. Go #24! All eyes were on Gordon: Even though Biffle was defending champion, I don't think anyone expected him to repeat. It was fun, though, to see the booth guys introduce Greg's Boxer dog, Foster, and Foster's new daughter, whose name I did not catch.

In all, we had five guys in the top 10 on Saturday. Jr. is just 27 points behind Jimmie, so that could change anytime. Jr., Ryan, Kevin and Mikey broke even this week; Jeff, Kurt, Kasey and Mark picked up one; Tony moved up two; Elliott fell back three, and Jamie and Matt dropped two. Kasey, Jamie, Mark and Mikey would not be eligible for the chase for the championship if the season ended now. Given how shakily some of yellow-flag and other changes have work so far, you can be sure that NASCAR is walking the floor at night trying to figure out whether this new championship formula will be keep everyone interested or make it even harder to field 43 qualified cars and drivers each week. We shall see, dears...

I caught a good bit of the qualifying show on SPEED Thursday night when Jeff took the Bud pole for Saturday night. Tony Stewart was interviewed about his punishment for smacking Brian Vickers last week while Brian sat in his car after the Infinion race. (NASCAR put Tony on probation until Aug. 18, docked him 25 points, and fined him $50,000, but declined to make him sit out a race.) Tony knew he'd gotten off light and said he'd try to be better. On Sunday, the FOX guys were sort of taking up for Tony, saying that NASCAR had said "don't take your frustrations out on the track," but then when Tony went to Brian to settle it "man to man," NASCAR didn't like that either. (I mean, really! If you can't ram your car into someone, and you can't punch him, what's a rich, pissed-off driver supposed to do?)

Because there's just no better excuse for getting friends together than a night race, Dixie and I invited several of our pals over Saturday. Of course, everyone was running horribly late, as always, so we were actually glad about the two-hour rain delay. Dixie said she thought it would be good if all the night races started at 10, because that really gives everyone a chance to knock back a few drinks, get the pizza called in, and get all comfortable. What was annoying, though, was the way the announcers kept saying we were just "this close" to the green flag -- we finally stopped believing them and turned the hi-fi back up. (Of course, this is FOX, and they're still trying to convince us that the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction and attacked us on 9/11, so of course it should not surprise that they would mislead us about NASCAR as well!)

It was wonderful, as always to have the Rev. Hal Marchman lift us up to the Throne of Grace with his invocation. (If you missed last week's "Track Yack," go back and check it out -- I included some interesting information on the Rev. Marchman.) Singing the National Anthem was Josh Gracin, a handsome Marine who was on "American Idol 2."

When we finally got rolling, it was under yellow. The green flag actually dropped about 10 pm, much to the jubilation of all! Winner of the Gaytona award for the row we'd most like to smooch was the 16th -- that's where you could find Jamie AND Kasey! Um um good!

After the initial caution laps, we got our next yellow at lap 19 for a wreck that involved Ricky Craven, Matt Kenseth and Ward Burton. The third caution was at lap for 45 for John Andretti's single-car wreck after a tire goes down. During the pit stops, Bobby Hamilton Jr. sharp-turned and tore up the nose of the #42 car -- terrible news for Jamie at a track where aero and drafting are key! What was your hurry, Hamilton? Did you think there were some biscuits and gravy on that Havoline Dodge? This effectively ended Jamie's racing for the night. (Unusually, FOX had completely ignored our Jamie in the pre-race show -- even though they had to pad it out for two hours!)

At lap 55, Jr. took the lead from Mikey. June Bug led the cars into pit lane at lap 72 but lost the lead after an obviously sabotaging gang-bang where Jeff and Brian Vickers pulled sharply out of their stalls together and forced Jr. on to the wet grass! The caution was out again at lap 78 for the wreck of Mike Wallace and Brendan Gaughan. There were no more cautions; while several other guys led (including Tony, 142-153) and Jr., Jeff stayed strong and held every off, including Jr. who was coming hard at the end. I certainly expected some sort of late-race caution to set up the possibility for a huge wreck, but none was forthcoming. After the weather delay and a pretty exciting race, I guess NASCAR figured the fans had seen enough and would rate the night a success. I know everybody up in my trailer had a good time!

Well, gay NASCAR fans, the bad news is that FOX's part of the season is over, and now we have to rely on NBC for our NASCAR fix. The good news is that at least they're starting us off with a good weekend of racing action: you can check on qualifying on Speed at 4 pm on Friday (another good reason to bust out of the factory early!), plus the Busch race on Saturday and the Tropicana 400 Sunday. Have y'all ever partied in Chicago? Let me tell y'all, they tear it up! Let's all meet up down at the Track Bar!