NASCAR has suspended all testing at its sanctioned tracks next season in a cost-cutting measure that should help teams save several million dollars in their 2009 budgets.

The moratorium, announced Friday at Homestead-Miami Speedway, bans testing at any NASCAR-sanctioned track, including facilities where its low-level Camping World East and West series races.

“Hopefully, it’s a temporary situation,” said NASCAR president Mike Helton, who estimated the move will save “in the range of 10s of millions (of dollars) to the industry.”

The suspension is an about-face from just a few months ago, when NASCAR considered expanding the testing schedule to as many as 24 days at any track. It also includes the traditional “preseason” Daytona 500 testing, which NASCAR used to promote its season-opening showcase event.

“The ultimate decision was that the best-case scenario was no means no, and it being applied across the board for the entire season,” Helton said. “There are other ways we can promote the start of the season.”

Reaction was mixed among drivers, who generally loathe the midweek test sessions but value the data that’s gathered. Although Jimmie Johnson is poised to win his third consecutive Sprint Cup title in Sunday’s season finale, he struggled at the start of the year with NASCAR’s new car and used extensive testing to kickstart his season.

“I think it’s a mistake,” Johnson said. “I do understand and recognize that we need to cut expenses. … Now we’re going to need to focus on other ways to collect data or create simulation programs or machines to create on-track activity and then test at tracks that may not work and on tires we won’t race on and try to find a baseline.

“It’s going to slow things down and make it more expensive. We still have to get on the track. We still have to test. We cannot sit still.”

The testing ban comes as NASCAR is trying to cut costs to save struggling teams. Sponsorship dollars are extremely difficult to find, and several teams are in danger of folding if they can’t find a miracle or a merger.

Chip Ganassi Racing and Dale Earnhardt Inc. agreed this week to combine their teams next season, and the partnership resulted in 100-plus layoffs at DEI. The Wood Brothers, who have been in NASCAR since 1953, lost the Air Force as a sponsor this week when it said it was moving to Gillett Evernham Motorsports next year.

Furniture Row Racing, an independent one-car team based in Denver, Colo., said it will run a limited schedule in 2009. The Furniture Row company both owns the team and sponsors the No. 78 driven by Joe Nemechek.

Carl Edwards, who drives for Roush Fenway Racing’s five-car team, applauded the decision because of the immediate cost relief it will give teams.

“I think it gives a little bit of relief to the teams as far as expenses and the team owners,” Edwards said. “As long as everyone operates on the same rules, you are going to have nearly the same competition whether you can test every day of the year or not test at all.”

Estimates vary on how much testing actually costs. Rick Hendrick said it can run about a $1 million per car, while Ray Evernham said every test costs around $70,000.

“It is very, very expensive to go track testing,” Evernham said.

The current testing policy was seven tests over 15 days at tracks selected by NASCAR. Teams also could rent time at NASCAR tracks that don’t host Cup races — Nashville, Kentucky, Memphis — and were free to test at any facility not on the NASCAR schedule.

NASCAR can’t control teams from testing at tracks it doesn’t sanction, and Johnson was certain his Hendrick Motorsports team will put together a busy schedule at those facilities next year.

Helton said the ban is for a “pretty good community of race tracks,” but admitted the sanctioning body can’t stop teams from going to the handful of facilities it doesn’t govern.

“It’s more challenging, if not impossible, to have an enforcement element that we can lean on and utilize,” Helton said.

It creates an interesting dilemma for NASCAR, which also wants the second-tier teams to catch up to the super teams of Hendrick, Joe Gibbs Racing, Roush Fenway Racing and Richard Childress Racing. Those four organizations can and will test aggressively at non-NASCAR tracks, while teams short of cash may not be able to afford that luxury.

“At the end of the day, speed equals dollars. It’s the formula in racing, it’s the way it works,” Johnson said. “At the end of the day, the only way we’re going to beat Roush, or Childress or Yates or Ganassi or any of the teams out there, is by finding more speed and technology and that takes money to do. No matter how you try to fold the rules, you can’t change that.

“We’ve got to do what we’ve got to do to win.”

Robbie Loomis, vice president of Petty Enterprises, said an additional worry is how the lack of additional track time will hurt rookie drivers.

“Rookies like (Joey) Logano need to spend a little bit more time in Nationwide, and I think a rule like this will make people look at them a little different before they bring their driver up,” Loomis said. “Jimmie Johnson was in Nationwide a couple years before he came to Cup. But when Jimmie Johnson came here, he was ready to go.” Helton said NASCAR is studying several other ideas, including adding a day of track-time to the weekend schedule and giving rookies more practice time.

For the second time in as many events, the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour will visit Stafford (Conn.) Motor Speedway and take the green flag for the TSI Harley-Davidson 150 on Friday, May 23.
Following a month layoff since the last race, also at Stafford on April 27, the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour will get back on the half-mile track for the one-day show.
Action will begin with an afternoon practice session and evening qualifying that will precede the first night race of the 2008 season. Read the full story

An attempt has been made to burn the Ministry of Culture Youth and Sport Head Office in Georgetown. This comes in the wake of public statements by one political party saying it will not support CARIFESTA X. The Ministry of Culture Youth and Sport is organizing the event in August. Two channa bombs which were thrown at the Ministry’s head office Friday night failed to ignite. Reports are the bombs were thrown from a car which drove away.

A police report says two men armed with firearms exited the vehicle and discharged a number of rounds at the northern side of the Ministry, shattering windows and damaging the wall. They also threw two channa bombs at the building, one of which exploded scorching a blind at one of the windows, before escaping.

The police have recovered a number of spent shells at the scene. No report has been received of anyone being injured. the release says police responded promptly to the reports and roadblocks/cutoffs have been established at strategic locations while mobile police patrols are scouring the city in efforts to locate the gunmen. Read the full story

You can always count on H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler to put on a riveting dog-and-pony show about this time every year. Well, at least a dog show anyway.
Wheeler, the president and general manager of Lowe’s Motor Speedway, went to the dogs Wednesday to reveal his annual pick of the winner of this Saturday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup All-Star Race at his track
Using four breeds of dogs to illustrate his logic, it wasn’t the audience that flipped out in the end when driver Carl Edwards was tabbed as Wheeler’s top choice. Nope. This time, the driver whose signature move after race victories is a backflip off the door frame of his No. 99 Roush Fenway Racing Ford took a back seat to a fox terrier named Princess.
And Princess did not take a bow. She took two backflips of her own on center stage before a curious gaggle of spectators and media at One Wachovia Center in uptown Charlotte.
Wheeler said it came down to Edwards, Tony Stewart and Kyle Busch when he was trying to figure out who to pick this year. His success rate in recent years has tailed off dramatically after he first gained a large reputation by accurately selecting the correct winners of the race on his first five attempts, beginning in 1989. He made it six correct picks out of his first seven attempts when he chose Jeff Gordon in 1995 — but in the 12 years that have followed, he has correctly picked only two more winners. He last was successful when he chose Jimmie Johnson in 2003.

Add “most hated man in NASCAR” to the growing list of nicknames for Kyle Busch.

He can try to run, but Busch cannot hide from what went down in the closing laps of Saturday night’s Crown Royal Presents the Dan Lowry 400 at Richmond International Raceway.

Just when it looked like Dale Earnhardt Jr. was finally going to snap a 71-race winless streak – the longest of his Cup career – Busch’s right-front fender got into Earnhardt’s side, spinning him into the wall.

At the time, Earnhardt was leading the race, and with only four laps to go things were looking oh so promising for him and his millions of minions. Read the full story

In a heartbreaking race for Virginia native Denny Hamlin and victory-starved Dale Earnhardt Jr., Clint Bowyer stole a win in Saturday night’s Crown Royal 400 at Richmond International Raceway.

In fact, Bowyer’s victory was merely a footnote during an evening that produced high drama in NASCAR’s top series. Within three laps of a victory that would have ended a two-year, 71-race drought, Earnhardt Jr. smacked the outside wall in Turn 3 after Kyle Busch slid up the track into Junior’s No. 88 Chevrolet as the two drivers battled for the lead on Lap 398. Busch held off Mark Martin to finish second, after angry fans threw beer cans over the catch fence onto the track as the cars circled under the caution period leading up to a green-white-checkered finish. Tony Stewart posted a solid fourth-place finish, followed by Martin Truex Jr.

Bowyer, who won for the first time this year and the second time in his career, pulled away on the two-lap dash that extended the race 10 laps beyond its scheduled distance.

Hamlin had the race’s dominant car, but the No. 11 Toyota wasn’t a factor at the end. Hamlin led a track-record 381 laps before surrendering the top spot to Earnhardt on Lap 383 after developing a slow leak in his right-front tire. Hamlin finished 24th, three laps down. Earnhardt salvaged a 15th-place result and remained third in the championship standings. Read the full story