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Garage Pass: Auto Racing Notes

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By TONY FABRIZIO The Tampa Tribune

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 21, 2008

BIG WINS ASIDE, DODGE HAS A LOT OF WORK TO DO

It's odd Dodge has won the season's two highest-paying NASCAR races, because this has been another tough year for the manufacturer overall.

Daytona 500 winner Ryan Newman and Sprint All-Star race winner Kasey Kahne are Dodge's highest-ranked drivers, and they're only 13th and 14th, respectively. Kahne doesn't have a top-five finish in a race that counts.

Through 11 points races, Dodge has managed only one victory, five top-five finishes and 89 laps led with 13 full-time drivers. By comparison, Toyota, in only its second season in Sprint Cup competition, has four wins, 16 top-fives and 1,593 laps led.

Dodge had only three victories last year - two by Kurt Busch on ovals and one by Juan Montoya on a road course.

Big talk heading into this season hasn't translated into much improvement.

GIBBS TRICKS? NOT IN 600

The reason Kyle Busch had a blistering-fast car in the all-star race was Joe Gibbs Racing used an experimental configuration in its Toyota engines for the non-points event.

Busch's engine suffered a fatal broken rocker arm and bent valves about halfway through the 100-lap race. Teammates Denny Hamlin and Tony Stewart also had engine failures - Hamlin while leading the race and Stewart before the race, forcing him to start in the back of the field after an engine change.

Gibbs builds all of its Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series engines in-house under the direction of longtime engine boss Mark Cronquist and will go for reliability in Sunday's Coca-Cola 600.

PROGRESS FOR NEXT 'LITTLE E'

Kasey Kahne finished third and an Earnhardt finished fifth - Jeffrey Earnhardt, that is.

Jeffrey, 18, is the middle child of Kerry and Renee Earnhardt. He's Dale Sr.'s grandson and Dale Jr.'s nephew, and he's part of Dale Earnhardt Inc.'s driver development program.

The race was Sunday's NASCAR Camping World regional series event at Iowa Speedway. Kahne raced in it less than 24 hours after collecting $1 million for his Sprint All-Star race victory. Earnhardt's DEI teammate Trevor Bayne finished fourth.

LOOSE WIRES

•Tampa's Michael Cherry grabbed sixth Saturday night at Motor Mile Speedway near Radford, Va., his best finish in his NASCAR Drive for Diversity rookie campaign. Cherry posts a blog at http://fastcherry.blogspot.com/.

•Speed Channel scored its highest rating in network history with Saturday night's telecast of the all-star race, earning a Nielsen mark of 3.74 (2,701,000 households). That was No. 1 among basic cable channels in the all-star time slot. The Tampa Bay numbers - a 3.09 average with a peak at 3.76 - were especially impressive, given Speed is an upgrade channel in parts of this market.

•How about Gil de Ferran's American Le Mans Series debut at Utah? With teammate Simon Pagenaud, the 2003 Indy 500 winner finished third overall with his new Acura LMP2 team.

HE SAID IT

"They were going to have to knock me out to get around me." - Denny Hamlin, on whether winner Kasey Kahne or anybody else could have passed him in the waning laps of the all-star race had his engine not failed.

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