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Heading to Loudon, Carl Edwards trails by 127 points behind Kyle Busch and hopes to close the gap in the NASCAR Nationwide Series point standings. Carl finished in the top five at this race last year and hopes to take home the win Saturday when the race starts at 3PM on the ABC network.

Photo by Icon Sports Media

Am I awake yet? Is this race over yet? Far too many yellows, even for Darlington. But the Old Geezer won another one………

Geezers: OK, so SirMark’s gonna take a poke at another full time ride in ’10. Goodie for him, but this leaves a promising driver (BradK) out on his ear. One way they can make this work (under the max 4 car rule) is if Jr. gets a car into Cup next year. He’s been toying with the idea, but now the Markmeister is pushing his hand. Could there be some back room negotiations with Rick? Hmmm.

NASCAR Sprint Cup Racing posted a 5.0/12 (8.1 million viewers) on Sunday for the race from Talladega. Though that’s down -12 percent from last year’s 5.7/13 for the same race, Sunday’s telecast was the top-rated event of the weekend, and was FOX’s highest-rated and most-watched NASCAR event in nearly two months. Sunday’s race opened with a 4.4/12 (6.9 million viewers), and grew steadily throughout the race peaking at a 6.6/15 (10.8 mill). Season-to-date, NASCAR Sprint Cup Racing on FOX is averaging a 5.5/11 (9.2 million viewers), down -13 percent from last year’s 6.3/13, but remains the highest-rated and most-watched sport in season.

Good golly.

You can’t visit a website or read a paper where they are not talking about Carl Edwards’ last lap crash at Talladega.

Now, I am not a NASCAR driver nor do I pretend to be.

But I am a race fan and I love the racing at Talladega.

I give the drivers a lot of credit for getting into those cars at this track knowing what the outcome may be. You may not get up into the fence as Edwards did, but you just might get caught up in a wreck that is not your fault.

But hey, can’t that happen at just about every track?

Photo by Steve Langley of MotorSportsNews.Net; click photo to view full size version

Our staff photographer, Steve Langley, was able to attend the Aaron’s 499 racing weekend on a media pass, and took some fantastic photos…

Here’s a small sample.

Now it’s time for some real racing, real close, and real fast. This is the race the veteran fans look forward to each year. Talladega is rich in history for some of the most exciting racing of all the tracks. One small mistake out there and, let’s just say, don’t make any mistakes.

Talladega Superspeedway completed its fourth repaving on Sept. 19, 2006. The new surface should be ready for some better grip and hopefully tires won’t be an issue at this race. Hendrick Motorsports has won 10 races, more than any other organization. Mark Martin has been of fire with pole positions lately so watch for this team to do well this weekend.

Mark Martin broke his winless streak of 97 races by overtaking Ryan Newman, who stayed out after a late race caution for Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s wreck. Newman took a chance on older tires but was no match for Martin, who overtook the #39 Newman, and passed him for the final time claiming his 36th career win. He started on the pole.

Mark has had a good start of the season, and now has a win with Hendrick Motorsports and three poles in the #5 Chevrolet. “No burnouts for me,” he radioed his crew. “Just a backward Polish victory lap for my man Alan Kulwicki.” Many drivers and crew members were anxious to congratulate Martin on his win on pit road and in the winners circle.

I’m not sure what happened… I sent out the Stock Car Gazette at my usual time this morning (6:30 AM ET), but I didn’t receive it until about 7 hours later.  So I couldn’t post it out here until now…  here it is.

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T H E * S T O C K * C A R * G A Z E T T E
by MotorSportsNews.Net

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motorsportsnews.net/you-can-know-for-sure
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This is probably the LAST Stock Car Gazette of 2008…. so we’d like to wish a HAPPY NEW YEAR to all our subscribers and readers!

Please mention us to your stock car and motorsports friends… that’s how we grow.

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T H E * S T O C K * C A R * G A Z E T T E
by MotorSportsNews.Net

Do you know for sure?
motorsportsnews.net/you-can-know-for-sure
____________________________________________________________

NASCAR's official statement on declaring the winner as Tony Stewart is, according to Mike Helton, "During the last lap of [Sunday's] race at Talladega Superspeedway the driver of the No. 01 violated NASCAR policy by driving under the yellow line to improve his position. In NASCAR's opinion he was not forced below the yellow line. NASCAR correctly took immediate action to enforce the policy by penalizing the No. 01 and scoring the No. 20 as the race winner."

This NASCAR policy was issued in a written statement during the drivers meeting prior to the race at Talladega, which reads as follows;

O.K. I've never seen a right rear tire blow like that one did. That was huge!
Honestly, I'm surprised that the impact in the wall wasn't greater. The amount of damage caused by the wall pales by comparison to the damage done by the thermal-nuclear tire.
I'm just glad that those involved in the wreck are all right, it could have been a lot worse than what it was.
Photo Credit - Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR