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<< Previous   of   Next >>   ADVERTISEMENT   CONTACT THE HERALD Report scores and results to 425-339-3470 or 1-866-6-SCORES (Call after 4:30 p.m.) E-mail information including items for Tuesday's Communities Sports Roundup and Thursday's Outdoor Calendar, to sports@heraldnet.com Kevin Brown, Sports Editor kbrown@heraldnet.com   Published: Saturday, August 23, 2008 NASCAR notes: Most drivers love racing at Bristol Also items on Michael Waltrip and Jimmie Johnson By Mike Harris Associated Press For most NASCAR fans, there is nothing better than the Saturday night race at Bristol in August. There's just something magic about 160,000 fans packed into a tiered, football-style grandstand watching the lights play off the cars, seeing the sparks fly as they bottom out in the turns on the fastest half-mile oval in Sprint Cup. At least some of the drivers feel the same way, even though the 36-degree banking — the steepest in the sport — often creates some of the wildest action of the season, along with frayed tempers. Australian driver Marcos Ambrose, a regular in the Nationwide Series and a part-time driver in Sprint Cup this year, first saw the Tennessee track on a visit five years ago. He was already a racing star down under, but Ambrose decided that night he wanted to race in NASCAR. And now that he has driven several times at Bristol, the Aussie hasn't changed his mind. "It is a real intimidating place," Ambrose said earlier this week. "It is a real buzz to get back there and actually drive the track. "I had some fans with me to watch the first (Nationwide) race this year and they got debris in their beer cans," he added. "That's all they could talk about was how they were sitting so close that they got debris in their beer cans. Bristol is a great place. It's one of the best tracks we go to because of the atmosphere." Elliott Sadler is another driver who just loves going to Bristol. Sadler and his family regularly visited the track when he was a youngster growing up about five hours away in Emporia, Va. He also got his first Cup victory there while racing for the Wood Brothers in 2001. "People ask me all the time which racetrack is my favorite and before they can even get the question out I tell them it's Bristol," said Sadler, who now drives for Gillett Evernham Motorsports. "Bristol is racing heaven. A super fast short track with unbelievable banking, and it's only gotten better since they repaved it (after the spring race in 2007). "Now you can race high and low and it opens up the track for more passing and better racing. The two races at Bristol are by far my favorite of the year. Daytona is Daytona and Indy is Indy — they are historic, pressure-packed and prestigious — but Bristol is just awesome. Bristol is fun, fast paced, challenging, edge-of-your-seat racing — everything I love about racing." There is a downside to racing at Bristol. "You just have to realize that, more than likely, you're going to make someone mad or you're going to get mad at someone else," Martin Truex Jr. said. "You can't help it. You're turning 500 laps around the place. That's a lot of time to get into it with someone." The spring race is run on Sunday afternoon, but the summer event has been run at night for 30 years. "Races at Bristol are always crazy, but they seem to get a little wilder when we're racing at night," Truex said. "I don't know why the night races seem to have more wrecks. Maybe it's because the fans are so hyped up by the time the race starts, the drivers just feed off of their excitement." PLAYING CATCH-UP: Jimmie Johnson didn't win the Cup championship each of the past two years by being intimidated. Despite trailing points leader Kyle Busch and runner-up Carl Edwards through the 2008 season, Johnson remains confident that he can make a run for the title when the Chase for the championship begins four weeks from now. If the Chase began this week, Johnson, with two victories, would trail Busch, with eight wins, by 60 points and Edwards, with five wins — only four of them counting toward the Chase seeding because of a penalty — by 20 points. "I think we are there," Johnson said. "I think we are close. I think we are competitive. "We still need a little bit more speed to be in our comfort zone of what we want, but we have made a lot of progress over the summer. We just get into those final 10 (races) and see what happens." Johnson doesn't expect the Chase to be just a three-man show. "Carl has shown a lot of strength. I think we have over the last few weeks as well. Kyle has been rock-solid all year, so you know those three are the obvious ones," he said. "But when you get into the Chase and that points margin closes up, there are going to be some other guys we will need to think about and worry about as well. We are just going to keep doing our jobs and give 100 percent and, hopefully, get the job done." When the regular season ends at Richmond on Sept. 6, each of the top 12 drivers who make the Chase field will start with a base of 5,000 points. They will then be seeded, with 10-point bonuses for each win up to that point. MONKEY BUSINESS: Michael Waltrip has had a generally forgettable season. Other than finishing second at New Hampshire in a rain-shortened race, the two-time Daytona 500 winner's best finish came last week at Michigan, where he placed 19th. And he may have had a little outside help on that one. "In all of the years that I have been racing, I have never taken anything to my car like a good luck charm," Waltrip said. "But, at Michigan, a nice lady working in the NAPA suite handed me a furry monkey. She told me that I had a monkey on my back and she wanted me to put the monkey in my car so I could get the monkey off my back. "I carried it with me and I think we got it done. He just rolled around in my car and behaved. We ended up finishing in the top 20. We had a solid run. All I wanted to do was compete and be competitive. We accomplished that on Sunday." STAT OF THE WEEK: Heading into Saturday night's race, Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer, both battling for spots in the Chase, led the Cup series in consecutive races in which they were running at the finish. Harvick had finished 67 straight events, while Bowyer had run to the end in 60 in a row. Matt Kenseth, another driver fighting for the berth in the NASCAR postseason, was next with 28 straight.

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