FanHouse David Stremme

Since we're a little late on this week's edition of Sprint Cup Notes & Quotes, we're gonna do both a rewind of last weekend's festivities at Dover and a bit on Wednesday night's Prelude to the Dream. Capisce? Capisce.

Prelude to the Twitter - Can't be in or around the booming metropolis that is Rossburg, Oh., (Pop: 224) for Wednesday night's Prelude to the Dream at Eldora Speedway? No problem, FH has you covered with live twittering from the fourth row up behind the start/finish line just for you! Follow us here: www.twitter.com/FanHouseRacing

Rain, for the love of Pete, go away - What happens when you invite 20-plus NASCAR drivers to compete in a charity race at a half-mile dirt oval? Well, they bring rain -- just as they have for three of the past four NASCAR event weekends.

The Essentials
Coverage: ESPN on ABC @ 3:00pm/ET
Green Flag: 3:45pm/ET
Distance: 312 laps/312 miles/500 kilometers
Other: Follow it on ESPN360 if available
Venue: Phoenix Int'l Raceway, sold out

Keep These in Mind...
1) Chasing Dreams - The second-to-last round of the Jeff and Jimmie Show: 2007 gets underway with the green flag. It's simple, Jeff Gordon has to overcome a 30-point margin in the next two races to win his fifth Nextel Cup title. Johnson has to beat him to claim his second.

Johnson averages a finish of one spot higher than Gordon at Phoenix, but Gordon was the last to win at the track in April.

2) Three-peat? Kyle Busch could become the first driver in NASCAR history to win in all three divisions on the same weekend. Busch took the victory in Friday night's Craftsman Truck Series race and followed that up with a Busch Series win Saturday night at PIR.

He starts 38th Sunday at Phoenix in the Nextel Cup race.

3) A Flavor of Indy in the Desert - For just the third time in history (thanks, Jayski!), three former winners of the Indianapolis 500 are in Sunday's race. Sam Hornish Jr., Juan Pablo Montoya, and Jacques Villeneuve all made the field.

Add in former open wheel drivers Patrick Carpentier, Casey Mears, Robby Gordon, and Tony Stewart and you see very quickly how quickly NASCAR has become the all-around proving ground for drivers.

4) Truex Strong in Practice - Martin Truex Jr. starts second at Phoenix but had the car to beat in Happy Hour practice yesterday. He ran the fastest lap of the session, followed by Kasey Kahne, Casey Mears, David Stremme and Jeff Gordon.

Chase point leader Jimmie Johnson was seventh on the time sheet.

Goodbye IndyCar ... Hello NASCAR.

You don't test and run an ARCA race unless you're seriously thinking about crossing over into stock cars.

Still no word one way or another from IRL Champion Dario Franchitti, but Chip Ganassi is getting him some track time this fall in preparation for Daytona in February.

"There's an open test [at Talladega] on Sept. 27th so we'll run that and then come back for the race."

Robin Miller suggests that CGR will announce the signing of Franchitti to a five-year deal to replace David Stremme in the #40 [Canadian Club?] Dodge as early as this week.

Previously in the Fanhouse
Robin Hood Strikes the IRL
IndyCar Champ to NASCAR Chump?
NASCAR Gains IRL Driver and Celebrity WAG

Travis Kvapil will return to the Cup series (yea!) replacing the retiring Ricky Rudd in the #88 Chevy in 2008--or sooner. Owner Robert Yates, 64, is also retiring and will turn the reigns of the renamed Yates Racing over to son Doug at the end of this season. The Roush Yates engine partnership will continue and Doug shall strive to grow Yates into a pre-eminent team like Roush Fenway.

Stremme Latest Free Agent
Car owner Chip Ganassi doesn't really want to let David Stremme go, but since losing the Coors sponsorship he has nothing to offer the driver for next season so he has not yet picked up his option. Career stats: 2 top 10s, 8 laps led. Ouch. But ... even with the Yates and DEI opening already filled, silly season is still going strong. There'll be somebody out there looking for a little experience.

I wonder ... if I were an owner, who would look more appealing ... Stremme? or Mayfield? Eh. I'd like more choices, but ... I'm going to have to go with Mayfield, baggage and all. A mere two seasons ago, he was contending for the championship. He hasn't forgotten how to drive. But first we'd have to have a come to Jesus meeting. Then again, Stremme is probably more marketable, so ... let's make that an undecided, dependent upon sponsors.

Scott Riggs has next. David Reutimann on deck.

Parlez-vous français?
In French, it's better concealed how bad it is. In English, it's painfully obvious.

Go Fish
Big Fish Games has launched a Roush Fenway Racing-branded gaming site for RoushFenway.com. Uh ... ok?

The air is still thick between Kasey Kahne and David Stremme since the Richmond incident that led Kahne to throw out that Stremme "fat and out of shape" and Stremme to lob back with "he has his own mental problems."

Both Dodge drivers showed up to tape a commercial Wednesday and reportedly didn't speak to each other during the entire eight-hour shoot.

Kahne:

"Yeah, that was a little awkward. We're trying to get some sponsors and some big deals going on right now, and I don't want to screw that up by getting in a fist fight or anything like that with David Stremme."

And here I thought Kahne was a lover, not a fighter.

Stremme:

"If he wants to act like a high school kid, then he can. We obviously have different opinions about what happened on the race track, and I think I'm in the right because there's a lot more people supporting my side of it.

"I think he has problems with a lot of people. I don't know. I am here to race and not worry about his problems."

Kahne:

"I've always had a hard time racing with him. I don't know why. When I'm around his car we just have problems. Racing with David hasn't ever worked for me."

Sounds personal to me.

Just put these two in the ring and be done with it. My money's on Stremme.

A few weeks ago, you could find each of these drivers in the Top 10 in NASCAR Nextel Cup Standings. For two of them, that is no more, and for one, two more weeks of horrendous finishes would make the three 3 for 3. Here's how it happened -- and cue the Tom Petty.

Jeff Burton
Following his win four races ago at Texas, Burton sat just 8 points behind point leader Jeff Gordon and looking poised to continue his surge to the top. The next week at Phoenix, Burton's team never got a good handle on his Impala, but managed a 13th-place finish. At Talladega, a crash took Burton out of the race after qualifying 42nd and then Sunday at Richmond, the team blew a motor.

Result: Burton now sits 5th in points, 339 points behind Gordon.

Kahne: Stremme Is Fat and Out of Shape

Kasey Kahne slides up the track and gets into David Stremme ... and then blames the contact on Stremme being being worn out late in the race 'cause he's fat and out of shape? Ouch.

Is it just me, or is Kahne a little out of touch with reality?

"We got to battling with Stremme and those guys, and my car was better. Everywhere I went, Stremme went. I was just confused on where he was going. He was going bottoms up, bottoms up. He was going all over the place. All the leaders were trying to pass him. I was a fast lapped car, and I was trying to pass him and he just got in the way like every weekend."

Everywhere he went, Stremme went? Stremme was clearly already there when Kahne clipped him. If his car was better, why wasn't he in front of Stremme?

I've got to side with Stremme on this one:

"He was a lap down and I easily passed him. He ran me out. That's all there is. He beat on me. He's having a bad year, but he doesn't need to take it out on everybody else."

At :50 to go:
I don't seem to know what all went down with them during the whole race or in previous races, but that particular incident looks all Kahne and spotter to me.

Besides that, Stremme's never looked better than he has this season. If that's "fat and out of shape," he wears it well.

Apparently, a driver earning a top 10 for the first time in his career is a pretty big thing, nowadays. David Stremme has been on top of that heap this week after finishing 10th at Texas on Sunday.

The career-best finish for Stremme has been a cornerstone in what looks to be a very solid start to a sophomore year in the Nextel Cup series for the South Bend, Ind. native. Stremme sits 12th in the points right now and has finished in the top 20 in every race this season except Martinsville. In this era of Hendrick, Roush, RCR, and Gibbs dominance, that's a pretty respectable finish for the Chip Ganassi Racing driver.

"That was a great top 10 finish, and it's a career best, but I thought we were headed for a better finish [at Texas]. Still, a top 10 at Texas is pretty good and we moved back up to 12th in the series standings. We've done what we set out to do in these first few races," said Stremme in the team's post race release.

Stremme endured a tulmutous first season with Ganassi, squeaking into 2007 with the same job after finishing 33rd in points. He had a couple flashes of brilliance last season, finishing 11th twice, but several DNF's didn't have the boss too happy.

Imagine this situation.

Coming into turn three at "The Quarter-Mile at Lowe's Motor Speedway", Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s crew chief Tony Eury, Jr. is leading the inaugural running of the Kobalt Tools Crew Chief Race. The Budweiser head guy has led a majority of the race of the Thunder Roadsters after bumping Steve LeTarte (Jeff Gordon), Alan Gustafson (Kyle Busch), and Larry McReynolds (FOX) out of the way.

Then -- wham!

Chad Knaus, 2006 Nextel Cup Champion Crew Chief of Jimmie Johnson, takes the win as Eury spins in turn four coming to the checkers in front of the entire grandstand.

Is there anything that wouldn't come out of the grandstands? (Hot dogs, Bojangle's Chicken, Dale Jr. die cast cars, coolers...)There can't be a large following in the grandstands that love Mr. Knaus -- both in and out of the Hendrick group. After all, the guy's been suspended for cheating and last week made a comment last week over the radio after Johnson won that didn't sound too favorable to Gordon's team, despite utilizing their setup.

Hello, launched beer cups.

Well, we're going to find out what this event actually produces at the Nextel All-Star Challenge in May. The crew chief event will be run prior, and will be carried live on SPEED's pre-race show.

The additional expected participants Billy Wilburn (Kyle Petty), Darian Grubb (Casey Mears), Gil Martin (Clint Bowyer), Jeff Hammond (SPEED), Jimmy Elledge (Reed Sorenson), Kevin "Bono" Manion (Martin Truex, Jr.), Larry McReynolds (SPEED), Paul Andrews (Bobby Labonte), Scott Miller (Jeff Burton), Steve Lane (David Stremme), and Todd Berrier (Kevin Harvick).

I'm looking forward to it, and I hope these guys realize that a spin and win of anything relating to the 8 car could be deadly.