FanHouse Daytona

Saturday night's Coke Zero 400 at Daytona will mark the official midway point of the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup season. Naturally, it's a great time to review what we've seen so far from the Cup boys, their teams, the series and the tracks. First, we'll start with the not-so-hot performers:

Motorsports FanHouse Grade: F

Dale Earnhardt Jr. - It's been easy to see why the season for driver No. 88 has earned a failing grade. He's been slowly -- very slowly -- improving of late, but still has no chance for the Chase in 2009 and has one track left with a great chance to win at -- Daytona.

After what the Charlotte Observer is calling a "loud confrontation" at a Manchester, N.H., hotel prior to last Sunday's Lenox 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, TNT play-by-play announcer Bill Weber won't be returning to the booth in 2009.

The network announced the move Wednesday, and also confirmed that Ralph Sheheen will continue in the replacement role for the final two TNT races this weekend in Daytona Beach and next at Chicagoland.

Sheheen did a bang-up job in his first coverage of a Sprint Cup race on Sunday, but the bigger question surrounds what exactly Weber did to force himself out of the booth for what will ultimately be half of TNT's NASCAR coverage.

It's quite easy to think that after the season's first two races, Jeff Gordon's 2009 appears headed in one direction.

A direction, that is, that will lead to his four Sprint Cup championship trophies earning a fifth partner on Gordon's mantle.

But lest we get caught up in the hype -- or is it desire? -- of seeing one of the sport's icons rise back to the top before realizing that the No. 24's disappointing 2008 started out in much the same fashion.

That didn't take long.

NASCAR's newly-revised drug abuse policy -- instituted with a heavier hand and heavier rules for 2009 -- picked up its first positive test following the sport's season opening events last weekend in Daytona Beach, Fla.

That test belonged to Paul Chodora, an over-the-wall crew member for Jeremy Mayfield's No. 41 upstart race team.

Former Sprint Cup driver Kyle Petty made some interesting comments last weekend at Daytona that were somewhat swept under the rug.

Of course, the factors of the race being the biggest on the circuit and the controversy that followed will often do that news stories of smaller value.

However, Petty's words indicated that there was obviously a healthy dose of tension between him and the rest of the leaders at the now-former Petty Enterprises -- including his father, Richard -- thanks to the business moves the team has made in the past year.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Here's a few rumblings and bumblings from a soggy evening at Daytona:

Are television viewers more important than full races? I think its a very valid question to wonder why NASCAR is so willing to push the snooze button later and later on Sunday afternoons with the start times of its Sprint Cup Series races.

It was just eight years ago that the Daytona 500 started at 12:30pm local time, while Sunday, it started after 3:40pm local time. The reason? Television ratings and commercial advertising rates go up the later in the day thanks to West Coast viewers and the "prime time" effect kicking in on the East Coast.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- It wasn't a full race, but for the driver from Cambridge, Wisc., it's still the Daytona 500.

Matt Kenseth, driver of the No. 17 Roush Fenway Racing Ford, won the rain-shortened 51st running of the Daytona 500 Sunday night after NASCAR stopped the event 48 laps from the scheduled distance.

DAYTONA BEACH, FLA. -- After the dust settled in Daytona from Tony Stewart's verbal lashing of Goodyear and later his win in the Nationwide Series race, there were a few other things that are worth noting from the garage area:

Bowyer, Edwards get in some good-natured ribbing

Towards the end of the post-race press conference for second-place and Missouri-native Carl Edwards and third-place Clint Bowyer after Saturday's Nationwide Series race, the two drivers got on the topic of Daytona's plan to resurface the 2.5-mile superspeedway.

"I like the fact that his track gets rougher and slicker and there's different grip levels all over it. I was kind of sad to hear they were going to repave it," said Edwards. "I wish they'd just kind of patch it up or do whatever they do."