FanHouse Kroger200

FanHouse's Geoffrey Miller is on location & blogging away at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for Sunday's 15th Running of the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard.



15 extra horsepower or not, Kyle Busch -- or more precisely Joe Gibbs Racing -- is still the Nationwide Series competition's biggest threat, as they showed Saturday night at Indianapolis' O'Reilly Raceway Park.

Busch led 197 of 200 laps to win the Kroger 200 Benefiting Riley Hospital for Children at the half-mile flat short track just five miles from the site of Sunday's Allstate 400 at the Brickyard.

First, we need something to cause every race fan to get chills of excitement:



The boys (and girls) are back in (my) town. And man, isn't that music on the video just awesome?

Yep, racing has returned to Indianapolis in the form of stock car racing for the 15th-straight year as the Sprint Cup Series lights up the engines Friday afternoon for the first practice session teams will be given to get prepared for Sunday's Allstate 400 at the Brickyard.

Wednesday afternoon, news started spilling out that was music to the ears of Clint Bowyer, Carl Edwards, and a vast number of fans as NASCAR took a step to decrease Toyota's horsepower by releasing a technical bulletin to all Nationwide Series teams saying:

"At all Events, unless otherwise specified, all engines with a cylinder bore spacing less than 4.470 inches must compete using a tapered spacer with four (4) 1.125-inch diameter holes."

"At all Events, unless otherwise specified, all engines with a cylinder bore spacing of 4.470 inches or more must compete using a tapered spacer with four (4) 1.100-inch diameter holes. Unless otherwise authorized, the carburetor restrictor will be issued by NASCAR."

Notice among all that technical jargon that there was never a mention of Toyota or the engines that Toyota Racing Development currently competes with. However, the only engine with "cylinder bore spacing of 4.470 inches or more" is the Toyota engine that so many people have cried foul about this season.

Of course, that engine has found victory lane 14 times in 21 races, and if you ask Bowyer, it's fast enough that a monkey could win with it.

Jason Leffler drove Toyota to victory lane for the first time in the NASCAR Busch Series after a nail-biting finish at O'Reilly Raceway Park. Fellow Toyota drivers David Reutimann and Mike Bliss gave the manufacturer a top 10 trifecta with their 3rd and 9th place finishes.

I've never been a huge fan of Leffler or the #38 team, but I was ecstatic about their win today, which makes for five top 5s and eight top 10s on the season. That team has struggled for the past several years--they lost Kasey Kahne to Evernham Motorsports, Shane Hmiel to drugs and several cars to the wall, many of them put there by Anthony Foyt IV. Speaking of Hmiel, he holds the record at ORP for most laps led by a non-winner (153).

What made Leffler's win even more exciting is that he is only the second non-Cup driver to win a Busch race this season (not counting Aric Almirola). But any race fan who skips Busch races thinking they aren't worth watching because of the Buschwhacking missed out on some fantastic racing today.

Until recently, I don't imagine Martin ever thought he'd ever be driving for Dale Earnhardt Inc. I sure didn't. And I certainly never thought he'd be driving for DEI in the Craftsman Truck Series, but that's what they reported tonight on "NASCAR Now" tonight.

After confirming the uncertainty of Regan Smith's future, it was mentioned that DEI will run two Busch teams and possibly a truck team with Martin behind the wheel. No idea if that means that DEI is acquiring the Ginn truck that Smith is racing this weekend at Indianapolis Raceway Park.

I do believe that this is Martin's dream situation--to be able to run a full-time season in the truck series--for the "fun" of it--as well as a part-time Cup season--for the cash.

Whatever else he was thinking about the "merger," Martin had to have been thrilled with this development. Speaking of Martin's thoughts... I've been dying to hear them. He has been outspoken about his confidence in Ginn, but I have to wonder if the firing of three drivers, two veterans like himself and a rookie he personally mentored, wrenched his gut a little.

Update: Mark Martin speaks: "It's not something I ever dreamed of happening."