Carpenter failed to make last Sunday's race at Talladega, and later had somewhat of a confrontation in plain view of the entire Talladega garage with his crew chief who blamed Patrick -- not the car -- as the reason the No. 10 car wasn't in the race.
Carpentier, who was already scheduled to leave the team at the end of 2009, later posted a response to the incident on his web site:
"I think it's a complete lack of respect," said Carpentier. "I never was shy to take the blame when I thought it was my fault, but here, everybody knows that it's like driving in a straight line."
"I've looked at the timing data and we were already three-tenths below the time we needed to qualify when I went below the line. I went low because I felt we had to try everything. I gave it all I had, but now he blames me? This is totally unacceptable. It's not as if my teammates were on the first row! They both ran slower than me!"
It's hard to deny Carpentier's logic, but at the same time, he and his publicist had to know that it was a risky move by posting the team's dirty laundry for everyone to see -- especially when its against a team that had a gossip-filled firing of Jeremy Mayfield a few years ago that revealed a team owner's relationship with a female driver, among other things.
On the Carpentier side of things, word came out Wednesday that Gillette-Evernham Motorsports has officially made NASCAR's favorite driving Canuck a free agent after his first season in a race car with fenders.
Carpentier is being let go effective at the end of 2008 in favor of the younger, more marketable but seemingly-similarly (say that five times) talented Reed Sorenson. Sorenson is departing Chip Ganassi Racing's No. 41 ride after having a disappointing foray into the Sprint Cup Series racing with that team.
Carpentier's story is one that just makes you want to frown and say "that just ain't fair" because of his noted improvement from when he started driving a NASCAR (hasn't even been a year yet) to now, on top of his interesting and always honest personality. Given the right opportunity with a patient car owner and sponsor, Carpentier could easily succeed as a solid driver in NASCAR.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like that's going to happen, and that's a shame.
Speaking of potential shames (Can you really make that plural? Probably not. Works for me, though.) the future relationship betwee Red Bull Racing and A.J. Allmendinger appears headed toward a crossroads in the very near future with a decision on 2009 coming soon.
But more telling of Franchitti's move was how quickly the idea by NASCAR owners to bring open-wheel talent to NASCAR's Sprint Cup Series with limited stock car experience at best became a bust.
Franchitti is the third driver to take the reins in NASCAR with intentions of making a long-term career move at the beginning of 2008 to succumb to the economics of NASCAR. In other words, open-wheel drivers with limited experience struggle early in their stock car careers and sponsors just don't want to spend money and time on such a move.
That list includes Franchitti, Jacques Villenueve and Patrick Carpentier, and leaves just one question.
Both are former open-wheel racing drivers. Both have struggled at times to get a strong foothold on NASCAR racing.
And both have now been strung along by their race teams, with Carpentier finally getting the word this week that his services aren't a top priority at his Gillette-Evernham Motorsports home. Allmendinger has yet to receive word on his 2009 plans.
Most people in the NASCAR world would have signed Allmendinger a month ago to an extended contract after the driver has shown an obvious improvement in not only finishing races, but qualifying for them, too. But Red Bull Racing isn't like most other teams.
The operation has its NASCAR base in North Carolina, but most of the big personnel decisions -- like hiring a driver -- are handled by the ownership group in Red Bull's native country Austria. And that ownership group is used to the Formula One train of thought when it comes to driver decisions of waiting until September or October to make plans for the following year.
That has got to be frustrating to Allmendinger for many, many reasons -- the least of which is Scott Speed.
And as he did so, rookie Canadian driver Patrick Carpentier in first year with GEM's No. 10 car could read the writing on the wall.
Simply, the team was placing him on the back burner of its sponsorship search -- meaning he more than likely won't be in a sponsored car if he decides to stick with the GEM team in 2009 because the emphasis will now be on Sorenson.
"They hired Reed Sorenson for next year, so it's over," Carpentier says. "They're working on a fourth team and looking for sponsorship, but you know how that goes."
So Carpentier says he's a free agent. "I'm talking with other teams to see what's out there," the Montreal native says.
I'd classify what was said by Carpentier as another round of those "you can't blame him"-type comments.
Reed Sorenson isn't waiting for Chip Ganassi Racing to figure out the Car of Tomorrow.
The 22-year-old driver signed a multiyear contract to join Gillett Evernham Motorsports next season, where he'll join Kasey Kahne and Elliott Sadler.
Sorenson said his decision to leave Ganassi, where he began his NASCAR career as a precocious 18-year-old, was difficult but necessary.
"I'm going over here to try to make myself a better racecar driver," Sorenson said during a conference call Tuesday shortly after the announcement. "I wanted to be more competitive and I wanted to have some more opportunities to win races and things like that."
For Sorenson fans, this is great news, but for Patrick Carpentier fans it's probably not.
FanHouse's Geoffrey Miller is on-location at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for Sunday's 15th Running of the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard.
It's a good day to be a driver from Australia or Canada in Indianapolis.
Both drivers representing their respective countries managed to qualify for their first Allstate 400 at the Brickyard Saturday morning at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the session's go-or-go-home finale.
Australian Marcus Ambrose, who announced just last week that he would be jumping from the Nationwide Series to the Sprint Cup Series full-time in 2009 with the creation of JTG Daughtery Racing, qualified for his first oval race. Needless to say, he was excited:
"I've never been so anxious and nervous and apprenhensive all my life. Two laps on the race track here at the Brickyard, which is so famous and so intimidating as well, I just had to suck all that up and let her rip," said Ambrose.
"We're racing against the big boys and we qualified ourselves in on merit. It means an awful lot to me. I feel like today I've made it. I feel like we're in the Brickyard."
Now isn't refreshing to hear a guy who is that excited to make the race? Ambrose's run is all that more impressive because his team had just two laps in practice on Friday thanks to NASCAR rules that allow Top-35 cars to go through technical inspection first.
Busch, who has pulled triple duty in all three of NASCAR's top divisions on a couple of race weekends in 2008, has been quite a busy guy while riding trains, planes, and automobiles to get to each race on those adventuresome weekends. (OK, maybe he's not been on any trains, but you get the picture.)
And Carpentier doesn't want any of that business, so he's decided to focus all of his efforts on winning the NASCAR Nationwide Series race in Montreal on Aug. 2 instead of skipping back and forth between that event and the Sprint Cup race at Pocono Raceway.
The road course event in Montreal is essentially what got Carpentier into Gillette Evernham Motorsports' No. 10 Sprint Cup ride one year ago after he nearly won the event in his first NASCAR start and sat on the pole.
It was quite an impressive effort for the former open-wheeler, and his first full-time season in Sprint Cup has had about as much success as one would expect from a true stock car rookie. He sat on the pole at New Hampshire and recorded his best finish of 14th at Daytona just three weeks ago.
The No. 10 currently sits 39th in owner point standings.
By the time drivers should be reaching lap 100 around 3pm/ET in Sunday's Lenox Industrial Tools 301 -- 301? Really? -- the track might be a little damp thanks to weather in the area.
The forecast for the Loudon, New Hampshire area is for a 50% chance of heavy rain Sunday afternoon and a higher chance Sunday night. Glancing at the radar from the National Weather Service, rain is moving towards the area, but it doesn't look to be an all-day soaker.
The rain could do a favor for Patrick Carpentier after he shocked the NASCAR world Friday afternoon by putting his No. 10 Dodge on the pole for the Sprint Cup event. If the race gets postponed -- my money is that it won't -- then Carpentier will stay in the headlines for another day.
It is interesting, though, to see how this season especially NASCAR has gotten away from pushing up the start of a race due to an impending weather situation. The sanctioning body in the past has pushed through pre-race activities as fast as possible to get another 15-30 minutes ahead in the racing schedule, mainly to ensure that the race goes to halfway.
To me, at a track like New Hampshire without lights and thats a 15-hour drive from the team shops in North Carolina, it'd make sense to remove the threat of having to stay at the race track until Monday afternoon.
Hopefully, though, Sunday's race will get in as planned.
Be sure to come back to the FanHouse Sunday night for plenty of race coverage and some announcements of interactive opportunities coming up this week.
Candian Patrick Carpentier sat on the pole and finished 2nd in his first-ever NASCAR race at Montreal last Satuday.
This Sunday, he's expecting to sport Valvoline colors for Evernham Motorsports.
Because the No. 10 that Scott Riggs usually campaigns is out of the top-35 in owner points, Ray Evernham decided that putting in a road course guru might be beneficial.
Evernham has already made it quite clear in early July that he doesn't see Riggs as part of the long-term future, anyways.
Evernham said negotiations to extend the contract of Scott Riggs, who has missed the past two races and is 36th in points, continue. But he wasn't quite as adamant that Riggs will be a part of the organization in 2008 as he was three weeks ago.
"He's a good little guy," Evernham said. "I just feel bad for what's going on with him."
There's so many things demeaning with that statement, and not the least of it is the diss on Rigg's height.
Reed Sorenson's future seat at Gillette-Evernham Motorsports might get a little cold before he takes the reigns of his new Dodge after Patrick Carpentier got the boot from the organization Tuesday afternoon.
Patrick Carpentier
Dario Franchitti
Reed Sorenson
You can now call Reed Sorenson 
It's a good day to be a driver from Australia or Canada in Indianapolis.
As of noon local time Sunday, the .jpg)
Candian Patrick Carpentier sat on the pole and finished 2nd in his first-ever NASCAR race at Montreal last Satuday.
