NASCAR's Back!

We take a break from politics for a moment to celebrate the return of NASCAR racing to the sports scene. The timing couldn't be better for sports fans. Football is over, hockey on strike, and baseball hasn't yet opened Spring training. I was getting a little tired of getting my racing fix on Speed TV by watching bobsledding and boat races.

Saturday night under the lights at Daytona Speedway the Nextel Cup cars will take the track in anger for the first time this season. This first race is not part of the championship, but the Bud Shootout, a quasi all-star race featuring those drivers who qualifed either by winning a Bud Pole in 2004, winning the Shootout in some past year, or by being a past NASCAR Winston or Nextel Cup champion. Twenty cars will run 70 laps around the 2 1/2 mile quad oval beginning around 5 pm (PST) on Fox TV.

Since no championship points are involved, the guys will be racing strictly for the money ($211,500 to the winner) and the bragging rights, not to mention the right to run this race in the future. That can make for a pretty exciting event, and it's not unusual to see some risky moves that they wouldn't want to try in a points race.

Activity at Daytona will be fast and furious all week. The Cup cars will qualify Sunday morning and will run the twin 150 mile qualifying races on Thursday (the qualifying format at Daytona is a little too complicated to try and explain here - see NASCAR.com for the details).

Next weekend will be wall-to-wall racing. The inaugural 250 mile Craftsmen Truck Series race will run Friday night under the lights. Saturday morning the first race of the Busch Series, a 300 mile event, will run under the Florida sun (hopefully). And finally, the Daytona 500 will be run on Sunday morning. This is the Superbowl of NASCAR, which is kind of interesting as they run their biggest race the first weekend of the year instead of the last.

The TiVO is programmed and ready to go. Gentlemen, start your engines!