This Week in Auto Racing April 4 - April 6

NASCAR

Samsung 500 - Texas Motor Speedway - Fort Worth, TX

After two weeks of bumping and banging on the short tracks at Bristol and Martinsville, the high-speed Texas Motor Speedway is this weekend's destination.

Where last week Jeff Gordon finished second despite smashing the front nose of his car in an early race incident, this week the idea is to keep the nose and fenders completely clean. Aerodynamics are of utmost importance at a track where qualifying speeds are around 193 m.p.h.

Jeff Burton, already a winner this year, is the defending champion. The No.31 Richard Childress Racing driver and current series points leader won at Bristol. Burton has finished no lower than 13th (Daytona) in any race this season and his third-place finish last week coupled with Kyle Busch's problems gave the Virginia native the top spot in the standings.

"It is early to be talking about it," Burton said. "We know that everybody's going to step it up. If we continue to run the way we're running now come July, that will be running 20th. So we've got to find a way to be better."

Burton could easily have been better than third at Martinsville, but he got caught up behind rookie Michael McDowell.

I never felt like Kyle (Busch) impeded me," said Burton in the post-race interview. " The No.00 (McDowell) did. No one expects anybody just to move out of the way all day long. But there is a time when you do move out of the way."

Burton, known as one of the cleanest and respectful drivers in the sport, knows the difference. I'm sure McDowell will get the message.

But it shows that the fire is still there in Burton's belly and that he might be ready for a season-long championship run.

What also showed at Martinsville was that Hendrick Motorsports has not disappeared. All four HMS drivers grabbed a top-10 finish on Sunday and had the race run five laps longer Gordon might have caught Denny Hamlin.

"Our car was unbelievable the first half of the race," said Gordon. "And we played some pit strategy that I really felt like was the right call. We took four tires as soon as we could make it on fuel, but the car never took off.

"I was trying to figure out why my car had no grip out there the last several laps. Then I got out of the car and I understood why. Man, we were racing in the rain. I knew it was spitting on the windshield, but I had no idea just how bad it was."

And yet Gordon cut a six-second Hamlin lead to 0.398 second at the checkered flag.

Gordon doesn't have a great record at the Texas Motor Speedway, but don't bet against him. This is one of only two current tracks where the No.24 Dupont Chevrolet driver has not been to Victory Lane (the other is New Hampshire), but he does have seven top-10s in 14 career starts.

And despite all the talk about the demise of HMS, Gordon is sitting in ninth place overall and could be much higher.

Gordon had the dominant car in the Auto Club 500 before the race was postponed and run on Monday under completely different conditions. He was in second place at Las Vegas when he and Matt Kenseth collided, sending the No.24 hard into the inside retaining wall. In Atlanta he won the pole, but could only come home with a top-five. And yesterday, he was charging at Hamlin as the checkered flag came out.

This week Gordon checks the Texas Motor Speedway off his "to do" list.

Nationwide

O'Reilly 300 - Texas Motor Speedway - Fort Worth, TX

As with the Sprint Cup Series, the Nationwide Series saw a change on top of the standings after its last race. Kevin Harvick sat out the Pepsi 300 in Nashville and fell to seventh overall while Clint Bowyer finished second to take over the points lead.

Bowyer and 2007 Nationwide Series champion Carl Edwards (-11 points) appear to be in a season-long battle for supremacy. Last year, Edwards built a huge lead (over 700 points) and coasted to the title. It doesn't look as if that strategy will work this time around. Bowyer has become a force both in this series and the Sprint Cup Series.

While Bowyer and Edwards are on top of the standings its very nice to see some youngsters on the list.

Twenty-four year-old Brad Keselowski and 23-year old Kelly Bires are sixth and eighth, respectively, while 20-year old Steve Wallace is 15th.

Keselowski has three straight top-six finishes. He could also have easily earned the first win of his career, but a rare mistake by veteran Mark Martin cost the youngster his shot.

It was in Las Vegas and late in the race Keselowski's No.88 JR Motorsports Chevrolet was holding off Edwards. Martin closed in on the pair and accidently clipped Edwards sending him into Keselowski. Keselowski finished 23rd, but deserved a much better fate.

Bires has been consistent through the first six races and finished a career- best fifth in Nashville, even leading a lap.

"It's been a really good start to the season," said Bires on his website. "Being a full-time Nationwide only team, it's tough to compete with these Cup affiliated teams week in, week out.

"Our strongest point would probably be our mile and a half program," he continued. "That's where we've had success so far this year so we are looking forward to races like Texas."

Although Bowyer and Edwards will vie for this week's win, expect Harvick to be back in the mix too. He returns to a track where he as won a series-high four times. Harvick won the spring race in 2001 and has captured the last three fall races at Texas. Driving his own equipment for the first time in his career, Harvick is on a hot streak having collected four consecutive top-10s.

INDYCARS

Honda GP of St. Petersburg - Streets of St. Petersburg - St. Petersburg, FL

Scott Dixon led most of last year's IndyCar drivers to the top of the charts in the season opener at Homestead. There were a couple of reason's that no 2007 CART driver finished in the top-10.

Many of the CART drivers were visiting an oval for the first time in their career. And the teams had just received their race cars only a couple of weeks ago at the most giving them almost no time to test and adjust the cars before the race.

One of those variables will be gone this week when the series travels to the streets of St. Petersburg. Now the driver advantage will be gone as the CART drivers will be more at home turning left AND right. They will still be way behind on car performance, but the margin should be much less.

It will probably take at least half the season before the CART guys are ready to compete.

Still it was great to see the unified 25-car field take the green flag last Saturday night. The race was Tony Kanaan's to win until rookie Ernesto Viso spun right in front of him and he clipped the Venezuelan's left rear corner.

From there it was all Scott Dixon and he won for the second time at Homestead breaking Dan Wheldon's three-race win streak.

It's on to St. Petersburg where Helio Castroneves has won the last two. The Brazilian finished fourth in the opener, but didn't seem to have the pace that Kanaan, Marco Andretti and Dixon had.

"We just didn't have the speed that the top few guys had, thankfully, we were able to stay out of trouble and bring home a solid fourth-place finish," said Castroneves after the race. It should be interesting to see if that was just for one race, or a season long problem for Team Penske.

FORMULA ONE

Bahrain Grand Prix - Bahrain International Circuit - Sakhir, Bahrain

The series is two events into the 2008 Formula One season and the results have been confusing to both fans and experts.

At the season opener in Australia, McLaren dominated. Second-year driver Lewis Hamilton won the pole, drove a mistake-free race and came home with the victory and 10 points. His new teammate Heikki Kovalainen finished a solid fifth.

Meanwhile, Ferrari's Felipe Massa suffered a first-lap crash that ended his day almost before it began. And Massa's teammate, 2008 World Champion Kimi Raikkonen lasted until lap 53 when his engine turned sour and he pulled the No.1 Ferrari to the side of the road. It was only because of a penalty to Rubens Barrichello that Raikkonen moved in the eighth and final points-paying position. Total points for McLaren - 14, for Ferrari - one.

One week later at the Sepang Circuit in Kuala Lumpur, it was a totally different story.

Massa captured the pole with Raikkonen alongside him on the front row. This time it was Raikkonen who took control and he cruised to a relatively easy 19.570-second victory. If not for a Massa driving error on lap 30, it would likely have been a one-two finish for Ferrari. Kovalainen led the McLaren contingent with a third-place finish, but they could never generate the speed that Ferrari displayed.

So which race was the real indicator of things to come?

Maybe the answer will come in Bahrain this Sunday. In the four years of the event, Ferrari has won twice, in 2004 with Michael Schumacher leading a one- two sweep and last year with Massa winning while Raikkonen took the final podium spot.

McLaren has never won this event as the other two years Fernando Alonso took home the top honors.

More likely, the season won't come into full focus until the teams bring out their "new and improved" 2008 version race cars. They usually begin to appear when the series starts up in Europe which this year is race No.4 at Barcelona, Spain on April 27th.