Automobile Racing

After nearly winning the pole for today's NASCAR Sprint Cup race, Dale Earnhardt Jr. gave reporters a perfunctory recap of his qualifying lap and race car. Then NASCAR's most popular driver was asked about Mark Martin. Earnhardt took a deep breath, looked down at the microphone and let his affection flow for the 50-year-old veteran. "I'm real happy for him," Earnhardt said. "He was a bridesmaid for so many years, and so here's one guy that's pulling for him to win a championship this year because he's deserved it."

After Joey Logano's Toyota got shoved into the outside wall by Greg Biffle's Ford early in the race, Logano was resigned to hoping he wouldn't finish worse than 10th. But after a spree of caution periods kept bunching the field and knocking out other leaders, Logano moved back to the front and then won the Copart 300 NASCAR Nationwide Series race in a wild finish at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana. The 19-year-old Logano held off Brian Vickers and Carl Edwards in a two-lap overtime shootout to win his second consecutive Nationwide race after winning a week earlier at Kansas Speedway.

Can Kurt Busch finally steal some of his younger brother's thunder? For nearly two years, Kurt has toiled rather unsuccessfully in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series while Kyle has racked up wins, stirred controversy and bulldozed his way into the series' top echelon of drivers. But even as Kyle made more headlines with a historic Saturday in Fontana, winning NASCAR's Nationwide and truck series races on the same day, Kurt on Sunday quietly showed the form that earned him the Cup title five years ago.

Reigning supercross champion James Stewart avoided the sloppy track forecast for the season-opening race at Angel Stadium, but he ran into another problem he couldn't overcome. Stewart crashed as the grid's 20 riders squeezed through the first turn Saturday night. He scrambled back to second but couldn't catch Chad Reed, an Australian rider for Yamaha who earned his fourth Anaheim victory. Reed, the series' 2004 title winner, won by 21.

NASCAR's Car of Tomorrow got mixed reviews in its debut at California Speedway on Thursday as Sprint Cup drivers tested the design for the Auto Club 500 later this month. The series' season opens Feb. 17 with the Daytona 500, followed by the Fontana race Feb. 24. California Speedway wasn't among the tracks where NASCAR began phasing in the Car of Tomorrow last year. But the car -- designed to be safer and reduce operating costs -- is now the series' only race car.

He limps a little now, walks slightly hunched over and needs glasses for those eyes that used to be able to calculate a hairpin turn 300 yards away. Most of his movie-star, light-brown hair is still there, always tousled, parted on the right and still falling into his eyes. So is the boyish grin that always said, and still does: Let's go racing. Like the cars Dan Gurney drove, all kinds, all over the world, time flies. He is 76 years old, and that seems impossible.

Funny car driver Tony Ped- regon won an NHRA Power- ade Drag Racing Series championship for John Force Racing in 2003, then seized the moment. He left the comfort of Force's stable and started his own team. He switched to Chevrolet from Ford, and took on sponsorship from Quaker State after previously carrying Castrol colors. He took crew chief Dickie Venables with him, as well. There were those who thought his grand venture was a career-killer.

John Force stood next to his redesigned funny car alongside crew chief Austin Coil at a test session in Phoenix two weeks ago, and the reality of the previous 10 months took hold of him. As he looked at the reinforced three-rail chassis, the carbon fiber tub, the alterations inside the cockpit to accommodate his battered body, he spoke words he never thought he could say. "If for any reason I should be killed," the 14-time champion recalled telling Coil, "I think you need to pack it in.

The latest merger discussions between Indy Racing League and the rival Champ Car World Series have apparently ended in yet another failure. Or have they? After information leaked Thursday that the rival open-wheel series were close to unification, with a snag over race dates the biggest hurdle, Champ Car co-owner Kevin Kalkhoven was irate.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- The season hasn't even started, and already there have been multi-car crashes, drivers banging their cars into each other in anger and officials threatening to levy penalties. NASCAR is back. In practice Friday for tonight's Budweiser Shootout, a 70-lap exhibition race around the Daytona International Speedway, nearly half of the 23 drivers were collected in two big crashes within minutes of each other.