This is just part of racing. Guys up front feel like they just can't give up that track position to stop and top off with fuel, but the smart racers are doing the math and realizing that NASCAR is becoming more about fuel mileage than it is about track position. If Ryan Newman was the last guy on the lead lap already, you and everybody else wouldn't have had a problem with him topping off. So what's the difference now? Every week, we see guys towards the back of the lead lap making more pit stops than the guys in front. I see no difference in this instance.

It's not a loophole, IMHO. It's just the stubborn racers in front not willing to give up a few spots to make it on fuel. They're so focused on the now that they're not paying attention to the later. Look at Junior when he only took 2 tires. He was so concerned about track position at that time that it cost him tons of spots to guys who got 4 tires. As a driver who won a race by taking 4 tires when everyone else took 2 (Daytona 2001), he should have known he was putting himself in a bad situation. Instead, he focused on the now and lost out on the later.

So what's fair about that? That's just as unfair, if not more unfair, than the "lucky dog" rule. The old way made it up to the whim of the leader, so sometimes the best car in the field made it back to the lead lap after an unfortunate cut tire and sometimes they didn't. I think the fans, and NASCAR, would much prefer to see the best car in the field on the lead lap.

As for the link you posted, I don't see where anybody is actually questioning the rule. I see some whining (I'll get to that later), but overall no real questioning of the rule. Newman made it very clear that he was only questioning it for when a car was well off the pace. "If there's 42 cars on the lead lap and one car's way off the pace and gets his lap back, then he got a free lap for basically nothing... Our situation, we were working our way forward and finally were the first car that was one lap down. You could call it earning your lap back of sorts."

I agree. Newman didn't just get a handout. He, and his crew, were working their butts off to get him back into contention. In the old way of racing, he likely would have been running far faster than anybody else and still trapped a lap down. I see this as far more unfair than the "lucky dog" rule.

Even Jeremy Mayfield was alright with it. "He would've made it back up anyway," Mayfield said. "If it had been the normal deal, he would have made his lap back up." Well, as long as the leader at the time let him make it back up. Again, how fair is that?

Most everybody in the NASCAR story is questioning it for a situation where there is a car that clearly deserves to be a lap down. Unfortunatly, I don't think you can have one situation without the other. And to give the lap back to a car that deserves it is far better overall than leaving the decision up to the leader.

As for the whining, Tony Eury, Sr. and Matt Kenseth say they don't like the rule, but as Kenseth also said, "Some day I'm going to want a free lap back and I'm going to think it's cool, but I still don't know if that's the best policy." These guys always complain about something one week and then are happy as a pig in mud the next week when the very thing they complained about works out for them. It's just like lining up according to points. If you're 25th and points and have a great car, you hate it. If you're top 5 in points and have a crappy car, you love it. It's human nature.

Just what we need. More NASCAR subjectivity. ;)

Seriously though, I think NASCAR needs to just have a rule that doesn't require any measuring or timing or any of that other stuff. They'll have enough to deal with just making sure the cars are in the right order. Just make the lapped car rule nice and easy and foolproof. What do you do if a car is/was 5-1/2 car lengths behind the leader? And what if it's determined that a car was 5-1/2 lengths behind the leader, but tapes later show they were exactly 5 lengths behind? And does this hold true on all tracks or are drivers/fans going to have to remember a specific number for each track? Let's face it, 5 car lengths is not the same at Bristol, Daytona, and California.

Personally, I think a lot of people are getting too worked up over a single race. Yes, Newman benefited from the "lucky dog" rule and won the race, but let's also be realistic that he had the best car on the track and was only put in a situation to use the "lucky dog" rule by a cut tire.

As I posted in the other thread, Tammy Jo Kirk was the first driver to benefit from the "lucky dog" rule in the Busch race. She managed to finish 24th, 12 laps down. Todd Bodine got 2 laps back on Sunday and managed to finish 17th, the 3rd from last car on the lead lap. My point is that both of these drivers got their laps back, yet they still weren't really even in contention in their respective races. The biggest key to Newman winning the race can be found in the race review...

Sure he does. Any car that is near the end of the pack makes those stops if needed. You're not going to lose a lap under the caution, so make as many as you need to if you're already at/near the end of the pack. This happens every weekend. How many times do we hear the announcers asking, "And who's going to come in for gas?" and then they wait and wait and wait until the 10th place car is the first one to pit. So, what's so special about it happening this weekend? Nothing, IMHO.

But even beyond that, the way Newman's car was running, even if he was the 2nd or 3rd car on the inside of the restart (which is about as far back as I think he could have been), he still could have passed those 1 or 2 cars that were a lap down, as well as the 4 or 5 cars on the lead lap that would have been in front of him and gotten his lap back on 325. At that point, he could have simply used the strategy he used for the rest of the race. So in essense, under your scenario, he likely would have gotten his free lap back AND taken the lead on the same caution. Boy, wouldn't that have caused a controversey! :)

As for crew safety, there is a LOT of room for improvement. I'm glad they have them all wearing helmets now (it seems weird to think about them NOT wearing helmets), but I think they should go a step further and not allow any pit crew members over the wall until the car is stopped in the pit area. This would prevent a lot of potential incidents on pit road. Would it have prevented today's? Maybe, but I KNOW it would have prevented the incident with Johnson's crew and the incident with Jarrett's crew at IND. I know it sounds like a bit of an extreme measure, but realize that these guys are jumping out in front of cars that are going 35-45 MPH on average and praying that they stop where they're supposed to. I just don't think that's as safe a setup as it could be.

I don't mind the cars pitting at the same time because they do separate it into lead lap and non-lead lap cars. If you separate them into pit placements, then you effectively put a complete end to pit racing. If the 1st, 3rd, and 5th place cars pit, where do you put the 2nd, 4th, and 6th place cars? Where do you put the even cars afer they pit? In other words, the pit crews become a non-factor. A crew could take 30 seconds and not be penalized because the only way to line them up after pit stops is according to how they went in, unless they're all going in together.

The first case was Elliot Sadler crashing hard into the wall. His car caught on fire and he was in a hurry to get out. By the time he started to come out of his window, the safety crews were there.

The second case was Kurt Busch's car fire. After seeing the inside of his car splattered with oil earlier, it's a small wonder that his fire wasn't worse than it was. Again, by the time Kurt Busch came to a stop and was climbing through the window, the safety crews were there.

Most of use remember Bobby Labonte's fire at Chicagoland earlier this year as well as Ryan Newman's rolling inferno at Michigan. A few might even remember Rusty and Kenny Wallace's fire incidents at the second Michigan race this year. In each incident, there were no safety workers to be found when the cars came to a stop and the drivers were getting out. In every instance, the driver was well out of the car by the time the safety crews got to them. In most cases, the safety crew wasn't even in sight yet.

This was a dangerous setup for NASCAR. For instance, what if Dale, Jr's car had caught fire at Dover and they still had the racing back to the yellow in place. There would have been precious seconds lost trying to get the dazed driver from his car. The same thing for Elliot Sadler at Daytona. Any of these incidents could have been far worse than they were.

But now, the safety crews have gained back those valuable seconds. Because the cars don't race back to the yellow, the safety crews can get on the track faster without risking their own safety. They can get to the accident scene faster and deal with it as they need to. They can assist drivers out of their buring cars instead of wrapping an arm around them after the driver has already struggled to get out and is bent over on the grass. They can be in the picture, instead of everybody, most importantly the drivers, wondering where in the heck they are.