Before getting a job offer over the phone from Richard Childress as he worked at his job in a body shop in his hometown of Emporia, Kan., Clint Bowyer was a champion at one of the Midwest's top dirt short-tracks. Bowyer will be back racing under the lights this weekend, and he's hoping that the dirt from his past will resurface and help him nail down a berth in the 2010 Chase For The Sprint Cup, which is now just two weeks away.

For 12 drivers, a new season will begin Sept. 19 with the Chase For The Sprint Cup. For the other 30 or so full-time drivers, their focus will be on trying to win a race, improve their teams for next year or simply get better as drivers with NASCAR’s new car and new spoiler.

For 12 drivers, a new season will begin Sept. 19 with the Chase For The Sprint Cup. For the other 30 or so full-time drivers, their focus will be on trying to win a race, improve their teams for next year or simply get better as drivers with NASCAR’s new car and new spoiler.

Penske Racing’s Kurt Busch, winner of the spring NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, is the apple of the SceneDaily.com panel’s eye this week as the series heads back to the 1.54-mile track for its second and final appearance of 2010.

Erik Jones (Photo Credit: Detroit Free Press)

Erik Jones is doing both.

The whiz-kid racer from Byron, Mich., began competing at Owosso Speedway in Ovid at age 13 in stock cars, winning a heat race and feature on the same August night last year.

This season, Jones is rewriting the record books. On Aug. 20, he finished first in the ASA Late Model Northern Series race at Dixie Motor Speedway in Birch Run, becoming the youngest driver to win in the series. (Current NASCAR Nationwide and Sprint Cup competitor Landon Cassill was 16 when he scored an ASA victory.)

On the track, Jones is proving hard to intimidate. He respects older drivers but doesn’t flinch if there is a postrace dispute.

“It’s very cool to run against the older guys,” said Jones, who is a freshman at Byron High. “I got a lot of respect for them, and they’ve taught me a lot. I keep my driving smooth and clean. But you can’t be pushed around on or off the track. Drivers treat me the same as anyone else out there. You just got to stay aggressive.”

Jones started driving quarter midgets at 7. He quickly won races and a championship. His grandfather raced dragsters and an uncle told him when he was 4 years old, “You were born to race,” Erik recalled.

So far, Erik is keeping up with the Joneses — and making passes, too.

This season, in 20 races, he has a win, three top fives, six top 10s and seven top-15 finishes, and two of the fastest qualifying times, too.

- Detroit Free Press

The idea of multi-car qualifying is nothing new to motorsports.  Our readers who follow Formula 1 racing (or other open wheel series) know what I’m talking about.  It is however, a fairly new system for NASCAR.  We’ve seen the Nationwide Series use the process for road course races over the last few years, and this season the Truck Series has used it at Pocono and will again use it at Kentucky this weekend.  CBS Sports reported on Thursday that NASCAR may be considering implementing multi-car qualifying for both the NNS and Cup Series on a regular basis.  Is anyone else wondering why?

It appears that the main reason this system would be adopted by all the NASCAR series is to speed up the qualifying process.  That’s fine, but I didn’t realize there was a problem with how quickly qualifying happened.  This appears to me as something that isn’t necessarily broken, but NASCAR wants to fix it anyway.

Personally, my biggest objection with the multi-car qualifying idea is how fair this would be for everyone involved.  We’ve seen plenty of times in other forms of racing where one driver’s bonzai qualifying lap was ruined by another driver in the name of strategy.  With so much at stake, and the measures that teams go to in terms of finding an advantage, it isn’t crazy to think that this could happen in NASCAR.  Single car qualifying runs eliminate any possibility of tampering by another team.

On top of that, what if a driver blows an engine while qualifying, and the other driver on track drives into the oil left behind and wrecks their primary car?  A team could potentially have their weekend ruined before the race even starts.  How is that fair?  Under the system we have now, this would never happen, because NASCAR has the ability to clean the track in between qualifying runs.

With the current state of the sport I realize that NASCAR is trying to find ways to improve the racing and get more people to not only attend races, but also to watch on TV.  To me though, implementing multi-car qualifying will cause more problems then it actually fixes.

TheNASCARInsiders.com

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NORTH WILKESBORO, N.C. (September 2, 2010) – SONIC, the popular drive-in restaurant that features made-to-order American classics, is welcoming another American classic back to the racing community – Historic North Wilkesboro Speedway – by sponsoring Saturday’s PASS Labor Day Classic Limited Late Model race, speedway officials announced Thursday.

The SONIC 50 kicks off Saturday’s racing card at 2 p.m. It will be followed by the PASS Super Late Model Last Chance Qualifying race, a 25-lap Stadium Stock/U-Car feature, and a 35-lap Allison Legacy feature. The final race is the PASS Labor Day Classic 200.

“We are thrilled to have the largest chain of drive-in restaurants in America join our Historic North Wilkesboro Speedway family,” HNWS President Alton McBride Jr. said. “This is a very special weekend for us and Sonic. We both have the same goal – entertaining families and creating memories — so we’re a perfect fit.”

The Labor Day Classic weekend kicks off a two-month period in which Historic North Wilkesboro Speedway will host three major race weekends. The second race weekend is Oct. 3 and features the USAR Pro Cup Series, while the third is the Short Track Shootout Oct. 29-31. For more information, visit www.historicnws.com.

- North Wilkesboro Speedway Press Release