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INDIANAPOLIS -- IndyCar Series boss Randy Bernard held court with the media Friday morning and has a plan for future success that follows these points:

• Prop up current road and street courses to make sure they are profitable.

• Add a couple of short-track ovals and a new street race in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

• Don't have competing events in the same geographic area.

• Continue to court more manufacturers.

• Say bye-bye to big ovals with too many empty seats.

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Brian Spurlock/US PresswireGraham Rahal on the possibility that he or Marco Andretti will win the Indy 500: "As much as I would hate to see an Andretti win this race, it would be really good for the sport. I'm sure Marco probably would say the same thing about me."

Will it work? Sure, as long as two or three of their current young drivers find a way to stardom. Otherwise it doesn't matter much.

The key to long-term success is national name recognition for a few drivers. Sort of like Danica Patrick had, except drivers who actually will win races.

Two drivers come to mind right off the bat -- Marco Andretti and Graham Rahal. They have a leg up on the name-recognition thing, thanks to the family history in open wheel. Now they just need to win regularly and compete for titles -- hopefully, against each other.

And the best-case scenario is to have that up-front rivalry come to fruition Sunday in the Indy 500.

"I think it would do incredible things for the sport," Rahal said Thursday. "It really would, without a doubt.

"As much as I would hate to see an Andretti win this race, it would be really good for the sport. I'm sure Marco probably would say the same thing about me. I'm not the guy he wants to see win either, but at the end of the day, we both get it. It would be a great thing."

It hasn't happened yet, but the time is right with the first Danica-less Indy 500 in eight years. Rahal says the best is yet to come for him and for Marco.

"I think what people have to remember about us is I'm only 23 and Marco is 25," Rahal said. "Don't write us off. Marco and I have many, many days of racing together ahead of us. And we want to do it for wins, which we will.

"But right now, it's hard for us to compete against a guy like Dario Franchitti. He's been doing this since 1997, since I was 8 years old. Think about that. He knows so many things that I still have to learn."

Franchitti is 39, a two-time Indy 500 winner and a four-time series champion. But his first win at Indy came at age 34, as did his first championship.

Bobby Rahal, Graham's dad, got his Indy 500 victory at age 33, the year he won his first CART title. Mario Andretti, Marco's legendary grandfather, won the Indy 500 at age 29.

So give the youngsters more time. In the meantime, Bernard has his agenda. Chevy returned to the series this year and Bernard thinks more manufacturers are coming.

"We have some very strong interest," he said Friday. "I think you will see some other manufacturers out there this weekend looking around."

Bernard talked about hopes of returning to short ovals at Richmond and Phoenix, but most big ovals with tons of seats are not in the picture.

"We saw some events last year that weren't very good," Bernard said. "We need races that have that wow factor. It's important we continue to look at ovals, but we don't want to go to a place with 150,000 seats if only 30,000 people are in the stands."

IndyCar racing doesn't get more of a wow factor than high-speed ovals, but it takes big names competing up front to put people in the seats.

Bernard also doesn't want to pit one event against another in the same geographic area. That's bad news for Michigan International Speedway (which falls into the big-oval category's well) with the series returning to Detroit's Belle Isle street race next week.

"It's important for us to give Roger Penske's group [the promoter at Belle Isle] a chance to succeed," Bernard said. "So MIS is not an option for us right now."

Bernard feels the same way about Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wis. It won't get a race with IndyCar returning to the Milwaukee Mile next month.

"Milwaukee is important to us," Bernard said. "Michael Andretti's group has taken over the promotion there. We are helping them every way we can to make it succeed.

"Let's see how well the Milwaukee Mile does this year. That track opened in 1903. It's the oldest track in America. I don't want to see it shut down on my watch. If we don't make a go of it this time, it will go to the mothballs."

The no-compete theory will be interesting news to Texas Motor Speedway president Eddie Gossage, who isn't happy about IndyCar's return to Houston next year for a race around Reliant Stadium.

Bernard said he also hopes to work a deal for a street race in Fort Lauderdale next year, and he has an interest in returning to Australia and possibly the West Coast.

"We are not interested in having dates,'' he said. "We are interested in marriages for many years."

That's great, but track marriages won't matter unless track stars are made, and an Andretti-Rahal rivalry is a good place to start.

Kentucky Speedway's inaugural Sprint Cup race was named the 2011 Sports Event of the Year by the Cincinnati Sports Professional Network.

I kid you not. What was the runner-up, the Apocalypse?

Speedway general manager Mark Simendinger will accept the award during a June 6 ceremony at the Sharonville (Ohio) Convention Center.

That's fine, just make sure the award is a scaled down aerial view in gold of the miles and miles of gridlocked cars on I-71 unable to get to the event.

"Bringing the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series to greater Cincinnati has been a dream come true for our entire staff," Simendinger stated in a news release Wednesday. "We thank CSPN for recognizing our Quaker State 400 as the top sports event in a town with many of them."

Wow, the Reds and the Bengals must wonder what they need to do to have a big event. Burn down the stadiums? Have fans battle lions to the death in gladiator games?

The Cup race at Kentucky last July was a failure at almost every level, including a race that wasn't exactly edge-of-your-seat drama.

Speedway officials were not prepared for the massive traffic jam (the worst I've ever seen, and I was at there for the hellish first Texas Motor Speedway race). Officials couldn't get thousands of ticket holders into the facility, and that doesn't include the ones who turned around and went home.

I don't really know what the CSPN is, but the group must give out awards for famine and pestilence. Seriously, the organization has made itself look ridiculous on this one.

Honestly, I don't want to rag on Kentucky Speedway. Officials realized it was a disaster and speedway owner Bruton Smith has spent millions of dollars and taken numerous steps to make sure the same thing doesn't happen again.

But let's keep it real here, folks. If this was the sports event of the year, I have a few other awards to give out:

Coach of the Year: Sean Payton.

Humanitarian Award: Metta World Peace.

Sportsmanship Award: (a tie) Kyle and Kurt Busch

Friendliest Fans: Vancouver residents after Game 7 of the 2011 Stanley Cup finals.

Lifetime Commitment Award: Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries

Motorcycle Rider of the Year: Bobby Petrino

Mr. Popular of Miami: Ozzie Guillen

Nice Guy Award: Ndamukong Suh

Crime Fighting Award: Ryan Leaf

So enjoy, all are just as deserving of recognition as the 2011 Cup race at Kentucky.

How would you feel about a winless champion in NASCAR? And what if that champion was Dale Earnhardt Jr.?

Even in an era with increased emphasis (still not enough) on winning, a driver could win the Sprint Cup championship without winning a race.

At the quarter pole of the 2012 season, winless Earnhardt is only five points behind Greg Biffle for the top spot in the standings.

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Jerome Miron/US PresswireWin or lose, Dale Earnhardt Jr. remains the most popular driver in NASCAR.

Earnhardt is one of five drivers in the top 10 who haven't won through the first nine races. The others are Martin Truex Jr., Jimmie Johnson, Kevin Harvick and Carl Edwards.

I'll take a wild guess and say that your feelings on a winless champ would vary greatly depending on who did it.

Junior? No problem. He is NASCAR's most popular driver, even though readers who comment on our stories love to rip him. But media attention would reach a Tim Tebow- or Jeremy Lin-type frenzy if Earnhardt was heading toward a championship down the playoff stretch, regardless of whether he won a race.

However, take almost anyone else and make that driver a winless champion, and many fans (along with many reporters) would scream for a new points system. Edwards was one point short of being a one-win champion last year.

A one-win champ was a factor in starting the Chase playoff system after Matt Kenseth won the last pre-Chase title with one victory in 2003.

Kurt Busch won the first Chase with only three victories for the season, but every champion since 2005 has won at least five races, including last year, when Tony Stewart became the first driver to win five Chase races.

The closest any driver has come to a winless championship in the Chase era was Harvick in 2008, when he was a distant fourth, 276 points behind champ Johnson.

But it's not impossible, even though winless drivers start the Chase below the drivers who have won races. Each victory is worth three points, so even if the man on top has five wins, a 15-point deficit isn't much to make up for the driver who starts the playoff without a win.

It's 15 spots in one race, not counting bonus points -- one for leading a lap, one for leading the most laps and three for winning.

So what are the odds of seeing a winless champ? Not good, but I would say the chances of it are better than two guys finishing the season tied for the top spot in the points, which we saw last year.

For those of you who predict Earnhardt never will win again, I disagree, but you could be right. He also could win the title while fulfilling your prediction.

Matt Hagan's exploding Funny Car has gone viral. And Hagan is receiving far more attention for blowing up than he did for winning the NHRA championship last year.

The ESPN video of Hagan's incredible exploding car has been seen by 19 million people worldwide via television and the Internet, according to Don Schumacher Racing officials.

The car went kaboom during qualifying for the Four-Wide Nationals last weekend at zMax Dragway in Concord, N.C.

If you haven't seen it, take a look. It's a shocker as racing car explosions go, even topping Juan Pablo Montoya's jet dryer collision in the Daytona 500 earlier this year that caused a towering firebomb.

Hagan has made appearances this week on "Good Morning America" and the "Today Show." He had a TV interview with the BBC on Thursday morning. Hagan said he was told the video of his accident was the second-most viewed item on the BBC website behind the story about Dick Clark's death.

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Mark J. Rebilas/US PresswireThis crumpled heap is what was left of the body of Matt Hagan's Funny Car after an explosion during qualifying at zMax Dragway on Friday the 13th.

"It has blown me away how much attention this has gotten," Hagan said Thursday from his cattle farm in Christiansburg, Va. "I even have a friend in Australia who called me and said, 'Hey, man, I saw you on the news here.'"

Hagan was about halfway down the track when the engine in his Dodge Charger exploded, virtually disintegrating the body of the car. The firebomb was caused by a $36 broken valve spring getting into one of the cylinders, which destroyed a $75,000 race car.

Along with the stunning explosion, Hagan's reaction as he exits the car has helped make the video such an Internet sensation.

Instead of being happy he was still alive and unhurt, Hagan was furious about the failure. As he climbs out of the cockpit, he grabs a metal plate (about the only piece of the car body left near him) and slams it down on the track.

"I react to things, so that explosion really pissed me off," Hagan said. "I put my emotions on my sleeves sometimes and they caught me doing it on that one.

"It's just been such a frustrating year for us. We're coming off the world championship, but we've struggled this year. I know our car is better than that."

So what was the metal piece he grabbed and abused?

"It was a carbon-fiber shield that protects our hands," Hagan said. "I was climbing out of the car and I saw it hanging there. I thought, 'Well, this is a hunk of junk,' so I grabbed it and spiked it."

Hagan has experienced three car explosions in the four-wide event (the only NHRA race in which four cars race at the same time instead of two) over the past three seasons.

The zMax Dragway officials now have renamed Lane 2 as Matt Hagan Way, but it isn't because of last week's explosion.

"I set the NHRA record [322.27 mph] in that lane last fall with the first 3-second pass in a Funny Car [3.995 seconds]," Hagan said. "So that lane is either going to win for me or kill me, I guess. Next time I go to the four-wide event, I'm gonna wear two firesuits."

Hagan, 29, can joke about it now, but he realizes professional drag racing is a dangerous business.

"That type of thing is [a] way of life out here," Hagan said. "Every run we make is death-defying stuff. It's 8,000 horsepower at more than 300 mph. You roll the dice every time because you are driving a time bomb."

Hagan failed to qualify for the zMax event, something that doesn't happen in NASCAR for its top drivers because they have a guaranteed spot in each race.

In the NHRA every driver shows up every week with no guarantees. Sometimes the top guys fail to make the show. But in this case, Hagan's sponsor received far more attention than it would have had he qualified and won the event.

"It's not what we want to do, obviously," Hagan said about blowing up and failing to qualify. "But this attention is good for our sport and my sponsor, Aaron's. But I don't want to do it again."

FORT WORTH, Texas -- Chances are decent that someone who hasn't won before at Texas Motor Speedway could win Saturday night. In 16 of 22 Cup races, the man in Victory Lane was a Texas winner for the first time.

Thirteen drivers who have won a TMS event will be in the field Saturday night on the super fast 1½ -mile oval. Five of them have more than one Cup victory at Texas -- Jeff Burton, Denny Hamlin, Matt Kenseth, Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards, the only man with three wins at TMS.

Will one of them win Saturday night? Here are the odds I put on it:

Burton (30-to-1): He won the first race here in 1997 while driving for Jack Roush and again in 2007 for Richard Childress Racing, but Burton hasn't won any race since 2008 and doesn't appear close to winning again.

Hamlin (14-to-1): He won both TMS races in 2010 when he finished second in the Chase. Hamlin also won earlier this year in Phoenix with new crew chief Darian Grubb. He has eight top-10s in his 13 Cup starts at Texas.

Edwards (9-to-1): The other driver who won back-to-back at TMS, winning both events in 2008, Edwards got his first Texas win in his first full season of Cup racing in 2005. Edwards finished third here one year ago and second in November, but he hasn't won a Cup race in more than a year.

Stewart (5-to-1): He won here in November, his fourth of five victories during last season's Chase en route to the championship. His first TMS win came in 2006 with Joe Gibbs Racing. Stewart is the only driver with two victories so far this season. If he wins his third Saturday, some people may start thinking another championship is a done deal.

Kenseth (4-to-1): The 2012 Daytona 500 winner loves this place. He won here one year ago, nine years after his first Texas victory. But Kenseth runs up front a lot at TMS. He has 13 top-10s, including 10 top-5s, on this track. Kenseth has finished second four times at Texas and hasn't finished worse than fourth in his last three TMS starts. Tough to bet against him here.

Eight other drivers racing Saturday have one victory at Texas. Can one of them join the list of two-time winners? Here's my take on their chances:

Kurt Busch (35-to-1): He won the November TMS race in 2009, but that was in a Roger Penske Dodge. Now he's driving for Phoenix Racing, a team that has never won on a 1½-mile or anywhere else excluding one restrictor-plate race at Talladega.

Mark Martin (20-to-1): His Texas victory was 14 years ago in the second Cup race ever run at TMS. Martin was driving a Jack Roush Ford that day and will be in a Michael Waltrip Racing Toyota this weekend.

Roush drivers have eight victories on the 1½-mile oval, more than any other teams. MWR has zero, but Waltrip's team is on the rise. Martin Truex Jr. and Clint Bowyer rank in the top 10 after six races.

Martin has finished in the top 12 in three of his four starts this year, so a victory isn't out of the question, but don't count on it. Martin's last Cup win was in 2009, his first season at Hendrick Motorsports.

If an MWR car wins Saturday, it probably will be Bowyer or Truex.

Kasey Kahne (18-to-1): His TMS win came in 2006 when Ray Evernham still was a team owner for Dodge. That must seem like a lifetime ago for Kahne. His first six races at Hendrick Motorsports couldn't have gone much worse, but he loves this track and finished third here in November in the Red Bull Toyota.

Ryan Newman (15-to-1): He's coming off a surprising victory at Martinsville -- some might call it a fluke -- but he had to be in the right place at the right time when cars started crashing in front of him at the end.

His victory at TMS came in 2003 while driving for Penske. Five of the eight guys who have one win here earned that victory for another team.

But Newman is driving for a Stewart-Haas Racing team that has won three of the six races this season and eight of the past 16 since the 2011 Chase began. Granted, seven of those were won by teammate Stewart, but who's counting.

Jeff Gordon (12-to-1): He won this event three years ago, which was an afternoon start on a Sunday. His last victory was in September in Atlanta, a 1½-mile high-banked oval similar to TMS. Gordon has only one top-10 this season but deserved better two weeks ago at Martinsville.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. (10-to-1): In an emotional moment no one here that day ever will forget, Junior earned his first Cup victory at TMS in 2000 as his famous father greeted him with a hug in Victory Lane, reached in the car and told his son, "I love you."

That was 10 months before Earnhardt Sr. was killed in the 2001 Daytona 500. Now it's been almost four years since Earnhardt Jr. won a Cup race, but what a moment it would be if he were to win Saturday night at the place where he made his father proud.

It could happen. Earnhardt has finished in the top 10 in three of his last four starts at TMS. He also has led laps at Texas in 13 of his 19 Cup starts here. And Junior is off to his best start in years with three finishes in the top three. He hasn't finished worse than 15th all season.

Jimmie Johnson (8-to-1): He won at TMS in November 2007, but only Kenseth has consistently run near the front at TMS as much as JJ. Johnson has finished second four times at Texas, including this event two years ago. Johnson has eight other top-10 finishes at TMS. The only time he didn't post a top-10 here in the past four races was a 14th-place run in November.

Greg Biffle (6-to-1): He comes to Texas as the season points leader with the best start of his career. He has four finishes in the top six and hasn't finished worse than 13th so far this year. His win at Texas was seven years ago, but he has three consecutive top-5s and seven straight top-10s at TMS entering this race, so I'd say his chances this weekend are pretty good.

NASCAR's much-maligned penalties and appeals process looks pretty good, believe it or not, compared to the NFL.

NASCAR took a beating (in the outcome and in the court of public opinion) after most of the whopping penalties on the No. 48 Chevy were reversed on the final appeal two weeks ago.

The six-week suspensions for crew chief Chad Knaus and car chief Ron Malec (over illegal C-posts on the car) were lifted. The 25 points docked from Jimmie Johnson were reinstated. Only the $100,000 fine was upheld.

Whether justice was done in the end differs depending on whom you ask, but at least the appeal wasn't heard by NASCAR president Mike Helton.

That's basically what's happening with the appeal by the New Orleans Saints. It was heard Thursday by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, the man who suspended coach Sean Payton for one year (along with other team penalties) over the bounty system the team had to purposely injure opposing players.

Maybe Goodell will reduce the penalties; maybe he won't. Don't get me wrong, I think all the penalties imposed by Goodell were justified, but he shouldn't be the person hearing an appeal.

The defendant in NASCAR doesn't make his case to Helton or competition vice president Robin Pemberton or Sprint Cup director John Darby.

"I think that whole thing [the No. 48 penalties being overturned] vindicated NASCAR," said Texas Motor Speedway president Eddie Gossage. "It took the wind out of everyone's sails who said the fix was in."

NASCAR's process has some flaws, like the one-man final appellate judge (John Middlebrook) being a good friend of Rick Hendrick, the man making the appeal. But NASCAR's system of justice certainly appears to be a much fairer way of doing it than what the NFL does.

"I don't know if the NFL system is unfair,'' Gossage said. "But I know competitors in NASCAR have someplace else to go [with an appeal] beyond NASCAR."

I applaud Speedway Motorsports Inc. honcho Bruton Smith for his willingness to spend his money to try to give the fans what they want at Bristol. But before he tears up the track, he might want to take this into consideration: The 2013 Cup car is going to be a lot different from the one now.

The new car still will have the Car of Tomorrow chassis, but the body for all four manufacturers will have a dramatic new design to try to make the cars look more like the production models.

It's a great idea, a back-to-the-future concept to make the race cars resemble real cars again. Ford and Dodge already had unveiling ceremonies that were well-received by fans. Chevy and Toyota will show their 2013 cars later this season.

The new look means the cars will react differently from an aerodynamic standpoint. So whatever changes Smith makes at Bristol might work well to bring more bumping and banging with the 2012 car, but not so much with the 2013 car, or vice versa.

FONTANA, Calif. -- Maybe NASCAR can bring John Force in every weekend as the prerace entertainment. The NHRA legend never fails to spark things up whenever he attends a NASCAR race.

Sunday was another example, when he held court in the media center at Auto Club Speedway.

Force, a 15-time Funny Car champion, was asked whether he ever considered racing in NASCAR: "Well, they would need rest stops out there for me. I can't race that long at one time."

Force attended the event with drag racing daughters Courtney and Brittany Force, along with son-in-law Robert Hight, the 2009 NHRA Funny Car champion.

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Mark J. Rebilas/US PresswireBrittany Force is the next of John Force's daughters gearing up for a career in the NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series. She's hoping to run Top Fuel beginning next year.

Auto Club sponsors Hight's car at John Force Racing, so it made sense for the Force drivers to come to Auto Club Speedway for the Auto Club 400, especially since the team's headquarters is down the road in Yorba Linda, Calif.

As usual, Force didn't disappoint reporters trying to get him to say something funny, not a difficult thing for him to do.

A German reporter asked him: "Do you remember me?"

Force: "Yes. Do you know I'm German? I'm Oklahoma German."

Another reporter to Force:  "John, I have one quick question and I hope I get a short answer."

That brought a roar of laughter from the room. There are no short answers from Force.

"That's OK," Force said. "You can make fun of me. Even my family does that."

Force said he just returned from an event in Kentucky. Country singer Randy Travis was there, but Force called him Travis Tritt.

"I think I made him mad," Force said.

Hey, he just got his Travis references messed up. For those who don't know, Force is a constant whirlwind of energy, something his daughters have learned to live with.

"People don't believe it, but he's always like this," Brittany said. "After spending a day with him, you're exhausted."

Brittany's younger sister, Courtney, is a rookie this year in Funny Car. Brittany is spending this season testing in a Top Fuel dragster with hopes of running in Top Fuel in 2013.

She does test runs on Mondays and Tuesdays after each NHRA event with Jimmy Prock, Hight's crew chief. She loves her dad, but she's glad when she gets a break from his super-hyper ways.

"I don't know how Mom [Laurie Force] deals with it all the time," Brittany said.

Then she smiled and glanced over at John and said, "Sorry, Dad."

FONTANA, Calif. -- If you think Brad Keselowski might have changed his opinion this week on reconfiguring Bristol Motor Speedway, think again.

Keselowski, who won the race at Bristol last weekend, is more adamant than ever about leaving the half-mile oval the way it is.

"I think the racetrack is as good or better as it has ever been," he said Friday. "The whole reconfiguration story doesn't go very far with me. Personally, I think it's irresponsible, misinformed and, at best, self-serving for any driver or media member who goes out there and criticizes the track.

"I don't think that's right. I think there are drivers that struggle there as the track has been reconfigured and have ulterior motives to point the finger at the surface reconfiguration instead of their own teams' performance."

Several drivers were asked Friday if they thought Bristol Motor Speedway owner Bruton Smith should change the track to try to bring about more bumping and banging like the old Bristol.

Keselowski said he wants to call Smith.

"But I never got his cell number,'' Keselowski said. "That's why he hasn't heard from me."

The half-mile oval was repaved and reconfigured in 2007 to add progressive banking, something Smith said he opposes. Dale Earnhardt Jr. would like Smith to give him a call before making a decision.

"There are some drivers he ought to talk to about it," Earnhardt said. "There were some things about that racetrack before that I liked. One of the reasons why it was so good was because the yellow line was about a foot off the apron. That provided grip for the left-front tire.

"Whatever he decides to do, talk to the drivers. We are the ones out there running on it and can provide some insight. We don't have all the answers, but I'm sure we can give him some things they can improve on if that's what they want to do. It's not just the [progressive] banking. It isn't ever just one thing."

Denny Hamlin doesn't think it's possible to make Bristol what it used to be.

"I don't know how they'll do it," Hamlin said. "The old Bristol was the old Bristol because it was old. It's hard to duplicate that. If they're going to repave it, make it asphalt and not concrete."

Kevin Harvick said he doesn't know if Smith can make Bristol what it used to be, but Harvick said he misses it.

"I enjoyed the old Bristol," he said. "I like that rough-and-tumble type of racing. I know a lot of the car owners and some of the drivers don't like that style of racing. That's what made Bristol what it was.

"People don't want to watch cars ride around with no donuts on the doors and no caved-in fenders at Bristol. They don't want to see a 200-lap green-flag run. That's not what they come to Bristol for, and that's why they quit coming."

FONTANA, Calif. -- A few interesting things that might happen this weekend at Auto Club Speedway:

First awkward moment: When the No. 48 Chevy rolls into the inspection area Friday morning -- sort of like taking your free-pass gold card into the forbidden zone.

No C-post jokes allowed. No high-fiving by 48 crew guys in front of the inspectors. And no team shirts that read: John Middlebrook For President.

Bad crowd comparisons: A half-full Bristol Motor Speedway this past weekend still is more people than you probably will see at Fontana on Sunday, but empty seats at ACS won't be headline news because it isn't unusual.

Nevertheless, some people will say NASCAR should stop racing at Fontana because it can't sell out one Cup event a year. Not going to happen.

NASCAR races at ACS because it's in the second-largest market in the country. It's good for sponsors and driver appearances to spend a few days in SoCal. No one will admit it, but the number of people who actually attend the event is a secondary consideration.

A Danica improvement: Danica Patrick should be better than the first two times she raced at ACS, which isn't saying much. She finished 31st, three laps down, in her first Nationwide race at Fontana in February 2010. Patrick finished 30th after a crash later that year at ACS, but she was running 14th before the accident late in the race. She needs a top-10, something she hasn't done yet this season.

A fifth consecutive Nationwide race without a Cup winner: A seemingly impossible thought before the season started, but it could happen. Only three Cup regulars are on the entry list at Fontana -- Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano and Kyle Busch.

Granted, one of those three easily could win. Busch won it last year at ACS, but he was in Joe Gibbs Racing equipment then. Kyle's in his own car now, and that hasn't looked so hot.

The cream to rise to the top Sunday: The past nine winners (and 11 of the past 12) were drivers who made the 2011 Chase. And the past nine winners also were guys who finished in the top six last season. Cup champions have won fourteen of 22 Cup races at Fontana.

Bad luck for the Lap 1 leader: Note to pole winner: You may want to back off on that first lap. Here's the weird stat of the week. No driver has ever won the ACS Cup race if he led the first lap of the event.

Bad luck for Joe Gibbs Racing: Fontana is the only track where JGR is winless in Cup. What makes that seem so crazy is the fact that a JGR driver has won the past seven Nationwide races at ACS.

Rick Hendrick gets that elusive 200th victory: The Hendrick Motorsports quartet has gone 10 consecutive Cup races (dating back to last season) without a win. But Hendrick's drivers have won nine of 22 races at ACS, including four of the past eight by Jimmie Johnson.

Second awkward moment: Postrace inspection if Johnson wins it. Under that scenario, crew chief Chad Knaus may want to take a restroom break before heading over to the room of doom. That inspection might take awhile.

Todd Warshaw/Getty ImagesTony Stewart needed a little help to make it to his pit after his car wouldn't restart on Sunday.

Carburetors, electronic fuel injection, whatever, fuel-mileage races are here to stay.

Sunday's Sprint Cup race at Phoenix came down to which team could milk its fuel cell, and the new EFI system, to the checkered flag.

Denny Hamlin made it and won. Kevin Harvick didn't make it and lost. And Greg Biffle could have made it a little farther than he thought.

Biffle finished third, but was a little ticked that he didn't catch Harvick for second as Harvick coasted across the finish line.

"With about 20 laps to go, [crew chief Matt Puccia] panicked, to say the least," Biffle said Sunday after the race. "He kept telling me, 'Slow down. Slow down.' Then with four laps to go, he sounded desperate. So I backed off a little more.

"Then the 29 [Harvick] runs out. So my guys are yelling, 'Try to pass him!' I'm like, 'Well, a little late now guys. You should have told me that a lap ago.' I missed catching [Harvick] by about 100 feet. And I made it around the cool down lap with no flicker of fuel pressure, so I know I had at least one more lap."

Don't get the wrong idea. Biffle wasn't mad at Puccia. He loves the guy. But everyone is learning what they can and can't do with EFI.

Tony Stewart learned you can't just turn the engine off under caution (a longtime fuel-saving technique) because the motor might not re-fire. His didn't.

Harvick learned you can seemingly run dry, as he did with half a lap to go, and the engine will still run a little longer.

"You really have a little bit more of a cushion," Harvick said. "It knocks the engine down to minimum RPMs like it's on a rev limiter, but it will keep running."

EFI fuel limitations are a learning process for everyone, but just as it was with carburetors, it's still an inexact science. Hopefully, it always will be.

Not knowing the exact moment the engine will conk out is a good thing. It adds drama at the end of races.

For the moment, it's even more drama than it was with the carburetors because the teams don't know for sure how the engine will react using EFI.

Darian Grubb, the crew chief who figured it out right Sunday for Hamlin, knows he easily would have been on the opposite end of things.

"I'm going to knock on wood somewhere," Grubb said. "I feel like we have a good understanding of [EFI] but it's still a new system. You're always going to have that doubt in the back of your mind."

Not fun for the guy on the pit box, but pretty intense for everyone watching, no matter how the gas gets fed to the engine.