OK, OK, OK… so I’ve held out on my News and Notes for a couple of days in hopes of having the IndyCar-Champ Car merger news confirmed. And just as I was gonna post this plain ‘ol column without confirmation of any marriage, I received an email saying, FINALLY, that the deal was done!

Now, since nothing has officially been released, I can’t ‘officially’ comment on the open wheel news just yet… but since we are SpeedFreaks and are known for our opinions, I have plenty of those at the end of this column for your enjoyment.

So quickly, let’s get through the weekend news…

How about that Daytona 500?! Definitely one of the best Daytonas I’ve ever seen! And I was completely impressed with the COT, aka Car of TODAY, as well. (Note: some are even calling it CORN, which stands for Car Of Right Now… and how is that for a future Ethanol promotion!) Anyway, this '08 car… Now THAT’s a race car for the stock car genre! And for those of you who don’t like it for whatever reason, just consider this… with all the tight racing, no one flipped on their lid… heck, no one flipped at all! Thank you Brett Bodine and all the R&D crew for making a better race car, no matter if the drivers have to handle it a bit more… (Insert Todd Bodine comment from SpeedFreaks Sunday night here: “Shut up and Drive!”)… the difference in handling will just help to separate the men from the boys. The absolute bottom line is that we had a safe and exciting race with more lead changes than we’ve seen in years, too! Accept the change, folks… change is good and in this case in particular it is MUCH better for the sport!

When the Grand-daddy race all shook out, it was Roger Penske, the man with 14 Indy 500 wins on his resume, who finally got himself a Daytona 500 title. The driver to do it for him was Ryan Newman, his INDIANA driver, & one of my fellow Hoosiers (OK a Boilermaker grad, but born and raised in Indiana makes him a Hoosier overall… spoken from the IU Alum Association from which I am a part). Yep, Mr. Ryan Newman, along with a tremendous team effort by Kurt Busch, took the 50th Anniversary golden trophy!

My sources have not given me any accurate updates as of Sunday night, but at that point, tempers were beginning to flare with Gibbs teammates Tony Stewart and Kyle Busch as a result of their good team work gone bad in the last few laps of the Great American Race. Was it selfish racing in the final laps… both obviously gunning for the win and not necessarily willing to do what it took for the team? Was that the difference in the Gibbs team and the Penske team? That may be a question that never gets answered… instead everyone will post their opinion I’m sure. We’ll see what happens leading up to California Speedway this week. Overall, their Daytona results sucked for both of them (even though it was a 3rd and 4th place) as Kyle clearly had the best car of the day and Tony is so deserving of that 500 win… but life isn’t always fair.

In the Busch race (I just can’t call it the Nationwide Series yet – hey, Nationwide doesn’t pay me anyway… whereas Budweiser is a sponsor of the Freaks, so get this, I will continue to call it the Busch Series because I CAN!) Sooo, in that Busch race, Tony did get to celebrate a victory. It was the first Busch win for Toyota (and why did no media outlet point out that fact?… seems like the 1st Toyota win was lost in teammate Denny Hamlin’s Dual win a few days prior).

Todd Bodine took the Truck win on Friday night, which was just another typical Truck Series race… freakin’ EXCITING! There is a reason why the Trucks are my favorite NASCAR (aka ‘N’) series.

Off Road’s SNORE Series raced The Battle at Primm where the Overall winner was CJ Hutchins and the Unlimited winner was Cameron Steele. For the complete results, visit: www.snoreracing.net

In other racing news, Kevin Windham won the Houston Supercross race! Now THAT should have been good news for Boris Said as the two of them are quasi business partners and very good friends. (With Boris missing the Daytona 500 field a few days earlier due to ‘N’s poor qualifying rules, he needed some good news on the weekend). In the main, points leader Chad Reed had a mid-pack start, but was never able to catch KDub. Wow! Also with win #1 of the year was Austin Stroupe in the Lites Class.

For some sad news in the dirt bike world, I’m hearing that FMXer Carey Hart and his singer wife Pink have decided to separate… hopefully they can work things out so as to eventually avoid the dreaded divorce.

The World of Outlaws were rained out in Mississippi, but most of the other Open Wheelers gathered in Phoenix over the weekend for their extremely popular USAC Copper World Classic. The Freaks’ own Kenny Sargent was on hand for the TV broadcast and came back to tell us that hometown boy Jerry Coons took the Silver Crown race, Indiana’s Shane Cottle won the Sprint Car crown and Cali’s Darren Hagen grabbed the checkers in the Midgets. Complete info can be found here.

And more open wheel news… now that Scott Dixon’s wedding has happened – BIG congrats to Scott! – Tony (George) and the gang should make some sort of announcement this week or next on the oh so anticipated open wheel merger.

…Oh yeah, that was what I was GOING to say…

Now, here is what I will instead say…

Click Here for the Merger News… sorry folks, I had to write an entirely new column as there is just too much to say… and this column is the WAY edited version as I still have too much to say, some of which can't be printed!

CrashG@SpeedFreaks.TV