Nascar Race Today

HOMESTEAD, Fla. - Dario Franchitti is expected to make a full recovery from injuries suffered last month in a brutal IndyCar crash at Houston.

But the four-time IndyCar series champion and three-time Indianapolis 500 champion won't race again. With reportedly three major concussions in the last 11 years, his doctors have advised him that he risks significant permanent injury if he drives in a racecar again.

That type of diagnosis is exactly what worries some NASCAR drivers about the implementation of baseline concussion testing beginning next year to help determine whether a driver should race after suffering a concussion. The ImPACT test that NASCAR will use can help determine the impact of a concussion as it measures verbal and visual memory, processing speed and reaction time.

MORE: Franchitti retires | NASCAR still watching Richmond controversy | 2014 drivers to watch | Most respected drivers

Brad Keselowski, the 2012 Cup champion, was quite vocal last month when the policy was announced, saying, "Doctors don't understand our sport. They never have. Doctors aren't risk takers. We are. That's what makes our sport what it is. When you get doctors involved, you water down our sport. ... This is not the field for doctors. Let them play in their arena and I'll play in mine."

IndyCar has required drivers to have baseline tests for several years and its doctors have used them to make diagnoses.

"Let's just say I'm probably 180 degrees different than (how) the current NASCAR champion feels about having doctors around, their input," said Franchitti team owner Chip Gansasi, who also owns two NASCAR Sprint Cup teams. "That statement comes from experiences that I've had personally. To break a bone is one thing, or to have a surgical procedure is another.

"But when it comes to your head, I think it's important that everybody understands that's probably the least known area of expertise by any doctor, and certainly there's a lot of expertise out there. They're just in the last four or five years understanding what injuries and implications of those injuries are."

Keselowski said last week that he has not talked to IndyCar doctors but has done research on the topic.

"I'm well-versed on the topic," Keselowski said last week. "There's a lot of unknowns as to the enforcement of the policy that will really dictate whether it's a success or not or a detriment to the sport."

NASCAR President Mike Helton wouldn't go as far as saying that Franchitti's retirement validates NASCAR's decision to implement baseline testing. Franchitti is well-liked in the NASCAR garage from his brief move to NASCAR in 2008 when he ran 10 Cup races and 14 Nationwide races before sponsorship woes forced Ganassi to shutter the program.

"It has a huge effect on all of the motorsports industry when a caliber of driver like Dario says he's not going to get back in the car," Helton said.

"And that's fairly final. We heard from one of our more significant participants last year when Dale (Earnhardt) Jr. said I'm going to take myself out ... for part of the rest of the season for safety's sake, and those moments are huge in the industry."

NASCAR's new policy could end careers, as it apparently has done for Franchitti, who said in a statement Thursday that he had no other option but to retire.

"Upon the expert advice of the doctors who have treated and assessed my head and spinal injuries post accident, it is their best medical opinion that I must stop racing," Franchitti said. "They have made it very clear that the risks involved in further racing are too great and could be detrimental to my long term well-being. Based on this medical advice, I have no choice but to stop."

Ganassi wouldn't talk about Franchitti's specific injuries.

"It's obviously around his head, concussions, things like that, has to do with a repeat of that type of concussion (that) could be serious," Ganassi said.

Franchitti had no thoughts of defying doctors' orders, Ganassi said.

"He was certainly heartbroken," Ganassi said. "But at the same time he wouldn't dare risk giving a black eye to the sport or something by trying some sort of end around. That was out of the question. He respects professionals. I think he has a lot of respect for (IndyCar consultants) Steve Olvey and Terry Trammell and those guys, that he's been under those guys' care. A lot of the IndyCar drivers have been under those guys' care. They're at the highest levels of their game.

"He wouldn't think of giving the sport a black eye by second-guessing something or wanting to participate in something he shouldn't. That's not even close to his style."

Ganassi, a former racer, understands the predicament of drivers but says the benefits of having such tests outweigh the risks.

"I'm not in favor of a doctor telling somebody they can't continue their career," Ganassi said. "Nobody would be in favor of that. I think if you have an interest in the sport, though, I think you have to rely on professionals at all levels to move forward, whether that professional expertise is in the medical field, the field of engines, the field of engineering, or the field of marketing, whatever - you rely on professionals.

"I don't see any reason why we wouldn't rely on professionals in this area."

If there is one group of people you don't want to upset, it's NASCAR fans and drivers.

It's pretty safe to say former NFL quarterback and FOX Sports Live analyst Donovan McNabb.

Following Friday night's NASCAR Camping World Truck Series season finale, McNabb and the FOX Sports Live crew were discussing where Jimmie Johnson's dominance ranks in sports today.

While McNabb said Johnson was the third most dominant in sports, he made it very clear he did not think the five-time champ was an athlete.

Immediately, the NASCAR Twittersphere exploded as they came to the defense of race car drivers everywhere.

I had respect for McNabb as an athlete. But what a comment....Bet he couldn't do what JJ does, but bet JJ can throw ball @ receivers feet.

And certainly don't mean 2 be too disrespectful to Mcnabb, But i know how hard I've worked on & off track, and battle things, just to be avg

Stating an opinion doesn't make McNabb a bad guy. Many believe the same thing. Gotta prove it before doubters will understand.

Eventually, the hashtag #PeopleWhoAreMoreOfAnAthleteThanDonovanMcNabb emerged and fans and drivers.

Jimmie Johnson took the higher road, responding to the criticism Saturday morning.

McNabb has yet to answer the hordes of Twitter critics.

As he puts the finishing touches on yet another remarkable season, Jimmie Johnson has been named NASCAR Illustrated's 2013 Person of the Year.

Johnson, who will be racing for his sixth Sprint Cup championship Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway, has won six races this season and carries a 28-point lead into the season's final race.

Perhaps more importantly, Johnson is being honored for helping others. The five-time champ's Jimmie Johnson Foundation has raised more than $5.6 million to help children, families and communities across the country.

MORE: NASCAR's most respected drivers | Johnson's winning edge | Johnson deserves fan support

The foundation currently focuses on funding public education through the Lowe's Toolbox for Education Champions Grants program. The foundation also selects 12 charities each year to be featured on Johnson's Blue Bunny Helmet of Hope.

Johnson and his wife, Chandra, also spent time this year in tornado-ravaged Oklahoma, helping families recover from the storms that wrecked much of the state. Along with sposor Lowe's, the Johnsons helped with relief efforts from a storm that killed 20 people and left thousands of families displaced.

The devastation from the storms made a lasting impact on Johnson.

"That devastation lasts for a decade if not longer," Johnson told NASCAR Illustrated. "The impact that it has on individuals and on a community. We see it - it's forefront in the news, people fundraise, there's a lot of attention brought and that lasts two, three, four weeks and then everybody leaves. And those folks are sitting there dealing with their loss, tragedy, monetary things and all of those things just continue on and on and on."

Johnson's help in Oklahoma was just part of the impact he and his foundation made this year.

"Jimmie Johnson was a paragon of performance both on and off the race track this year," NASCAR Illustrated's Kris Johnson wrote in the December issue honoring Johnson.

NASCAR Illustrated, a sister publication of Sporting News, will present its Person of the Year award to Johnson this weekend at Homestead.

- For more on Johnson's season and charitable work this year, see the December issue of NASCAR Illustrated on newsstands now.

In a few short days, a dramatic 2013 season will end -- as will the milestone 10th Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. I have said a number of times that we created the Chase to provide fans with more high stakes, late season competition that goes right down to the final event. Now 10 years into the Chase, we can point to a number of instances which fit that description. You can look back at Kurt Busch's tight victory over Jimmie Johnson in the very first Chase. Revel in the epic back-and-forth between Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards in 2011. And now this year, Jimmie Johnson continues his march toward history, attempting to fend off Matt Kenseth and Kevin Harvick in Sunday's finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. As good as the Chase has been for our sport, we want more. We want more excitement, more passing, more drama. We want to give you more reasons to go to the race track and continue to follow our sport week after week. Rest assured that we as an industry are working hard to accomplish this goal. We're on a mission to make the racing the best it can be. Frankly, your passion and commitment to NASCAR warrant our resolve to continuously pursue ideas that will make the best racing in the world even better.

The debut of the Gen-6 race cars - the Toyota Camry, Chevrolet SS and Ford Fusion - led to a number of highlight-reel moments on the race track this season. They not only look better but they have delivered significantly more passing across the season and some incredible moments in the capable hands of the best drivers in all of racing. But again, we want more. Our team at the NASCAR Research & Development Center, in concert with all of our NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race teams, is testing a number of rules packages in order to improve upon this season's on-track product for 2014 and beyond. I'm proud of the effort and care put into this mission from all involved.

In terms of the 2013 season, we have had some very special moments and great accomplishments at all levels. Our first Nationwide Series race at Mid-Ohio was a great success for our sport near the home of valued series sponsor, Nationwide Insurance. In the Camping World Truck Series, the highly successful return to dirt at Eldora Speedway and the series' first race outside of the United States at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park stand out as huge milestones. The Canadian Tire Series, NASCAR Whelen Euro Series and Toyota Mexico Series all delivered spectacular moments to NASCAR fans in all of those regions of the world, and the first Toyota Mexico Series event held in the United States at Phoenix International Raceway earlier this year will go down as a memorable, landmark moment in NASCAR's rich history.

Darrell Wallace Jr. made history, becoming the first African-American driver in 50 years to win on the NASCAR national series stage. Kyle Larson's win at Rockingham Speedway earlier this year, Darrell's victory and innumerable great young drivers taking the spotlight in the K&N Pro Series ranks show that our Drive for Diversity, NASCAR Next and development series initiatives are bearing fruit on the track. These programs are filling the talent pipeline with emerging stars we'll someday see chasing the NASCAR Sprint Cup. Finally, we are thrilled with the unification of sports car racing in North America and look forward to the inaugural TUDOR United SportsCar Championship beginning next year.

Of course, this season has not been without challenge. As a sport, we were presented with a number of unprecedented moments. In each instance, we met our responsibility to act in what we believe was in the best interest of the sport as a whole. We recognize there are times when you have agreed and others when you have not. Please know, wherever you stand on these issues, we appreciate your passion for NASCAR. It does not go unheard or unnoticed.

Now as we head into the season-ending races at Homestead-Miami Speedway and begin the countdown to Daytona, on behalf of the entire NASCAR team, I thank you for your continued passion for our sport. You are the greatest fans in the world and we wish you the very best during this coming holiday season.

Best regards,

Brian France

HOMESTEAD, Fla. - Matt Crafton can look at the stat sheet and know why he will be celebrating the 2013 Camping World Truck Series championship Friday night at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

With just two finishes outside the top 10 and no races in which he failed to finish, Crafton put himself in position of just having to show up, get in his truck and start the engine for the Ford 200 Friday night to clinch the title. He did just that to make his accomplishment official. Involved in a late wreck in the race, Crafton had his worst finish of the season in 21st but remained on the lead lap, completing every lap of every race during the season.

"It's an awesome accomplishment to be able to say we're going to be (champions)," Crafton said Thursday at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

MORE: Drivers to watch in 2014 | Most respected drivers | Kenseth, Harvick cite 'Dumb and Dumber' | Harvick-Childress

Crafton has one victory this year and had such a big lead in the standings that NASCAR didn't even bother asking second-place Ty Dillon to attend the championship contenders press conference Thursday.

The 37-year-old Crafton has had a great season that he believes could have been even better. His team did not win the owners championship - Kyle Busch's victory in the finale Friday resulted in a tie atop the owners points with the Kyle Busch Motorsports No. 51 team owning the tiebreaker having more wins.

MORE: Truck standings

"The last third of a season, the truck hasn't been where it was capable of," Crafton said. "I can honestly say it sucks points racing. We haven't points raced, just riding around, but at the same time we're not going to do something stupid to get ourselves caught up and lose a bunch of points.

"On these restarts, there's so much to be made, I think we gave up a little bit more than what we wanted to."

Crafton is a staple of the truck series, having started 315 races since 2000. His team owners, Duke and Rhonda Thorson, began competing in the series in 1996. The Sandusky, Ohio-based ThorSport Motorsports team is celebrating its first NASCAR truck title.

"He never had the chance to move up," Brendan Gaughan, a former Cup driver who competed full time in the truck series this year, said about Crafton.

"He never got the opportunities like some of us did and he slugged it out and he's sticking with a team that is in Sandusky, Ohio, and people say you couldn't do it. ... It's super exciting to see a guy like Matt do it."

And Crafton seems like he's OK with that.

"I'm getting the opportunity to do what I love to do: Race, be competitive, being able to win races and win a championship," Crafton said. "I'm happy doing what I'm doing. I would love to run some Cup races, Nationwide races in some competitive stuff, no doubt. Do I want to go up there and move? Not the end of the world if I don't."

Ryan Blaney, a Penske Racing development driver who competes for Brad Keselowski Racing in the trucks, won the rookie title.

Dear NASCAR fans,

In a few short days, a dramatic 2013 season will end -- as will the milestone 10th Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.I have said a number of times that we created the Chase to provide fans with more high stakes, late season competition that goes right down to the final event. Now 10 years into the Chase, we can point to a number of instances which fit that description. You can look back at Kurt Busch's tight victory over Jimmie Johnson in the very first Chase. Revel in the epic back-and-forth between Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards in 2011. And now this year, Jimmie Johnson continues his march toward history, attempting to fend off Matt Kenseth and Kevin Harvick in Sunday's finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.As good as the Chase has been for our sport, we want more. We want more excitement, more passing, more drama. We want to give you more reasons to go to the race track and continue to follow our sport week after week. Rest assured that we as an industry are working hard to accomplish this goal. We're on a mission to make the racing the best it can be. Frankly, your passion and commitment to NASCAR warrant our resolve to continuously pursue ideas that will make the best racing in the world even better.

The debut of the Gen-6 race cars ? the Toyota Camry, Chevrolet SS and Ford Fusion ? led to a number of highlight-reel moments on the race track this season. They not only look better but they have delivered significantly more passing across the season and some incredible moments in the capable hands of the best drivers in all of racing. But again, we want more. Our team at the NASCAR Research & Development Center, in concert with all of our NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race teams, is testing a number of rules packages in order to improve upon this season's on-track product for 2014 and beyond. I'm proud of the effort and care put into this mission from all involved.

In terms of the 2013 season, we have had some very special moments and great accomplishments at all levels. Our first Nationwide Series race at Mid-Ohio was a great success for our sport near the home of valued series sponsor, Nationwide Insurance. In the Camping World Truck Series, the highly successful return to dirt at Eldora Speedway and the series' first race outside of the United States at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park stand out as huge milestones. The Canadian Tire Series, NASCAR Whelen Euro Series and Toyota Mexico Series all delivered spectacular moments to NASCAR fans in all of those regions of the world, and the first Toyota Mexico Series event held in the United States at Phoenix International Raceway earlier this year will go down as a memorable, landmark moment in NASCAR's rich history.

Darrell Wallace Jr. made history, becoming the first African-American driver in 50 years to win on the NASCAR national series stage. Kyle Larson's win at Rockingham Speedway earlier this year, Darrell's victory and innumerable great young drivers taking the spotlight in the K&N Pro Series ranks show that our Drive for Diversity, NASCAR Next and development series initiatives are bearing fruit on the track. These programs are filling the talent pipeline with emerging stars we'll someday see chasing the NASCAR Sprint Cup. Finally, we are thrilled with the unification of sports car racing in North America and look forward to the inaugural TUDOR United SportsCar Championship beginning next year.

Of course, this season has not been without challenge. As a sport, we were presented with a number of unprecedented moments. In each instance, we met our responsibility to act in what we believe was in the best interest of the sport as a whole. We recognize there are times when you have agreed and others when you have not. Please know, wherever you stand on these issues, we appreciate your passion for NASCAR. It does not go unheard or unnoticed.

Now as we head into the season-ending races at Homestead-Miami Speedway and begin the countdown to Daytona, on behalf of the entire NASCAR team, I thank you for your continued passion for our sport. You are the greatest fans in the world and we wish you the very best during this coming holiday season.

Best regards,

Brian France

The door to NASCAR owner Gene Haas' corner office is light wood with a brushed-nickel handle, and it swung open as wide as its hinges would allow. Through its frame limped a humbled man who has long blown through every door in his path, with little consideration for the other side.

For 35 years the man has known but one speed: fast. As fast as man and machine would allow. And most certainly, faster than the next guy. So when fate forced the man to slow down -- and worse yet, to stop -- it was odd that the other side provided his refuge. And the man, hobbled and humbled, torn down but rebuilt, learned that the simplest -- the slowest -- of life's moments are quite precious, too.

Sitting silently on the front porch, in a wheelchair, on the hottest, most humid day Charlotte can offer proved heavenly for the man. The air smelled different to him. The atmosphere felt warmer -- and not just in temperature.

Visits from friends were more meaningful; visits from rivals even more still. The visits provided the distraction from the reality that lived in the mirror: Tony Stewart had shattered his right leg chasing his passion. And it was bad. Real bad.

Stewart knew it immediately. Granted, he couldn't see it, and that was probably for the better. His leg was hidden by the pant leg of his driving suit. But he knew it was broken and he knew it was serious. He knew it then and he knows it now, some three months and three surgeries later.

But he won't apologize. Don't even bother asking and certainly don't assume. He's not interested. Sprint car racing is his release. It is the organic body cleanse from NASCAR's corporate toxins. It is the root system that nourishes his soul.

"I can't not do it," said Stewart, seated in a gray chair inside Haas' office one day recently, in his first one-on-one television interview since the accident. "There's people sitting there right now going into a frenzy over it.

"We'll cut back the schedule quite a bit [in the future]. But I'm not going to just stop doing it because I got hurt once. People get hurt in car wrecks every day, and they don't stop driving the car the rest of their life to work. It's my passion. It's what I want to do with my life. It's a part of what I do."

The accident was a freak one. By Stewart's estimation a one in a million. It was Aug. 5, 2013. Stewart was somewhere those detractors said he shouldn't be -- in front of the field at a sprint car race at a dirt track in the middle of nowhere. He barreled down the backstretch and into Turn 3. Suddenly, dust was everywhere.

A car toward the tail end of the lead lap, which Stewart had sighted to pass, had hit a tractor tire used to mark the inside of the track's corner, spinning the car sideways on the track. Meanwhile the tractor tire was pushed into the infield dirt, stirring up a cloud of dust that spread across the track so thick that Stewart couldn't see through it. And when he sped through the backside of the dust, there was a car sitting sideways directly in front of him.

He had barely enough time to burp the throttle and swerve away from the center of the car that sat before him. Had he not done that, "I'm going to hit him in the driver's compartment. It was going to be big. It was going to hurt two of us, not one of us."

Stewart hit the front of the other car, which broke the suspension on Stewart's car. The drive shaft in a sprint car runs directly between the driver's legs, and when Stewart impacted the other car it broke, and pushed the drive shaft over and into Stewart's right leg.

And the engine kept running. And the drive shaft kept pounding. And when the dust cleared away and the engine fell silent, Stewart's leg was mangled.

"I knew I was going to miss races," he said. "It was something I wasn't prepared for. Because in 35 years of driving race cars, I've only not been able to start races one other time."

That was in 1996, after the Indy Racing League event in Las Vegas. But 1996 was a transition year for Stewart. He was running some Nationwide races, learning the stock car trade in preparation for a full-time move to NASCAR. He missed some races, but none of consequence.

"That didn't affect my life -- and everybody in it -- nearly as much as this did," he said.

The fallout was substantial. Stewart-Haas Racing needed a driver. Mobil 1 and Bass Pro Shops and Coca-Cola needed answers. The media and fans wondered how bad it really was. SHR upper management knew well the extent of the damage, but the boys building cars on the shop floor were purposefully kept in the dark. They didn't need to know. They needed to work.

"We had never had to try to plan and come up with a solution to a problem like this," Stewart said. "We didn't have anybody lined up to drive a car if I ever got hurt. We never planned for that. So we went from all the sudden being in a scenario of everything moving right along to, we need a solution to a big problem, and it's not going to happen in five days, six days."

Immediately, SHR management assembled at Eddie Jarvis' home north of Charlotte to determine a plan. Jarvis, Stewart's manager for nearly 15 years, was the emotional buoy that kept Stewart afloat every time he sank. Stewart moved in with Jarvis for recovery.

In an instant, Stewart went from the busiest race car driver on the planet to stationary in a bed -- for full days and long nights. Walls don't move. They don't talk. The scenery never changes. The only change he experienced was the flicker of the television screen.

And his life perspective.

"We all get so caught up in the moment of what we're doing every day, it's hard to hit that reset button and get pulled away from all that, and see life from a different perspective," he said. "This has made me think a lot different about little things -- the little things that when we were younger, or in a different position meant a lot. It's been good for me to get reminded of things that actually meant a lot more than I thought they did."

Like the smell of the air. And the view of the lawn. And the depth of a friend's concern.

That concern was on full display in Richmond, Va., in September. For the first time since the accident, Stewart was cleared to attend a race weekend. He couldn't walk, so his team decaled a scooter in the likeness of his race car, complete with a brace to rest his foot in. That was his only choice.

This is a proud man, accustomed to walking through the garage gate breathing fire and spitting bravado.

Now he was on a scooter. Vulnerable.

"I was embarrassed about having to do it," he said. "This isn't the way I want to go into the garage area -- but I get to go in the garage area again. That outweighed the embarrassment of not getting to walk in there and have that swagger that I'm used to having. It was very humbling to go into the garage that way."

He was out of his element. Uncomfortable. But it was the latest reminder of how much the racing community cares for him. The first reminder came Aug. 7, when he turned on his phone to reveal 850 text messages. While at Jarvis' home, streams of people came in and out for as many as nine hours straight. Folks told him to rest. He said no.

"I told them, you don't understand -- that is my motivation," he said. "Seeing these people take time out of their day just to see how I'm doing. That was my drive. That was my motivation. That support was much more valuable than you could possibly put a price on."

In the aftermath, Stewart says his fans have carried on that motivation at sponsor appearances. Ninety percent, he said, ask about his leg, how it's healing and whether he'll be ready for the 2014 Daytona 500.

Stewart says he never worried that he wouldn't race again. And he fully expects to be in the No. 14 Chevrolet on Feb. 23, 2014, when the green flag waves over the Daytona 500.

"Barring any major setbacks, I'm 99.99 percent," he said.

The chief setback would be infection, which he already battled once and, as a result, required an unforeseen third surgery. He had three choices to fight the infection:

1. Keep on the current path and hope it worked, while continuing to take antibiotics in pill form. That was an option, but one that all agreed wouldn't have worked.

2. Open the leg back up, clean out the infection and hope you got it all while taking antibiotics intravenously.

3. Open the leg up, removing the titanium rod in Stewart's leg and replacing it with an antibiotic rod for a time, before opening the leg back up again and replacing the antibiotic rod with the titanium one.

He chose the second option, and is progressing well. On this day, Nov. 12, Stewart has been walking without a cane for nearly a week. Therapy provides a unique challenge, as mental as it is physical.

"I have to relearn how to walk again," he said. "It's not that you have to reteach yourself. But your mind and your foot have to get back on the same page, and remind yourself that it's OK to do this. You've done this before. It's reminding it what it's supposed to do again.

"When you're laid up, it literally forgets how that process works. You have to retrain or remind your leg and your foot that it's OK to go through these steps. It's basically just waking it up again."

Stewart attends rehabilitation on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Some of the required exercises, such as foot flexion, center on his career. For the most part he enjoys therapy. It offers a release from the monotony and a goal toward which he can strive. He focuses one week at a time. If he knew what doctors expected in three weeks, he would strive to achieve that in one week, and likely hurt himself.

The pain of therapy comes in the final 20 minutes, when his therapist digs in and breaks scar tissue away from his skin. It hurts. Badly.

"I'm at his mercy, but when you leave there you know you've accomplished something," Stewart said. "A lot of pain associated with it, but you know that pain is working towards a goal.

"The pain is getting much better. Therapy is tough. Everybody told me when I got to therapy -- and I didn't believe them -- 'you'll cry.' Everybody goes 'you'll cry.' I go, 'I'm not going to cry.'

"I cried."

On the floor adjacent to Stewart's position rest four hard drives loaded with United States Auto Club sprint car footage, given to him by a friend. As far as he's concerned, Santa Claus just came to town. He is thrilled to view them. And, naturally, he cannot wait to get back in a race car. A sprint car.

"Sprint car racing is my release," he said. "I get to be out on the track three days a week with the best stock car drivers in the world. And then at the same time, when I have spare time, I get to go race with the best dirt track drivers in the world.

"I am a racer. I'm not a race car driver. I am a racer. I race. That's what I do. I don't go on vacations. I don't take my family on vacations because I don't have a family. My family is the racing family. Everybody has the option to do what they want to do with their spare time. I want to go race. That's what I've done for 35 years. I've raced. Everything in life revolved around racing. I'm not going to change that. That's what I live for."

The fact is there are 200 families on Stewart's watch at SHR. He does not feel as if he let them down. He says those folks understand well his passion for racing any and every machine into which he can climb. He also says that as long as he and his team continue to field the safest cars possible, he doesn't feel as though he is neglecting his employees in any way. Again, as far as he's concerned the broken leg was a one-in-a-million moment.

"The hardest part was we had to hide the reality of what really had happened," Stewart said. "Everybody knew immediately we had a broken leg. But that was a fraction. The bones were a fractional part of everything that went on. Soft tissue. Nerves. Muscles. That was a much bigger drama, with the risk of infection. All of that was a much bigger drama than bones being broke."

Prior to the injury Stewart was scheduled to run 115 races in 2013 across all manner of series.

"I don't think everybody is passionate about anything, but most people are passionate about something in their life," he explained. "For me it's always been racing. I was born around racing. My earliest memories is always thinking about racing. That's what my life is. It's consumed.

"That is what my passion is. If I wasn't' passionate about it I wouldn't be an owner in NASCAR, a driver in NASCAR, have ownership in three dirt tracks, wouldn't have two cars racing in World of Outlaws, three cars racing in USAC. I wouldn't have all those things going on if I wasn't passionate about it."

He is asked what he would be without racing.

"I wouldn't be," he continued. "I can't imagine myself without it. If you took all of this away from me, there is no me. There's nothing left, in my opinion. If you take any of that away from me, you rip my heart out, and there's nothing left."

NASCAR

Think in contrasts when it comes to NASCAR driver Darrell Wallace Jr.

Wallace deals in speed for a living and is into clouds. Not the smoke clouds whipped up by a Pit Road peel-out, but the ones that float overhead. He says if you see clouds, you'll see him looking up, trying to figure out the best photography angle.

Wallace also shoots time-lapse video. He has done short videos that feature a patient chronicling of things that happen slowly.

Yet, impatience on the track cost him this season, and there's an impatience surrounding his progress up the NASCAR ranks.

That leads to this last contrast: Wallace fits the stereotypical profile of a NASCAR driver, with his North Carolina upbringing, affinity for Dale Earnhardts living and dead, an early talent behind the wheel, even the nickname "Bubba" . . . except that he's also the first black driver to win a race in one of NASCAR's main series in 50 years.

NASCAR's present runs Sunday, when a champion will be crowned at the season-ending race in Homestead. Jimmie Johnson, winner of five consecutive series titles from 2006 to 2010, needs only to finish 23rd or better at Homestead-Miami Speedway to clinch his sixth series championship.

But Saturday's races - the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series and NASCAR's Nationwide Series - feature the sport's future. While some Sprint Cup series drivers dip into the trucks or Nationwide series, those circuits often function as a proving ground for NASCAR's Sprint Cup hopefuls. That group includes the 20-year-old Wallace, a graduate of NASCAR's Drive for Diversity program and truck series driver.

"I've been in barbershops in my hometown where people of color are always asking me when he's going to be in the [Sprint] Cup series?" said ESPN analyst Brad Daugherty, also the owner of a truck series team and a former NBA star.

Wallace's truck series win in the Kroger 200 at the Martinsville (Va.) Speedway last month clearly didn't hurt that prospect.

"That win definitely helped in the exposure level that's key to racing," Wallace said.

That's a reference to a fact that NASCAR's Drive for Diversity can do only so much about, even as it's the basic reason NASCAR desires driver diversity in an increasingly multicolored United States: money.

"At the end of the day, it's about the color of green," Daugherty said. "You or I can just pick up a basketball. Racing is cost-prohibitive. That's what Darrell is facing now."

Whatever the economic indicators say about the economy, NASCAR owners have said that for the past few years sponsorship money hasn't flowed as freely as it once did to Sprint Cup teams. Most of the Nationwide and truck series teams, never flush in the best of times, are NASCAR's version of the working poor.

Even in those series, sponsors like getting behind teams with drivers who have some name recognition. That makes it much more likely that photos will be taken of the car with the sponsor's name and the TV coverage will show the car.

After the driver's day is done, he or she probably would be interviewed about the race and inevitably would refer to the car by the sponsor's name, as modern drivers know to do. Even in regular conversation. Wallace, in discussing his photography with the Miami Herald, didn't speak generically of his camera but said, "Just doing stuff with my Canon 60D .. . I upgraded to a Canon 5D Mark III and started to do time-lapse . . ."

Darrell Wallace Jr. blends a newfound patience with the need for speed - and along the way hopes to attract more black fans to NASCAR.

Jimmie Johnson is the envied exception in a sport where continued success is rare

After five tough years in NASCAR's two top series, Sam Hornish Jr. reaches the Nationwide series' Ford EcoBoost 300 competing for a championship.

Taking the advice of his doctors, three-time Indy 500 winner Dario Franchitti announced his retirement on Thursday.

Franchitti - a four-time IndyCar champion who also enjoyed a brief NASCAR career - sustained head and neck injuries in a violent crash last month in Houston. Doctors warned Franchitti that continuing to race could be detrimental to his long-term health.

Considered one of IndyCar's all-time greats, the announcement sent shockwaves through the racing community. Here's what some of your favorite NASCAR drivers were saying.

Sam Hornish Jr. did not just win an Indianapolis 500 in 2006, as historic a feat as that would be for any race driver in the world.

Hornish, over four riveting closing laps, rocketed past subsequent three-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon for third place, legendary Michael Andretti for second and, in the final 300 yards, Michael's then-19-year-old son Marco for glory.

The storybook triumph propelled Hornish toward his third IndyCar crown in six years, and that championship remains the most recent in open-wheel racing for the famed Roger Penske empire.

The backgrounder is offered to refresh memories about the motor sports stage Hornish departed and the pinnacle he descended after the 2007 IndyCar season to shift his talents to NASCAR.

Stating the obvious, those talents didn't travel well. Hornish and stock-car racing have not been a natural fit.

But after five grinding, often-exasperating years in NASCAR's two top series, Hornish reaches the Nationwide series' Ford EcoBoost 300 season windup at Homestead-Miami Speedway once again competing for a championship.

Austin Dillon, 23-year-old grandson of accomplished team owner Richard Childress, will attempt to preserve a tenuous eight-point lead over Hornish on Saturday and add a Nationwide title to his 2011 Camping World Trucks crown.

But being relevant in a title fight again has gratified Hornish, still only 34 in a sport in which drivers' careers can extend into their 40s. He has never looked back with what-ifs or regrets.

"People ask me, 'Don't you wish you were still in Indy cars?' " Hornish said by telephone last week. "I can guarantee you that I wouldn't still be racing right now if I had stayed in Indy cars.

"It was time to try something new. Something in my gut told me I needed to go out and extend myself, learn a little bit more about myself, try to challenge myself again.

"I can honestly say that [the switch to NASCAR] has prolonged my racing career," he added, no matter how three lean full-time seasons at the Sprint Cup level from 2008 through 2010 might have clouded perceptions of his driving skills.

In addition, Hornish ran 20 Sprint Cup races in Penske's No. 22 Ford as replacement for suspended A.J. Allmendinger in 2012. Again, he experienced limited success, though he did finish fourth in Nationwide points in his full-time ride.

But Penske hired 23-year-old Joey Logano to fill the No. 22 seat full-time this year. Hornish, characteristically stoic and not one to get too high or too low no matter the circumstances, took that in stride.

"I was disappointed," Hornish admitted, "because I could see what that team was capable of." Logano drove to one victory and made the Chase for the Cup, though he' is ranked a distant ninth. Added Hornish: "I felt I definitely could have been part of that, but I also knew we'd have a great opportunity over here."

Moonlighting Sprint Cup drivers ineligible for the Nationwide championship have typically dominated in victories, with Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski combining for a remarkable 18 victories in 32 races.

But Hornish steered to his second career Nationwide win at Las Vegas in March, leading 114 of 200 laps and outdueling Busch to the checkered flag by 1.1 seconds. That staked him to a points lead that he has traded back and forth with Dillon and Regan Smith throughout an intensely competitive season.

Darrell Wallace Jr. blends a newfound patience with the need for speed - and along the way hopes to attract more black fans to NASCAR.

Jimmie Johnson is the envied exception in a sport where continued success is rare

After five tough years in NASCAR's two top series, Sam Hornish Jr. reaches the Nationwide series' Ford EcoBoost 300 competing for a championship.

CONCORD, N.C. -- It's Tuesday morning at Hendrick Motorsports and the sprawling campus just north of Charlotte is about to come alive. The sun is breaking to the east, rising over nearby Charlotte Motor Speedway, and the parking lot of the massive race shop that houses the team of Jimmie Johnson is beginning to light.

"Here they come!"

The shout pierces the quiet. The stillness that vanishes won't return until more than 12 hours from now. But even the return of the darkness won't bring relief from the tension.

That won't come for five more days. You see, this isn't just any old Tuesday. This is Tuesday of Championship Week. There is one race remaining in the seemingly never-ending NASCAR Sprint Cup season, at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

The leader of the championship fight is Johnson, holding a 28-point lead over Matt Kenseth and 34 over Kevin Harvick in the Sprint Cup standings with only 400 miles left to race.

In five days, everyone currently en route to work at this shop hopes to be celebrating Johnson's sixth NASCAR Sprint Cup title. But until then, the tension will continue to hang over everything they do. And there is a lot to do.

"Here they come!" was a warning that an 18-wheeler was rolling into the parking lot. It's the blue-and-white striped team transporter of the Lowe's Racing team, bringing back the race car that Johnson raced to a pole position and a third-place finish at Phoenix International Raceway.

Hauler drivers Kyle Bazzell and Chad Kohn have made the 2,100-mile trek in just under 36 hours. They pull the rig in behind the building and carefully back it in. Within minutes everything packed inside is pulled out -- like a giant multi-ton Swiss Army knife -- and cleaned.

Chad Knaus' Chevy SUV pulls into the parking lot mere moments after his Phoenix race car.

He is dressed more like a stock trader than a crew chief, in a pressed blue shirt and a tan sport coat. Almost on cue, a building full of employees begins to fill the parking lot around him. Mechanics, maintenance, public relations, everyone sticks to their normal routine as if it is a Tuesday in August or March. Even if they all know that this week is anything but normal.

"We try to operate the same every week so that when the Chase [NASCAR's 10-race postseason] does come, it's not anything out of the norm," the 42-year-old Knaus says as he flicks on his computer. "The goal is make sure that it feels all about the same."

He then fires up the video of last year's season finale, also at Homestead-Miami, to refresh his memory concerning tendencies, patterns and strategies that he employed in that race which might be applied to this year. The perfectionist is proud of his five Cups with Johnson, but is still dogged by memories of the Cup that got away. A loose lug nut on a pit stop and then a failed rear-end gear essentially allowed rival Brad Keselowski to run away with the title last season.

"Every little edge you might see from one year could be what ensures we don't have the same outcome again," Knaus said.

"C'mon ... c'mon ..."

Calvin Teague sits on the floor of the gym in the Hendrick Motorsports Human Performance Center.

The rear-tire changer for the No. 48 team doesn't even realize he's talking aloud as he grunts through one of the stops on the pit crew's circuit of workout exercises. He holds a long, heavy, black rope in each hand. Connected to the base of a nearby post, the ropes look like something off an old merchant marine dock.

He whips the heavy ropes into waves as they thwap onto the floor. The movements build strength along his shoulders, back and core, all crucial as he launches himself off the pit wall, air wrench in hand, and slides to his knees to whir-whir-whir-whir-whir five lug nuts off a used tire and then do it again to bolt a new one on.

Like most of his teammates, Teague is a former college athlete. Much of his time on the Hendrick campus is spent as it was during his days as a pitcher for Appalachian State, with strength and conditioning coaches in the gym and, when dinged up, with trainers in the recovery room.

"This organization, this team, is much like my Yankees used to be," says Hendrick Motorsports head athletic trainer Gene Monahan, who served in the same capacity with the New York Yankees for 49 years. "We came here for one reason, and that's to win. The atmosphere here during a week like this feels exactly like it did at Yankee Stadium. This is business around here."

"OK, guys, you can talk about your trades and dealings later ... "

Greg Morin and Lance Munksgard, the pit crew coaches for the 48 team, sit at the head of the table in the pit crew's film room. It looks identical to any position meeting room at any NFL or NCAA football facility. Only these coaches are trying to shut down the football talk because the team members won't stop discussing their fantasy football rosters.

Once focused, the seven-man team starts to examine the stack of papers waiting on them. On Monday, Morin and Munksgard went through video of each of the pit stops from the previous day's race at Phoenix. They have broken down each stop by position and time. Every fraction of a second lost or gained is recorded and shared with the group. Then each stop is projected onto a screen on one end of the room. There are angles shot from a small camera mounted on a pole that hangs directly over the pit stall and there are shots from lipstick cameras mounted on the crewmen's helmets.

Looking at the first pit stop, they all see a near-disaster. As they jumped off the wall and sprinted around the corners of the car, an air hose came within a fraction of an inch of getting hung up underneath the splitter that hangs below the nose of the Chevy. It's a problem that befell their closest championship rival, Matt Kenseth and the No. 20 team, at Phoenix and cost him dearly.

The 48 crew continues to watch film and talks about everything from the angle of the gas can during refueling, to clouds of brake dust at Phoenix, to a nagging right-foot injury that's causing one member to alter his initial jump onto pit road for each stop. And yes, they go back over that costly pit stop from Homestead one year ago.

"At this stage of the year, the mental aspect of it is so huge," explains front-tire changer Cam Waugh. "Doing all the stuff we do before races, building the muscle memory helps out. But once the race starts and you're back doing pit stops, the majority of it's mental."

"How about that Cardinal!"

Andy Papathanassiou (Andy Papa for short) played offensive tackle for Stanford in the late 1980s and is still basking in the glow of his alma mater's win over Oregon.

Hendrick's director of human performance, Papa came to Hendrick Motorsports two decades ago, working with revolutionary crew chief Ray Evernham on ways to improve the performance of Jeff Gordon's pit stops (Knaus was on those crews as a tire changer).

It was Papa who first started implementing football-style film work and athletic training, and then he started recruiting college athletes. At first, he was laughed at. Now those who used to poke fun at those methods consider them standard operating procedure.

Papa watches the 48 crew practice pit stops in a covered area behind the building where they had just watched film. They do individual drills and then crank out multiple full-team pit stops, all in the sub-13 second range.

"We will run the scenarios that we think we'll have at Homestead," explains Munksgard, who used to go over the wall for race teams such as Ultra Motorsports of NASCAR's Camping World Truck Series.

He notes that Sunday's race will be more "traditional," meaning there is less likelihood of two-tire or fuel-only pit stops in the name of strategy. "If you were here in March or April, we'd be making much bigger moves to get better. By now, it's all small stuff. Tiny little hand adjustments. Being patient when trying to fix a problem."

As patient as one can be changing four tires and filling a tank with two cans of fuel in 12 seconds.

"Exactly."

Jimmie Johnson looks plenty patient. In fact, the all-smiles racer looks like a man relaxed enough that he could climb into one of his old race cars on display nearby and take a nap. He's in the Hendrick Motorsports Museum, where he has stopped by to chat with team president Marshall Carlson, who has just described the 48 team to an ESPN TV crew as being "on kill."

In keeping with the "just another day" philosophy, Johnson spent his morning sitting in the carpool line at his daughter's preschool before coming to the Hendrick campus for the weekly competition meeting. Once that's done, he'll scoot back south to Charlotte to take his daughter to her dance lesson.

Yes, he is well-aware of the points scenarios it will take to win the Cup. He's been there so many times before. He has arrived at nearly every season finale of his 12-year career with a shot to end the day as champion. It should all feel so familiar. And it does. But only to a point.

"You want to have the points lead so that you control your own destiny, but it's the most stressful and pressure-packed situation you could ever ask for," he says in a tone that sounds nothing like a man feeling pressure. "I've got what I want.

"Now I just have to go down there and try to hold onto it and make stuff happen."

Just as happens every Tuesday around lunchtime, the drivers, crew chiefs and key team executives gather for the Hendrick Motorsports competition meeting in the HMS headquarters building at the center of the HMS campus.

There, the four teams of Johnson, Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kasey Kahne review the previous race and talk about the upcoming event. They exchange ideas and reveal information they think may help the entire group.

Of particular interest this week is Gordon's performance at Homestead in 2012. While Johnson was focused on winning the Cup, his onetime mentor was on his way to an impressive win, struggling early but closing strong to defeat Kyle Busch.

"The days of guys withholding information are long gone," explains HMS general manager Doug Duchardt. "This is totally open book.

"All data is out there for all to use. You hear about teams fighting and all that. We've taken the opposite approach here for a long time. And it's paid off."

On the shop floor, a sparkling new Lowe's Chevy is up on blocks, and no less than six men are crawling all over it and all inside it.

This is the race car that Johnson will pilot at Homestead and, they hope, will never be raced again because it will be placed a few buildings over in the Hendrick Motorsports Museum as the car that won the team's sixth Cup.

Yes, that would be cool. But it would also be a shame.

"This is the car we won Texas with two weeks ago," explains car chief Ron Malec, who has been with the team since its inception

Knaus' right-hand man, Malec is responsible for making sure that all the data gathered by HMS engineers, via computer simulation and a Homestead test session two weeks earlier, are correctly translated and dialed into the car's chassis before it is loaded onto the team hauler -- which has already been cleaned -- and sent south.

This car -- Chassis No. 797 -- didn't just win at Texas. It delivered one of the most complete one-race beatdowns in recent NASCAR memory.

After that win, the car was sent to NASCAR's Research and Development Center for a thorough postrace technical inspection. One week ago today, Malec's team was told it could come get the car and bring it back home.

In the days since, the chassis was stripped bare, cleaned, reconstructed, repainted and sent to the floor to receive its pre-Homestead tweaking.

"All of our cars come off the same assembly line, but sometimes one just has something special in it," Malec says, motioning to No. 797, which also ran extremely well at Charlotte and Dover earlier this season. "We need to get one more special race out of it."

Officially, the race shop is closing.

Truthfully, there is still plenty of work being done behind the card key-protected doors.

The hauler is cleaned and already in the process of being reloaded, set to make the nearly 800-mile trip to South Florida on Thursday.

Chassis No. 797 is nearly through Malec's lengthy prerace checklist. The pit crew members have headed home with instructions from Monahan about how to have their soreness worked out by Sunday. Knaus is watching the 2012 Homestead race. Again.

And Jimmie Johnson is at dance practice.

ESPN The Magazine, NASCAR

Author: Nick Venable | published: November 14, 2013 9:26pm PST

With a fanbase in the trillions – at least that's what it seems like – the sport of NASCAR is barely present in the history of cinema outside of a few obvious examples, especially when compared to movies about major league baseball and other sports organizations. And with Ron Howard's Formula 1 –centered Rush recently gaining much critical acclaim (not to mention tons of money at the foreign box office), it's no surprise that NASCAR is now getting behind its own origin story, Spitfire, which was recently acquired by Lionsgate and OddLot Entertainment, who is also behind Ivan Reitman's upcoming NFL comedy Draft Day.

Based on a pitch from actor/writer Grant Thompson, Deadline reports Spitfire will cover the strong female presence in the early years of NASCAR, which was created after World War II by Florida businessman Bill France Sr. The film will follow Louise Smith, often called "the first lady of racing," and her merry band of "barnstormers and former bootleggers as they crisscrossed the country to raise interest in this fledging professional racing tour." Smith became an icon at the time, and it only took another 90 years for Danica Patrick to join NASCAR and remind people that yes, women are pretty prevalent on the racetracks.

The last movie NASCAR, which will serve as executive producer, put their name to was Adam McKay's Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby with Will Ferrell, but most people just picture Tony Scott's Days of Thunder when they think of a stock cars on film. I'm not sure if Spitfire will replace it, given things weren't quite as fast and hectic back in those days... well, compared to the sport today anyway. I'm sure the audiences at the time were blown away by the speeds they saw.

OddLot and Lionsgate recently teamed up on Ender's Game, which hasn't performed nearly as well as either studio hoped, so it's quite interesting that their next bet is a female-driven film about a sport where a majority of the drivers and a good number of the viewers are men. I like that kind of risk.

It's too bad we don't really have any idea what kind of a writer Thompson is, as his only feature so far is Niki Caro's McFarland, another sport film currently filming with Maria Bello and Kevin Costner, though he did sell yet another sports drama, Start, to Gran Via Production. So maybe 2015 is going to be full of his films. It's going to take some deft scripting to get a non-NASCAR fan like me interested, but I'm keeping an open mind, given it's about the history of the sport.

If you'd like to get your facts straight and without Hollywood's whitewashing, check out the documentary below.

HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- Beginning next year, there will be a new voter to help select members to the NASCAR Hall of Fame -- the reigning champion of the sport's premier series.

NASCAR announced Thursday at Homestead-Miami Speedway that the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion will be added to the Hall of Fame selection panel beginning in May of 2014, when proceedings begin to select the members who will be enshrined in the downtown Charlotte, N.C., facility the following year. According to series spokesman Brett Jewkes, NASCAR will become the first sport to have an active competitor on its Hall of Fame voting panel.

WHAT: Hall of Fame Voting DayWHERE: Charlotte (N.C.) Convention CenterWHO VOTES: 21 members of Nominating Committee and 33 members of Voting Panel. In addition, one vote is generated by fan input.WHO WAS CHOSEN: Tim Flock, Jack Ingram, Dale Jarrett, Maurice Petty and Fireball RobertsWHEN THE 2014 INDUCTEES WILL BE INDUCTED: Wednesday, January 29, 2014 (Live television coverage provided by FOX Sports 1)

That means either Jimmie Johnson, Matt Kenseth or Kevin Harvick will be added to the panel for next season. Johnson enters Sunday's finale needing only to finish 23rd to secure his sixth title at the sport's top level. Kenseth (28 points behind ) and Harvick (34 behind) are the only other two drivers still mathematically eligible for the championship.

"It's a huge honor and pressure in a different way that none of us have experienced before," Johnson said about being a prospective Hall of Fame voter. "Quickly thinking about it, I think it will help engrain the current champion into the past and understand more about the history of the sport, the people that came before us. I think it's a cool opportunity for whoever the champion is."

Jewkes said further "significant chances" to the Hall of Fame selection and eligibility processes will be announced next month during Champions Week in Las Vegas. At present, a 21-member nominating panel compromised of NASCAR Hall of Fame officials, NASCAR executives and track operators chooses the list of 25 people nominated for election. That group joins a 34-member voting panel, which includes several media members and former competitors, as well as one fan vote for 55 voters.

Beginning next year, the Sprint Cup champion will be added to that group.

"I think it's a cool idea," Kenseth said. "I think anytime anybody asks your opinion, actually listens to it, that's always neat. I think it would be neat to be part of that. I think it probably would also teach us more about the sport. I think we all think we know about it, but I think you'd learn more about it and probably appreciate it more."

At present, former drivers must have competed for 10 years and been inactive for at least three to be eligible for enshrinement. Non-drivers must have worked in the sport for a minimum of 10 years. Harvick believes having an active driver on the voting panel could add a more contemporary view to the process.

"I think as you look at the sport, obviously there's a lot of key participants that have been a part of the sport for a long time," Harvick said. "I think having somebody on that panel that may think a little bit outside of the current known drivers, crew chiefs, team owners, might bring something else to the panel to think about. It's pretty cool."

Think in contrasts when it comes to NASCAR driver Darrell Wallace Jr.

Wallace deals in speed for a living and is into clouds. Not the smoke clouds whipped up by a Pit Road peel-out, but the ones that float overhead. He says if you see clouds, you'll see him looking up, trying to figure out the best photography angle.

Wallace also shoots time-lapse video. He has done short videos that feature a patient chronicling of things that happen slowly.

Yet, impatience on the track cost him this season, and there's an impatience surrounding his progress up the NASCAR ranks.

That leads to this last contrast: Wallace fits the stereotypical profile of a NASCAR driver, with his North Carolina upbringing, affinity for Dale Earnhardts living and dead, an early talent behind the wheel, even the nickname "Bubba" . . . except that he's also the first black driver to win a race in one of NASCAR's main series in 50 years.

NASCAR's present runs Sunday, when a champion will be crowned at the season-ending race in Homestead. Jimmie Johnson, winner of five consecutive series titles from 2006 to 2010, needs only to finish 23rd or better at Homestead-Miami Speedway to clinch his sixth series championship.

But Saturday's races - the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series and NASCAR's Nationwide Series - feature the sport's future. While some Sprint Cup series drivers dip into the trucks or Nationwide series, those circuits often function as a proving ground for NASCAR's Sprint Cup hopefuls. That group includes the 20-year-old Wallace, a graduate of NASCAR's Drive for Diversity program and truck series driver.

"I've been in barbershops in my hometown where people of color are always asking me when he's going to be in the [Sprint] Cup series?" said ESPN analyst Brad Daugherty, also the owner of a truck series team and a former NBA star.

Wallace's truck series win in the Kroger 200 at the Martinsville (Va.) Speedway last month clearly didn't hurt that prospect.

"That win definitely helped in the exposure level that's key to racing," Wallace said.

That's a reference to a fact that NASCAR's Drive for Diversity can do only so much about, even as it's the basic reason NASCAR desires driver diversity in an increasingly multicolored United States: money.

"At the end of the day, it's about the color of green," Daugherty said. "You or I can just pick up a basketball. Racing is cost-prohibitive. That's what Darrell is facing now."

Whatever the economic indicators say about the economy, NASCAR owners have said that for the past few years sponsorship money hasn't flowed as freely as it once did to Sprint Cup teams. Most of the Nationwide and truck series teams, never flush in the best of times, are NASCAR's version of the working poor.

Even in those series, sponsors like getting behind teams with drivers who have some name recognition. That makes it much more likely that photos will be taken of the car with the sponsor's name and the TV coverage will show the car.

After the driver's day is done, he or she probably would be interviewed about the race and inevitably would refer to the car by the sponsor's name, as modern drivers know to do. Even in regular conversation. Wallace, in discussing his photography with the Miami Herald, didn't speak generically of his camera but said, "Just doing stuff with my Canon 60D .. . I upgraded to a Canon 5D Mark III and started to do time-lapse . . ."

Darrell Wallace Jr. blends a newfound patience with the need for speed - and along the way hopes to attract more black fans to NASCAR.

Matt Crafton, who calls his baby daughter his lucky charm, will secure NASCAR's 2013 Camping World Trucks championship Friday night.

After five tough years in NASCAR's two top series, Sam Hornish Jr. reaches the Nationwide series' Ford EcoBoost 300 competing for a championship.

EXCLUSIVE: Lionsgate and Gigi Pritzker's Odd Lot Entertainment has acquired Spitfire, a pitch by Grant Thompson to tell the fact-based origin story of NASCAR, which was done with female drivers were in the fast lane. Female drivers were surprisingly instrumental in the founding of NASCAR just after WWII. Louise Smith, a fiery, handful-of-a-woman, led a motley crew of barnstormers and former bootleggers as they criss-crossed the country to raise interest in this fledging professional racing tour - at the behest of Florida businessman and former driver Bill France Sr. A forgotten forerunner of contemporary female drivers like Danica Patrick, Smith was the quintessential small-town girl with big dreams who smashed through the gender preconceptions of the time to ultimately race at the famed Daytona Beach road course and help France secure the initial funding for what would become the billion-dollar sports giant NASCAR.

Nicky Weinstock of Invention Films is producing. NASCAR is exec producing. NASCAR holds the key to a vast potential racing audience, but it is stingy about the films it gets involved in. The last big one was the Adam McKay-directed Talladega Nights, which starred Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly and Sacha Baron Cohen. Obviously the question is whether or not that largely male audience will turn out for a female-themed racing film, but the formula worked well for Sony and Penny Marshall in A League Of Their Own.

Meredith Milton and Rachel Shane are overseeing for Lionsgate and Odd Lot respectively. Odd Lot and Lionsgate most recently teamed up on Ender's Game, which was designed as a franchise-starter but hasn't performed that way.

Thompson scripted McFarland, the Niki Caro-directed Walt Disney film which is currently shooting with Kevin Costner and Maria Bello for Mayhem. He is currently scripting Bad Dog for Participant Pictures, and the sports drama Start for Gran Via Productions and Mayhem. He also sold the pilot script The Hero to CBS, with Sony and Original Film producing with Steve Maeda attached as EP/Showrunner. Thompson's deal was made by his reps, Paradigm, Madhouse Entertainment & attorney Mark Weitzstein.

France's approach is gaining respect after he battled perceptions of being disengaged and unworthy

It was his 10-year anniversary as NASCAR's CEO, but Brian France was in no mood to celebrate.

Instead, he was the focus of a hastily called news conference on Sept. 13 at which he assured outraged fans that the sport was taking drastic measures to address the most tainted finish in its history, starting with the extraordinary addition of a 13th driver in the Chase for the Sprint Cup. The move came after Michael Waltrip Racing was ruled to have manipulated the race at Richmond International Raceway - the cutoff to set the field for the 10-race title playoff - by ordering one of its drivers to take a dive by pitting under the green flag, along with radio chatter that raised suspicion of foul play by other teams.

A day later, on the eve of the championship playoff, France summoned team owners, drivers and crew chiefs to a Chicagoland Speedway infield garage, where he read them the riot act for 20 minutes and brusquely outlined new rules governing integrity. He took no questions.

With NASCAR's premier series embroiled in an unprecedented credibility crisis from the scandal in Richmond, France unleashed the iron-fisted fire and brimstone that were a hallmark of the previous regimes of his father and grandfather.

"I was angry, frankly, at the circumstances that got us to that point," France, 51, told USA TODAY Sports. "I was determined we were going to deal with it and not have this happen again."

It was a rare instance in which the third-generation scion departed from his understated and collaborative management style, which eschews the spotlight even as it often invites scrutiny. Though it bears little in common with the authoritative and omnipresent methods favored by his predecessors who guided NASCAR from 1948-2003, there are signs France's approach is gaining respect after he battled perceptions of being disengaged and unworthy.

From TV deals that have lined NASCAR's coffers with more than $12 billion to a diversity thrust finally bearing some fruit - in October, Darrell Wallace Jr. became the first black driver to win in a NASCAR national series in nearly 50 years - to an increased focus on green technologies, France is reshaping the sport in the interest of 21st century relevance as it continues to recover from the recession that battered its sponsorship, race attendance and TV ratings.

Powerful owner Rick Hendrick, whose teams have won 10 Sprint Cup championships, said France was a guiding force through the Richmond debacle and has fulfilled the promise predicted for him by Bill France Jr., who died in 2007, four years after abdicating the stock-car throne to his only son.

"I think Brian's done a super job being the CEO of the company for a lot of reasons," Hendrick told USA TODAY Sports. "I'm not sure his dad, Billy, would have trusted anybody else to make those kind of moves but Brian. When I would talk to Brian even back when Billy was alive, Brian already was thinking about what we need to do in the future."

Yet questions remain - even within corners of NASCAR, France concedes - about the depth of the CEO's commitment and understanding of a business that "is much broader than most people realize," he said.

It might be that the sport's sprawling landscape - in which the conflicting interests of fans, sponsors, teams and series officials sometimes seem to be locked in an endless tug of war - makes universal acceptance impossible.

"I think there's still skepticism about Brian, and I don't get it," Texas Motor Speedway president Eddie Gossage said. "After 10 years, you'd think it should be resolved. I like Brian and don't necessarily agree with everything he does, but that's OK.

"I think if you're in charge of NASCAR, you kind of need everybody to be off balance all the time because it's like wrestling an alligator. Once you get the head, the tail whacks you. Wrestle the tail, the head bites you. You can never get everything under control."

The most visible way in which France has overhauled the sport - the Chase for the Sprint Cup - will wrap up its 10th edition Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway, and it's a good example of how his fingerprints can be both positive and polarizing.

Though the Chase has produced consistently close points finishes (the Ford Ecoboost 400 will mark the ninth consecutive time the title is decided in the finale) and ratings are up in six of nine races this season, it remains a lightning rod of criticism from a hard-core fan base that speaks frequently and passionately on social media and on a satellite radio channel devoted to NASCAR.

"I think the way to look at it is if we ever wanted to go back to the old system, there wouldn't be many people at all in favor of that," France said. "The most important thing is it elevates our competition and makes things more exciting."

His regime has weathered its share of high-profile stumbles. France readily admits one of his major mistakes was the heavy-handed rollout of the much maligned Car of Tomorrow. Yet the boxier car was part of a safety revolution - no driver has died in 12 years - and ultimately led to a more collaborative effort with manufacturers and teams that in 2013 produced an aesthetically pleasing successor, the Gen 6.

In the past year, France might have completed his greatest masterstroke - brokering deals with Fox and NBC through 2024 that are worth $8.2 billion and represent a 42% increase over the previous deal, despite ratings being down roughly 25% from their 2005 peak.

It's another example of how France, who spearheaded the move to consolidate races on network TV that quadrupled rights fees 12 years ago, has left his largest imprint on the NASCAR business model.

"That's a watershed for the sport," team owner Roger Penske told USA TODAY Sports about the TV deals. "I'd give him the credit for it. I think what Brian has tried to do is step away from the good old boy network in running NASCAR to what are the current requirements for the sport."

His focus now is on competition, specifically how to improve racing on 1.5-mile superspeedways while considering new formats for qualifying next year. It's a precursor to a potential major overhaul in 2015 - coinciding with NBC replacing ESPN in its return - that some believe could feature halftime breaks and heat races.

The goal is to hook a digitally focused younger audience with shorter attention spans not well suited for three-hour races.

"I think Brian is going in the right direction because we can't continue with the NASCAR of the past," Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing minority owner Felix Sabates told USA TODAY Sports. "Don't be surprised if you see a completely new format. He's going to shake up the way racing is for the fans."

The Richmond debacle showed that France doesn't shy from controversial decisions, such as adding Jeff Gordon to the Chase. Though there was much debate among the NASCAR hierarchy, the call ultimately belonged to France.

"That's my responsibility," he said. "I just felt like that was the just thing to do. If you can make the right decision and not have ill effects against others, you ought to try to do that. That's what we did."

France requires that members of his executive team attend at least two sporting or entertainment events each year and return with feedback that can be applied to NASCAR. It's the hallmark of a CEO who calls himself "the biggest sports fan in the company" and sometimes hosts pickup basketball games with his employees.

"I go to the most games, and you do that by following the business side of things," he said. "What are (other sports) doing right to promote their players? As an industry, we tend to get a little isolated and don't have a broad enough worldview of what goes on beyond our sport and how it impacts us."

NASCAR president Mike Helton, a close confidante of France's father, said it's a much more "international" approach than NASCAR's prior leadership, noting that Brian France was among the first to push for a presence on the Internet and social media.

But he also is a much less visible presence at the track than his father and grandfather, who often were accessible whenever the garage was open. France runs NASCAR with the detachment of a Fortune 500 CEO rather than the mom-and-pop vibe of a family business. France attends about two-thirds of the events on the 36-race schedule. During the races that France misses, Helton said he always receives a call in the scoring tower from the CEO.

"Bill established his leadership as a very visible person because all that was developed when there were no cell phones, social media, email or any communication other than relying primarily on face-to-face contact," Helton said. "Brian is a leader in the modern-day world. If anything, the leadership of NASCAR has to manage somewhat Brian's passion for the details. He is as engaged as Bill Jr., it's just not as symbolically as visible. In some ways, he's more engaged."

Said Paul Brooks, a former NASCAR vice president: "Brian's era of leadership is a multibillion-dollar enterprise with significantly different business dynamics. If he spent all his time in the garage, it wouldn't be as successful."

France, though, does seem to be making a more concerted effort to connect with his stars. Defending series champion Brad Keselowski, who was chastised by France for wide-ranging criticisms of NASCAR in a preseason interview with USA TODAY Sports, said France has called him a half-dozen times since March to solicit his opinion on competition.

"It's something I've tried not to really talk about much in the media because I don't want it to be presented as such that he called me just to check a box," Keselowski said. "It was about strategies of where the sport is going, competition-wise, and what we could do to improve the racing across the board. So it's nice to have somebody that listens to that."

Brian France, left, watches Brad Keselowski down a beer in victory lane at Homestead-Miami Speedway after Keselowski won the 2012 Sprint Cup championship last November.(Photo: Tom Pennington, Getty Images)

France spends much of his time listening and staying out of the spotlight, where he isn't a natural public speaker. But the owner of a couple of upscale restaurants also likes hob-nobbing with the power elite.

"I bet you he can call Bill Clinton, and he'd answer the phone," Sabates said. "He just doesn't talk about it. We all have a tendency to drop a name. Brian could, but he won't. He'd rather be wearing blue jeans and sweatshirt and be at a basketball game than in a suit at an awards ceremony."

"He's a lot like Bill Jr. was in that he enjoys relationships with other successful people," Helton said. "In doing that, Brian gets the opportunity to share thoughts and ideas with other business leaders and then Brian takes that dialogue and relates it back to NASCAR. He and Bill Jr. shared the ability to look around the corner, but Brian might look broader and deeper than Bill."

France, whose favorite CEOs are Jack Welch (for being relentless and courageous) and the late Steve Jobs (focused, innovative and instinctive), has been counseling nephew Ben Kennedy, who has shown interest in following his uncle into NASCAR. The 21-year-old son of Brian's sister, Lesa France Kennedy, also is pursuing a driving career.

"I told him it's great you're interested, but you need to figure out how will you add value?" Brian France said. "What's your mark to put on the family business? That's how I always looked at my situation. I was given an opportunity, but I needed to add value in ways that I could. You can't add value everywhere. So on the commercial side, I felt I could do better."

At a motorsports marketing forum five years ago, France made waves when he said he wouldn't be around for a 32-year run as his father had. The remarks helped reinforce the perception that he would move into team ownership in another sport. In 2005, he admitted to asking the NFL about its ownership structure, and he was willing to entertain pitches on pro sports franchises in his first few years in order to gather intel.

But when a group bidding on a Major League Baseball team called three years ago, France passed and hasn't explored any opportunities since.

Many expect the longer he stays, the less likely it becomes that he will leave, and Penske said, "I don't think we're at any risk we're going to lose him."

"He may not be around as long as Bill, because Bill didn't have another life other than NASCAR, and Brian does," Sabates said. "But I'd say he'd be around another 10 years."

Said Hendrick: "I don't see him wanting to do anything else. He's too entrenched and engaged in the future. He's thinking about where to take this to the next level."

France still stays he won't match his father's longevity.

"I don't think the sport would be served well by that," he said. "But as long as we're making progress and it's enjoyable. It's not always enjoyable, but it's rewarding for me, and I'm able to make the right contribution at the right time. I'm not going to pick a date, but I like where we're going now."

10. Suspense and suds, 2012 It was supposed to be an easy Sunday drive -- all Brad Keselowski needed to claim his first title was 16th place at Homestead, which seemed no sweat given the run of excellence that had put him in that position. But the No. 2 team's pit strategy didn't unfold as intended, and Keselowski found himself mired in traffic as Jimmie Johnson moved to the front. Suddenly the point gap between them was narrowing, and the title seemed in doubt -- until the No. 48 crew dropped a lug nut, followed by Johnson suffering a broken drive line that knocked him out of the race. Keselowski managed 15th for good measure, then unleashed a beer-soaked celebration that became legendary in its own right.9. Taking the fifth, 2010 The heavy lifting had been done the week before at Phoenix, when Jimmie Johnson stretched his fuel over the final 77 laps to salvage a top-five finish that kept his fifth consecutive championship within sight. He still came to Homestead behind, trailing Denny Hamlin by 15 points, but in the end Johnson would become only the third driver since 1975 to overcome a deficit and win the title in the final race. Johnson finished as runner-up to Carl Edwards, while Hamlin labored to a 14th-place finish on a problematic afternoon. Johnson's final margin was 39 points, a stunning turnaround from midway through the previous week's race, when it looked like Hamlin was on the verge of taking complete control. But he didn't, and the man they would soon call Five-Time would make him pay.8. Tension in the Trucks, 2003 It may not have been Sprint Cup, but the last race in the 2003 Camping World Truck Series finale featured so much anger, drama and controversy it begs for inclusion. Team owner Jim Smith entered five vehicles in the race to give title hopeful Ted Musgrave plenty of help, and one of those played a central role when a Marty Houston wreck took out Brendan Gaughan, who had led the standings by 26 points over Musgrave coming in. But Musgrave was black-flagged for an illegal pass on a restart, opening the door for Travis Kvapil to claim the title -- although NASCAR deliberated the penalty for some time before making Kvapil's nine-point final margin official. Gaughan fumed at Smith, Bobby Hamilton made a last-lap pass to win the race, and Carl Edwards secured Rookie of the Year. Just another day in the Truck Series.7. A bittersweet triumph, 1963 The great Joe Weatherly earned his two NASCAR titles in very different ways: The first was behind the wheel of Bud Moore's car, the second was a patchwork effort that saw Weatherly drive for nine different owners over the span of his 53 starts. It was a necessity, given that this was the age before national sponsorship, when the era of the factory teams was ending and fully-funded rides were becoming scarce. Even so, Weatherly won three times that season and finished seventh in the finale at the defunct Riverside International Raceway to edge Richard Petty for the championship by 2.28 points.6. An Alabama slammer, 1983 He had finished second in the championship race five times, and at 45 years old it might have been easy for Bobby Allison to wonder if he'd always be remembered as the best driver never to have won a title. That all changed in 1983, in a season where he and Darrell Waltrip battled one another on the track and jawed at one another off it, setting the stage for a tense endgame between two headstrong competitors. A third-place finish in the penultimate event at Atlanta gave Allison some breathing room, and the next week at Riverside he finished ninth to secure his only title by 47 points over Waltrip. In the process, Allison became the oldest driver ever to earn his first title and took a large step toward his eventual inclusion in the NASCAR Hall of Fame.5. Rough day at the Rock, 1973 As a former cab driver from Detroit, Benny Parsons was probably used to tough days behind the wheel. But North Carolina Speedway in the final week of the 1973 season was another matter altogether. Parsons entered the finale with a lead of 194.35 points over Richard Petty, and 208.65 over Cale Yarborough, seemingly in control -- until a crash just 13 laps in forced Parsons to spend the next 136 circuits in the garage undergoing repairs. He finally returned at a greatly reduced speed, and missing most of the sheet metal on his car's right side. But Petty suffered an engine problem -- without which, he might be an eight-time titlist today -- and Parsons held on to manage a 28th-place finish that netted his only championship by 67.15 points over Yarborough.4. Lucky number seven, 1979 The number that would come to set the standard for championships at NASCAR's premier level was established in 1979, when Richard Petty claimed what would become the last of his seven crowns. But it didn't come easy -- the King actually trailed Darrell Waltrip by two points entering the finale at Ontario Motor Speedway, the defunct Southern California layout designed as a double to Indianapolis. Petty did what he needed to do, qualifying near the front and leading six laps before settling for a fifth-place finish that would prove good enough. Waltrip came home eighth and finished 11 points short, marking the first time the lead in the standings had changed hands on the final day. Petty celebrated his seventh title, and the Rookie of the Year that day was a driver who would eventually match him: Dale Earnhardt.3. A wheel and a prayer, 2004 It was a mesmerizing finish to the inaugural Chase, a finale that Kurt Busch, Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon entered separated by 21 points. They'd finish much closer than that, but not after a race that saw the three top contenders leap-frogging one another in the standings with almost every lap. On Lap 93, Busch thought his right-front tire was losing air pressure. He was wrong -- the wheel was loose, and it snapped off just as Busch had turned onto pit road, causing the No. 97 car to bottom out and throw sparks. As Busch ground his way to his pit stall, the loose wheel bounded down the frontstretch and caused a caution that perhaps saved his title hopes. Instead of getting lapped, the 26-year-old hung on to finish fifth and claim the title by eight points over Johnson in what was the closest final margin ever at that time.2. Rise of the Underbird, 1992 Before the race even started, the stage was set for a memorable finish to the 1992 season at Atlanta. Richard Petty was making his final start, capping a weekend of festivities. Some youngster named Jeff Gordon was making his debut. And the title race featured Davey Allison 30 points ahead of Alan Kulwicki, and 40 ahead of Bill Elliott. The event lived up to its billing, and the title picture changed almost immediately when Hut Stricklin, while trying to avoid another wreck, struck Allison from behind. Elliott took advantage, leading the most laps and winning the race -- but it wasn't enough to stop Kulwicki, who finished second to claim perhaps the most unlikely title in history. With 11 employees, $1.5 million in sponsorship, a Mighty Mouse patch on his firesuit and the first two letters scratched off what would become the Underbird, the driver/owner had done something people still marvel at today.1. Fit to be tied, 2011 Although Tony Stewart did his best to get inside of Carl Edwards' head during the latter stages of the 2011 Chase, he was most effective on the race track. Then a two-time champion, Stewart won four of the first nine playoff events to pull within three points of Edwards as the circuit arrived in Homestead. It had been a stunning reversal to a mediocre regular season, one in which Stewart had not only gone winless and sneaked into the Chase as the ninth seed, but also secretly fired crew chief Darian Grubb effective at the end of the year. And though Stewart was the one playing the mind games, it was Edwards who had twice won at the South Florida track. And goodness, did he make a run at a third victory. The Roush Fenway Racing driver started from the pole and led 119 laps as Stewart was forced to regroup from a front grille that had been damaged by debris. And yet momentum swung after a rain delay, and Stewart led the final 36 laps to claim a stunning fifth victory in the Chase, one he had to have to edge Edwards in a tiebreaker -- the first in NASCAR history to decide the title. The difference was Stewart's five victories on the season versus Edwards' one, that last triumph looming the largest. Edwards finished second, but it wasn't enough. Victory Lane stood empty as Stewart celebrated his twin triumphs by hoisting a sterling silver cup on the championship stage.

Meet Paulie Harraka, a young up-and-coming NASCAR driver who realized that in the current economic climate, if he was going to break into the sport, he'd have to create stock...in himself. He's now two start-ups into his journey to NASCAR greatness.

On Saturday during lunch at the Lincoln School Paulie will host a hands-on exploration of NASCAR gear and be available for autographs.

Don't miss Paulie's NASCAR Confidential talk Sunday afternoon during the Inspiration and Possibility session to hear his incredible story and to learn things you absolutely didn't know about the sport and business of NASCAR.

By Donald Wood on November 13, 2013

Motorsports and action sports superstar Travis 's quest to dominate the circuit has come to an end after his performance in the Nationwide Series this season was not good enough to secure sponsors for the 2014 campaign.

broke the news of his retirement from the sport on Facebook:

This past season of has been an awesome experience. I have made a lot of great friends, had a lot of fun and gained a new appreciation for all aspects of this sport. Jack and everyone at Racing have gone above and beyond to try and help me succeed and I am truly grateful for their support. I would like to thank them and all of the other people who stuck behind me during the last two years as I tried to learn how to make a successful career in . It's tough to step back now and prove the critics were right, but unfortunately my results were not good enough to get the sponsors I needed to appropriately fund next season.

While admitting defeat 't have been easy for the -sport legend, his lackluster performance since making the jump to has resulted in a lack of sponsor support, and finally the realization that the experiment was not going to work.

currently sits 14th in the Nationwide Series standings with one race remaining on the schedule (Homestead-Miami Speedway) and has only amassed four top-10 finishes in 32 starts in 2013. His average finish of 21st in 41 career races was simply not good enough to earn sponsorships moving forward.

Andy Lyons/Getty Images

Racing gave him every chance to shine in the No. 60 car during the 2013 season, but with only 11 career laps led and zero top-five finishes, it was the right time to walk away.

Add in the desire to spend more time with his wife and children and support them in their own goals, per Pastrana's message on Facebook, and it became clear what he needed to say.

Retiring from is a sad moment in his hunt for domination in every sport he attempts, but this is not a normal athlete we're talking about; has plenty of backup plans that will keep him busy now that his three-year asphalt racing career is over.

Now can turn all of his attention to dominating the dirt once again.

Whether it's on a dirt bike, in a rally car or in an off-road truck, will bring his mainstream notoriety and ability back to where he thrived earlier in his career.

There will inevitably be fans that continue to follow his career despite his retirement from the sport, and this minor setback could be a long-term positive as he regains his confidence and hones his skills.

Christian Petersen/Getty Images

At 30 years old, is still young and can continue to get better driving in NASCAR (testing for teams and running practice laps whenever he can) if the possibility of a return ever crosses his mind.

If the 10-time X Games gold medalist continues to thrive behind the wheel of anything he can get his hands on, there is still a chance that a team could take an educated risk re-signing him farther down the line.

With the name recognition, a hardcore following and legitimate ability behind the wheel, was smart to walk away with class now and re-evaluate the direction of his career.