“We gambled for fuel,” Kenseth said after the race according to Charlotte Observer reporter David Poole, “but there was really no reason to gamble because we had the best car. We had the car to beat so I don’t understand how we can run out of fuel on the last lap.”
That a driver expressed his frustration for one situation or another is nothing new. That it was Kenseth, who has come to be known for his even demeanor (some would say milquetoast), has given the story legs for as long as it has.
But it shouldn’t be surprising. Besides knowing how to drive a car, Nextel Cup drivers have another thing in common: They’re all intense. For some (Tony Stewart, Kurt Busch on occasion) that intensity is clear for all to see; for others (Kenseth, Mark Martin most of the time) that intensity is more hidden.
That, however, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
Talent only goes so far. Cup’s elite drivers are that because they’ve got a drive that rivals that intensity. And in this one instant for Kenseth, it boiled over for the world to see and hear about.
The list of elite drivers who have been around a while that we’ve never seen upset is very short. Kasey Kahne is the only one that comes to mind, but it’s entirely possible I’m not remembering something correctly.
Their job puts them on the edge, week in and week out. Beyond that, it’s their talent and their drive that bind them together.
• APOLOGIES for not updating yesterday. We managed to slip in an off day to work at Sunday’s Redskins-Jaguars game. I’ll try to be better about giving a head’s-up on upcoming days when there won’t be an update.

It’s not my intention to go on at length about the lack of excitement of continually driving tracks of the same length — though obviously no two tracks are the same. (Drivers say that California and Michigan, which appear to be as close to twins as tracks are, drive differently and require different setups.)
But at the same time, while California and Michigan may be different, no one can dispute that Bristol and Talladega are vastly different. The shades of different are as stark as can be.
As it stands, the 36 points races happen at 22 different venues. Using the standard definitions of track lengths (one-to-two-milers are intermediate, greater than two miles is a superspeedway, less than one mile is a short track and road courses are road courses, regardless of length), the breakdown goes like this: seven races at four superspeedways (Daytona, Talladega, Pocono, Indianapo-lis); six races at three short tracks (Bristol, Martinsville, Richmond); two races at two road courses (Infineon, Watkins Glen). The remaining 21 races are at 13 intermediate tracks.
The road courses are fine as they are, given their hot-and-cold reception among drivers — Jimmy Spencer famously said he’d prefer Infineon be used as a bombing range. Short-track sites can lead to high-intensity and occasionally high-frustration racing (Bristol) or sometimes just high-frustration racing (Martinsville). Here, only Richmond bucks the trend, ranking annually among the top of driver’s favorite lists. Restrictor-plate tracks are fine as they are too, given the unpredictability of plate racing.
So, politics and the intricacies of building a track aside, what could replace some of the intermediate tracks to give Cup a more balanced schedule, keeping in mind what we know in the paragraph above?
• Another unique superspeedway. Easier said than done, of course; I make no bones about my distinct lack of an engineering background. But if there was a way to incorporate the unique features like Pocono and Indy do without forcing NASCAR to use a plate, that would be a sound idea. Perhaps an oversized version of Darlington with a racing surface as wide as Pocono. Of course, to truly balance the schedule, you’d need three or four of those places — all individual.
• Incorporating the successful elements of Richmond into a short track. Drivers like Richmond because there are multiple grooves and plenty of room to move; it lacks the confinement of Bristol and the choke points at Martinsville (turns 1 and 3). But building a Richmond clone would be counterproductive and water down the short-track experience; perhaps a wide figure-8 shaped course. Again, more than one of those tracks would be needed.
As I said, this conveniently ignores the fact that Cup-capable tracks don’t grow on trees and that places like Lowe’s and Dover and Las Vegas would easily surrender one or both of their Cup dates. They wouldn’t, obviously.
But we can dream in a little bit of a fantasy land, can’t we?

(Photo by Gavin Lawrence/Getty Images via NASCAR)

It’s still a matter of luck, he said, because teams that have any sort of mechanical trouble or get caught up in a wreck — a la Kahne — are essentially eliminated from the championship well before the halfway mark. Kahne and Kyle Busch, the victim of equipment failure, conceded their title hopes while standing in the middle of the garage, cars still racing around them.
“It’s not about who’s going to win the championship based on good finishes, it’s going to be about guys who just don’t have a bad day. That’s all this Chase boils down to,” Stewart said on Sunday. “This Chase thing needs a lot of work, and it’s not a matter of how many cars make the Chase. It goes a lot deeper than that.”
Stewart’s mostly right, but his comments are a bit short-sighted. Yes, it’s important that drivers be able to climb back from a bad race; but at the same time, a championship represents more than just one person.
The driver gets most of the glory, of course, but we all know that it takes much more than a driver to win a title. Crew chiefs, engine builders, mechanics, fabricators and pit crews all wear the same uniform.
The championship, in theory, goes to the best team. The best teams, of course, don’t have repeated breakdowns and equipment failures; if they do, they should be penalized heavily. (One could argue that repeated breakdowns are penalty enough, as the rest of the Chase field zooms by in the points standings.) If a driver hits a streak of bad luck, oh well. Sometimes you need an ace on the river, and sometimes you get a four. That’s sports, and that’s life.
So, can NASCAR achieve a balance between penalizing teams that don’t perform in the Chase while not eliminating those who suffer a bout of bad luck? Probably not. As Stewart notes, winning a Cup title is still about consistency, no matter how short a timeframe 10 races is. And that won’t change unless NASCAR adopts a Formula One-style points system, which won’t ever happen.
The Chase is what it is: a playoff that plays by the same rules as the regular season. No matter what kind of tweaks are made — and NASCAR boss Brian France has promised tweaks — that won’t change.
Because if it were to change, that would be well beyond the realm of tweaks and into the realm of overhaul.
• BEFORE I LEFT for work, I caught the highlight on SportsCenter about the brawl at the ARCA race in Toledo, Ohio. According to the Associated Press account, driver Michael Simko hit the wall after battling with Don St. Denis. The video on SportsCenter shows Simko sprinting and drop-kicking St. Denis’ windshield, breaking it.
The video is on the Web site of Toledo television station WTOL, but it doesn’s show the wreck that precipitated the fight.
ARCA has announced that both Simko and St. Denis have been suspended indefinitely.
While it’s unclear what role St. Denis had — aside from having his car drop-kicked — it seems pretty clear that Simko needs to be suspended for a long time. Yes, tempers flare and yes, it makes for great theater.
But certain acts are just so far beyond the bounds of sportsmanship that a large hammer needs to be dropped. I’m glad to see ARCA did just that.

Police identified and caught the counterfeiters after viewing a video tape from the Olde Towne Hobby Shop on Center Street where counterfeiters tried to pass one of the bogus bills, Hughes said.

Brian Magnani owns the hobby shop and refused one of the bills when a man tried to use it in his store Saturday.

“The bill felt real, but the ink was kind of faded a little bit and it was blurred like the ink was bleeding,” Magnani said.

“That’s the first tip-off. American currency doesn’t bleed, ever,” the 33-year-old Magnani said.

The bill didn’t have a water mark, and the numbers in the lower corner did not change colors when held in shifting light, Magnani said.

The man insisted that the bill was authentic, Magnani said.

“I told this kid, ‘Look, I can’t take this bill. You’ve got to take it back to wherever you got it from,’” Magnani said of the man who appeared to be in his early-to-mid 20s.

The man left the store, Magnani said.

A customer who was in the store and witnessed the incident called Magnani about an hour later saying he had seen the man with who had tried to use the fake money enter a nearby book store and exit with some books.

Magnani walked to the book store and asked the owner if he had recently taken a $100 bill.

He had.

“It turned out to be a fake,” Magnani said.

Magnani called the police and gave his story.

The police returned to Magnani’s store about two hours later and asked if he could come and identify a man they had arrested, Magnani said.

“I identified one of the guys that had come into my store,”Magnani said

Manassas police called the secret service after initially arresting two men for passing the counterfeit bills, Perea said.

“Manassas P.D. was very good as far as jumping on this thing an probably prevented more notes being passed out out there,” Perea said.

The Secret Service investigated and found that the bills were being produced a Manassas area residence, Perea said.

“We followed the trail back — as far as the path of the counterfeit and the suspects — back to the actual printer they were printed on,” Perea said.

So far, the investigation shows that four fake bills have been passed in the Manassas area, Perea said.

“We’re researching right now and checking the identifiers of the notes — paper quality, that kind of thing — to see if anything else was passed in Prince William County,”

Annette Womack, the owner of the Sweet Shop on Battle Street, got stuck with one of the bogus bills.

She had a booth set up at the Harris Pavilion for the chili cook-off Saturday and one of her clerks took the bill from the counterfeiter, Womack said.

“He bought $2 worth of bulk candy and she gave him change from the $100 bill,” Womack said.

Womack noticed the fake bill when she took the large bills from the till for safekeeping.

There were two $100 bills in the till, the 44-year-old Womack said.

“I looked at one then I looked at the other one and I said, ‘This isn’t real,’” Womack said.

The fake was apparent to Womack.

“The money felt real but the color of the money, the color of the ink was kind of a bluish color. It looked like they had tried to wash it,” Womack said.

Womack called police who took the money for evidence.

Womack said everyone in town was talking about the incident.

“Police were everywhere,” Womack said.

Womack doubts she’ll ever see the $100 again and said it she would have to sell a lot of candy to make it up.

“That’s a lot of money to a candy store,” she said. “I’m so glad that they caught these boys.”

Staff writer Keith Walker can be reached at (703) 878-8063.