A quick scan of what’s being written provides two viewpoints. David Poole of the Charlotte Observer believes that Gibbs should be lauded for taking responsibility for the cheating; over at Yahoo, Bob Margolis thinks that the shenanigans went way higher up chain of command than we’re led to believe.

Take those two for what they’re worth. But what stuck out to me was the comments at the end of Margolis’ story, with Ford owner Jack Roush and someone from the GM camp taking the opportunity to kick Toyota while it’s down.

Coming from Roush, it’s no surprise. He’s had a back-and-forth with Toyota ever since the manufacturer declared its intention to enter the Cup series.

GM’s Pat Suhy, who heads the racing group division for NASCAR, goes further than Margolis did; Suhy was quoted as saying that the tentacles of the cheating reach all the way to Toyota itself. (Toyota has distanced itself from the situation, claiming it was merely a Gibbs problem.)

Controversy always makes things interesting, of course. And for me, this is even better than two drivers getting out of a car and taking a swipe at each other.

Because of the importance of sponsors, there is a fair amount of sanitization in NASCAR. No one wants to create a tidal wave of negative publicity, lest it affect the sponsors that foot the bills.

So when you have people in the upper echelons of the sport taking jabs at each other, it’s worth watching — particularly when it goes beyond a running grudge, like Roush has with Toyota.

That’s not to say he’s wrong; he’s exactly right in what he says in Margolis’ story. It’s just that it’s more enjoyable to watch others jump in the fray, especially those who would seem to be Roush’s most hated rival (General Motors). Ford vs. Chevy is a battle of American icons.

More and more, it seems to be Toyota that is the real villain in NASCAR — though it’s worth pointing out that no one much cared about Toyota last season.

But there’s a reason that the Dallas Cowboys and New York Yankees are despised by a fair amount of the population.

(Photo by Bob Brodbeck/Associated Press)

We’re three weeks away from the beginning of the Chase. And after much hype for last year’s second Bristol race, we found out that this is the shutdown point for some of the teams.

Those guys that are pretty solidly in the Chase (Kyle Busch, Carl Edwards, Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Burton) have little to run for, particularly if they’re not having a great night. If they’re in contention for a win, yeah, they can get the 10 bonus points, but it’s hard to imagine they’ll do anything terribly risky to get that win. (Except for maybe Busch.)

The guys closer to the bubble — and the way the points are now, that’s everyone from sixth-place Tony Stewart on back — are in a more precarious situation. While there’s bound to be some shuffling, those drivers must also face a far greater risk of loss.

Let’s say an unwise move leads to a wreck. Now, that particular driver is headed to pit road to fix damage and come out with a lesser car than he had to start. And while he was on pit road, several other competitors would have passed.

When risk far outweighs the reward, as it does in our little hypothetical, you try to minimize those risks. And that means racing conservatively, which is what happened at last year’s race.

It happens in other sports. Week 17 in the NFL often becomes an extra preseason game for teams that have already clinched a playoff spot. Since each snap carries the real potential of catastrophic injury, why subject your stars to that risk? So they don’t play.

In baseball, the rosters expand in September. Teams like the Angels, who currently enjoy a 15.5-game lead in the American League West, will use those younger players to give the regulars a rest. And if that inexperience costs them a few games, so what? Texas isn’t going to catch them.

With three races left before the Chase, Cup teams are going to do the same thing.

It’s a simple risk-reward equation.

• NASCAR LOWERS THE BOOM ON GIBBS RACING: As expected, the penalties were severe for Joe Gibbs Racing on the fallout from Saturday’s attempt at deceiving the dyno.

Gibbs has been stripped of 150 owner points from both the No. 18 and No. 20 Nationwide entries. The cars’ crew chiefs, Jason Ratcliff on the 18 and Dave Rogers on the 20, have been fined $50,000 and suspended indefinitely. Five other Gibbs crew members were indefinitely suspended, including both car chiefs (Dorian Thorsen on the 18, Richard Bray on the 20), two engine tuners (Michael Johnson and Dan Bejak) and Toby Bigelow, a crew member for the 18.

Of lesser importance, both cars have been placed on probation until the end of the calendar year (but probation carries little weight in NASCAR) and drivers Tony Stewart and Joey Logano were stripped of 150 points (though drivers often change seats in Gibbs’ Nationwide cars and Logano wasn’t running a full schedule anyway).

That’s a harsh, harsh penalty; then again, you had to know NASCAR was not going to take kindly to a blatant attempt to cheat on one its tests.

(Photo by Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR)

But two races out, these two have established themselves as the dominant drivers of the season. It will take mistakes from them in some form — on-track miscues, equipment malfunctions, missing setups — for anyone else to have a legitimate shot at a championship.

That’s how it looks, anyway.

The Chase is a long deal and lots can happen. By and large, the champion in the Chase era has been deserving; but remember 2006, when Jimmie Johnson’s fortunes went south in the opening weeks. Johnson found himself in the final races, including five straight finishes of first or second, to seal the title.

From this perspective, looking ahead, it seems impossible for such a thing to afflict Busch or Edwards. But if it can happen to Johnson in 2006, it can happen to anyone.

Both drivers have had their share of clunkers: Busch at Pocono (twice) and Martinsville, Edwards at Atlanta, Talladega and Chicago. That’s about normal, since no driver is going to make it through a 36-race season unscathed. To keep the comparison going, Johnson’s 2006 season had only one real clunker, which also happened to be the first race in the Chase. He was 39th at New Hampshire, his lowest finish of that year.

With all of that being said, it’s rarely what happens on your best or worst days; it’s what happens on all the others. My uncle, as knowledgeable of a sports fan as you’ll find, had a saying about baseball: They’re all going to win 50 and they’re all going to lose 50; it’s what happens in the other 82 that matters.

That line of thinking applies to the Chase, too. There will be some wins and some ugly finishes, but salvaging a good finish is an important ability. In the season as a whole but particularly in the Chase, it’s critical to minimize the damage when you’ve got to grind through an afternoon.

• GIBBS? REALLY? Joe Gibbs Racing is in hot water after NASCAR discovered a rather blatant attempt to conceal its engines true power.

The sanctioning body ordered Toyotas onto the dyno after Saturday’s Nationwide race to test engine strength. NASCAR had already ordered Toyota engines to be modified, bringing them closer to the pack.

But NASCAR discovered magnets underneath the gas pedal, which would prevent it from reaching the floor (and, thus, underestimating the top limits of the engine). Severe penalties will be on the way, likely tomorrow, and team president J.D. Gibbs promised that the situation will be handled internally as well.

Joe Gibbs, the former Redskins coach, has always prided himself on being a people person. You get the best people and you put them in charge. There’s a trust there.

From time to time, that trust is violated. It’s not like the Redskins, even in his first stint, never ever had a problem with players. It wasn’t the norm, but they weren’t all choir boys, either. No random collection of people, like you’d find at a workplace, is.

If you judge the comments from J.D. and Joe, and the manner in which they were delivered, it’s hard not to believe that this is a harmful blow. Because of the actions of one or a few, it’s J.D. that has to sit in front of the press with egg on his face and Joe that has his name sullied.

When you hold yourself to a different standard, the fall is harder if those standards are violated. If Gibbs can find how such deceit occurred and takes the appropriate steps to correct it, then its credibility should not suffer in the wake of this incident.

• SKIPPING OUT ON TUESDAY: We’ll be back Wednesday. Lots of stuff to do for the printed edition.

(Photo by Carl Pendleton/Associated Press)

The continued merry-go-round of silly season isn’t much affected by Friday’s announcement, which was anticipated. On the back end, Newman had long since announced he was leaving Penske after this season, the same one in which he won the Daytona 500.

How long ago that seemed…

This has been a rather paltry silly season; many potential seat swappers bailed out by re-upping with their current teams. Guys like Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle and Martin Truex Jr. Their presence would have made the midseason free-agent discussions especially silly.

Tony Stewart has been the only real bombshell and, in terms of sheer surprise, was greater than Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s announcement a year ago. It’s not like we didn’t see that coming, not with the running gags of how Junior’s engine would blow up on a particular week.

Stewart’s departure, however, seemed unimaginable when the series rolled into Daytona. Aside from Jeff Gordon, who has a lifetime contract with Hendrick, there was no safer seat in the series than Stewart’s.

Casey Mears’ ouster at Hendrick was easy to see coming. He simply had not produced; while his teammates flourished, he languished.

That Mark Martin will replace Mears was a bit of a surprise, but not much. It’s been easy to see Martin’s desire to get back into a winning machine; remember the questions that swirled around him when he was a points frontrunner early last season? Everyone wanted to know if he planned on sticking to a part-time schedule — and taking himself out of the running for a championship — or if he felt he had another run in him.

He has continued to run well, even in DEI’s second-tier equipment. A victory was his for the taking at Pocono, but his typical bad luck there again reappeared.

But those are the major movements. The leftover seats will be filled by Joey Logano (presumably for Stewart), Aric Almirola and a driver to be named at Penske.

Aside from one surprise, it’s been a fairly quiet silly season.

And that’s probably not a bad thing.

(Photo by Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press)

That’s because such dates are a cash cow and there’s only 36 of them — and even fewer that are realistically up for grabs.

First, the backstory on Kansas: The speedway is trying to put a new Hard Rock Hotel & Casino on its property; there are three other groups also trying to land a Hard Rock franchise. As a deal sweetener, Kansas’ parent company, International Speedway Corp. — which is run by the France family — said it would try to find a way to add a second Cup date to the facility. (A little more detail is over at Scene Daily.)

ISC and its rival, Speedway Motorsports, are welcome to move dates among their tracks, with NASCAR’s approval, of course. But the rub is this: To get a date to a new track, one has to give one up.
So ISC has to find somewhere to give up a date.

Again, this is all preliminary; if the casino goes to another group, the issue is pretty much moot.

Martinsville traditionally comes up in these discussions for any number of reasons that we don’t need to rehash. Dustin Long pretty much nailed the list of scenarios; when you run through the list of ISC tracks, where are there honest candidates to lose dates?

There aren’t many, as Long points out.

It’s a situation that bears watching. If Martinsville does lose a race, whether now or down the road, it would be a fairly big blow to the state as a whole. As it stands, Virginia is one of only a handful of states (North Carolina, Florida, California) that have more than two Cup events.

• THE ‘SUSPENSE’ ENDS TOMORROW: Tony Stewart is holding a press conference at 10:30 tomorrow morning in Michigan to announce Stewart-Haas’ second driver.

Most everyone expects it will be Ryan Newman.

Next season will be a most interesting one for Stewart-Haas. I would tend to agree — but far from totally sold — with the naysayers who believe that ’09 will be a struggle for that team.

It will be interesting to watch once it arrives.

In the meantime, keep an eye on the current drivers. The No. 66, with Scott Riggs aboard, is 37th in owner points. The No. 70, now with Tony Raines, is 43rd in owner points. Though they will certainly change by season’s end, Stewart and (presumptively) Newman could be in the position of having to qualify for Daytona — as well as the following four races — on time.

With no safety net, the pressure will be on Stewart and his team immediately.

(Photo by Don Petersen/Associated Press)