Weekend That Was: Indy

My boss, Duane Cross, sent out the warning shortly after I took this job in January.

Don't worry about the e-mails. Don't try to answer them all, he insisted. It will only drive you crazy and begin to dominate your life if you try, he said. Or at least he said something to that effect.

I should have listened.

• Send Joe your thoughts

In fact, I tried to. I said I wouldn't try to answer them all, although I always made the attempt to do so in my previous job as beat writer covering an NFL team for a newspaper that I will not name here for fear of giving them even a shred of positive publicity. (The folks running that place now don't deserve it).

Problem was, in the old job I might get 25 e-mails per week. Maybe 50 if I wrote something that really ticked off the ol' shrinking reader base.

"Hah! Fifty? You might get 50 in an hour on this job. Or 500 in a week," Cross told me.

I laughed. I thought he was joking.

He was not.

If I didn't know that before last week, I know it now. I received more than 500 e-mails in response to the Good Tony / Bad Tony column I wrote about Tony Stewart one week ago. They ran about two to one in favor of calling me an "idiot" or a "moron." The ones that didn't pretty much praised me and called Stewart the same.

As had been my habit, I tried to answer all the e-mails. But they kept coming. I actually stopped counting after about 500 -- but when I would clear 100 out, another 100 seemed to arrive. After a while, I simply couldn't keep up without risking putting my marriage in trouble or forgetting what one or more of my four children looked like.

So for those of you who didn't get a personal response or didn't get what I was trying to say in the first place, get this: I don't harbor a deep personal dislike for Tony Stewart, the terrific driving talent who won his second consecutive Nextel Cup race on Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I simply was pointing out that there is Good Tony and Bad Tony, and that Stewart ought to work harder to let the public see the Good Tony more often.

His winning the last two weeks hasn't changed my opinion on that. In fact, seeing Good Tony in action only reinforces my feeling on the subject. Keep Bad Tony under wraps ... puh-leaze! (Besides, didn't anyone notice that I actually picked him to win the last two weeks?)

At the same time, I realize that Bad Tony is part of Stewart's competitive personality -- part of what makes him the terrific driving talent he is. He can't cut him out of the deal entirely, but maybe he can channel Bad Tony into more innocent endeavors such as uttering a post-race swear word on national television, rather than running into the back of a teammate during a race and then repeatedly not only blaming the teammate but calling him out and then having the audacity to blame the media for the controversy that erupts.

Then there was the column I wrote last week about Ginn Racing merging with Dale Earnhardt Inc. Who would have thought that would have generated almost as many e-mails as the Stewart deal? Actually, it might eventually surpass the Stewart total -- as the Ginn e-mails still seem to be pouring in (this time probably more like three to one in favor of my opinion, however).

Here's the deal on that one, for those folks who again trotted out the creative "idiot" and "moron" monikers: No, I don't have a personal vendetta against Bobby Ginn. Nor do I necessarily think he made a bad business deal -- for himself and a few of his close cronies.

Of course I realize that merging Ginn Racing, which was having trouble finding sponsors for at least two of its cars, with DEI is a win-win situation for Mr. Bobby Ginn. But again, many law-abiding citizens who normally wouldn't call me the things they did in e-mails to my face missed the point of my column.

Ginn laid out a supposedly comprehensive five-year plan last January for Ginn Racing. Veteran drivers Sterling Marlin and Joe Nemechek and developmental driver Ricky Carmichael were among those present for the grand news conference. They all thought they were part of the plan. So did those working closely with them to put the cars they were to drive on the tracks where they were going to run them.

That isn't to say that Marlin and Nemechek figured they would be around for all five years of the so-called plan. They've both been around long enough and weren't that naive. But they surely didn't figure if they ran well enough to keep their cars within the top 35 in owner's points over the first 19 races that Ginn would sell them out after six months!

Carmichael will be fine. Mark Martin supposedly will continue to work with him under the new Ginn-DEI umbrella.

But the point I was making, and will continue to make, is that Ginn made lots of empty promises to lots of good folks who are now out of work. It wasn't right. And that's the bottom line.

I refuse to apologize for pointing that out, or for no longer being able to answer all the e-mails now flooding my inbox at Turner Sports. At least I never publicly promised to answer all of them.

The Top 35 Debate

Ask Brian Vickers the most difficult part of being a start-up Toyota team with Red Bull Racing this season, and his answer is as quick as it is obvious. It all goes back to either having owner points and being in the top 35, or not having them and having to scratch and qualify your way into races on speed each Sunday until you can get in the top 35 and stay there.

"The hardest part of it has been just not being in the top 35," said Vickers, who made just 10 of the first 19 Nextel Cup races in his No. 83 Toyota. "I mean, we brought up last week [prior to the running of the Brickyard race] -- just out of curiosity -- what would have happened had the points leader, who happens to be Jeff Gordon, if he had not been in the top 35 and been in the same position as us when the season started. We wondered how many races he would have missed -- and he would have missed three.

"You've just got to put it in perspective. That's been the hardest part -- just being a new team not having any points from the previous year to kind of rely on coming into this season."

So the top 35 rule needs to be changed, right? Vickers said yes, but admitted he isn't quite sure what NASCAR should do.

"It definitely needs to be changed. I think everybody knows that," Vickers said. "Obviously you can't change it mid-season. But the fact that the guy who has won four championships, 70-some races, and is leading in points in 2007 by 200-plus points would have missed three races if he had been in our position -- I mean, wow -- that's a statement. I mean, you couldn't compare it to a better-running team, a better-running car or driver.

"If that would have happened to them under those circumstances, I guess you'd better look at your structure. If they couldn't have made every race under that structure, then how could you expect anyone else to? You know what I mean? I mean, it's arguably the best team and driver on the circuit ... If arguably the best guy out there right now would have missed races under this format -- or even one race, for that matter -- then it's like, 'OK, maybe there's something we need to do differently here because we can't expect a brand-new start-up team to make races if they can't.' "

Familiar territory

Vickers said he can relate to Kyle Busch, who recently indicated that he feels like an outsider at the weekly Hendrick Motorsports competition meetings. Busch, driver of the No. 5 Chevrolet that had another good day at the Brickyard, already has said he's leaving Hendrick at the end of this season.

Vickers found himself in a similar situation last year when he was driving for Hendrick but knew he was on his way out. He eventually was banned from attending the competition meetings.

"It was tough to do my job," Vickers said. "They would say, `Look, we want you to go out there and try to win races and we want you to be out there racing hard. We expect the best out of you. But we're not going to let you use all the tools to do it.' That kind of makes it tough.

"But you know, they did what they felt like they had to do. I tried to be professional about it and do the best job I could do, given the circumstances, and just go on down the road."

Vickers said he won't be surprised if Busch eventually is shut out of the Hendrick meetings altogether, as well. Then again, the difference is that Busch continues to run well within the top 12 that is the cutoff to make the Chase for the Championship -- something Vickers wasn't doing when he entered lame-duck status at Hendrick last season.

"I think it just depends," Vickers said. "If you want that driver and that team to continue to run well, then you give them all the tools to do it. That means letting them come to competition meetings. If you don't really care how they run, then you don't let 'em do those things -- and you just sort of let the team run its course as the situation changes."

Pit stops

• Yes, Stewart said a bad word Sunday that didn't get bleeped out during his initial post-race interview following the Brickyard race. But am I the only one who found it kind of humorous, while admitting that NASCAR will have to follow its established precedent and force Stewart to swear under his breath again after issuing him a hefty fine?

• Stewart had a better line when he was asked about the casual way he took a swig from his water bottle while cruising down an Indianapolis Motor Speedway straightaway at nearly 200 mph. "I was thirsty," he shrugged (watch video).

• After the weekend's strong showing by the No. 42 car of Juan Montoya and the No. 41 of driver Reed Sorensen, it's time to see if Chip Ganassi Racing can start building the kind of consistent top finishes that will enable that operation to elevate itself to the same level as the other top Cup organizations. Sorenson won the pole at Indy and finished fifth in the race, while Montoya qualified second and finished the same after running in the top five virtually all day (watch video).