Need soap opera drama? Check the NASCAR garage

Justin Timberlake brought sexy back but Jamie McMurray is bringing the drama back to daytime TV.

The 31-year-old blonde bomber made his soap-opera debut this week on Passions, a campy daytime drama that depicts supernatural adventures between rival families and foes along with the "whose bed have your boots been under" storylines that make every daytime drama a favorite guilty pleasure for all who watch.

Interesting enough, the same ingredients that make shows like Passions popular are some of the same ingredients that make NASCAR one of the most talked about sports on TV.

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Like a soap opera, with a dash of reality television, NASCAR is not without family feuds, tawdry trysts and tussles, bouts with drugs and blunders under the covers.

And like a high school cafeteria, the NASCAR garage is where it all starts; it's where the worst-kept secrets are revealed as soon as they are whispered.

Most industry players will tell you the garage is a real hot bed for gossip and drama; drama for your mama, your sister, your cousin, brother and your uncle, too.

Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin explained why.

"NASCAR can be that way because we all travel together so much and we know so much about each other's lives," he said. "You know guys talk about each other when they walk away. It's not like other sports where there are only two teams on the field."

NASCAR has an estimated 48 teams socializing and living together every weekend in the close confines of a racetrack, more or less the makings of a college fraternity.

And the more media coverage and hype surrounding the sport and its cast of characters, the more likely Hamlin and other drivers will become topics of conversation. They are increasingly becoming targets for celebrity Web sites, Page 6 and gossip blogs.

The most recent episode of unfounded hearsay and innuendo came when fair-weather fan Paris Hilton reportedly flirted with NASCAR's man candy Kasey Kahne. Then a few short weeks later, reportedly canoodled with Hamlin.

Nothing was founded but it didn't stop tabloid journalist from running with it, namely the NASCAR gossip blog called Tall Glass of Milk, the most well-known in a string of NASCAR gossip blogs to surface in recent years.

Operated by a pop culture blogger in California, Jen, who has asked her last name not be mentioned for fear of retribution, makes it her mission to know which NASCAR drivers are single, married, dating, persona non grata or all of the above.

She knows their breakups and their make-ups. She has positioned her blog as the People magazine of NASCAR.

Hamlin, who Jen follows with regularity, became blog fodder for his recent split with a long-time high school girlfriend and now his current love interest.

"If that site didn't write it, someone else would've," Hamlin lamented.

McMurray initially embraced the celebrity attention early in his NASCAR career but now prefers his privacy.