Now that Kansas is over, it's time for real wild card

Maybe all the worrying, fretting and wailing about the new Car of Tomorrow at Talladega this weekend will be for naught.

After the monumental mess on the Great Plains, how can Talladega be any rougher on teams than Kansas was?

The rains that stopped the race on Lap 149 -- 16 laps past halfway -- were typically heavy Midwestern thunderstorms. If you've never been through one, it seems like it's raining quarters, the drops are that heavy. But, in typical Midwestern fashion, there was nothing behind it, and it dried off quick enough to get more of the race in.

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NASCAR has an obligation to get the race in, if at all possible, and officials did that. They had daylight, the track was dry, no weather coming ... it was a no-brainer. All of that failed to make any difference to the leader in the clubhouse, however.

Tony Stewart stayed out, much as Jeff Gordon did at Pocono, to get the lead when it started to rain. Game over, right? Take the check, hop the plane and back to Indiana in time to watch Colts highlights, right?

Well, no.

Apparently, the rain delay was enough time for several drivers to get their fill of Red Bull, Full Throttle or Amp, because it got hairy after that. You can't blame them; the drivers only knew that NASCAR had shortened the race 42 laps because of darkness -- it was originally scheduled to end on Lap 225 instead of Lap 267.

Recipe for disaster? This is the Chase, and the Chase guys were flat after it, with the rest of the field mixed in.

That brings us to Talladega, where the COT is set to make its debut on Sunday.

It's not going to be any different. The Chase guys -- especially the seven drivers who crashed out at Kansas -- are going to be loaded for bear, and some of the guys who didn't make the Chase are in the middle of the road.

While we're talking about Talladega, let's visit the Jacques Villeneuve whine-fest for a minute. Several drivers, including Gordon, Kyle Busch and Jeff Green, to name a couple, have expressed a desire for Villeneuve to make his NASCAR debut elsewhere, anywhere but Talladega, for the reasons listed: it's the Chase, he's a "rookie," they don't want to be tripping over him, he needs more experience, yada, yada, yada.

Fine, they're the drivers. They know what makes them happy, and hey, they've got opinions, too. That said, I'm absolutely positive that Villeneuve, should he make the race, isn't going to be any more of a moving chicane than some of the other drivers currently racing in the series every week.

In fact, he's having to slow down a bit from what he's used to from open-wheel cars, and what, are NASCAR drivers the only drivers who know what aerodynamics can do? Sure, the traffic might be a little hairy, but this is a guy who has won at Indy and in Formula One. He knows hairy, has been there and done that, and it doesn't scare him. It shouldn't scare Jeff Gordon.

After what happened at Kansas, it's pretty clear that anyone, even a long-time veteran, can trigger a multi-car crash. There's one every year at Talladega, it seems like, no matter who is in the race. It's all right if someone you race with week in and week out crashes you, but not somebody new? That's a little far-fetched, but you get the point.

Some of you might remember the days when Bobby Allison and Cale Yarborough ran the Indy 500 smack in the middle of the NASCAR season. The Indy drivers didn't moan about the stock-car drivers crashing their party at arguably the most important race of the year in any series in the world. They were good enough to make the race; deal with it.

Gordon suggested that Villeneuve go to Atlanta to make his Cup debut. Gordon made his there. But Atlanta is the fastest non-plate track the series visits, and last I checked, it's still in the Chase.

NASCAR drivers are some of the best in the world, bar none. If you're a competitor, and all of these guys are, why worry about a driver from another discipline coming into the series? If you can't beat the cat on your home turf, then you have to get better. Nobody, as far as I know, has claimed that Villeneuve is going to come in and kick their butts. If he gets in and does well, then we've wasted far too much oxygen debating it.

End of rant.

This weekend's event is going to be a barn-burner any way you cut it. There's a race-watch party at one of the Official NASCAR Members Club's Local Headquarters that will be quite a good gauge of how entertaining it is, and if Villeneuve is in the field, then it ought to make for a heck of a race.

I'll be taking notes, too.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.