In NASCAR, order of the day has driver before team

Team orders? In NASCAR racing? It makes you wonder who comes up with these zany ideas.

All you had to do was watch the last 30 laps of this past Sunday's race at Dover to know -- just absolutely, incontrovertibly know -- that while orders to some degree do exist, like:

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• "Don't wreck your teammate, whatever you do," or ...
• "Be nice to your partners coming onto pit road," and ...
• "Push a teammate back to pit road if he runs out of gas under caution," ...

"Team Orders," -- as they appear to be known in Formula One where Driver A will, on command of the team manager, give way to Driver B who's probably a more likely bet for the championship -- just don't have a chance in NASCAR.

If they did, why on earth would Dover winner -- in fact, winner of the past two races in the Chase for the Sprint Cup -- Greg Biffle chuckle after the race and say words to the effect of, "If I were [Jack Roush] watching what we were doing, I would have crapped in my pants."

I'm here to tell ya -- it don't get no better than that, whether you're talking about a driver with personality or the racing that spawned it.

If it's just Dover, my vote would be to give Dover five Sprint Cup weekends, and to take 'em away from some of the, uh, less-apt-to-be-scintillating racetracks -- determined by a vote of the fans.

But the new car-be-damned, those last 30 laps were damned good racing, and a damned good show.

Clichés be darned, but one time I either blinked or glanced at my computer for I swear, two seconds, and missed a pass from third to first by Matt Kenseth. Rubbing fenders was only part of what had ol' Jack on the verge of a fit. These guys were sideways on top of sideways on top of each other, everywhere.

As a fan, whether you root for Ford, Chevy, Dodge or Toyota -- you had to be loving it -- because it was pure, unadulterated racing.

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Come on. If team orders existed, Carl Edwards would have won Sunday. Many people think Carl is Jack's chosen one as it is.

No way. Edwards may win the championship, but if he does, he and Bob Osborne will have to earn it. And if they do, after anything like what was witnessed Sunday, they will have earned a ton of respect along with a pretty hefty trophy and prize package.

The fact is, Roush does a pretty good job of spreading himself around, especially considering of any given Saturday or Sunday, he's pretty apt to have all five of his cars seriously in the mix.

But this past Sunday, he just about had to be cross-eyed trying to keep up with what was going on. That video is definitely a keeper.

Near the end of his post-race briefing, Roush said the only time he left Biffle's pit box was to visit the bathroom. It's guaranteed it wasn't to think about any set of orders.

And it was a good thing. That might have been all that kept him from soiling his britches.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.