Did Hamlin's ghosts in the shadows crush title hopes? (cont'd)

So, what it looked like happened was, that Keselowski coming off the corner under Hamlin distracted Hamlin enough that he didn't realize Greg Biffle had a monstrous run on his outside. And by not even thinking about breathing the throttle, Hamlin waffled Biffle into the outside wall and wrecked them both.

Not to imply that Biffle's treatment of race winner Joey Logano earlier in the day was totally classless, but I think Hamlin's totally too classy to just stuff Keselowski into the wall and end this chapter of their brewing "feud."

But he has to do something, and preferably before next season, when he'll begin another sure run to the Chase. Hamlin doesn't need to go through another set of events like he did this past weekend, even if most of them were his own responsibility.

And he doesn't need to create any collateral damage, or false hopes, either. If you believe in any kind of karma, maybe you felt like whatever had gone around came around for Keselowski, who neatly dodged the Biffle-Hamlin wreck but was taken out and finished a disappointing fifth after a melee on a later restart. (watch)

But speaking of collateral, what do you think was the worst part of all this? It had to be the look on Pops' (Keselowski's crew chief, Tony Eury Sr.) face when he realized his driver was crashing instead of contending.

That's racing, boys. And the bottom line is, when it eventually does come all the way back around, I hope Brad K. can be as professional in his demeanor as Hamlin's been -- his profanity laced, face-to-face confrontation with Keselowski at Dover aside. (Video: Wreck | Reactions)

Can you wait for this Nationwide feast?

Who knows how long it'll take, but after watching Justin Lofton and Parker Kligerman battle for the ARCA Re/Max Series championship Sunday at Rockingham, it's cool as heck to think about when they might do the same thing in the Nationwide Series.

Kligerman, a Penske Racing development driver who made his Nationwide debut from the pole at Kansas, won his ninth race of the season but lost the title to Lofton by five points. Here's hoping the economy improves enough to get both these kids into Nationwide full time next season.

Little change

Not that long ago, Fontana added a second race at the expense of venerable Darlington. Now it faces a similar situation.

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Fans continue to be served

California has attendance issues and the best possible solution -- or an attempt at one -- might be a "variable venue schedule" idea that's been floated by some in the media. Namely, since California can neither sell out, nor even come close, drop one of its dates for a year, give someone else -- like Vegas or Kansas -- a shot at a race, or another race and see if California's attendance appreciably goes up with only one event to try to sell.

But we're getting sidetracked. The point of this was to applaud NASCAR and its tracks for listening to the fans and going back, in 2010, to a race schedule with relatively consistent starting times. Now, it remains to be seen how the fans will respond.

And count Martinsville Speedway and its Chase race sponsor, Tums, as the latest to enlist some fan support. In two weekends, for the Chase's sixth race, "the fans" will serve as grand marshals and default honorary starters for the Tums Fast Relief 500.

That means fans will give the command, "Gentlemen start your engines" before the field leaves pit road. It'll be interesting to see how boisterous and commanding an effort that'll be -- and how tough it'll be to coordinate.

And a little more oblique will be the "honorary starter" role. To effect that, each fan entering the stadium will receive a commemorative 12x15 inch green flag that they'll be asked to wave, along with NASCAR's official starter in the flag stand, to start the race.

Geez, if umbrellas aren't legal in the grandstands, I wonder how many eyes might be put at risk by that move? (Continued)