Did Hamlin's ghosts in the shadows crush title hopes?

For the latest time in his short career, Denny Hamlin on Sunday showed why he's a very, very good professional race car driver -- and perhaps an even better professional representative of his team and sponsors.

The fact that Hamlin, on both Saturday and Sunday at Auto Club Speedway was delivered devastating blows on the race track -- particularly Sunday where his own admitted "rookie mistake" eliminated him and his team from contention in the 2009 Chase -- made his reactions even more impressive.

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Denny Hamlin had a weekend to forget at Fontana, with wrecks in both the Nationwide and Cup series taking him out of contention.

• Nationwide Series wreck
• Sprint Cup Series wreck

After racing to the front in both the Nationwide Series, even more impressive since he'd relieved Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch, and then on his own team's behalf in the Sprint Cup Series, Hamlin was left with nothing but a pile of shattered pieces -- and hopes -- in both races.

And yet he stood there, for the benefit of the media and viewing audience, and explained what had occurred.

Trust me, it was excruciatingly painful, because Hamlin had to reflect and revisit and try to explain what went wrong. It doesn't take much sense to figure Hamlin would've much rather been somewhere else.

But he didn't snarl. He didn't turn tail, run and hide. He could have and he knows it, because his current and former JGR teammates, Busch and Tony Stewart, have done plenty of it.

So hat's off to Hamlin for being a professional man.

But there's something that began nagging me Saturday and, even though there was no connection -- I repeat, none whatsoever -- to Sunday's event, it's continued.

And that's the lingering "ghosts" of Hamlin's mini-brawl with Nationwide regular Brad Keselowski.

Even though Hamlin once again Saturday accused Keselowski of basically racing over his head and with a chip on his shoulder, for the second consecutive race a potential winning Nationwide ride for Hamlin was nullified in part by Keselowski.

But Saturday was much more insidious than Keselowski barging into a barely existing hole on the bottom of the race track, as he'd done at Dover. On Saturday, Hamlin said he saw Keselowski coming, knew how he races and that a wreck was inevitable no matter what happened.

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?

Hendrick's documentary TV-scarred

The documentary presentation of Hendrick Motorsports' 25-year history that aired just before ESPN on ABC's presentation of the California Sprint Cup festivities exposed a couple of dangers of time-limited television programming previewed by the media from a more wide-angled perspective.

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• 1on1: Hendrick opens up

If you read rave media reviews of the premiere, then you had to be a little disappointed by the TV show, which was only an hour minus all the commercials. The reasons were the reviews said the premiere showed a balanced display of every element of Rick Hendrick's racing team's history, which included some difficult personal situations.

These included AIDS victim Tim Richmond's meteoric rise and fall with Hendrick's team in its early years, Hendrick's successful battle with leukemia and his concurrent legal issues from the mid- to late-1990s.

If you watched the TV show you only saw a couple of images of Richmond, precious few specifics on the team's racing history, nothing on the legal case and only a second-hand mention of Hendrick's leukemia, by his daughter, Lynn, in the show's final minutes.

That's the bad news, though it isn't terminal. Apparently what everyone saw at the various premieres was a version of the documentary, more than twice as long, that's available on DVD. And without seeing that, but after being involved in NASCAR through the entire history of Hendrick's organization, I'd say it would make compelling viewing for anyone with an appreciation of the sport's history -- or Hendrick Motorsports' achievements.

The TV show was heavily weighed by the October 2004 crash of a Hendrick Motorsports airplane that claimed Hendrick's son, Ricky, his brother John and his twin daughters and six other company friends and employees.

Despite the omissions and despite having lived and worked through the events of the team's entire history -- the poignancy of reliving that aspect of Hendrick's legacy, as predicted, brought shameless tears.

Heading on with Harvick

Anyone who thought Kevin Harvick might have trouble focusing, or competing as he apparently winds down his career with Richard Childress Racing -- even though it has the better part of 14 months to go -- got a lesson in pride and competitive spirit at California.

Harvick was in the mix all day before finishing 10th in his No. 29 Chevrolet. But an interview broadcast on ESPN in which Harvick likened his current career to finishing a book and saying it was good, but wanting to read another book, makes him virtually a non-stop target for weekly speculation throughout 2010 before he announces his next move -- or his intent to stay at RCR, which doesn't seem likely.

Biffle will be a show

Greg Biffle had designs on getting back into Chase contention at California, but despite having competitive cars in both Saturday and Sunday's races it seems that all Biffle has left to provide this season is some drama and maybe some fireworks as he either settles a score or two, or goes for race wins.

Kyle Busch Victory Watch

You don't want to jump on a guy when he's down, but if Kyle Busch's stomach wasn't already upset by the flu-like symptoms troubling him in California, the outcome of Saturday's event really had to push him to the verge of puking.

So for another week we repeat the phrase, until there aren't enough races left that Busch's planning to compete -- which unofficially at this point is 16 -- he has a solid chance to eclipse his 2008 record total of 21 wins (8 Cup, 10 Nationwide, 3 Truck).

Right now, Busch remains at 15 wins: 4 Cup, 6 Nationwide, 5 Truck. At this point last year Busch was at 19: 8 Cup, 8 Nationwide, 3 Truck; and with Busch being the defending champion of the Lowe's Nationwide race, can he finally break a current 11-race winless skein this week to get his points lead comfortably padded, again?

The opinions expressed are those solely of the writer.