Can we have just one more race?

Maybe just hang around Homestead-Miami Speedway, and run some kind of Thanksgiving eve special? Or see if Bruton Smith has Lowe's Motor Speedway booked for Friday night? Or talk to the folks in Las Vegas about holding some kind of 10-car postseason exhibition there prior to the awards ceremony next weekend? As long and as draining as the NASCAR season is, you hate to see it end just when it's getting good.

And no, we're not talking about Jimmie Johnson's record-breaking four consecutive titles -- with apologies to the champion, who rightfully celebrated until the wee hours Monday morning on South Beach. We're talking about anger. And revenge. And drama. And the kind of heated words and mechanical vendettas that NASCAR could honestly use a little more of. We're talking about Tony Stewart verses Juan Montoya, and Denny Hamlin verses Brad Keselowski, and how terrible it is that they have a whole three months to cool off before they potentially tangle on the race track again.

“

I've gotten the short end of the deal every single time, and it's not just me. He's wrecked our cars. He's put our fabricators through hell. And it's not just us.

”

DENNY HAMLIN

So is it too late to add one more race weekend? Hey, Kentucky Speedway wants one, right? Sure, it could be a little brisk outside of Cincinnati this time of year, but the running Nationwide Series feud conducted by Hamlin and Keselowski would surely heat it up. And just imagine Montoya and Stewart, parked next to one another in the Sprint Cup garage area for one more week, and the tensions that would exist in that small space between them.

Just to be clear here, we're not advocating violence. Yours truly does not prescribe to the "go out and hit someone" mentality that some track promoters seem to have. We have to remember that the possibility for danger and injury exists anytime cars are competing against one another at high speeds, and intentionally dumping someone absolutely deserves the kind of two-lap penalty that NASCAR levied against Montoya on Sunday -- although how Stewart got off without suffering the same sanction, we're still not sure.

But goodness, the season-ending weekend in metropolitan Miami was terrific fun, and we're not even including the nights out on Ocean Drive. It all started on Friday, when Hamlin fired a not-so-subtle warning shot across Keselowski's bow.

"I've been wrecked four times by him. I've not wrecked him any. So, it's a one-sided scale that eventually has to even up. Maybe not fully, but that scale has got to tip a little bit," said Hamlin, rapidly becoming the most outspoken driver in the garage. "I've gotten the short end of the deal every single time, and it's not just me. He's wrecked our cars. He's put our fabricators through hell. And it's not just us. [There are] four guys at Memphis that he wrecked. There are just a lot of guys, and that's the part he's going to have to work on. He's got the speed and everything. It's just he thinks that the way he does things is the right way, and truthfully it's not. Anybody inside this garage that knows anything about the sport will tell you that it's not."

And Saturday he did his part to even those scales, booting his rival in the Nationwide event and deadpanning afterward that he couldn't see because the sun was in his eyes. The crowd loved it, and series champion Kyle Busch defended his teammate by proposing that five drivers team up and wreck Keselowski in each of the first five races of the 2010 season so he has to qualify on time in the sixth. "I'm going to be the leader," Busch said. "I'm going to ante up everybody else. Maybe you shouldn't have let the cat out of the bag." (Continued)