Pothole fix, fence-mending top early season headlines (cont'd)

Olympic celebration

Geoff Bodine has made a lifelong commitment to stock-car racing, and for the last two decades has made a nearly equal commitment to the U.S. Olympic bobsled program. So it's pretty cool to see Bodine attempt to make his first Truck Series start since 2004 this weekend at Atlanta, in a truck that celebrates the U.S. four-man Bo-Dyn sled's gold-medal performance.

The paint scheme on younger brother Todd's Germain Racing Toyota will also celebrate the achievement.

Mending fences

McMurray, Montoya during happier days at Fontana.

Hopefully Jamie McMurray and Juan Montoya have settled their intramural spat, which took place during the Sprint Cup race at Las Vegas. Montoya's reaction was so bitterly personal, and it continued so long after the dust had cleared from the wreck, it was impossible to ignore it. In effect, Montoya's ongoing tirades were akin to a tornado leveling 20 homes in a small Kansas town but killing no one. That would get your attention.

Return on investment

Looking for a statement on the economy and how hard even big Cup teams have to scramble? From the entry lists for Las Vegas, to this weekend at Atlanta, no less than 22 cars had primary sponsorship changes. Good news is only six cars are unsponsored.

How can social media and the Internet work for you? Joe Nemechek got last-minute sponsorship for his Daytona 500 effort from England's Stove Works. The final figures weren't in, but within a couple days of the Great American Race, the company did more than $500,000 in business and its Web site had trouble handling the traffic. "Bravo Joe" for providing a real return on investment.

A similar tale comes from Kenny Wallace, whose Jay Robinson Racing Nationwide Series team is scrambling almost event-to-event to be able to race. Wallace, who has become an ardent Twitter and Facebook proponent, credited social media with securing Zimmzang.com as a sponsor that enabled him to race at California rather than just circulate.

Tired of questions

The always genial but sometimes brutally honest Jeff Gordon had a couple of the best moments of the Las Vegas weekend during his Friday media availability.

First, Gordon was asked about his newly-known interest in track design. He launched into a miniature tirade over the national newspaper article in which that fact had appeared, saying the story "focused too much on when I retire, when the fact is, I'm not retiring any time soon."

The coup de grace for Gordon was one of the last questions he fielded, as someone tried to relate the rash of new babies in the NASCAR motorhome lot to the need for NASCAR to approve a condom sponsorship.

A short time later, Gordon pushed back his chair and ended the session by saying, "that [session] was strange!"

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.