It's the money stupid!  Dope!  What was I thinking?  It's always show me the money!

Last year in California last place paid $80,000.  Why?  Should we really pay this for last place?  No wonder some teams were trying to make a living as field fillers then parking a car only fit for qualifying after one lap.  What was the point in that?

Thankfully, with the entry of Toyota this is not happening this year.  But there is still something rotten in Denmark.  Busch fields are short of entries.  Why aren't these extra Cup teams running Busch?

Chorus:

It's the money stupid!  Dope!  What was I thinking?  It's always show me the money!

Busch paid roughly $24,000 to start.

Cost to send trailer from North Carolina to California...$10,000

Cost to send four people with team...$5,000

Tire bill...$3,000

Not exactly priceless.

O.K.  So why not run trucks?

Chorus:

It's the money stupid!  Dope!  What was I thinking?  It's always show me the money!

How much did Mike Skinner win last Friday by winning the truck race?

$60,000.

$20,000 less than it pays just to make the Cup race?

Yep.

Which brings me to this.  What should NASCAR do to rectify this situation?

How about revenue sharing?  Pay less to start in Cup?  Pay less to start in Cup and use money to pay more to start in Busch?  Pay less to start in Cup and use money to pay more to win in trucks?

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http://www.nascar.com/2007/news/opinion/02/24/
maumann.short.fields/index.html

A tangle on a late-race restart with second-place driver Ron Hornaday sent Mark Martin sliding through the grass and opened the door for Mike Skinner just enough to allow the 1995 Craftsman Truck Series champion to slide through and claim the lead.  Skinner made a clean restart with two laps remaining and was able to hold off Hornaday to take the 20th win of his NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series career.  A native of nearby Ontario, California, Skinner becomes the first home state driver to score a Truck Series victory at California Speedway.  "I am going to make sure I find my teammate Tyler Walker tonight and pick up some of that 360 OTC," Skinner joked in victory lane.  "We're going to go back tonight and celebrate, so we may need some hangover relief in the morning!"

Mike Skinner

While Skinner was all smiles after the race, he knew exactly where he needed to be in the final laps in order to put his No. 5 Toyota Tundra Toyota in the winner's circle.

"I knew my best chance to win the race was going to be the restart," Skinner said.  "If they got together, or even if they didn't, I knew the restart was it.  If they went down into one side-by-side, I was going to get a good run on them down the frontstretch and slide down on the inside in turns one and two.  My truck was great down there all night long.  But they ended up getting together and I drove hard until I heard the spotter call for the caution.

"I was ahead of Hornaday and I knew when they went back to the scoring loop we'd be the leader.  But it wasn't over, I had the King of Restarts Ron Hornaday on my back bumper.  I had to be smooth.  I could have held it wide open in one and two on those last two laps but I just barely burped it.  Once I got to the backstretch and I was leading, I knew we had enough horsepower under the hood of our Toyota to hold him off."

Mike Skinner

Martin was pragmatic in defeat.  The No. 21 Bad Boy Mowers Ford led the race three times for a total of 45 laps and seemed to have victory within his grasp until the restart with four laps remaining.

I don't know what happened," Martin said.  "All of a sudden the motor revved up and the wheels started spinning and I got behind on the steering.  That was a lot of fun.  It was awesome, but (NASCAR) has got to get their cautions there at the end."

Two-time series champion and fellow California native Hornaday was regretful about the contact with Martin, but the driver of Kevin Harvick's No. 33 AES HR Solutions Chevrolet said he had no other option.  "I knew what Mark was doing," Hornaday said.  "He slowed it down just enough so that I would have to get off the gas and flood the carburetor with fuel.

But, I drag the brake on the restarts so I don't spin the tires.  When he slowed down, I got up under him and the bumpers didn't line up.  If they did, all I would have done is shoved him down the straightaway.  But it lifted the tires off the ground and he lost it.

Mark Martin

I feel bad about it because Mark doesn't race me that way and I don't race him that way.  In all my years racing with Mark, that may be the first time we've ever gotten together."

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