Racing Beat
B rian and Tony, stop it! Stop it right now! It's time to quit act-ing like spoiled children, clutching tightly to your toys and yelling, Mine! Your mothers were right. Sharing is better for everybody. What I'm talking about, of course, is the sad fact that Indy Rac-ing League chief Tony George and NASCAR boss Brian France refuse to work things out so that a handful of ambitious drivers once again can pull double duty and participate in both the Indianapolis 500 and the Coca-Cola 600 on the same day. The Indy 500 is, without doubt, one of the world's great motor-sports events. The Coca-Cola 600, as NASCAR's longest race, is a chal-lenge unique unto itself. Together, they make Sunday of the Memorial Day weekend one of the best days anywhere on the sporting calendar. And what used to make these races just a little more fun was watching the rare driver with an extra dose of chutzpah and stam-ina try to complete all 1,100 miles in America's top two series in two totally different types of cars on two of America's most prominent race-tracks on the same day. The double-duty concept was cre-ated in the 1990s and, not surpris-ingly, was the brainchild of legend-ary Charlotte race promoter Humpy Wheeler. He realized that the timing of the two races meant drivers could start at Indy at noon, finish the race, zip down to North Carolina and strap into their stock cars in time to take the green flag at 5:30 p.m. Wheeler encouraged John An-dretti, who had experience in both types of vehicles, to give it a shot in Doing Double Duty A plea for IRL and NASCAR to settle their differences over the biggest weekend in racing Speakingofthe IRL, I got a chuckle over a recent press release announc-ing that the IRL had been nomi-nated as Professional Sports League of the Year in the second annual Sports Business Awards. Really? The IRL has no real TV presence, the Rahal-Letterman team is just one of several teams that went out of business, several prominent drivers don't have rides, and the IRL's biggest star, Danica Patrick, is far more famous for taking off her driver's suit (calm down! I'm talking 's bathing suit issue!) than putting it on and winning races. The2009Formula 1season kicked off a few weeks ago eyeing a radi-cally different scoring format, one NASCAR fans might want to take a look at for the con-trast it provides. Starting next year, the driver who wins the most races will be crowned the champion, regardless of how he finishes in the races he doesn't win. Points will still be awarded, but they'll only come into play if two or more drivers end the season with the same number of wins. Old-schoolrace fans got a little blast from the past a few weeks ago when former NASCAR driver and crew chief Dean Combs was busted for making moonshine in a still at his home not far from the North Wilkesboro Speedway in North Carolina. Combs was a five-time champion of NASCAR's compact-car touring series in the 1970s and '80s, and his 60 wins remain that series' all-time record. He won the 1980 and '81 titles driving a Datsun, mak-ing him the first driver to win a NASCAR series championship in a foreign make. He also served for a while as a crew chief for a NASCAR team once owned by Junior Johnson. LOOSELUGNUTS May 2009 44 TrUcKErSNEwS Todd W arsha W /Ge TT y Ima G es for N as C ar Kasey Kahne crossed the finish line to win the 2008 Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe's Motor Speedway. ViEwSFrOmThEGraNdSTaNdS kay Bell