*: Rookie

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Kyle Busch, fighting an aero tight condition in traffic, managed to start up near the front, get to the front, and stay there.

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Today at TMS:


I arrived to the track just as Sprint Cup Second practice started.

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Matt Crafton won final practice today with a speed of 180.180 MPH, but only turned 18 laps in the session.

• Renault consider options for continued participation
• French car-maker will announce verdict before end of year

Renault have postponed making an official decision on whether or not to follow Honda, BMW and Toyota out of formula one until the end of the year.

The matter was discussed at a major board meeting in Paris on Wednesday. "You will have to be patient," Renault's chief executive Carlos Ghosn said tonight. "We will make an announcement on our participation before the end of the year."

It is understood that Renault is considering a number of scenarios. It could remain in formula one for the long term; indeed as a signatory to the Concorde agreement it is contractually bound to compete until the end of 2012. It could decide to withdraw at the end of next year or it could reduce its involvement simply to the role of an engine supplier.

Although the Renault factory team had a dismal 2009 season with Fernando Alonso scoring their only podium finish with third place in the Singapore grand prix, rivals Red Bull used their engines to win six grands prix with Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber and have re-signed to continue supplying the Milton Keynes-based team next season.

Earlier this year the Renault were also given a suspended indefinite ban from formula one after it was proved that Nelson Piquet Jr was asked to crash deliberately at Singapore in 2008, tactically advantaging Alonso who went on to win the race. Team principal Flavio Briatore and Renault's executive director of engineering Pat Symonds resigned in the aftermath of this episode. Meanwhile, in the aftermath of Toyota's decision to withdraw from formula one with immediate effect, the BMW Sauber team is waiting to hear from the sport's governing body what procedures they will have to follow if they are to take the place vacated by Toyota in the grand prix field next season.

"The Toyota management has reached a decision that is to be respected," said a spokesman for the Swiss-based team. "We will now discuss with the FIA the relevant consequences for the BMW Sauber F1 Team."

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• Renault chief executive Carlos Ghosn asks for patience
• Toyota announced this week they were quitting the sport

The French carmaker Renault says it will decide by the end of the year whether to stay in Formula One following Toyota's exit from the sport. "You will have to be patient," the Renault chief executive, Carlos Ghosn, told reporters. "We will make an announcement on our participation in formula one before the end of the year."

Toyota announced this week it was quitting the sport, less than a year after Japanese rivals Honda pulled out and only days since BMW ran their last race. In another blow to the sport, the sole tyre supplier Bridgestone has also said it will leave at the end of 2010.

Renault won the 2005 and 2006 championships with Fernando Alonso but the Spaniard has now left for rivals Ferrari. The title sponsor ING has also departed, leaving a big hole in the team's budget.

]]> http://www.autoracingdaily.com/news/formula1/interview-with-williams-nico-hulkenberg/ http://www.autoracingdaily.com/news/formula1/interview-with-williams-nico-hulkenberg/ http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/TheFastAndTheFabulous/%7E3/8baqD9AcALk/ http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/TheFastAndTheFabulous/%7E3/8baqD9AcALk/ http://elementofspeed.com/nascar-plays-musical-chairs http://elementofspeed.com/nascar-plays-musical-chairs
(Center to right) Team owner Jack Roush and Jamie McMurray, driver of the No. 26 IRWIN Marathon Ford, celebrate in McMurray’s third career win in Victory Lane after winning the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series AMP Energy 500 at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday in Talladega, Ala. Despite his recent win, McMurray is one of several drivers jockeying for a ride in 2010. (Photo Credit: John Harrelson/Getty Images for NASCAR)

It’s that time of year again — time for NASCAR’s version of musical chairs. Of course, in NASCAR’s version, there’s usually enough chairs — or cars — to go around, with everyone looking to move finding a new home with a new team.

With team mergers and cutbacks, so is not the case as teams and drivers prepare for 2010. It wasn’t all that long ago that Chip Ganassi Racing was a three-car operation and Dale Earnhardt Inc. fielded three cars in Sprint Cup competition. The two organizations have since merged to become a sing two-car team.

Before that, Evernham Motorsports and Petty Enterprises merged to form a four-car team. That team, which became Richard Petty Motorsports, recently announced another merger, joining the two-car Yates Racing to form one four-car organization.

Then you have Roush Fenway Racing. The Roush organization has been running five Sprint Cup Series cars for years, but at the conclusion of the 2009 season, the team must scale back to four to comply with NASCAR’s four-car cap.

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• French hold emergency board meeting in Paris
• FIA warns Japanese team of possible legal action

Formula One was plunged into fresh chaos last night when it emerged that Renault had held emergency talks yesterday over joining Toyota in exiting the sport. The French manufacturer was said to be considering whether to continue running a team, reduce its commitment to supplying engines for others or to withdraw altogether.

The news followed the announcement of Toyota becoming the third team in 11 months to pull out of the sport, a decision that was met with outrage by the FIA, which said it would investigate the legal implications of Toyota's decision to quit Formula One despite having signed a new Concorde agreement committing the team until the end of 2012.

"The announcements this week by Toyota and Bridgestone of their withdrawal from Formula One are of concern to the FIA," said a statement from motor sport's governing body. "Bridgestone has given almost 18 months' notice of its intentions, thereby allowing the necessary arrangements to be made for the future supply of tyres to the championship.

"Toyota's decision, however, comes just weeks after its F1 team signed the new Concorde Agreement until 2012. Urgent clarification is now being sought from the Toyota F1 team as to its legal position in relation to the championship. This will have a direct bearing on the admission of any future 13th entry."

Bernie Ecclestone, the sport's commercial rights owner, last night added: "I'm not sure what we will do. They did sign the agreement knowing exactly what it meant. Fortunately we have other teams coming."

The German-based team has been withdrawn after the Toyota Motor Corporation returned its worst sales figures in 32 years and reported a record loss in the financial year ending 31 March. Toyota entered Formula One in 2002 and did not win a grand prix in 139 attempts, despite having a substantial budget. The FIA, under its new president, Jean Todt, will continue to pursue the need for cost-cutting in the sport.

"The FIA has repeatedly warned that motor sport cannot outpace the world economic crisis. That is why the competing teams have been asked to cut costs and the entry of independent teams has been encouraged. The FIA accepted the cost-reduction measures put forward by the teams on the basis that they would ensure a long-term commitment to the championship. Toyota's announcement demonstrates the importance of the original cost-reduction measures set out by the FIA."

News of Toyota's withdrawal sparked a furious outburst by Ferrari, who reportedly claimed that the sport's rulers had "waged war" on the big car makers. "In reality, the steady trickle of desertion is more the result of a war against the big car manufacturers," a Ferrari statement said. "Formula One continues losing important parts. In exchange, if one could call it that, Manor, Lotus, USF1 and Campos Meta arrived. You might say 'same-same', because it is enough if there are participants. But that's not entirely true."

Renault's board meeting in Paris was said to have been attended by the acting team principal, Bob Bell, and the managing director, Jean-Francois Caubet, although neither man was said to have been allowed to take part in the debate about the team's future. However, according to a Renault spokesman, the summit had been planned for weeks and could not be described as an emergency meeting.

Toyota's decision was announced by the head of Toyota Motor Corps, Akio Toyoda. "This has been a very painful decision for the company," he said. The Toyota FI principal, Tadashi Yamashina, was reduced to tears during the press conference.

Richard Cregan, who was with Toyota for 25 years and general manager of the Formula One team, had first-hand experience of the company's management and believes the team has paid a heavy price for taking the wrong directions. Cregan left Toyota last year to become CEO of the Abu Dhabi grand prix. "This will have come as a big shock to the people on the team," he said.

"I talked to them last weekend when they were in Abu Dhabi. They said there had been discussions about downsizing the team and everyone seemed to have the impression that everything possible was being done to continue. I feel very sad for the team in Cologne because there were a lot of very good people there. The problem lay with certain individuals.

"Formula One is a very, very difficult sport. It's very hard indeed to combine a corporate approach with a motor sport approach; you need a good balance between the Toyota way of doing things and the motor sport way. The team had excellent technical people, the proper resources and a good budget. But there's a well-proven formula on how to go about motor racing at that level. Ignore that, and you do so at your peril. It was not recognised early enough that the direction the team was taking was simply not correct. But that was pretty obvious to those who knew what the business is all about."

There is a certain irony in the likelihood that Toyota's withdrawal will allow Sauber back in. The team's very existence seemed to be under threat when their engine supplier and the 80% shareholder, BMW, announced that they would be leaving the sport at the end of this year but they may well now be saved by the departure of another major car manufacturer. Unlike Toyota, BMW did not sign the Concorde agreement. That meant their efforts to sell Sauber off as a going concern were seriously in jeopardy as any new owner would have had to get unanimous agreement from all the other competitors to increase the number of competing teams from 13 to 14 if Sauber were to be allowed back in. Such unanimity was not forthcoming.

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The world's car makers should invest in making environmentally friendly vehicles rather than this poor excuse for a sport

Is there no end to the excitement? Not since I lost my Maserati in a small Lincolnshire town – and my, didn't the heads turn that day – has the Formula One season been so wonderfully fascinating. One story after another and even now, with the title decided and the last race in Abu Dhabi completed, the multifarious shenanigans, it seems, keep coming. Not only is everybody on tenterhooks as to whether the British grand prix will take place next year, the news came yesterday that Toyota had pulled out of the circus. Why it barely seemed a week since Ferrari were threatening the same, and how we gasped. Ferrari? Never.

I mean, you just couldn't make it up: Max Mosley and his fancy dress party, and then Nelson Piquet Jr's Crashgate. Every time the sport threatened to get boring those tales came bounding along like the kangaroo in Five's Flashforward. Still another 16 episodes to go and, I suppose, like the grand prix season, I may just about stick with it, though my suspicions are that I have already blacked out for far longer than the two minutes and 17 seconds suffered by the rest of the world in the US-made drama, though I have not been blessed with a glimpse of the future six months hence.

Unlike Ferrari, it does seem that Toyota, the world's largest car maker, has pulled the plug completely, though we have all learned never to say never in the now-you-see-it, now-you-don't world of grand prix racing. For an instant my heart warmed to the Japanese. Finally, it seemed, a country has raised its head above the parapet and screamed: "Enough of this energy-wasting, carbon-footprint-heavy charade of a sport." I had a flash backwards that Japan's Greens had won power overnight, and were consigning Formula One to its rightful place in the dustbin of unenvironmental monstrosities, along with Top Gear.

Alas no. The truth was altogether more prosaic. The poor dears had no option, with their president citing "the current severe economic realities". The fact the team failed to win any of the 139 races since their F1 debut in 2002 was clearly coincidental. And not only has the Toyota team been disbanded, but in a display of "and you are not having my ball either", they have ruled out supplying engines to other teams.

This, of course, will hugely cheer Peter Mandelson, who took time out recently to stress the importance of the British grand prix to New Labour, and all the millions of pounds Formula One generated towards the health of the British economy. No Toyota may mean more British-made parts, and British-built engines. Hurrah. However, Toyota's withdrawal leaves the sport with no Japanese team after Honda left Formula One at the end of 2008, while Toyota became the third manufacturer to quit in the last 11 months after BMW announced it was leaving in July.

Such news is enough to warm the cockles of those who can only pray that it is the beginning of the end for Formula One as a sport, if such it is. Not much chance of that. It is only to be hoped that Jenson Button, like Lewis Hamilton last year, fails to win BBC sports personality of the year, for not until the day when a driver steps into an unprepared car identical to his fellow drivers will the Formula One world championship have any credibility in the eyes of any self-respecting sports fan, and that will never happen. But wouldn't it be wonderful if the industry put as much money and effort into trying to create a green, environmentally friendly engine rather than its pandering to petrolheads.

Oh, yes, and that Maserati. Well, I was five, and as I sped it along the pavement of the town of my birth, the little red toy car suddenly lurched to the right and disappeared down a drain. If only there was a big enough drain to lose Formula One so completely.

Computer-generated disdain for Benítez

During this year's Australian Tennis Open, a Spanish journalist, of a previously equable and unemotional temperament, suddenly launched into a highly charged and armada-sized denunciation of Rafael Benítez as a manager. It went something along these lines, and you will have to forgive me if something may have been lost in translation: "The man is a joke. He spends all his time sitting in front of his computer screen analysing every statistic and CV of every player in Europe and around the world – from what he eats for breakfast to how many times he kicks the ball with his right foot, rather than his left, or vice versa. Benítez has his head so jumbled up with so much useless information that he can never sort out what is going on in front of him."

It should be pointed out that this critic, we shall call him Juan, was a Real Madrid supporter, and anxious, to the point of paranoia, that Rafa, a former employee of the club who went on to lead Valencia to the Spanish league title in 2002 and 2004, should never get the job at the Bernabéu. That said, his words have resonated more and more in recent weeks. The chances of Rafa being rebooted seem increasingly likely.

Degree in folly for the genius of Stamford Bridge

Barely had Carlo Ancelotti proclaimed the prodigal Joe Cole "a genius" than the little Chelsea midfielder, easily slipping the mantle of discrimination and perspicacity around his diminutive, Napoleonic frame, urged his fellow professionals and assorted footballing mercenaries at Stamford Bridge to go out on to the battleground of Europe and return with the Champions League title.

"Chelsea are building a genuine claim to be as big as the Manchester Uniteds, the Real Madrids, the Barcelonas, the Milans ... but you have to win trophies, and you have to win major trophies. Obviously the Champions League is going to help show us as a worldwide club that means business." Now genius must be forgiven for its odd flights of fancy. But let us have a little think, Joe. Exactly how many European and domestic cups and titles have the Manchester Uniteds, Real Madrids, Barcelonas, and Milans won over the years? And how many have Chelsea won? Sorry, what was that you said again, Joe – "claim to be as big" as who?

Agassi's outpourings fritter away fans' trust

So Andre Agassi wore a wig, lied and took drugs. Had he been British he might have qualified for the bar. Having carefully reinvented himself in his latter years from punk to politician, the American has rather reverted to type for the sake of what is deemed to be honesty within the pages of his autobiography.

His fellow American Andy Roddick was understandably supportive. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, currently the best two players in the world, were a little more waspish, while our own Andy Murray said he preferred to judge Agassi simply as a tennis player. But fans need to trust their heroes, and Agassi has forfeited that trust.

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]]> http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/33623198/ns/sports-motor_sports/ http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/33623198/ns/sports-motor_sports/ Rotoworld: Able to fund their engine programs better than any other racing teams, Roush-Fenway Racing and Hendrick Motorsports cars should dominate this weekend's race in Texas.

The departure of Honda, BMW and now Toyota from F1 should allow traditional teams to thrive

Toyota's decision to quit Formula One, following on the heels of Honda and BMW, leaves just three manufacturers in a sport undergoing a change that may not be as devastating as it seems. Renault is the next most likely candidate to depart – the company held a board meeting in Paris tonight to discuss their future in the sport – leaving Ferrari (owned by Fiat) and Mercedes-Benz, two names with a deep understanding of how Formula One works, unlike the more recent arrivals from an industry that can prioritise car sales and balance sheets. The emphasis would seem to be returning to the smaller independent teams such as Williams and Brawn, with racing as their core business; no bad thing in the view of many inside the sport.

When Honda quit in December 2008, Toyota were expected to follow sooner rather than later. But the racing team's signature on a new Concorde Agreement – the latest document governing F1 until the end of 2012 – indicated a serious commitment despite Toyota not having won a race since the Japanese firm's move from international rallying to F1 in 2002.

Estimates of Toyota's budget vary but an annual figure of £300m would be close to an expensive mark that has netted only 13 podium finishes and, at best, fourth in the 2005 championship after 139 races. It is a sign of the huge losses at home that the Toyota Motor Corporation is willing to deal with the redundancy associated with more than 700 people at the team's headquarters in Cologne, as well as facing heavy compensation costs for breaking its commitment to stay in F1.

Toyota, like Honda, struggled to make the Formula One operation work thanks to a failure to understand that racing teams think on their feet rather than rely on cumbersome corporate decision-making by a committee thousands of miles away. Honda was bought out by the team management and BMW has been taken over by the mysterious Qadbak Holdings. Toyota's more complex operation is less likely to be saved in the same way.

Even though Toyota's F1 budget is minuscule in the firm's overall scheme of finance, motor manufacturers cannot afford to be seen to be spending money on a sport that may be considered frivolous when vast losses and redundancies are occurring in the core business. In the 2008 financial year, Toyota lost $4.74bn (£3bn), its first operating loss since 1937. This year the company is predicting a loss of $8.3bn. Such dismal reading motivates a board of directors more than anything achieved in F1, no matter how high the sport's profile may be. That was always going to be the case, so there should be no surprise as Toyota joins a list of more than 40 teams to have been associated with F1.

Ten years ago, as he watched Jaguar march in and buy the Stewart F1 team in one of the most badly managed enterprises ever seen in F1, Eddie Jordan commented that such moves, despite their initial splash of cash, could only end in pain. Jordan, as a wheeler-dealer and owner of a compact team that won four grands prix, knew exactly what he was talking about. A mere four years later, Jaguar limped away at the behest of the board, some of whom would not have known an F1 car if they tripped over one in the executive car park.

One of the lesser casualties in the Toyota debacle will be Kamui Kobayashi, the driver who made a very impressive F1 debut as he raced wheel to wheel with Jenson Button in Brazil and Abu Dhabi and looked set to continue with Toyota next year. Now the 23-year-old Japanese driver must pack his bags. "I will probably go back to Japan to work with my father in his sushi restaurant," Kobayashi said. "It was like that two months ago." A case of doing what you know best under the circumstances. And a lesson for motor manufacturers who think big bucks automatically guarantee success in a sport they know nothing about.

]]> http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/33622189/ns/sports-motor_sports/ http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/33622189/ns/sports-motor_sports/ Sporting News: What's the biggest reason Jimmie Johnson has virtually locked up the 2009 title? It's because Johnson simply does not run into trouble.

Toyota Pulls Out of F1 originally appeared on About.com Formula 1 on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 08:12:31.

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RFTW's Steve McDermott will be on location for this week's Dickies 500 Triple H