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HOUSTON DAILY JOURNAL msm Point Standings |H Green Flag News and Notes Harvick coasting to Busch Series title Through last Saturday’s road course race at Watkins Glen International, the 23rd race of the season, Kevin Harvick has a series-best five wins, a series-best 15 top-five finishes, a series-best 21 top -10 finishes and a series-best record of finishing all 23 races on the lead lap. Maybe that’s why he has a 443-point lead heading into this Saturday’s race at the Michigan International Speedway. The deficit represents the second biggest blowout in Busch Series history. Jeff Green won the 2000 championship by 616 points. With 11 races to go, that record is certainly within reach. Harvick advantage now is so large, he essentially can skip three races and still be assured being the leader. Yates Racing to shelve Sadler for rest of 2006 It hasn't been announced yet, but Elliott Sadler is out at Robert Yates Racing. Part-time Busch Series driver David Gilliland will drive the No. 38 Ford this week at Michigan. His name already is on top of the car. Sadler shouldn’t be out of work long. He probably will slide into the vacancy at Evernham Motorsports created last week when car owner Ray Evernham and driver Jeremy Mayfield reached an out of court agreement to end their working relationship. NASCAR decisive on pit road penalties In an example of “be careful what you wish for,” NASCAR vice president Robin Pemberton said the penalty to Kurt Busch last Sunday was the result of the drivers’ demands the sanctioning body take control of pit road. Busch was four feet away from pit road when NASCAR threw a caution flag for a crash. Busch was driving about 35 mph and couldn’t veer away from the entrance, but NASCAR penalized him by placing him at the end of the lead lap for coming to pit road before it was opened. Pemberton admitted he wasn’t sure if Busch could have avoided pit road, but he said drivers have demanded cut-and dry rules for pit road. “Each week it’s a new call. We put ourselves in position for NASCAR to make a call and it didn’t end up in our favor,” Busch said. Other drivers said they couldn’t believe NASCAR didn’t consider the fact Busch couldn't avoid pit road. Deadline nears for Georgia Public Links championship Special to the Journal MARIETTA - Entries will be closing in one week for the 18th annual Georgia Public Links Championship, which will take place September 16- 17 at Stonebridge Golf Club in Rome. This event is open to ama teur golfers who are Georgia residents and members of a GSGA Member Club that is open to public play. Entrants must not have held privileges since Jan. 1 at any club that does not permit public play. The format of the event is 36 holes of flighted stroke play over two days. The field consists of the 72 entrants with the lowest USGA Handicap Indexes and 72 drawn by lottery. Last year, McDonough’s Dave Womack posted rounds of 72 and 74 to finish with Autographs: Fans’ gold 1 if m&j m pi* f'j,.' i f 'Jl ’- / ■ •^■i-V'.v.S'-■?■■'| |9Hr „ NASCAR is a sport built ‘one autograph at a time ’ By Don Coble Morris News Service While it can never be proven, Richard Petty has proba bly signed more autographs than anyone else in the world. The Guinness Book of world records doesn’t list auto graphs in its more than 40,000 entries, but Petty’s ability to sign his name is legendary beyond the world of NASCAR For more than 50 years, he’s stood at the back gate signing everything from photographs to cans of oil treatment. Now 14 years into retirement, he still spends one day a week at his race shop in Randleman, N.C., signing his name. “Nobody has signed more autographs than Richard Petty,” Bobby Labonte said. “Not even Elvis.” Autographs are a big part of NASCAR’s appeal. Drivers are exposed to the general public in ways baseball, basket ball and football would resist. Not only do some fans have access to the garage area, others can wait near the motorhome lot to catch their favorite driver walking to and from work. And if that’s not enough, every driver has an extensive list of public appearances. “The Boston Red Sox don’t ask their players to sit in a mall for two hours and sign autographs,” Kyle Petty said. “It’s different in racing. We make untold appearances. We work for a sponsor. I make 75 appearances a year for my sponsors. It’s getting harder to get an autograph at the race track, and 1 hope people who come to the track looking for that special autograph don’t go home disappointed. The thing is, there are plenty of opportunities out there to get an autograph.” NASCAR has an unwritten rule that prohibits auto graphs in the garage area, which is supposed to be a race a two-over-par 146 to cap ture his second victory at the Georgia Public Links Championship. Womack won the event by four strokes over Travis Moore of Atlanta and William Murchinson 111 of Acworth. Qualified players may enter online at the GSGA website at www.gsga.org by click ing the Online Registration quick link. Paper entries are available by request and may also be downloaded as a PDF file via the GSGA website. The dead line for entries is Wednesday at 5 p.m. Entry periods are also cur rently open for the Atlanta Amateur Match Play Championship (through Sept. 13) and the Georgia Women’-s Team Championship (also through Sept. 13). Call (770) 955-4272 or 1- 800-949-4742 for more. Driver Behind Jimmie Johnson Leader Matt Kenseth -124 Kevin Harvick -323 Jeff Burton <362 Kyle Busch -370 JMMg •Bait & Tackle •Deer Processing WE CLEAN FISH f 6am-7pm • 7 days a week | 333 Hwy 96 • Bonaire^ l» 478-922-1819 * SPORTS Wm NASCAR [ ( BUSCH J team’s sanctuary. But every driver, plus NASCAR president Mike Helton, carries a Sharpie pen to speed up the process. In a normal day, a driver will sign as many as 500 auto graphs at the race track. Away from the track, that number swells into the thousands. For Richard Petty, it’s estimated he’s signed his name more than one million times during is career and into retire ment. ‘You lose track,” said Greg Biffle. “When you sit down and sign for two hours it’s hard to know how many you sign. It’s part of the job. It’s what your sponsors want; it’s part of what made NASCAR great." Kyle Petty agrees with the long-standing notion that NASCAR was built one autograph at a time. He remembers being a child at the race track, waiting after the main event for hours while his father granted every request. “That’s one of the few perceptions that was real,” he said. “He signed until everyone was gone. But back then, there were only 15,000 people at the race, not 150,000. The King (Petty), David Pearson, Bobby Allison, they all signed.” Some drivers are just as accommodating today. Others are more reserved. Kyle Petty, for example, doesn’t like to sign things sent to the race shop. He has boxes filled with requests that haven’t been opened since 1998. Bobby Labonte is just the opposite. He signs requests sent by mail when he’s on his airplane flying to the track. “My home time is my time,” Kyle Petty said. “That’s not the way Bobby Labonte thinks. That’s not the way Richard Petty thinks. He still signs every Tuesday, all day long. That’s him. But I’m home so little, I want my time to be my time.” Complete Pair Of Eyeglasses SB9" yy <> ly 1 Driver Behind Kevin Harvick Leader Carl Edwards >443 Denny Hamlin -497 Clint Bowyer >570 J.J. Yeley -657 PHOTO BY DON COBLE-MNS NASCAR drivers sign hundreds perhaps thousands of auto graphs every race weekend. [s2o Off When You Present ThisAP] SATURDAY, AUGUST 19, 2006 TcRMTSMfm WmiCKSERIEtM 'mU tii [* j '( ,;»«>- . m WHERE: Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Mich. WHEN: 2:30 p.m., Sunday TRACK DIMENSIONS: 2-mile tri-oval with 18-degree banking in the comers BROADCAST: Television TNT; Radio Motor Racing Network LAST YEAR’S WINNER: Jeremy Mayfield TRACK RECORDS: Qualifying -194.232 mph (Ryan Newman); Race 173.997 mph (Dale Jarrett) COMPANION EVENTS: Friday - Pole qualifying (3 p.m., Speed), ARCA Series Hantz Group 200 (5:15 p.m., Speed); Saturday Busch Series Carfax 250 (3 p.m., TNT. RACE NOTE: Six of the last seven win ners of Michigan Cup races are outside the cutoff for the Chase for the Championship but within 400 points of the top-10. Drivers agree there are ways for fans to make the auto graph process easier. First, be nice. Second, be ready. “Don’t be obnoxious,” Bill Elliott said. “Don’t stick some thing in my face and say, ‘Sign this.’ I don’t mind signing an autograph. Just be nice.” Rookie Reed Sorenson said a woman asked him to sign her pregnant stomach. Kyle Petty said he once signed a hairless dog. Tony Stewart signed an ostrich egg and just about everyone has signed their name on a body part, only to have it turned into a tattoo. “I ran across a man who had a tattoo of me crashing my Sprint car on his arm,” said J.J. Yeley. “He had me sign under the crash, then he ran out and had that tattooed, too.” Biffle said the idea of having his name tattooed on some body’s body is “creepy.” That’s why he won’t sign a body part, real or prosthetic. The most-revered autograph in racing comes from Dale Earnhardt Jr. The demand also makes it one of the tough est. Earnhardt Jr. has an entire room at his home dedicated to mail-in requests. He periodically sits down for hours and signs until his hand cramps. He also offers two different sig natures, depending on his mood - one with a cursive capital “D,” the other with a capital “D” that looks like an arrow head. Regardless, he’s shortened the process by simply signing, “Dale Jr.” There is nothing short and simply about Richard Petty’s autograph. He not only signs his entire name, it comes with his traditional loops and swirls. Each autograph is complet ed with meticulous attention to detail, each completed with unparalleled appreciation. One at a time, a million times over. LIHEX SPRAY-OH TRUCK BBOLINBRS =BEFORE W **WB9r \ IbbkflikwihlsM ■■% f JOL. Jfl /W~ • /C&a3r. ' Sike it THIS! .-_-j====t“^, AFTFR • ; .:■■K: S 592 Carl Vinson Pkwy., Warner Robins, GA 478-329-8100 Driver Behind Todd Bodine Leader Johnny Benton *144 David Reutimann >194 Ted Musgrave -239 Rick Crawford *255 This Week’s Race LLumar WINDOW Hill 3B 00037133