Image details: Missouri-Illinois Dodge Dealers 250 served by picapp.com

Even with the Sprint Cup Series taking the week off, it was still a busy weekend for Missouri native, Carl Edwards …. particularly because he decided to commit to a three-day bicycle trip from his hometown of Columbia, MO to the track that lies in Madison, IL - just outside of the St. Louis metro-area.

Edwards made the trip and got to the track in time to qualify third for the Missouri-Illinois Dodge Dealers 250 at Gateway International Raceway, and then passed Jason Leffler with 48 laps remaining en route to picking up the win Saturday night. The win gave Edwards his second Nationwide Series win of the season, and the second of his career at Gateway.

Driving the dominant no. 20 car for Joe Gibbs Racing in just his fifth NNS start, Joey Logano started the race fourth and finished second, as he was unable to track down Edwards in the closing laps of the race. Jason Keller, Jason Leffler, and Brad Keselowski completed the top-five finishers, with rookie driver, Landon Cassill, running in 6th.

An incident involving David Reutimann and Brad Keselowski brought out the final caution of the day. The restart came on lap 146 with Edwards running third behined Jason Leffler and eventual 7th place finisher, James Buescher. The top two cars, however, took only two tires under the caution period, with Edwards taking four, which ultimately made all the difference in the world, passing Leffler for the lead just six laps later.

Earlier on a lap 116 restart, Landon Cassill got into the back of Scott Wimmer, setting off a chain reaction that eliminated the cars of Mike Bliss, Steve Wallace, and defending race winner, Reed Sorenson. Polesitter, Jamie McMurray, was in the lead at the time, but later retired with engine problems after lap 152.

Points leader, Clint Bowyer, finished 8th; David Ragan was 10th; and Marcos Ambrose ran in 15th. The hometown favorites of Mike, Kenny, and Steve Wallace finished 11th, 18th, and 26th respectively. Kenny was the only one of the three to lead any laps during the race.

Clint Bowyer and Brad Keselowski maintained the top two spots in the Nationwide standings, while Carl Edwards jumped up a spot to #3, where he now sits 201 points out of first.

Complete Missouri-Illinois Dodge Dealers 250 Results.

Nationwide Series Standings (from nascar.com):

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It’s going to be a big weekend coming up for the Wallace’s as the NASCAR Nationwide Series makes a trip to St. Louis this weekend for the Missouri-Illinois Dodge Dealers 250 at Gateway International Raceway, hometown to brothers Mike and Kenny Wallace. Considered to be the home track for the Wallace family, the track has been kind enough to name the grandstands in Turns 1 and 2 after the Wallace’s, and even honored them by placing their name on the race itself during older brother, Rusty’s retirement year.

Despite all of the hometown recognition, though, a member of the Wallace family has never put a tally in the win column since the Nationwide Series began racing here back in 1997, but they’ll have a prime opportunity to change that this weekend. Mike Wallace is having one of his finer seasons as he currently sits 8th in points and would like nothing more than to notch one up here in front of his hometown fans. He nearly did just that back in 2005 when he finished 2nd here in an Evernham Motorsports car. Mike will also be an honorary guest at the St. Louis Cardinals game on Thursday where he will throw out the first pitch of the game.

Kenny Wallace will also attend the race, as will Steven Wallace, who will be driving for Rusty Wallace Inc, the team owned by his father, Rusty Wallace. That team is still looking for their first win of the season. Steven is currently 12th in the points standings, and Kenny is 18th. All three Wallace’s will also compete in a dirt track race at Tri-City Speedway on Friday in Pontoon Beach, IL.

Mike’s daughter, Chrissy Wallace, will be competing this weekend as well. Chrissy will make the third Craftsman Truck Series start of her career on Saturday in the Built Ford Tough 225 at Kentucky Speedway. To date, she’s finished 18th at Martinsville and 20th at the Milwuakee Mile.

Image details: Meijer 300 served by picapp.com

In only his third start in the Nationwide Series, 18-year old Joey Logano was nothing but masterful during Saturday’s Meijer 300 at Kentucky Speedway en route to picking up his first career victory in the series. Logano passed teammate, Kyle Busch, for the lead on lap 147 and stayed there for the ensuing 53 laps to become the youngest winner in Nationwide history at 18 years, 21 days (the former record was held by Casey Atwood at 18 years, 10 months, 9 days in 1999 at Milwuakee). The victory also gives Joe Gibbs Racing their leading 10th victory on the season.

Logano finished 2.259 seconds ahead of Scott Wimmer, who ran second in the race, with veteran, Mike Wallace, coming home third. Fourth place went to last week’s race winner, Brad Keselowski. Rounding out the top-five was rookie driver, Bryan Clauson. Sixth place was taken by second year Nationwide driver, Marcos Ambrose, and David Ragan, Mike Bliss, Clint Bowyer, and Jason Keller completed the top-ten finishers.

Kyle Busch had a great day turned sour. After flying into Kentucky Speedway late, he was forced to start the race dead last in 43rd. Forty laps later, however, Busch found himself with the lead and went onto lead a race high 85 laps on the day. After surrending the lead to Joey Logano on lap 147, Busch tried to fight back from the second spot, but he lost control of his car on lap 164. The spin sent Busch slamming into the outside retaining wall down the backstretch, and he went onto finish 30th.

Clint Bowyer retained control of the points lead, and now leads Brad Keselowski by 170 points. Keselowski jumped three spots in the standings to take over 2nd over David Reutimann and Carl Edwards, who finished 13th and 20th. Kyle Busch’s run dropped him from third to fifth in the standings.

For Logano, he has now led laps in each of his first three starts in the series. Those three starts have resulted in a win, 2 top-ten’s, and 2 pole awards. Between Logano’s driving abilities and the dominant team that Joe Gibbs has assembled for him over in that no. 20 car, the rest of the series could be in for a very long, agonizing season.

Click here for the complete results from the Meijer 300.

Nationwide Series Standings:

Brad Keselowski picked up his first win in the Nationwide Series on Saturday night, and the first of the season for JR Motorsports, as he took the lead from points leader, Clint Bowyer, with just five laps remaining and then cruised on his way to victory, winning the Federated Auto Parts 300 at Nashville Superspeedway.

Keselowski set the stage for the finish of the race when he stayed out on the track on lap 79 of the 225 lap event as the rest of the leaders made their way down pit road, led by then race leader, Joey Logano. The call from Tony Eury Sr. put Keselowski on a completely different pit sequence than the rest of the field, and it proved to be a factor late in the race.

With the rest of the field making their final pit stops with 77 laps remaining, Keselowski made his with just 41 left, giving him tires that were 36 laps fresher than the rest of the field when the caution flew with just ten laps left. David Reutimann, who was leading the race at the time, was ambushed by Clint Bowyer on the restart, but a few laps later, it was Brad Keselowski making the pass for the lead, and he never looked back, as he went onto win the race and collect the first checkers of the season for JR Motorsports.

David Stremme and David Reutimann both went onto take position from Bowyer as they finished 2nd and 3rd, and Clint was relegated to 4th, followed by David Ragan in 5th. They were followed by the cars of Mike Wallace, Scott Wimmer, Kelly Bires, Landon Cassill, and Greg Biffle to complete the top-ten.

Joey Logano won the pole for Saturday’s race, marking only his second career start. He led 64 laps in the event and appeared to be an early favorite to win, but he got caught up in a 4-wide race through turn 2 that resulted in him getting clipped by Greg Biffle and slamming into the outside wall. He went onto finish 31st. His teammate, Kyle Busch, who is making an unprecedented tri-fecta run this weekend, finished three laps down in 20th.

Clint Bowyer remained atop the Nationwide standings, while Reutimann’s run was enough to bump him up two spots to second. Kyle Busch dropped a spot to third, and Carl Edwards’ thirteenth place run drops him down to fourth overall. Brad Keselowski remains in fifth.

Nationwide Series Standings (from nascar.com):

*Credit photo to Newscom.

Image details: CARQUEST Auto Parts 300 served by picapp.com

Kyle Busch has visited the Nationwide Series Winner’s Circle three times this season from behind the wheel of a Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, but Saturday night, he won the Carquest Auto Parts 300 by driving his no. 32 Braun Racing ride to the front of the field, and stretching out a tank of fuel over the course of the final 68 laps.

Busch had to hold off his JGR teammate, Denny Hamlin, to secure the win on a green-white-checkered finish that ended under caution when Mike Wallace slammed the wall. Hamlin finished ahead of the no. 88 JR Motorsports car driven by Brad Keselowski, whom Hamlin had an earlier on-track altercation with just moments before. Keselowski had gotten into the back of Hamlin earlier on, and as the field drove under caution, Denny decided to take a swipe at him in retaliation to what he described as ‘poor racing eitquette’. Immediately following the race, as Busch was taunting the crowd with his post-race victory bows en route to grabbing the checkered flag, both drivers’ pit crews got into a shoving match that was eventually separated by NASCAR and track officials.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Brian Vickers finished fourth and fifth to round out the top-five, followed by points leader, Clint Bowyer, Greg Biffle, Jeff Burton, David Ragan, and Jimmie Johnson in sixth through tenth. Carl Edwards ended the evening with a decent 13th place finish, and Kasey Kahne ran in a disappointing 16th after getting caught up in a late-race tussle.

The win gives Kyle Busch his fourth Nationwide victory of the season, and his first for Braun Racing. He also has three Sprint Cup Series victories on the season, as well as two wins in the Craftsman Truck Series while driving for Billy Ballew Motorsports. The race ended a six-race winning streak for Joe Gibs Racing in the series, but does give Toyota their seventh consecutive win.

Nationwide Series Standings (from nascar.com):

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The Sprint Cup Series was off this past week while the Nationwide Series took to the streets of Mexico City for the Corona Mexico 200 as Kyle Busch cruised to his third consecutive Nationwide Series victory. That, however, was not the headline that the sports world took away from auto racing on that day because while Kyle Busch was debating whether or not to dump Scott Pruett, Danica Patrick was out in Japan making history en route to winning the first IRL race of her career, as well as becoming the first female driver to ever win a race in that series.

In a pure incident of coincidental timing, just days before Danica broke down the barriers for females in racing, Chrissy Wallace inked a deal with Germain Racing that will have her competing full-time in the Craftsman Truck Series in 2009.

Chrissy made her NASCAR debut just a few weeks ago at Martinsville Speedway in the Truck Series’ Kroger 250. Despite starting that race all the way back from the 35th position, she was able to find her way up to 18th by the final lap of the race. Her run was impressive enough to force the hands at Germain Racing to offer her up a contract, and they finalized the deal this past Wednesday. Chrissy will run another six races this year in the no. 03 Toyota Tundra – the first of which will be on June 20th in Milwuakee, and from there she will begin to prepare for her 2009 rookie campaign.

Regarding her signing with Germain, Chrissy stated, “I’m extremely excited. This is a big deal for us. When I saw my name on that contract, I almost couldn’t believe it. But, I’m thrilled about this opportunity.”

Chrissy comes from a long line of racers in her family, to include her father Mike Wallace, and uncles Rusty and Kenny. She has spent the majority of her amateur career racing late model stock cars, and became the first female driver to win at Hickory Motor Speedway in 57 years.  She has also earned herself the backing of the unofficial NASCAR spokesman himself, Tony Stewart, and that just simply can’t hurt matters.

The official signing of Chrissy Wallace is a huge step for NASCAR as they continue to work on building diversity within their garage areas. In recent years, the sport has added a number of drivers with foreign backgrounds, to include such names as Juan Pablo Montoya, Dario Franchitti, and Patrick Carpentier. They have also created and contributed to a multitude of diversity programs in an effort to help this cause. Although Chrissy certainly is not the first female to dawn a NASCAR firesuit, it certainly appears as though that she may potentially be the first to have the necessary combination of talent AND proper equipment afforded to her that it takes to win at NASCAR’s highest levels.

DYN Imposes:
This week, Do You Nascar also asks its readers …

1) Do you think that Chrissy Wallace will be successful in the Craftsman Truck Series in 2009, and will she win Rookie of the Year?

2) Are female drivers often given some of their driving opportunities simply because of their market value as women?

3) Have NASCAR’s diversity programs been successful, and is the diversity they’ve added been good for the sport?

4) What could NASCAR do to expand their diversity programs?

For those NASCAR fans that thought after the retirement of Rusty Wallace two years ago that the sole responsibility of getting the Wallace family name into the headlines of the racing world would fall squarely on the shoulders of young Lauren (Warren?) Wallace, you could be sadly mistaken. No, I’m not talking about the trio that currently occupies the Nationwide Series – Mike, Kenny, and Steve – and, I’m not even referring to the team of Rusty Wallace Inc.  I’m actually making reference to the 20-year-old Chrissy Wallace.

For those of you not familiar with the name, Chrissy is the daughter of Mike Wallace, and the niece of future Hall of Famer Rusty Wallace. She’s been racing for a few years now, particularly in late model events in North and South Carolina. She has won four late model events and is also the first female to win a late model stock car event at Hickory Speedway in the track’s 57 year history. Additionally, she’s won forty-plus races in legends cars.

Now, according to Raygan Swan at nascar.com, Chrissy will officially embark on her professional career on March 29th of this year when she competes in the Craftsman Truck Series’ Kroger 250 at Martinsville. She has partnered herself with the Toyota team Germain Racing and will compete in at least five Craftsman Truck races as well as five ARCA races throughout the course of the season. If she runs well in those events, who knows, she could potentially be tapped to run more events if scheduling permits. Chrissy’s father, Michael, also races for Germain in the Nationwide Series, and this move will officially make them the first father-daughter combo to ever race for the same team in NASCAR.

In response to questions regarding the status of women in NASCAR – or, in the racing world in general – Chrissy stated, “I feel more accepted here, especially lately because I proved my point by winning. But, guys have it stuck in their heads that females don’t need to be out here. The phrase ‘never a successful female’ is stuck in owners’ minds and some have said we don’t run well and look like idiots, but if you don’t take a chance, you’ll never know.”