If you’re a fan of D-How, I am truly sorry. The guy played the most uninspired game I have ever seen. He looked more like Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum than he did superman, with one bead of sweat glimmering from his reddened cheeks, as he smiled all evening at the half-clad body of Rihanna.

No I am not arguing in favor of Bieber fever to the Magic for D-How to Hollywood. The fever needs to stick to swooning fifteen year old girls with hip thrusts.  While D-How needs to go back to playing basketball with more drive than a uni-cycle. Dwight were you not the first overall pick in 2004, the guy who was supposed to help us forget about our generations great centers– Olajuwan, Ewing, Robinson, Mutumbo, and Shaq?

Yesterday you were far too much of the Afro-American Shawn Bradley. Pathetic.

Which is why Daytona– a “man” compared to the NBA’s “teenager”, shined yesterday. The tenth anniversary of the late great Dale Earnhardt’s death–Nascar’s MJ or Magic–touched me deep, as I reminisced on moments watching the great circle the track, while I hung with my ol’ man.  Those memories felt like yesterday–the flamed grill stinging the eyes with those dancing orange flames, while a beautifully seasoned tri-tip drips juicy fat onto oak wood.  Dad gurgling a Coors, with hash curling from his calloused cracked hands, while my uncles spit slurs at the fine Betty walking toward the beach in a poke-o-dot bikini. When the race began, everyone shuttup and watched. Something about the humming motors, thousands upon thousands of fans, and the various colored flags waving in the smooth wind of Daytona courted their boyhood (courting mine now) with memories of  wood race cars in Boy Scouts, skate boards, and bmx.

The glory of  yesterday reflected from a boy…literally. The victor of the 53rd Daytona 500, was  twenty year old rookie Trevor Bayne. He drove the famed Wood Bros. #21 car, leading them to their first large scale victory in ten years. As always the race was a cautiously safe ride for the first 175 laps, with your classic two by two mini races, and an occasional burst into the breakaway flat.  But it was far from boring. Jonathan Washer, from examiner.com, reported the race as ” [a] race [that] was filled with cautions and caution laps, there were too many two by two racing which made it seem boring for a 500 mile (200 lap) race.” Washer began the treatise as a lover of Nascar, which is why his opinion surprised me.

Or maybe it didn’t. The decline in Nascar’s attendance is not because the sport has become boring or awash with drivers that are “too safe”.  The decline is a derivative of pop cultures desire for athleticism–a highly relative term–considering most of us would not have the strength nor the fortitude to control the wile and torque of a car speeding around a track at 170-190 mph. Our cultures inability to see the competitive nature of Nascar is rooted in our entertainment world–the fact that we are now more of a fashion/hip hop culture that wants to see freakish, circus like movements in the air. We only want the wrecks or the dunks, not the patience of a skilled driver, taking small move after small move till the paramount of the 190th lap. A lap when no holds bar, and it becomes a dog eat dog experience on the race track.  My father’s generation looked at the resiliency of an individual, and judged them by their ability to withstand a sporting obstacle and win, win, win, on the biggest stages. We=beauty. My father=heart.

“The cool”=shoe shiner to my father as well. It did not matter what smile or swagger you had during his era, because it was more about the heart of each competitor. Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Mickey Mantle, Jerry West, Joe Joe D, The Big O, and Earnhardt Sr., were not a popular face in and of themselves, they were particles of popularity within the greater face of the sport itself. Basketball, Football, Baseball, Nascar, etc, made them who they were, not the opposite.

Which is why Nascar was where it was at yesterday. The NBA paled in comparison to a sport that still offers a freckle face twenty year old Bayne the opportunity to win on the biggest stage. A pile up on lap twenty nine, involving big names like Brian Vickers, Waltrip, Mark Martin, and Jeff Gordan, not only opened the field for youngsters like Bayne, but proved to the sporting world just how hard these guys compete. They literally risk their lives for the love of a sport, which should hit home for the people who choose to judge life by its quality not by its quantity.

Go ahead, you can have Bieber fever, and I will gladly remain steadfast in Nascar.  And when you leave, do you mind dumping Dwight “Tweedle Dee” Howard into the dumpsters out back? Thanks.

–Luke Johnson

This traditional hollering at the beginning of each race by Nascar TV commentator Darrell Waltrip is the question that is unequivically posed by an inebriated Randy “Hardtimes” Kenney. Before every race we have attended together, he would ask this question with unbridled enthusiasm to at least twenty random fans while on the walk to the track from the 5th-wheel parking lot.

“Do you know the 7 most famous words in racing? If you do, I’ll give you a dollar. If you don’t, you have to give ME a dollar.”

He was always able to buy the first round of beers inside the gates from the proceeds earned.

As the 2011 season narrowly approaches, memories are reborn along with the anticipation of new ones to come from the great American racing series.

Even though Jimmy Johnson has won an unprecedented 6th straight Sprint Cup title in his number 48 Hendrick Motorsports Lowe’s Chevrolet, the season-long headline will be what it always has been in recent years past – will Dale Earnhardt Jr. finally live up to expectations as Nascar’s most popular living driver and win his first Sprint Cup title?

Earnhardt, who is on the pole to start the Daytona 500 Sunday, sits on pole at this race for the second year in a row. Back to back poles at the Daytona 500 is something only Mark Martin and Dale’s late father, Dale Earnhardt Sr. have done in the past quarter century.

A wreck in Wednesday’s practice however, involving Earnhardt Jr., Martin Truex, Jr., Brian Vickers and Jimmy Johnson, will force Earnhardt to start in the back of the field.  Nascar rules state: if during practice between qualifying and the race, a driver wrecks the car he qualified in to where it is undrivable for the race and thus has to switch to a backup car, he must start the race at the “tail-end of the longest line,” in “Nascar-speak.”

Fortunately for all involved in the mishap, qualifying position garners you little advantage at large, 2.5 mile super-speedways like Daytona and Talladega.  This is due to the amount of positions changed every lap, which tends to happen consistently because of longer straight-aways and drivers drafting in long lines off of each other.  A driver all by himself and not in a line of drafters could lose 10 positions or more just on one straight-away.  At these tracks, as long as you qualify and are in the race, you have a shot to win.  Just look at last year’s winner, relatively unknown Jaime McMurray.

This year is also the 10-year anniversary of Dale Sr.’s death at Daytona. Michael Waltrip won his first and only Daytona 500 in 2001. His elation in victory, however, was quickly curbed. As he crossed the finish line, his car-owner at that time, Dale Earnhardt, Sr., was killed on turn 4 while traveling upwards of 200 miles an hour into an unforgiving wall. As a tribute to Dale, Sr., Waltrip will be racing in a black number 15 Napa Toyota on Sunday.

This isn’t the only tribute there will be this Sunday to Dale, Sr., who is basically the Elvis of Nascar, and is still amazingly it’s most popular driver according to merchandise sales even a decade after his death. There will be a number 3 (his longtime and retired car number) painted on the grass near the entrance to pit road. Also, as the drivers turn left around the newly re-paved surface, during the 3rd lap of the race, a moment of silence will be upheld by the over 240,000 fans present. They will be instructed to hold up 3 fingers during this respectful hush as the sounds of the pistons roaring will be all that is audible.

When Daytona Beach is vacated by the hundreds of thousands come next week and the season begins to progress, week after week, Johnson will have the bullseye squarely on his back. Earnhardt, Jr.’s back will also be accompanied by something – a monkey of gorilla-like proportions. But what else is new in Nascar, right? Well, surprisingly, things change as much as they stay the same.

A new points system will be introduced in 2011, a basic reverse snaking system (43 points for 1st, 42 for 2nd, 41 for 3rd, all he way down to 1 for 43rd). Additionally, the winner of each race will recieve 3 bonus points. Drivers will also receive 1 bonus point if they are able to lead the race for one full lap, and 1 bonus point will be up for grabs for the driver that leads the most laps.

Nascar CEO Brian France called the new system “a straight-forward way for us to communicate the standings, as opposed to the complicated formulas for points in years past.”

7-time Sprint Cup champion Richard Petty likes the new simplified points standings. The simple man in the cowboy hat is behind this ideal of simplicity so much, that he is also vehemently against the small bonus points system altogether.

“They ought to make it so simple that a 10-year old can keep up with the points standings,” said Petty in a recent interview.

The playoff system in Nascar, called “The Chase for the Sprint Cup,” will still carry 12 drivers as it has since it’s inception in 2004. However, this year there is a new twist that has been added to the equation. Before, it was simply the top 12 in the points standings that received bids into the chase. Now, the top 10 will get in the chase after the first 26 races based on points, as well as 2 wildcards. These wildcards will be decided by which 2 drivers outside of the top 10 in points have won the most races, regardless of overall points standings.

“It gives drivers a chance to get in on their own merit,” said Tony Stewart, who likes to the new wildcard structure.

The biggest villian in the series, Kyle Busch, also agrees. “It’s better than a fan vote deciding the final two,” said Busch, in jest.

These shakeups are a transparent attempt by Nascar at trying to gain back causal fans. The ratings surge of Nascar viewership in 2006 and 2007 has seen a heavy decline since. Johnson’s dominance has played the major role in this trend. As in all other sports, dominance is a bore to the casual on-looker.

That, however, is not the only problem mentioned by the ones in charge of presenting the product to the viewers. Fox Sports Chairman David Hill believes shorter races would bring more fans back to the turnstiles and TV tubes, stating, “with all the diversions in today’s world, the races are far too long to realistically keep viewers for the entire 3 to 4 hours of the race.”

One other fundamental change this season to the Nascar brand as a whole regards drivers competing in multiple series. Sprint Cup drivers, although still able to drive here and there in the “minor leagues” for purposes of existing contractual obligations to sponsors, are now out of the points championship contention in those two other series, the Nationwide Series and Craftsman Truck Series. This will allow the titles of the minor leagues to be contended by only the up and coming young drivers, which naturally should be the purpose of the minor leagues, shouldn’t it?

With Sprint Cup drivers also racing in these series in years past, the overall talent and equipment level was entirely an unfair playing field. The annual winners of these series were household Sprint Cup names. Drivers who’s livelihood was only being able to drive in these minor leagues, had a distinct disadvantage and never realistically had a shot to win. That dynamic saw a lot of young drivers fall by the wayside that maybe shouldn’t have, due to the money issues of losing sponsors by not having a chance to be seen, made note of by commentators or being able to exude the slightest bit of relevance.

This new rule doesn’t let the rich keep getting richer at the expense of the little man. Many Sprint Cup drivers, surprisingly however, are welcome to the change. Why would Albert Pujols want to hit 100 homeruns in triple-A anyway?

Kyle Busch, who two years ago while running in all three series, won both the Natonwide and Craftsman Truck Series. He is now unable to repeat this display of overall endurance, which could be a blessing in disguise, due to the overall dedication it takes to complete such a feat. Running in all three series may have lead to a decline in his consistency that year in the most lucrative and highest level of competition, the Sprint Cup series.

Last year’s Nationwide series winner, the most talented up-and-coming young driver in the Sprint Cup Series, Brad Keselowski, will be unable to defend his Nationwide title this season. Although somewhat disappointed, he was not bitter about the rule change at all.

“It’s important to live up to the spirit of the new rule, and it will be for the best to focus only on the (Sprint) cup side of things,” said Keselowski.

The “Silly Season,” as it is commonly known amongst fans, is the off-season game of musical chairs the drivers whose contracts have expired play in changing cars, teams and sponsors. While there aren’t as many major changes in the ranks of the most popular drivers that has been seen in years past, there are still some moves of note.

Kasey Kahne headlines the list of switches, as he will be going from his number 9 Budwieser Dodge to his new ride – the number 4 Red Bull Toyota. He is joining Brian Vickers, who recently returned from a blood clot disorder, and his number 83 Red Bull Toyota car, in the 2-team German-owned Red Bull organization.

Amazingly talented Austrailian road-course sensation Marcos Ambrose will also unveil his new number 9 RPM Stanley Dewalt Ford.

Penske announced their expansion by dropping Keselowski into their number 2 Miller Lite Dodge full time, a ride that was formally driven for nearly the past decade by Kyle’s older brother, Kurt Busch. Busch will now be behind the wheel for Penske’s new team, the number 22 Pennzoil Shell Dodge.

After a fall out with Hendrick Motorsports as well as the Red Bull team in the past two years, Bakersfield’s Casey Mears announced that in 2011 he will be driving for longtime Nascar Series small-market organization, Germain Racing, in their number 13 Toyota.

Another one of Bakersfield’s own, short-track specialist Kevin Harvick, who last year lead in points for nearly the entire season only to fall just short in the chase to Johnson’s 48 team, said that he is doing exactly the same things he did last year to try and repeat his good fortune in getting to that point. The one and only thing Harvick has changed? “I changed my phone unlock code to ‘48 48’ so I will remember all year long who I have to beat.”

As the green flag waves this Sunday in Daytona, everyone will undoubtedly be gunning for the 6-time defending champ, as they will be all season. If you happen to find the lost phone of any Sprint Cup driver this season that isn’t named Jimmie Johnson, you will know unlocking it won’t be much trouble at all.

Now, if we could only find drunken Hardtimes’ lost phone.