A title contender energized, former driver coming back; a look at a sanctioning agreement

Unfazed. That's how Jimmie Johnson's team is after last week's race at Texas where his points lead fell from 184 to 73. Yes, there is pressure, crew chief Chad Knaus admits, but they're still doing a lot of the same things as any other week. Knaus did tell me about a meeting he had with the team this week.

"We don't have a lot of formal meetings,'' he said. "We have open-forum discussions. We got together this week and we talked about things we could have done better in the crash repair, how could we do it better for next time, what tools, what resources do we need to call on to try to get that stuff done better and faster in case something again happens. Then we just went on into it and talked about the thing that is going to win this championship is preparedness and if you're prepared going into the next 712 laps we have to race (312 laps at Phoenix and 400 at Homestead), we should be able to win this championship. If we don't, it's not life-threatneing. It's not the end of the world. It means that we go into 2010 and we try to do it (win a championship) again. We've got to make sure we dot our I's and cross our T's and have the tools and resources ready and at our fingertips to make this deal happen and then go race.''

Even Jimmie Johnson was not professing too much concern at least publicly on Friday morning before practice started _ where Johnson was a regular in the top five in speeds from the beginning.

"I'm used to leaving Texas with a strong performance, a lot of momentum, coming into the Phoenix race with a ton of momentum,'' Johnson said. "I don't really have an emotion for how last week went. Obviously, it's a negative one.  I'm disappointed to lose the points but we didn't perform poorly. We didn't have a chance to perform good or bad. I'm kind of just at this blank spot with how last week went.

# Carquest is returning as a primary sponsor for select races for Mark Martin in Cup through 2011, the team announced Friday. GoDaddy.com already has been announced also as a sponsor for the car in a majority of the races.

# TRG Motorsports plans to announce a driver and sponsor for next season on Saturday. Foxsports.com,citing unidentified sources, reports that Bobby Labonte will remain with the team. That would make sense with Jamie McMurray reportedly going to Earnhardt Ganassi Racing next year (announcement is expected at Homestead).

# Jerry Nadeau was at the track Friday. He flew out with Jay Frye, general manger of Red Bull Racing and the team. Nadeau, as you might recall, suffered a head injury in a crash at Richmond in May 2003 and has not raced in a major circuit since. Here's the story I did on him last year on the fifth anniversary of his crash. He says he's trying to put together a deal to run in the Grand Am circuit next year but will need to find more than $300,000 in sponsorship. Nadeau is excited about the prospect and hopeful he can return to racing.

# I"m sure many of you have heard of the sanctioning agreements between a track and NASCAR but haven't seen one. Here one is for the Dover events for next year.

#  While you likely have heard of sanctioning agreements NASCAR has with the tracks, here's a copy of one such agreement between NASCAR and Dover for its two races. Lots of interseting nuggets buried within all the type. Here's the sanctioning agreement. 

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