On To Texas

My little sister, who was born in Fort Worth and lives in TexArkana, pronounces it "Teyaxes," which gives her a really cute drawl indiginous to that part of the country. I just thought I'd say that because it has nothing to do with Sunday's Dickies 500.
Nor does the fact that Bruton Smith has purchased New Hampshire International Speedway have anything to do with Sunday's race. Burton owns TMS, AMS, LVMS, LMS, Bristol, and one or two others I can't think of right now, and he wants to add a second race to Vegas. Personally, I don't think that Smith will pull a race from New Hampshire to move to Vegas, as long as that race sells out. With the races at Atlanta and Texas failing to sell out, he may try to move either the second race at Atlanta or Texas to Las Vegas in 2009.
As far as Loudon (NHIS) goes, we know he is going to reconfigure it. Which is fine by me, because, as much as I like the tracks that are 1 mile or less, NHIS has the worst racing of these. It is like two 1/4 mile drag strips with turnarounds at each end. Not that we would want to see him configure it to another 1.5 mile tri- or quad-oval, but maybe shorten the straightaways and widen the turns so it would be more like Milwaukee or Nashville. Mr Smith, if you are reading this (fat chance!) please consider my suggestion.
That being said, the closest I have come to accuracy in my predictions was at Kansas, after I picked Greg Biffle to be the non-chaser most likely to win the race, and he did. In one of the strangest finishes ever. Otherwise, everything I have predicted results in the opposite taking place.
Since my favorite driver can not logically be considered to be "in the Chase," we could say that the pressure is off, and he can get back to having fun, and maybe even throw a wrench into the works and win one. But that is not my pick.
With my terrible record of picking the winner, I will predict that Jimmie Johnson will win the race with Jeff Gordon close on his bumper. In fact, it should be a near tie. Of course, this is just in hopes that the points between the top three stay close until the very last race at Homestead.
So here's looking forward to a wild, entertaining, and, possibly, very wierd race at TMS. Yeehaw!