Even now that the schedule has belatedly been released, it is incomplete. Izod, the chief sponsor of the IndyCar title, mandates a minimum of 16 races on the tour. Only 15 were on the schedule released by IndyCar this week.

The schedule, as it is today, begins March 5th with the annual test runs at Sebring. The season begins for real March 25th in St. Petersburg – the IndyCar equivalent of the Daytona 500.

Many involved in the sport put at least partial blame for the Wheldon tragedy on the oval course at Las Vegas. That sentiment is probably reflected in the fact that only 4 of the 15 courses announced for 2012 are ovals.

In addition to the domestic stops at familiar tracks like Michigan, Fontana, Texas, Iowa, and – of course – Indianapolis, there are a number of international stops on the tour. IndyCar racing will travel to Canada (twice), Brazil, and – for the first time ever – China.

The other big announcement out of IndyCar is that there will be three engine-makers for the tour. In addition to Honda, who was the sole manufacturer last year, Chevrolet and Lotus will also participate. The influx of new technologies makes the tune-up in Sebring all the more important and the gap between test run and first race – less than three weeks – all the more challenging.

According to an official NASCAR press release on NASCAR’s official NASCAR site, NASCAR.com, NASCAR amazingly won the “Still The Most Awesome Sport Ever” Award. What a shocker! Who would have seen that one coming?

The “Where Did He Come From” Award for the most improved driver of the season was awarded to Brad Keselowski (pictured). Kes turned in a fifth place performance in 2011 after finishing a distant 25th in points the previous year. It was a good year for Keselowski in the Loopies. He also won – against all odds – the “Brad Keselowski’s Ankle Deserves Its Own Award” Award for his improved performance post-injury.

The opposite number for Keselowski’s most improved award was Jeff Burton who turned in the worst year over year drop in performance among the Sprint Cup Drivers.

Kyle Busch‘s up and down season earned him a special “Irregular Season” Award because he is at or near the top of so many statistical categories tracked by Loop Data but not within sniffing distance of the far more important points category.

The Loopies are silly and self-indulgent, but they’re also the closest thing we’ll have to NASCAR action for a long, long time.  Long, long, long time.  Daytona can’t come soon enough.

(U.S. Navy photo)

Busch released an apology. NASCAR released a statement. Penske, Busch’s team, released a different statement. His sponsors, Shell and Penzoil, released a statement of their own. None of them offered anything like a defense of Busch’s actions.

This isn’t the first time Busch has done something like this. But in the past he was Roger Penske‘s golden boy, the guy who offered the owner his best chance of winning a Sprint Cup championship. Now Brad Keselowski may well be that guy – with all the upside and none of the downside that Busch presents. With Kes in the stable, Penske may be less willing to indulge Busch and his anger-management issues.

In other racing news, the Formula One season came to a close on Sunday with the Brazilian Grand Prix.  The final race was anti-climactic because Sebastian Vettel had already sewn up the championship before the race began.  Vettel finished second behind teammate Mark Webber.

Busch started on the pole, lost it to little brother Kyle for much of the race, and retook it for the last 4 laps to claim the Zippo 200 at the Glen. Kyle looked like he would win the brotherly-rivalry but low gas forced him to pit on green, ceding the lead to big brother Kurt.  Ironically – and unfortunately for Kyle – mere seconds later the inevitable late yellow caution came out.

That late-race wreck – barely a wreck, really – was the only one in the final stage.  This installment of racing at the Glen was noticeably cleaner than most, especially in the late going. The fact that they managed a Green-White-Checkered finish on the first attempt was practically shocking.

You’d have to drop all the way to 7th place to find the Best of the Rest. The honor this week goes to Ron Fellows and the Canadian Tire Chevrolet. Points leader Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. fell to a distant 15th, but retained the lead thanks to Reed Sorenson’s almost-as-distant 13th place finish. Just 10 points now separate these two drivers with 11 weeks until the season finale at Homestead.

With rain postponing the Sprint Cup race at Watkins Glen until at least Monday, the Nationwide Series was all there was this weekend.  The Johnson-Busch feud was definitely less emphatic than we all expected, but sometimes these things take time.  An extra day or so in this case.

But in an ending that more closely resembled a Hollywood movie than any NASCAR race I’ve ever seen before his engine did blow up. More James Bond than Dale Earnhardt, Stenhouse’s car sprayed smoke and oil from the rear as he slowed. A charging Carl Edwards was blinded by the thick, oily smoke that clung to his windshield. Even if he had been able to see, he wouldn’t have been able to steer around Stenhouse’s car because of the oil slick on the road separating his tires from the asphalt.

So blind and out-of-control, Edwards slammed into Stenhouse, turning him sideways and propelling his across the finish. Stenhouse finished first, Edwards crossed a micro-second (actually 66/1000 of a second) behind.

“Wow,” said Edwards with something like a smirk as he climbed from his car.

“Wow,” said Stenhouse as soon as reporters caught up to him on the track before he climbed into a pickup truck to take his victory laps as his car lay a motionless wreck.

“Wow,” said acclaimed NASCAR writer Ronald A. Rowe so loud that his wife charged in from another room before the cars had stopped their sidelong slide. It’s a rarity that I make much noise watching a NASCAR race on TV, especially a Nationwide series. Sprint Cup, occasionally (usually involving Dale Jr. almost but not quite winning). Baseball, sometimes. Football, regularly. But Nationwide racing? There is seldom something so shocking as this in the sport. But a Lightning McQueen-esque finish happening in real life live before my eyes?

Next Week: The Zippo 200 at Watkins Glen.

Brad Keselowski

The two Busch brothers, Kyle and Kurt, in that order, followed Kes across the finish line. A not-at-all happy Jimmie Johnson finished fourth after a little bumping between him and Kurt Busch on the final lap. I’m sure their friendly conversation on pit road will not be the end of the discussion. The interest level in next week’s race at Watkins Glen just went up several notches.

Ryan Newman and Jeff Gordon were next, followed by points leader Carl Edwards. 7th place was good enough for Edwards to maintain his 9 point lead over Johnson in the Cup standings. Greg Biffle, Dale Earnhardt Jr, and Paul Menard rounded out the top 10.

Kyle moved up a spot to 3rd and Kurt jumped two places to 4th in the standings at the expense of Kevin Harvick and Matt Kenseth. That was the only movement within the top 14 drivers, although Biffle is now just three points away from the final Chase spot currently held by Clint Bowyer. Then again, with the new Chase rules, it may well be that neither makes it to the final 12. Keseloswki’s 2 wins put him ahead of either driver for the 12th spot, even though he’s now 18th in points.

There are now just five races remaining before the Chase begins in earnest. Drivers on the cusp have to be thinking wins, not points now. Watkins Glen next week will be the first of five final opportunities to score a victory and make the Chase.

Paul Menard

Menard played the fuel game and won. Even as he was streaking down the final turn, images of Junior’s last lap debacle earlier this year were playing through the minds of NASCAR fans across the fruited plain. Menard did have enough in his tank and he was able to hold off a determined Jeff Gordon who surely wishes it were the Brickyard 401.

The two guys vying for the lead in the standings didn’t look like champions on Sunday. Points leader Carl Edwards finished in 14th place. Perpetual Champ Jimmie Johnson, who started in the third position, found himself repeatedly in tight spots throughout the race on Sunday. He eventually finished in 19th place. Their mutually weak finishes were close to a push, with Johnson falling three points farther behind Edwards.

Neither Edwards nor Johnson moved in the standings, but there were a lot of ups and downs among the top Chase contenders. 18 of the top 23 drivers moved at least one position one way or the other. Currently ten drivers are within 100 points of the leader so the field is pretty wide open. More importantly there are 9 drivers within striking distance of winless Clint Bowyer and his hold on the final Chase spot – three of whom have a win under their belt in 2011. The battle for that final spot should be thrilling as we close in on the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

In one week: The Good Sam RV Insurance 500 (better known as the Pocono 500).

Indianapolis

Brad Keselowski streaked across the finish line after narrowly avoiding the carnage left behind when Brian Scott spun out on the Green-White-Checkered restart three past the scheduled distance. The GWC finish was necessitated by a nastier pileup a few laps earlier in which Elliot Sadler managed to wipe out his own teammate, Austin Dillon.

James “Who?” Buescher finished second in just his sixth start of the season. The honor of Best of the Rest – since Keselowski earns his points in the Sprint Cup and Buescher normally drives the Truck Series – went to Ricky Stenhouse Jr. who finished third, claimed Nationwide Series points, and took over the lead in the standings with a razor-thin 3 point lead over rival Reed Sorenson. There are 13 races to go and almost anything can happen, but 2011 is starting to shape up as a two-man race between Sadler and Stenhouse, Jr. Just don’t tell that to Elliott Sadler who’s sitting just 24 points out despite going winless so far this year.

Next up, one of the worst offenders in the Name-That-Race Age, the U.S. Cellular 250 presented by the Enlist Weed Control System at Iowa Speedway.

Yes, Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. won a significant victory by finishing second, even though most of the Sprint Cup crowd took advantage of the off week in the top division by skipping the Nationwide race as well.

Yes, Reed Sorenson won big by finishing 8th and snatching the points lead away from Elliot Sadler, who finished dead last (among those who actually finished the race).

All that is true, but there was one and only one biggest winner on Saturday, and that was Pastor Joe Nelms of the Family Baptist Church of Lebanon, Tennessee who gave the pre-race invocation. If you missed it, you really should check it out on youtube. A few fuddy duddies called it bizarre, but the rest of us just called it funny. Sure, we normally prefer our prayers to be a little more formal, but I firmly believe that God has a sense of humor. And anyone with a good sense of humor, Supreme Being of the Universe or no, can appreciate an homage to Talladega Nights.

Pastor Nelms channeled Ricky Bobby and Daryl Waltrip, praising God for His gifts – mentioning several by brand name – and his “smoking hot wife” before signing off with a “boogedy boogedy boogedy Amen”. Good stuff.

In a week devoid of Sprint Cup racing Nelms, with some significant help from Carl Edwards,, gave us a good show.

Whatever his emotions on that last lap as Tony Stewart the driver, Tony Stewart the team co-owner had to be pretty pleased with the 1-2 victory for Stewart-Haas Racing. Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano followed next. Then came Jimmie Johnson, who had been in the 20’s not long before, surging past Kasey Kahne at the finish line.

No one moved in or out of the Cup Chase based on Sunday’s race in New Hampshire, but there was a whole lot of movement within the top 12. 7 of the top 12 drivers and 18 of the top 23 moved at least one place up or down as a result of the Lenox Industrial Tools 301. If the Chase Cutoff were today, #13 David Ragan would be in and #12 Clint Bowyer would be out based on Ragan’s one victory this season (2 weeks ago at Daytona).

Carl Edwards maintained the lead in the Sprint Cup standings, but there are ten drivers within 100 points of him. Every week seems more intense than the last as we move toward the Chase. Well, except next week, which is one of those dreaded skip weeks devoid of Sprint Cup racing. The action will continue in two weeks at Indianapolis.