NASCAR Daily News Headlines * May 10, 2008

Does Roush Have An Advantage?

The housing has been an issue mainly with Carl Edwards' team at Roush Fenway Racing. Edwards has won three times on 1.5-mile tracks this season and was in position to win a fourth race before late engine woes.

Many in the garage said during testing at Lowe's Motor Speedway earlier this week that the yaw created -- Edwards' car appears to be going sideways on the straightaway, creating more side force heading into the turns -- by turning the rear housing to the right gives Edwards a competitive advantage.

"NASCAR knows it's happening," Gordon said on Friday at Darlington Raceway. "They are the ones that see the cars come through inspection. They see it. When cars can't even get on the scales because they're running sideways, it's something they need to address."

Series director John Darby said there are no plans to further police the rear housing adjustment, noting NASCAR already has a rule restricting more than a quarter-inch change plus or minus.

He added that Hendrick Motorsports, for which Gordon drives, was the first to experiment with the rear-housing adjustment on the new car and that Edwards' No. 99 team was one of the last. "They [complain] when we've got too many rules and then they want us to create more," Darby said of teams in general. "The process is so simple. There are limits on how far they can go."

Gordon admitted teams started finding ways to create more yaw last season, but added, "It's been taken to a whole other level. I believe it's something [NASCAR] didn't expect," he said.

Almost every team has tried to duplicate what Edwards has, but not every driver can handle it. "It makes the cars drive so terrible that it doesn't really help us in any way that we really need it," Gordon said.

Edwards has declined to comment on what his team is doing to create yaw. He was coy about it Friday. "Yeah, that's exactly what makes my car so fast," he said with a touch of sarcasm. "In fact, when we thought about taking a couple of weekends off, we were gonna go get a monkey to drive the car because it's real easy and that's the only reason we're winning. So they should just focus on that and not worry about anything else."  ...More at ESPN

Fire On Plane Causes Crash

The NASCAR accident summary is included in Friday's release of reports by the National Transportation Safety Board into the July 10 crash of the NASCAR airplane. It claims the pilots were overcome by fumes and were incapacitated.

The NTSB says it is still investigating the crash, with a final report of the cause likely in the summer. NTSB reports say a radar unit malfunctioned and caused a burning smell the day before the crash, but NASCAR claims the radar unit did not cause the fire that led to the crash. (hosted.ap.org)

Stewart Wins Wild Darlington Nationwide Race

Goodyear made two trips to Darlington since March for testing the new surface and a tire that would work with it. "I can’t believe it. We finally won a race at Darlington," said Stewart. "I really want to give Goodyear a pat on the back. I'm the first one to tell them when they screw up and I want to be the first one to tell them when they do a good job, too. It used to be with even with two laps to go, you came down for tires," Stewart continued. "We just needed to keep good track position. That was going to be most important."