Feeling iffy about your picks....

....here's some notes from the COT test at LVMS.

Picks so far - Vegas

Who to root for/against - Cali

Robby Gordon drops out of the top twelve

Not that anybody picked either of these drivers, but the top twelve has changed. Robby Gordon was penalized 100 points for his Dodge bumper in the 500. So he's out, Vickers is in.

How Junior ended up with Amp/Pepsi

Here's a pretty good article about went on behind the scenes when Pepsi signed Junior. Their plan is to use Junior to turn Amp into the "working man's" Red Bull. Energy drinks are a $6.5 BILLION market?

California picks so far

It's Wednesday already, and qualifying is on Friday. I'll try to keep the latest picks updated here.

Week 1 Results

Looks like not much has changed since last year. Regan started off the year with weekly win. I thought he might be in trouble when Harvick started complaining about engine problems on lap 5, but he held on to get a good finish. Hendrick cars looked like they had the best shot of keeping that foreign manufacturer out of the winner's circle for most of the race. But mechanical failures and bonehead moves took all four of them out of contention. Where did Dodge come from? Nobody was talking about Dodges leading up to the 500, and I guess we all bought in, we didn't have a single Dodge picked in our pool this week.

Kudos to Blond Dog for almost nailing the average race speed. The average speed was 152.672mph, Blond Dog missed it by 0.372. Ryan and Byron were also right there within 0.6mph.

Next race is in California. It's a fast track, and drafting may play a small role with the new cars. Rousch and Hendrick have been successful there, will Toyota be a factor?

California qualifying is about 6:30 Eastern on Friday. So get your picks to be before then.