Morning Brew

A few rumors and other news:

• A report that Ganassi and Penske are merging? The talk this past weekend has been the a possible alliance or a buyout by Roger Penske of Chip Ganassi's stock car team is in the works. Both team field Dodges in NASCAR Sprint CUP and Gansaai recently won the Indy 500 with driver Scott Dixon. But when Mike Accavitti, director of Dodge Brand and SRT Marketing Communications, he said the rumors are "Absolutely preposterous!" Accavitti said "That would be like putting the Hatfields and McCoys together."

• At Dover Kyle Busch may have won the race, but he almost lost a helmet. Busch helmet was stolen from the garge Friday night, but reportedly security officers caught the thief. "Someone snuck in the garage with the cleanup crew and stole it." said Sunday's winner Kyle Busch. "Somebody saw it happen, I guess, and they told the security guards outside. They were checking everybody that was leaving and they found him and brought the helmet back." When asked if the helmet had any special significance to Busch, he said "It didnt matter, it's not a lucky helmet."

• Speaking of helmets, I ran across this over at Rubbin's Racin's Forums, the winner for the best helmet design goes to.......MotoGP driver Valentino Rossis

• Prelude to the Dream will be aired Wednesday Night from Eldora Speedway, with another sell-out crowd for the all-star dirt late model race, which features 25 world renown drivers. Some driver listed to race are: Tony Stewart, Kasey Kahne, Kyle Busch, Jimmie Johnson, Carl Edwards, Kevin Harvick, Matt Kenseth, Mark Martin, Denny Hamlin, Bobby Labonte, and many more. All will be driving 2,300-pound dirt late model stock cars, with 800 horsepower. For more info go to: HBO.com
  

Kyle Busch...is it his time?

Can anyone stop Kyle Busch, after a not so amazing run at Hendrick Motorsports, Busch is on track to be the top driver at the end of this season. With this latest win at Dover today, his 4th out of the 13 races so far, he is leading the points and on the way to bring the #18 JGR Toyota to the Winners Circle many more times.

If Kyle continues to rack up wins at the rate he is, we are looking at about 11 wins by season end. YES 11! Now Jimmie Johnson won 10 lat year and still had to fight in the last 10 chase races, but think of this, so far this season Kyle Busch has 10 Nascar wins, four in Cup, four in Nationwide and two in Trucks.

How does he compare with others that have had dominated in the Cup level? Jeff Gordon won 13 times in 33 races nearly 40% of the time in 1998, Rusty Wallace won 10 of 30 races (but not the title because of 5 DNFs) in 1993, Dale Earnhardt won 11 of 29 races (37.9%) in 1987, Bill Elliott won 11 of 28 races (but not the title) in 1985, and Darrell Waltrip won 24 of 61 races (39.3 %) when he won the 1981-82 titles.

Now Busch doesn't have the Championship in his hands yet, but with wins giving him extra points going into the chase, you have to believe he will be a major factor.

When asked about all the success he has found this year, he said:

"For me, I believe there's a way that you drive the trucks, there's a way you drive the Nationwide cars,'' Busch said. "That's full out, as fast as you can go. The harder you go, the faster you can go. These cars here, you have to pace yourself a little bit. You have to slow them down. You can drive them hard for the first three or four laps, then you have to start backing off, start slowing down, slowing up your entry, slowing down the center, just kind of moseying around the corner, trying to make the thing stick in one particular groove. I've found something that's worked for me here recently in the past few weeks. I found it at Darlington. I won there. Then I finished third at Lowe's. Then we won here again today. You know, we're gaining on the car as well. But I think a lot of it is a little bit of driver. You got to stay calm when you can. You’ve got to get going when the time's right and when you can get riled up.''

Who would have thought a year ago we would be talking about Kyle Busch 4 time winner in 2008 and NASCAR Sprint Cup Points leader?

Other notes from today race:

• Tony Stewart's comments after a lap 16 multi-car wreck after contact between David Gilliland and Elliott Sadler: “I take 100% responsibility -- it’s my fault for being even anywhere close to Elliott (Sadler),'' Stewart said. "If I’m within a half a lap of him, I expect that to happen. It’s my fault -- I’m the one that hit him. When I hit him it caused all the guys behind us to wreck. So it’s my fault.”

• Greg Biffle finished third for his third consecutive top-three finish.
  

• Matt Kenseth finished fourth continuing his recent surge. He was sixth at Darlington, placed seventh in the 600. He has gone from 22nd in the points before Darlington to 16th and is 95 points out of 12th place.

• Dave Blaney's ninth-place finish was his second top-10 finish in the last three races (he also was ninth at Darlington). The Bill Davis Racing team is showing some life after struggling to be in the top 35 in car owner points earlier this season.

• Scott Riggs fell out of the top 35 in car owner points, meaning both Haas CNC cars must qualify on time. Those 150 points the team was penalized for after their violation at Charlotte kind of makes the team not such a good buy.....huh Tony?

• Joey Logano finished sixth in his NASCAR Nationwide debut Saturday at Dover.