This is my long overdue follow-up post to my initial comments about the Coca-Cola 600 last weekend. I am still so excited that Casey Mears has finally won his first Nextel Cup series race even though he’s apart of Hendrick “We Win Everything, Suckers!” Motorsports.

So there are couple things I must point out… first off, in this photo of Casey, in victory lane with his teammate Jimmie Johnson, he looks to be on the verge of tears. It’s gotta be one of THE best photos this year.

The photo below proves how much of an emotional win this was for the #25 National Guard/GMAC Chevrolet team; one guy (on the far right) is actually doing a cartwheel! A cartwheel people, I haven’t done one of those since I was in elementary school and I’m a girl. Anyway, it’s still cute… in a way.

It’s amazing to me what a difference one race can make. People make it seem like Casey Mears didn’t exist before this race. You can have all the potential in the world but until you deliver on it you’re not really anybody. I’m not saying I agree with this but I know that evidence speaks volumes and that’s what some people focus on.

I always knew that Casey had it in him; it was just a matter of time. The same goes for Clint Bowyer, J.J. Yeley and Martin Truex Jr. They need to figure out a winning recipe ASAP.

Ya know how some people can go so long without doing “it” that they feel like they’ve become a virgin again? Well I think that might be happening to my guy Dale Earnhardt Jr. I’m just sayin’. He hasn’t won a race in what feels like FOREVER (Actually it was last year at Richmond in May).

So besides the whole awesomeness that was Mears’ win at Charlotte I was very happy for Team Red Bull. They managed to pull out a top-5 finish after it seemed like everybody and Jesus was out to get them. I wouldn’t even want to drive my regular street car without power steering, but Brian Vickers managed to do it at over 180 mph.

It was crappy that AJ Allmendinger was taken out of the race so early in that crash with Jeff Gordon, but at least Brian was able to pull something together. This is great for Toyota. Vickers was able to lead more laps in that one race than all of the Toyota teams put together so far this season.

And now for the fun stuff, photos of hot dudes:

Actor Chris Evans races fellow “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer” cast members in a race simulator at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. (Photo Credit: Chris Graythen/Getty Images for NASCAR)

WWE star Jon Cena (left) meets with NASCAR Busch Series Director Joe Balash. (Photo Credit: David Griffin/NASCAR Scene)

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Hehe… I kid, I kid… I was very happy that Dario Franchitti pulled out the win at the Indianapolis 500 today but I was even MORE excited that Casey Mears won the Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.

There’s no one else that I wanted to see win that race more than Casey (ok, maybe Dale Jr.) and his reaction to winning was all I needed to see. This is totally what NASCAR is all about; newbies winning, being emotional and truly appreciating the moment.

All I can say is congratulations to the #25 National Guard/GMAC Chevrolet team! What a great way to celebrate the Memorial Day weekend by winning one for our troops overseas. Awesome.

I’m so sad that I missed the Busch brothers wreck each other at the All-Star race last weekend. Sounds like it was a good time. Although I don’t yet believe that all is well between the Busch brothers — at least I don’t want to believe that it is — we’ll see what happens on Sunday. I would like to see more proof that Kyle Busch is a little punk with an attitude problem. I doubt Kyle will fail me on this one, but ya never know, he did do the right thing last weekend by hiding from the media after the accident with his brother and not saying anything until he could put a good script together.

In other news…

Ryan Newman is on the pole for the Coca-Cola 600 this weekend! And I couldn’t be any happier! If I had found out that it was Jeff Gordon again I would of had to gauge my eyes out with a blunt object. Ok, maybe it’s not that serious but it was nice to see something good happen for Newman this year. He’s been pretty under the radar and pretty far outside of the Championship talks.

Since I didn’t get to watch the All-Star race festivities this weekend I don’t have much new to say, but I wanted to post something. So I give you this press release about the band Hinder. They’ve been tapped to cover the song “Born To Be Wild” for the new NASCAR on TNT theme song. Check it out below.

In other news…

My mind is racing with this incredibly great idea I came up with on Saturday. It involves me doing more blogging (we’re talking everyday, multiple times a day) and getting out to the races every weekend. I’m doing research on how I can make this happen and I’ll keep ya updated on what I find.

Hinder Remakes Rock Classic “Born To Be Wild” for TNT’s 2007 NASCAR Coverage
Exclusive premiere of full-length music video to debut on NASCAR.COM on June 6

Turner Network Television (TNT) announced today that they have teamed with multi-platinum rockers Hinder to remake Steppenwolf’s classic hit single “Born to be Wild” as the network’s beat-driven anthem to promote its 2007 NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series coverage. The song will serve as the primary musical bed for all six of TNT’s races, as well as for the network’s multiplatform marketing campaign surrounding its exclusive race coverage. To accompany Hinder’s cover of the rock-and-roll classic, the network is also producing a full-length music video of the song for the band that will debut exclusively on the Turner-operated Web site NASCAR.COM on June 6.

“When we were considering which music would anchor our NASCAR on TNT promos, we wanted to find a song that we thought would immediately resonate with NASCAR fans, and a band whose sound exemplified the muscle and energy of NASCAR,” said Craig Barry, Turner Sports VP/Creative Director. “Hinder is a true rock band on the rise. They have the sound and cross-over appeal that we were looking for to help us promote the high-energy and excitement of NASCAR on TNT.”

Hinder gained much attention with their 2006 ballad “Lips of an Angel,” the bands breakthrough single from their first album titled Extreme Behavior. In addition to topping the Billboard Pop 100 chart, the single climbed as high as the third spot on both Billboard’s Hot 100 and Mainstream Rock charts. The band is once again rising on the charts with their follow-up single, “Better than Me.”

From the full-length, hard-driving music video, Turner will produce several shorter spots in 30, 60 and/or 90-second lengths, as well as a three-minute version cut with NASCAR action highlights to serve as the feature NASCAR on TNT on-air promo. In addition, NASCAR.COM’s 24/7 Live host Riki Rachtman, formerly of MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball, will host a 15-minute behind-the-scenes look at the making of the video exclusively for the Web site. The spots will begin running on the network on June 6.

Previous musical pairings with TNT for its sports programming include Jay-Z (NBA), Fort Minor (2006 NBA Playoffs), Pharrell (2006 NBA All-Star Game), The Rolling Stones (NASCAR) and Fatty Koo (2005 NBA Playoffs).

To say that I’m miffed about that fact that the NASCAR Nextel Cup All-Star race is only being shown on the SPEED channel is a serious understatement.

I’m mad, annoyed, irritated. Obviously I don’t have the SPEED channel and therefore won’t be able to watch the festivities this weekend.

You’re probably thinking to yourself “Well if you’re such a big racing fan you should already subscribe to SPEED,” This is true but because cable costs an arm and a leg these days I’m not in any hurry to sign up and drive my cable costs up.

I just want it to go down for the record that I’m mad about this and I find it very stupid to put any All-Star anything on a premium cable channel. It should be on FOX or ABC, some channel that I could see for free with just rabbit ears on my TV.

For this past weekend’s race at Darlington I was in La La Land (aka Los Angeles). I was at my sister’s house celebrating Mother’s Day.

The great thing about the race being delayed until Sunday was that I was able to watch the race with my nephews. I had never done that before and it was fun explaining to them who I liked (Dale Earnhardt Jr., Casey Mears, Clint Bowyer) and who I didn’t (Kyle Busch, Tony Stewart).

When they asked why I didn’t like Kyle Busch, I said it was because he whined a lot, a problem that my nephews — ages 10 and 8 — could relate to. It suddenly occurred to me that this was a great opportunity to show them how important it was to control their anger, to not whine but to instead articulate their frustrations in a more productive way. Hopefully by seeing my distaste for Busch and Stewart they’d understand that it’s not cool to whine about every little thing that goes wrong for them. Sometimes you just have to take it and move on.