Gossage Offers $15,000 For Thrown Helmet

LAS VEGAS — After failing to make the first three races of the season, A.J. Allmendinger may be temporarily removed from his Toyota as Red Bull Racing tries to simply get the car into some races.
While Allmendinger, a former Champ Car star, has struggled in his two seasons of Cup racing, teammate Brian Vickers has made all three races this season and is currently 13th in the standings.
“We can’t keep missing races,” said Red Bull Racing general manager Jay Frye. “We’re looking at several different ideas, all aimed at figuring out what’s wrong with that program, how we can fix it and how we can get that car into races. But it can’t continue the way it is. It just can’t.”
One option includes replacing Allmendinger with a veteran driver that can help the team get into races and shake down the car in the races.
But Frye emphasized the team isn’t giving up on Allmendinger.
“We love A.J. and we’re 100 percent committed to him and want to develop him,” Frye said. “This is not at all giving up on A.J. But we just can’t do nothing and risk having a season like that team had last year.”
The 25-year-old Allmendinger qualified for 17 of 36 races last season and his best finish was a 15th at Charlotte in October. The team is attempting to find him rides in the Nationwide Series with Joe Gibbs Racing or Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates so he can get more stock-car experience.
“He needs seat time, there’s no question about that,” Frye said. “But it takes time to put it altogether and we’re working on it. We want A.J. in as many races as we can get him into, and we want him to gain as much experience as he can.”

• Texas Motor Speedway President Eddie Gossage wants to see NASCAR drivers be more expressive. So he has come up with a financial incentive to the Cup drivers to lash out at another competitor.
“I’m offering $15,000 for any helmet thrown by a Cup series driver during a race between now and the April 6 Samsung 500,” Gossage said of the spring Texas race. “I have a huge helmet collection from drivers through the years and it would be great to add to the collection. And as NASCAR allows the drivers to open up and show their personalities — even their frustrations — I imagine the likelihood of true emotions are more likely to bubble to the top. I’ve seen some helmets thrown during a race and never have they injured anyone or damaged another driver’s car. We’ll see what happens.”
Gossage said the $15,000 is available to the driver or will be paid to the charity of the driver’s choice.

• Patrick Carpentier of Quebec made it into the starting lineup for the first time this season when he was 12th quick in Friday’s qualifications, but third quick of the drivers that had to make the race based on qualifying speed.
Carpentier missed the Daytona 500 starting lineup when he crashed in his qualifying race. When qualifications were rained out at California last weekend, the starting lineup was based on last year’s points and with Carpentier out of the top 35, he never had a chance to race his way into the lineup.
“This is great, fantastic,” Carpentier said. “I had to buy so many tickets now at least it’s worth it.  I’ll be able to shake hands on Sunday with people I bought tickets for so it’s pretty good.  We’re really happy.” 

• Jimmie Johnson attempted to win his fourth-straight Vegas race, but he was never in the game on Sunday as he finished way back in 29th place.
“We don’t really know right now, what was wrong with the car,” said Johnson’s crew chief Chad Knaus. “We just didn’t quite have the speed in it that we needed.”

• Greg Biffle continued his impressive start to the season with a third-place finish for Roush Fenway Racing. That has him sixth in the standings after three races.
But he thinks he could have been in victory lane if he had played his strategy better.
“I’ll argue that I had the fastest race car today on the race track and the driver just screwed it up,” Biffle said. “I got caught speeding on pit road. I had just run the leaders down and had just caught Carl Edwards from a long ways back. I had come up and caught Carl and just slid onto pit road. That apron was dustier than I thought it was and I couldn’t get stopped and got caught for speeding there, and went back to 15th and drove all the way to the front under green.
“I was able to get all the way back to, I think I was passing for fourth or third and got loose off of turn two and probably should have wrecked and don’t really understand why I didn’t yet, and lost all my track position again. Then we had a botched up pit stop.”

• Kyle Busch crashed twice and brushed the wall with another car on Saturday. One of Busch’s crashes came during his qualifying run for the Nationwide Series on Saturday morning. He was able to qualify third fastest on his first lap.
“I was just trying to get a little bit more out of it that second lap,” Busch said. “I never breathed it though turn three. I didn’t quite go through the center the way I expected. It got a little out of shape on the exit. So instead of just quitting and giving up I was trying to drive through it like an idiot.
“I ended up tearing up a really good race car. But we’ve got another one. We brought two of them out here and tested both of them and they are both really, really strong.”

• Hendrick Motorsports has a list of names on the wall at its museum of all the legendary names that have not only raced for the team but have won for the team owned by Rick Hendrick.
After Mark Martin won Saturday’s Nationwide Series race, Hendrick can now add another name to the wall.
“I wanted to be involved in a race where Mark got a trophy for us,” Hendrick said. “He’s an unbelievable talent. He’s won more races in the Nationwide Series than anybody.”