NO SUN IN SOCAL

FONTANA, Calif. — A lovely ride early this morning took me from Las Vegas to Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif., where it’s been gray all day with rain likely Friday night and Saturday morning.

Good to get back to a race and prepare for next weekend’s Las Vegas NASCAR Weekend.

All the Cup drivers consider Fontana as the start to the “real” season after Sunday’s unique Daytona 500, which is one of four races held on tracks longer than 2.5 miles that require power choking restrictor plates.

The wet forecast had most drivers using Friday afternoon practice to get ready for Sunday’s scheduled race instead of keying on qualifying efforts.

Daytona winner Jamie McMurray won the pole for Sunday’s Cup race.

Next to McMurray on the front row Sunday will be Evernham Ganassi Racing teammate Juan Pablo Montoya. Clint Bowyer of Childress Racing is third. Each one uses a Childress-built engine.

Hummm. Looks like Childress has found something. Now the question is whether NASCAR will like what they’ve found ... if NASCAR can find it.

DANICA’S TIMING

Danica Patrick makes her second NASCAR start today in the Nationwide race. She’s locked in based on team owner’s points from last season.

She was 37th fastest out of 44 cars in Friday’s first practice and moved up to 27th in the second session.

The driver for JR Motorsports was scheduled to meet with media at 3:15 p.m. after Carl Edwards held court. Patrick had not shown up by 3:35 p.m. so I headed to pit road to watch Sprint Cup qualifying.

I counted eight TV cameras and about 40 reporters waiting for Patrick.

The gathering was smaller than the ones held for her a week ago in Daytona, and I’m guessing they’ll be even smaller on Friday when she has a press conference at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Other drivers have been very gracious about her taking the spotlight but are tiring of being asked similar questions at every press conference.

“... It’s just that you guys (reporters) keep pestering us about her gets to be too much,” said Tony Stewart when responding to a question about Patrick.

“After a while you wonder how much you can talk about the same topic and we haven’t even gotten her to her first regular race and we’re still talking about the same stuff.

“Our opinion about her hasn’t changed, I still think she has an extremely high amount of talent. I think that if the media will give her enough room to learn and not bug the daylights out of her where she can’t breath, I think she’ll be fine. That opinion from last week to this week, it really hasn’t changed.”

And it won’t change next week.

I spent some private time with Tony and you’ll read about it next week in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

I also visited with Kurt Busch and will spend Saturday trying to follow Kyle Busch around as he qualifies and races in the Nationwide race and practices for the Cup race.