Race fans allowed full tank

Say what you will about NASCAR, but Australian auto racing fans seem to have as much fun, if not more.

Take, for instance, next month's Bathurst 1000, an annual weeklong event at Mount Panorama in New South Wales that draws upward of 30,000 fans who camp out around the race circuit each year.

Police are clamping down, however, on the amount of alcohol those fans can take into the area and have set up checkpoints to make sure everyone complies.

The limits?

Each fan can take in 24 cans of full-strength beer or 36 cans of light beer per day, or 24 cans of mixed drinks or one cask of wine per day, with no combinations allowed.

"Anyone who needs to drink more than 24 cans of beer in a day to have a good time is not welcome," said a police official.

• BAD OMEN -- New England quarterback Tom Brady's injury Sunday puts in jeopardy his streak of 128 consecutive starts, third longest in NFL history, and brings to mind another troubling statistic for Patriots fans.

Of the last 10 Super Bowl runners-up, only three made the playoffs the next season, and the other seven had a combined record of 43-69.

• AT A LOSS -- Janice Hough of LeftCoastSportsBabe.com says fans in Oakland, Calif., were more than ready for the NFL season to start:

"After enduring the woeful second half of the A's, it will be a refreshing change to root for a team that only loses once a week."

• WAKE-UP CALL -- Amir Kahn, the unbeaten great lightweight hope of British boxing, had this to say just three weeks ago about fighting Colombia's Breidis Prescott:

"Prescott looks dangerous, but he's just the kind of opponent I need at this stage of my career. He may have been knocking them out left, right and center, but I'm going to make him wake up and smell the coffee. I've been working on my defensive skills."

Not enough, apparently. On Saturday, Prescott KO'd him in 54 seconds.

• TENNIS POINTERS -- Among the top 10 ways to spice up the U.S. Open tennis tournament, courtesy of CBS's David Letterman:

--"Extra point awarded for nailing opponent in the Adam's apple.

--"Ten ball boys, nine uniforms.

--"Two words: 'lectrified net."

• PRISON BREAK -- According to The Miami Herald's Greg Cote, "Marion Jones, released from federal prison, made it from her cell to a waiting car in 9.94 seconds."

• BEACH BABES -- Cam Hutchinson of the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, on the lesson to be learned from Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh having their 112-match winning streak snapped in beach volleyball: "May-Treanor and Walsh tie their bikinis one string at a time."

• SEA OF RICHES -- Gregg Drinnan of the Kamloops (B.C.) Daily News, on Olympic swimming star Michael Phelps getting a $1.6 million book advance: "Just what Phelps needs -- more gold."

• REALITY CHECK -- Headline at SportsPickle.com: "Hurricane too weak to put sports in perspective."

REVIEW-JOURNAL WIRE SERVICES