MOTORSPORTS: Childress said he deserved fine

Due to space limitations, last week's update on Gardnerville Outlaw Kart racer Tanner Thorson's season didn't make the paper.

Thorson, who recently turned 15, made his 360 wingless sprint car debut Memorial Day weekend at Silver Dollar Speedway in Chico. Driving the Browns Valley RV car for Meyers Brothers Racing, Tanner finished third in his heat race and eighth in the main after running as high as fifth.

•••

Much has been written and talked about over the past week about the NASCAR garage area confrontation between Kyle Busch and Richard Childress following the Camping World Truck race at Kansas.

Although no video of the event has surfaced, reports indicate that Childress carried through on an earlier warning to Busch that he would not tolerate any more wrecking of his team's race cars. Busch maintains that he never heard the warning and didn't intend to damage the RCR truck with a post-race bump. Childress was fined $150,000 and put on probation for the rest of the year. Childress is one of the last of the old-school racers who still gets his hands dirty and isn't afraid to mix it up when provoked. Among some fans, teams, and drivers, he is being hailed as a hero. Childress said he will pay the fine out of his own pocket, and money that fans have sent him to help with the fine will go to the Childress Institute for Pediatric Trauma in Winston-Salem, N.C. It will be interesting to see if Shrub gets some on-track attention from a Childress driver at Pocono this weekend.

•••

Pocono will be the site of the TV handoff tomorrow, when TNT takes over from FOX for the next six Sprint Cup races before turning over broadcast duties to ESPN/ABC. Hopefully, Pocono has made some safety improvements since last season, when Elliot Sadler had one of the most violent wrecks I have ever seen, ripping the engine from the car. And one NASCAR team owner who won't be in Pennsylvania this weekend is Michael Waltrip, who will be racing a Ferrari in the 24 Hours of LeMans in France.

•••

Activity this weekend rivals Memorial Day weekend, with Sprint Cup at Pocono, the LeMans endurance race, and IndyCars at Texas. The IndyCar series has a unique format tonight with two races of 114 laps each with an hour break in between. It's the first time since the early 1970's that the series has used the format. Thirty cars are entered, and backup cars will be allowed in the second race. I'm pretty sure some of the teams will need them. Alex Tagliani took his second straight oval pole in Friday's qualifying. Two drivers are back in Indy cars after running very different machinery last week. Danica Patrick raced her NASCAR Nationwide Chevy to a 10th place finish last weekend, and Tony Kanaan drove in Tony Stewart's Prelude to the Dream event at Eldora on Wednesday night. Kanaan will start tonight's first race in sixth, with Patrick rolling off in 10th.

Formula One is also on the racing agenda this weekend in Canada, with FOX taking over the broadcast from SPEED. McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton will be racing, although there was some talk of a six-race suspension after his post-race rant at Monaco. However, he wrote a letter of apology to the FIA and apologized in person to Felipe Massa and Pastor Maldonado, whose cars he hit during the race. Not on hand will be rookie Sergio Perez, who has not completely recovered from a concussion suffered in a crash at Monaco two weeks ago. Pedro de la Rosa will take his place on the Sauber team this weekend. As usual, everyone will be chasing points leader Sebastian Vettel's dominant Red Bull car, with the McLaren and Ferrari teams having the only realistic chance of beating him. Having said that, this is the most exciting F1 season I can remember in a long time, with more passing and absolutely amazing wheel-to-wheel racing.