by Darrell Waltrip

Updated: September 26, 2007, 2:00 PM EST 18 comments

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I'm just kidding. But I watched a little bit of Saturday's race and a little bit of Sunday's race, and I thought I was watching races from Bristol both days.

I've never seen Dover create the kind of carnage that it did last weekend. I haven't made up my mind about whether it was bad karma (Car-ma, get it?) or bad driving. Kyle Petty ran over and got in Denny Hamlin's face. People went to the Big White Truck. Tony Stewart ran over Paul Menard because of an incident in the pits. It had all the earmarks of one of those wild Bristol races...

...but it wasn't. It was Dover

It looked like some of those wild Friday and Saturday nights at Thunder Valley to which we've all sort of become accustomed — the beating and banging, the pushing and shoving and wrecking. It started early and it never stopped all day long. If you got through the race without getting your car torn up, it was pretty much a miraculous weekend for you.

A lot of guys had pretty good finishes because they were able to stay out of trouble, and some caught the "Lucky Dog". The No. 31 car should have been about three laps down, yet he ended up in the top 10. Stewart and Jeff Gordon didn't have great cars, and they're drivers that you would expect to run well at Dover. They just didn't have their act together.

Chaos of Tomorrow?

I'm not sure what created all the havoc, but it could have been the new car. So many guys are so unhappy with the Car of Tomorrow — especially the way it drives and handles. Concrete, particularly Dover, just amplifies some of the issues with the car. You have to run a different spring and shock package to keep the thing up off the track. Concrete tracks are bumpy, and those stiffer springs and heavier shocks create more tire buildup. It makes cars harder to drive, which probably had a lot to do with it.

I would recommend to NASCAR that they listen to these drivers and teams about the problems they're having with the COT before next season when we're going to run it every race. Maybe they need to reconsider some of the rules that they've implemented. There needs to be some serious setup adjustments. By the time we get to '08, hopefully the teams and NASCAR will have gotten together and come up with compromises to make it a better race car.

Week in and week out, somebody hits the right COT setup, and everybody else looks like they're out to lunch. Matt Kenseth, Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle had everybody's number at Dover as those Roush cars were incredible. Edwards was good at Bristol, too. I was a little hard on Jack Roush earlier in the year when he was complaining about the Car of Tomorrow, the tire-leasing program and what an unfair advantage that Hendrick Motorsports had on everybody. But jack stopped working his mouth and started working his hands. They've turned around that program. If I were the other competitors right now — Gibbs, Hendrick and Childress — I would be a little bit worried about these Roush Cars of Tomorrow in the next few races. Good job, Jack. I give you a pat on the back, old dude.

Down in a hole

It was unfortunate about Carl's car being a little low on the right rear. I haven't heard a specific number, but being low on the right rear is not a good thing. It's not something that you would do intentionally. Particularly on a harsh track like Dover, these cars have a tendency to shift around. The body is so strong that it can actually bends the subframes and parts of the chassis. Maybe that's something NASCAR needs to consider and adjust as well. We've seen a couple of issues with cars that were low in places where there's no advantage to being low. Fortunately for Carl, he's only 28 points out of the lead after the 25-point penalty from NASCAR. That's not so insurmountable.

Five of the 12 drivers have pretty much been eliminated so you're down to seven after only two races. It's really tight at the top, and that's good. It creates some interest, but it also separates them from the guys at the bottom. I'm not sure if there's going to be enough bad luck for the guys at the top right now for the guys at the back to catch up. It's playing out like every championship run. If you start with 12, you've got seven after a while. Then, you've got five. Before it's over, you just have two. I don't care what point system you use, that's the way it's been for 50 years.

Going to Kansas City

This weekend, somebody is going to be a Kansas City star, that's what you are. The way Dale Jr. ran at Dover, you've got to look at him as well as the three Roush cars that ran so well at Dover — Cousin Carl, Kenseth and Biffle. It looks like they really have something going there, and they all run well at Kansas.

This weekend will also be a chance for the Childress teams to get a hold of their bootstraps and pull themselves back up into the picture a little bit. Clint Bowyer would love to be able to get another Chase win at his home track, but Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton have dug themselves a hole. I'm not sure they can get out of it, but Kansas is a track that Harvick really likes. Maybe he can get his act together and get himself back in the championship hunt.

It'll be fun to watch with a lot of good cars and lot of people trying hard. A lot of opportunities are still out there, but those five drivers in the back can't stand another bad race. When you've got the consistency that the top seven teams are known for, you can't fall any further behind. You're going to have to start making it up somewhere, and it's hard to make it up on all of those guys.

Remembering G.C.

I want to send out my condolences to G.C. Spencer's family. G.C. was my very first childhood race car hero. He started racing in Owensboro, Ky., where I grew up, and when I went to the racetrack as a 6-year-old, the car that I loved and followed lap after lap, week after week was the "Flying Saucer". It was a flathead GMC six-cylinder that G.C. drove. He was my man, and he won a lot of races.

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It was a real thrill for me to get to know him as I got older and started racing in Cup at the end of his career. He drove an old No. 49 Dodge of his own. I'll never forget when they had just repaved the track at Darlington, and everybody wondering whether you could run Turn 3 wide open. Everybody said it couldn't be done. Nobody could run Turn 3 wide open. But all you had to do was dare old Grover. So he went out to qualify, packed her off into Turn 3 and spun out that bad boy. It went every which way, but he didn't hit the fence. He came in with that G.C. Spencer smile on his face and said, "Boys, you can't run that corner wide open. I just proved it." That was just the kind of guy he was. He had a really dry wit about him. If he would have moved south when he was younger, there's no telling how many races he would have won. He's just another one of the boys from Owensboro who paved the way for a lot of us, and he'll be dearly missed. He was a great guy, a great driver and a good friend. Another one of my racing buddies has gone off to be with some of the others we've lost in the last few years. He will be missed.

Oh, by the way

I just about fell out of my seat when Kyle Petty got up in Denny Hamlin's face. You want to know why? Because I had a flashback.

Kyle's daddy has the longest index finger of anybody I've ever known. Richard Petty's index finger looks like it belongs to E.T., not R.P. He used to come over to me after a race, poke me in the chest and tell me what a big dummy I was to make such stupid moves on the racetrack. I'd just stand there and sort of take it. I guess last Sunday proved that the apple didn't roll too far from the tree because it looked like Kyle may have been explaining to Denny some of the same things that Richard explained to me.

I guess Kyle did figure out one thing, though. It's a lot better to slap a guy's helmet a little bit than it is to bust your fist up against the cabinets in your hauler. It might break your pocketbook, but at least it doesn't break your hand.