ALL(MENDINGER) OF THE STORY

DAYTONA BEACH – During the recent Dec. 19 Rolex Series test at Daytona International Speedway, A.J. Allmendinger was full of energy, vim, vigor and all that stuff while testing Michael Shank Racing's new Ford-powered, third-generation Riley Technologies' Daytona Prototype -- which a member of a certain "Trustworthy" team claimed The 'Dinger as having sandbagged; regularly pulling up just short of clocking low 1:40's.

Allmendinger's fire, smile and upbeat attitude took a Stuka-like nose dive, though, when mentioned was "RPM" (Richard Petty Motorsports) or, even, "stock cars."

In need of some material for folks who handsomely pay for such (that is, the guy who cuts the checks being the "handsome" one, 'cause the stringer pay darn sure ain't), so as to speak with Mr. Allmendinger your intrepid reporter risked life and limb in running a rear-to-front transporter gauntlet of hostile MSR team members.

Likely seeing themselves akin to the Wizard of Oz's winged monkeys, they chanted "Oh-re-o, Oh-reo. Oh-re-o, Oh-reo."

So I tossed a package into their midst and that was the end of that gauntlet.

Climbing stair leading to the "2nd floor," forging ahead into the midst of an "up-front" groupthink by "The Talent," (that is: owner/s, engineer/s, drivers and, sometimes, Barry Waddell), Mr. Allmendinger was in the midst of chow when asked if he might provide a few, um, "testy" thoughts.

"Sure, but don't ask me anything about my other racing activities," Allmendinger responded with narrowed gaze.

The confused reporter (a regular condition of which ColdPit regulars are aware) wondered aloud as to why such circumstances should, even could exist, "After all, you can hardly not mention your other driving job in NASCAR, even if only cursory."

"Not even a word," was Allmendinger's terse reply, followed with, "Don't bring up the subject, at all, please. If you want to talk about (Mike) Shank (Racing) and sports cars, that's cool, but don't go anywhere near my other racing job. If you do, I will be forced to say things no one will believe I am capable of saying, even if captured by video."

Given the reporter's primary want of sportscar stuff, the driver's wish to steer clear of that "other" anti-subject was duly noted.

“But still . . .”

Unleashed then was a short verbal volley that would've impressed any U.S. Marine, after which six assorted others in immediate proximity said something along the lines of, "Somebody might've said what we just heard but clearly it wasn't A.J."

The reporter, properly silenced (stunned?) but nevertheless remaining curious as to that which had occurred to Allmendinger's previously believed "secure" 2012 sponsorship deal -- 26 of the 36 official races on the 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup's official schedule. As everyone knows, "Two out of three ain't bad" (thank you, Meat Loaf).

Having paid little attention beyond the point of Kurt Busch and Penske Racing each having respectively acknowledged a need of marching to different drums (thanks to Linda Ronstadt and/or H.D. Thoreau), some of "the rest of the story" subsequently became apparent to your humble scribe at the Fountainhead of Informational Flow, the DIS Media Center.

Simply put: Despite Allmendinger having scored his best Sprint Cup points finish as yet and with 2012 agreements already in place, when a certain Mr. Kurt Busch became a free agent a certain Richard Petty Motorsports executive displayed something other than magnanimity with regard to Mr. Allmendinger's continued association with RPM.

Speaking unreservedly to the favor of acquiring Mr. Busch's talents -- even if to the detriment of Mr. Allmendinger -- at least one RPM executive offered his soul, um, er, real estate in exchange for Mr. Busch's services.

“I would mortgage my house to make Kurt (Busch) a part of this team,” RPM Chief Operating Officer Robbie Loomis said in a Dec. 13 interview on SiriusXM's NASCAR-themed satellite radio show, Sirius Speedway.

"We value what he (Busch) has done on the race track. He has won a (Sprint Cup) championship and worked for a first-class operation like Penske Racing. Guys like that don’t come along every day.”

“(Sponsor) Best Buy has been a great partner for a long time, and A.J. Allmendinger has done a fantastic job for us. He’s coming off his best season yet, but I can tell you there is a lot of interest on our part in having Kurt Busch in the fold," Loomis said.

That RPM is struggling to stay viable is the gist of more than a few Charlotte, N.C., conversations. That someone within RPM would put at risk one of a family's most sacrosanct financial assets shows a high regard for RPM and Mr. Busch.

Yet, to all but callously discard someone else in the process, especially a darn decent (in more ways than one) "someone else," just provides for bad air.

If someone can be simultaneously noble and ignoble, Loomis sure made a good run at it.

If incorrect, nonetheless peripherally tied to the matter ("collateral damage," if one might), is (wait for it) "leading multi-channel global retailer and developer of technology products and services" company Best Buy (really, the preceding quotation is Best Buy's self-description).

Seeing some entwine Best Buy in Allmendinger's abandonment, thus sought by this reporter was an Allmendinger comment as to Best Buy's culpability.

"No, no, no!" Allmendinger said whilst in the midst of exchanging his driver's suit for street clothes.

"I've got absolutely no issues with Best Buy. They're good people and have been a terrific sponsor. They've got nothing to do with this. It's just one particular guy," Allmendinger at that moment stopping well short of naming that "guy," also effectively ending the discussion in silence but with downcast eyes and a shaking head saying volumes about disappointment and disbelief.

Allmendinger -- on the record or off -- could've at that time trashed someone, anyone, but did not. He took a higher road when more than a few folks would've chosen, perhaps did choose differently.

It's little wonder why Mike Shank (actually, everyone on the MSR team) thinks so highly of Allmendinger.

Even though Allmendinger over the course of his five NASCAR Sprint Cup seasons has in each improved his points standing over the previous (starting at 43rd his first season and in 2011 scoring a career-best 15th), his move to Penske of course doesn't guarantee a 2012 Chase spot.

Looking at its racing-entity empire as a whole, Penske Racing has compiled nearly 350 major race wins (about 70 of 'em in NASCAR), over 400 pole positions, 15 Indianapolis 500 victories, a Daytona 500 win and nearly 25 national championships (among them, Brad Keselowski's 2010 Nationwide Series title).

Yet, the organization has yet to get any closer to the topmost of the Sprint Cup ladder rungs than Rusty Wallace's second-place finish to Dale Earnhardt in the 1993 Sprint (nee Winston) Cup championship. (Note: Wallace drove for team-owner Raymond Beadle when the driver captured his 1989 Cup Championship crown).

Given Mr. Penske's success elsewhere (Chip Ganassi presently is 12 wins shy of Penske's Indy 500 win total, though the former enjoys a 5-to1 advantage over the latter in the Rolex 24), many are left wondering why a class-act Penske Racing organization has over the course of its 40 NASCAR seasons failed to claim center-stage at the stock car sanctioning body's annual awards ceremony.

Given Penske's seeming affinity for open-wheel types , maybe, just maybe, The 'Dinger can help turn that particular championship corner.

Being among the best liked in the Sprint Cup family, a 2012 Allmendinger surge into a year-end Chase ranking will be widely celebrated in the garage, mainly because Allmendinger, despite a head-spinning period no one saw coming, continued to display a personal class-act style that's a perfect match for the Penske organization.

Later,

DC

SPEED, WHAT SPEED?

DAYTONA BEACH – Gawd, what an absurdity.

You get up in the mornin', you hear the ding-dong ring (with thanks to Johnny Rivers), get the coffee a-brewing, rub eyes with balled fists (or extended fingers; depends), whiz, yawn a couple of times while stumbling along the drive in search of a newspaper, reverse course and stumble anew whilst returning to a structure wherein existing are "Honey-Do" demands for acts to be performed whereupon.

Inside again, (where presently in Detroit it is colder inside most houses than outside everywhere in Daytona Beach), finally in hand is a warm coffee cup possessed of wispy steam arising and its bearer headed for a favored morning-time butt holder (whether "chair," "couch" or "throne" being a matter of timing and a highly personal decision, but it being beneath one's butt being universally true . . . unless absent is that particular anatomical feature and, no doubt, an offended someone now reaching for his phone so as to protest this writer's "insensitivity" of those without. But, that's another ramble, altogether saved for the future, whilst still rolling with this one).

Contained still by the slumber from which you had just been loosed are the yelling kiddies, spouses, bosses and those who think themselves Bosses of The World (that is, every other driver on the morning commute) who will yet get their "moments."

It's a beautiful thing, those early day moments of quiet near-perfection.

Yet, deep inside you know it somehow is falling short.

At first struggling to understand the void felt and give it voice, a "EUREKA!" moment then arises.

Quickly grasping one of the most important tools of the modern-age male (archaeological digs millions-of-years in the future will confirm such), a remote control in an instant has set alight a nearby television and SPEEDtv subsequently tuned for the latest word concerning the world of motorsports – a “morning news” having been deemed an important part of nearly every real-time cable channel’s line-up (as distinguished from tape-delayed, scripted "reality" shows, the advertised description of which surely makes proud the likes of Aldous Huxley, George Orwell and Joseph Heller – were they still kicking, that is).

After all, among Tuesday’s hot-topic motorsports banter were the IndyCar Series' Dallara weight-distribution hassles – according to some the chassis apparently having been devised by Rube Goldberg's progeny at the behest of an ICS committee which forgot the car would occasionally race on surfaces other than just road courses.

The open-wheel car's integrated chassis weight having been shifted rearward by committee fiat and the Goldberg-types happily complying, the Dallara reportedly is a road-course dream not-as-wonderful on ovals, upon which IndyCar Series cars either charge ahead famously fast or, elsewise, when "baby got back," seriously rub along walls.

Then, there are the legions of sportscar fans eagerly awaiting news on what will likely prove to be the most competitive GT-class season since last century and while under the sanction of IMSA version 1.x.

Why, on Tuesday alone, at Daytona International Speedway were nine different marques -- Porsche, Ferrari, Viper, Ford, Audi, BMW, Chevrolet, Mazda and Buckler -- begging to differ with those who decried this week's DIS test as "inconsequential."

The January 28-29 GT race within the race? Well, it'll probably be nothing short of spectacular and just as likely to set off a firestorm of mid-Rolex 24 complaints from the faster Daytona Prototype types who expect the GT guys simply to move over whenever in proximity -- plus-or-minus a one-mile radius -- and discounting a proffered GT-position-fight argument as being not at all germane to a DP’s sole right of way.

In fact, such reminds one of some highway drivers all too often seen in a rearview mirror contained within the painted boundaries of a multi-lane highway's farthest-right lane, the following driver absolutely foaming at the mouth because the car immediately ahead is motoring along "too slowly" at the lawful speed limit.

Then, also at the test was the Brazilian driving talent, Filipe Nasr (in No. 58, at left), who came to DIS Tuesday after undertaking a detour journey through Yurrup and winning the Sunoco Challenge along the way. The guy is intelligent, more handsome than Ozz Negri, well mannered and speaks English without apparent trouble. In short: A perfect interview subject. Was “darn fast” omitted? We’re talking lickety split, actually.

Last but not least: Arriving Tuesday at Daytona International Speedway for the first time anywhere in decades was the first official Corvette prototype design to be officially produced by an official Corvette race car producer in the form of four darn-good-looking copies (SDR No. 90; SunTrust No. 10; Action Express Racing's Nos. 5 and 9, the latter pictured way up above and, shown at right, two of its drivers: João Barbosa, left, and Terry Borcheller, middle. The guy barely discernable pictured to Borcheller’s left was widely rumored as Bill Riley, but such remained unconfirmed. Besides, Shank’s new Gen3 Ford DP is supposedly being built this week at the Riley shops).

So, returning to this morning’s real world, what did SPEEDtv offer avid race fans? The chance of acquiring one's very own Personal-Time Gut Trainer, for "three easy installments" of $19.95, plus handling (at another $1,295.99 each, by the way. Yessiree, quite a sales-tax savings there).

Well, at least the morning started with great promise.

Later,

DC