An insider dissects Richmond, Stewart's possible move and more

Robby Gordon 's going to be out of control at Richmond . It's really difficult to race around him. He's a great person off the race track, but he clearly loses his head when he gets in the race car. He's just a pain in the ass. You'll catch him for a half a lap, and he'll race the heck out of you. He's actually a very talented at handling a race car; he has great car control. But he just doesn't race with his head very often. I would put him up to go run one fast lap, but to finish 500, I wouldn't put him up against anybody. In fact, I would put anybody up against him.

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The Big One has nothing to do with Talladega . Drivers wreck at every race track; I've seen pileups at short tracks that took out 15 cars. But as far as the Kevin Lepage incident [from the Nationwide race last Saturday], he made a huge mistake. He wasn't paying attention, and he really messed up and almost got somebody hurt.

I'm not trying to bash the guy too hard, because we've all made mistakes, but that was a pretty big one. And instead of apologizing, he got on TV afterwards and got cocky about it, like he was trying to blame everybody else. Well, I got news for you, dude; that was 100% your fault! First of all, the rule does not state that you're supposed to pull up on the race track where he did. Ever since they repaved that race track to blend out of turn two, you need to keep all four tires below the yellow line. And at some point in time, common sense has got to be a factor. If you're doing 100 and they're doing 200, you know they're not going to get out of the way if you blend in.

Like I said, everybody makes mistakes, but what really got me upset was what Lepage said after the race. He got all defensive and got angry at everybody else. He was being a smart aleck and saying everyone else should be paying attention, and what he should have been doing was saying, 'Holy smokes, I just made a huge mistake. I'm so sorry, and I'm just glad nobody's hurt.' People would probably be a little easier on him then. But he got out of the car and said, "I didn't do anything wrong. I don't know what people are talking about." That didn't need to happen. People will get over it; but I do think it's going to take longer and it's going to be harder for Lepage because of the way he handled it.

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I think Kentucky Speedway deserves a date [the track filed an appeal to its lawsuit with ISC this week, in which they demand a place on the Cup schedule]. I think Kentucky deserves one, Nashville , Iowa . You know, the shame of the current schedule is there are a lot of good tracks we don't go to. That's what gets me upset; we have other great tracks in other great cities and markets, but we keep going back to the same ones every year. There's not a track on the circuit I would say get rid of completely, but there's a lot of them we don't need to go to twice.

There are going to be markets that we need to be in twice; even though we don't sell out L.A. , I think we should be there twice. It's good for the sport to be in a market that big. It would be great for us to be in New York twice. Charlotte 's kind of a hometown. Daytona, obviously you should go there twice. Indianapolis , once is fine. But there are a lot of tracks -- Pocono, Loudon -- you can get a long list of tracks where there's no reason for us to be there twice. I'd much rather see us go to Kentucky , Nashville and Iowa , and build a track in Seattle and maybe run a race overseas or two or three -- really mix it up a little bit.

I like Rockingham, too [which was removed from the Cup schedule in 2004; minor league stock car racing resumes there this weekend]. But if people want it, they need to build Rockingham somewhere else. No state needs two race tracks. I don't think it's fair to the fans in Seattle that don't even have a track, and we're going to three or four races right next to each other in North Carolina .

At the end of the day -- and I've said this to fans all the time -- fans got upset about us taking Rockingham off the schedule, they got upset about NASCAR taking the race away in Darlington . But NASCAR listens to fans a lot more than they think; they just don't listen to them the same way they think. NASCAR doesn't pay any attention to five columns in a magazine or a newspaper; but what they do listen to is empty seats. If people liked those race tracks so much, they should have put their money where their mouth is. They should have bought tickets, and went to all the races; instead, you went to those race tracks -- with only 50,000 or 60,000 seats -- and fans were only filling half of them. That's not good enough.