Upcoming Nationwide Texas Race

NBaP see's that Texas Motor Speedway hosts the NASCAR Nationwide Series for the first of two events at the 1.5-mile track located in Ft. Worth.

ESPN2 will carry the O'Reilly 300 live on April 4 beginning at 2:30 p.m. ET with the NASCAR Countdown pre-race show. Race coverage begins at 3 p.m. ET.

Kyle Busch swept both races at Texas last year but he'll have to fend off the challenge of Kevin Harvick, who will not only have come off his first win of the season in the previous race at Bristol, but is the all-time winner in series races at Texas (four).

In fact, prior to his Bristol win last week, Harvick's last series victory was at Texas in the fall race in 2007.

Texas Fast Facts

Next Race: O'Reilly 300
The Place: Texas Motor Speedway
The Date: Saturday, April 4
The Time: 3 p.m. ET
The Distance: 200 laps / 300 miles
TV: ESPN2, 3 p.m. ET
Radio: Sirius NASCAR Radio / PRN
2008 Race Winner: Kyle Busch
2008 Polesitter: Kevin Harvick (via final 2008 owner points; qualifying was rained out)

Event Schedule (all times CT):
Thursday
Practice 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.;
Final Practice 1-2:00 p.m.;
Qualifying 6:05 p.m.

A Fan Hit by A Bullet at Texas

Before the Dickies 500 at Texas Motorspeedway, a fan in an RV was hit by a bullet in the parking lot as it came down through the roof of her RV.

She's OK and was amongst 40,000 patrons camping at the track for the weekend.

Law enforcement agencies weren't sure exactly where the bullet came from, but estimated it came from about 2 miles away.

The injured womans husband is offering a $3,000 reward for information about the incident because he believes the bullet was shot at the track intentionally.

Me, I'm thinking it's pretty good aim if one can lob a bullet straight up and have it come down where you want it to. It's an unfortunate demonstration of stupid behavior when someone is shooting up into the air and not aiming at a target.

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The Dickies 500 Results

The big news of the day was the handing issues Jimmie Johnson had today. The Lowes team struggled with the ill-handling No. 48 Chevy all day. He dropped all the back to 29th at one point, but rallied back to a 15th place finish, showing that despite things looking grim, they kept working at it. There were still able to bounce back from a bad deal from the deck of cards.

Carl Edwards pulled out a win with what looked like a gutsy call by crew chief Bob Osborne on fuel mileage.

There were some interesting complaints about the ESPN on ABC coverage over on the Daly Planet. It's an good perspective on the coverage. It's nice to see someone else matching some of my takes on the coverage, or quality challenged coverage that I seem to see on and off from the network.

The issues of the day were
Oil splayed all over the track from Reed Sorenson's car barfing up it's inner most oily toughts at one point, a few debris calls and Juan Pablo Montoya smacking the wall. Otherwise, it was a day full of racing.

The top 10 finishers were

• Carl Edwards pulled off a fuel starved win,
• Jeff Gordon almost got his first win at Texas by coming in 2nd,
• Jamie McMurray pulled out a good day with 3rd,
• Clint Bowyer kept in the top 5 by finishing 4th,
• Greg Biffle finished 5th,
• Kyle Busch pulled off a 6th place finish today,
• Kevin Harvick didn't break any axles today, like he did in the Nationwide race, finishing 7th,
• Martin Truex pulled off a real race version top-10 with 8th (Rather than a restrictor plate finish),
• Matt Kenseth was 9th,
• and David Reutimann did good for Michael Waltrip Racing with a top 10, 10th place finish.

There were only 12 cars on the lead lap at the end of the day. Other notable finishers were:

• Kurt Busch, David Gilliland and Montoya didn't finish the day out for one reason or another.
• Joey Logano finished 40th, a wee bit off the lead lap.
• Scott Speed finished 33rd.
• Marco Ambros - 21st.
• Brad Keselowski finished ahead of his Nationwide boss in 19th.
• Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished 20th.

See the rest of the finishing order at NASCAR.

What today's race means to the Chase is that:

• Jimmie Johnson leads Carl Edwards by 77 points.
• Johnson needs to finish 7th or better in the next 2 races to win the Championship, regardless of what anyone else does.

-BUT-

• Jimmie and Carl Edwards match up pretty good at the next two tracks, so at this point, all bets are off as far as I'm concerned.

Photo Credit: John Harrelson/Getty Images for NASCAR
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