Worth Canoy/Icon SMI

Sam Hornish Jr., 77, and Dario Franchitti get together late in the running of the Pocono 500. Hornish had no fewer than three accidents Sunday.

NASCAR wanted to create parity with the new car.

It has.

Fourteen races into the 2008 Sprint Cup season, Toyota has five wins, with Chevrolet, Dodge and Ford each winning three. That's a stark contrast from this time last year, when Chevrolet had 13 wins, and it's the most balance the sport has seen since the Chase format began in 2004.

In 2006, Chevrolet had seven wins to four for Dodge and three for Ford. In 2005, Ford had seven wins, Chevrolet six and Dodge one. In 2004, Chevrolet had eight wins, Ford five and Dodge one.

Sunday's race at Pocono was a microcosm of the season. Chevrolet had four cars in the top 10, with Dodge, Toyota and Ford each having two.

But you can't give all the credit to the new car. The decision by Joe Gibbs Racing to move from Chevrolet to Toyota also has played a big role. If you credit JGR's five wins to Chevrolet, it would give the manufacturer eight.

No other Toyota team has a victory, but Team Red Bull did show some progress Sunday with Brian Vickers finishing a season-high second in the Pocono 500 and A.J. Allmendinger a career-best 12th.

Vickers said he could have made a run at winner Kasey Kahne with fresher tires. Allmendinger was in position for a top-10 before a late caution tightened the field.

While parity might exist on the track, it still has a ways to go in the top 12 who will qualify for the championship chase after 26 races. Chevrolet is represented by six drivers, followed by Toyota with three, Ford with two and Dodge with one.

At this time a year ago, the top 12 consisted of 10 Chevrolets and two Fords. The nearest Dodge was Ryan Newman in 13th, and there wasn't a Toyota in the top 20.

In 2006, there were nine Chevrolets, two Fords and one Dodge in the top 12.

One thing hasn't changed with the new car or JGR's move to Toyota. A 500-mile race at Pocono remains too long and strung out.

"In today's world, with all the modern changes that have been made to tracks and progressive banking and just the shape of the track, it's tough to really put on a good race here,'' two-time defending Cup champion Jimmie Johnson said. "It really is. It has long straightaways and tight turns. There is only one corner with banking.

"So from a racing standpoint, we don't feel it puts on the best racing."

Many agree the triangle configuration of the track and length of the race create boring races. Jeff Burton, who closed within 21 points of Kyle Busch in the points race, would like to see the track take 100, maybe 200, miles off the race.

"I do support the fact that I think the quality of racing potentially could be better at 400 miles,'' he said. "What the heck, it would be worth trying it.''

The length of the race also plays havoc with the health of the drivers, particularly in the new car. Vickers and Denny Hamlin complained the car is much hotter than the old car.

"Oh, double and away, they are too hot,'' Vickers said. "It is extremely freaking hot out there. And to answer your question, absolutely, 500 miles is way too long for this race. It always has been.''

Several drivers, including Hamlin and Dale Earnhardt Jr., barely could breathe when the race was over. Some had to go to the infield medical center for fluids.

"The ventilation is not near as good [in the new car], even though we have a bigger window, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me,'' Hamlin said.

OK, so the new car is too hot and the races at Pocono remain boring.

But at least there's parity.

-- David Newton

Nationwide Series: Next goal for Keselowski a bit loftier

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Brad Keselowski is anxious to see whether the axiom that a driver's first win is his hardest holds true, now that he is among the winners in the Nationwide Series.

If it does, maybe he'll find a way to live up to the next challenge thrown his way by team owner Dale Earnhardt Jr. A little less than a year ago, when Earnhardt took a chance and put Keselowski behind the wheel of his No. 88 JR Motorsports Chevrolet, he simply was looking for a driver who wouldn't tear up his equipment.

This year, with JR Motorsports having merged its Nationwide Series operation with Hendrick Motorsports and with Keselowski having more experience, expectations have been higher. And on a muggy Saturday night at Nashville Superspeedway, Keselowski met a major goal by taking the lead in the Federated Auto Parts 300 with six laps to go and holding on for the win.

He's not ready to proclaim the path from here on out will be filled with victories, but he's not about to shy away from the challenge, either.

"You hate to be cocky and say that, but you'd like to think so," Keselowski said. "I feel like we've had a shot at winning a lot of races, but we haven't caught any breaks. There've been some races where we were fast enough and we didn't execute -- we made a mistake -- and there have been races where we haven't been fast enough, but ran a perfect race.

"This was one of those races where we made zero mistakes, had a relatively fast car, maybe not fast enough to beat the No. 20 [of Joey Logano], but mistake free. That's what's it takes to win races -- being mistake free."

One thing Keselowski says he hasn't lacked is confidence, and Earnhardt remarked last month that Keselowski was perhaps getting a bit ahead of himself in some areas, considering his lack of tenure in the sport.

The win might earn the driver more respect from some of his peers, even if some Sprint Cup veterans point out that there were just six Cup regulars in the field. Keselowski can point out that he did beat the likes of defending series champion Carl Edwards and other proven winners such as Clint Bowyer and Kyle Busch.

And while he was confident he could win before the season started, he now knows that having won once, it can be done again.

"I feel like the confidence has been here since the start of the year. The merger with the Hendrick Nationwide team meant a lot to me as a driver," Keselowski said. "It was a big vote of confidence in knowing that we were going to have equipment that could win this year.

"When you feel like you have equipment that you can win with, you forget about the rest, or at least I do, anyway. You forget about who you're competing against and know that on any given day, if you run the car right, you have a shot at winning. That's where the confidence comes from."

He'll need that confidence if he's to take the next step. While Bowyer holds a 166-point lead over second-place David Reutimann, Keselowski remains fifth in points, 192 behind.

More impressively, he's just two points behind Edwards and remains the highest of the Nationwide-only drivers. And that's where Earnhardt enters the equation with his next goal.

"Absolutely, I think it does [legitimize our program]. It makes us a legitimate contender for the championship this year," Earnhardt said. "There are a lot of different things that will change for our program and help our program. I think it really gives us a stronger footing in the series, our ability to be there and compete a few more years."

-- Mark Ashenfelter

Craftsman Truck Series: Hornaday atop points again with first win at Texas

It was a nice diversion in the Craftsman Truck Series season, back-to-back races with rookie winners and three consecutive weeks with first-time victors, a feat unseen since 1998.

But the streak came to an end Friday night in Fort Worth, Texas, with the same guy who last won before it began -- Ron Hornaday, the winningest truck driver of them all.

The Kevin Harvick Inc. defending champion dominated six weeks ago at Kansas and reprised the performance on another 1.5-mile track. His No. 33 Chevrolet led 140 of 172 laps, including the final 57, at Texas, needing only to hold off Kyle Busch in a green-white-checker finish to lock his 35th trucks win.

Hornaday, who will turn 50 on June 20, celebrated with extra vigor late Friday night, as Texas was one of the few notches not in the belt of the three-time series champion. He previously had raced 10 times at the high-banked oval without a win, including last season, when he led the most laps in the summer race but finished fourth.

No such trouble this time in winning and moving back atop the standings. And the way he's doing it begs the question: Will anyone prevent Hornaday from becoming the first repeat trucks champ?

He has led the most laps three times in nine starts and at least one lap in every start, with two wins and three other top-5 finishes. Of three finishes 23rd or worse, two were largely out of his hands, mechanical problems at Daytona and an untimely punt job by Todd Bodine late at Charlotte. Those are the races keeping him within sight of the field, as his lead is 45 points over ThorSport Racing's Matt Crafton, 55 over Bill Davis Racing's Johnny Benson and 65 over Germain Racing's Bodine.

Friday, teammate Jack Sprague was the only competitor who could hang with Hornaday for any period of time, as KHI's other three-time champion led 20 laps and ran side by side with the No. 33 early. Front-row starter Mike Skinner, trying to jump-start his season at a track where he had five consecutive top-threes, never found consistency in the BDR No. 5 Toyota and finished ninth. Teammate Benson finished third but wasn't a threat.

Circle Bar Racing's Rick Crawford, the points leader coming in, tangled with Dover, Del., winner Scott Speed on Lap 129, starting a series of mishaps for his Ford that ended with a 21st-place finish, his first outside the top 15 this season. He fell to fifth in the standings.

Busch, of Billy Ballew Motorsports, was the closest to Hornaday at the end but couldn't get around the celebrated "king of restarts." Friday was his best night in a three-day, three-city NASCAR odyssey, as the Toyota he called a "piece of crap" was the only one of his three rides to finish on the lead lap.

-- John Schwarb