CHARLOTTE -- Who's the best right-front tire guy on the NASCAR pit crews? Who's the best jack man?What driver has the best pit crew?On Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons, in the clutch on race day, the answers may vary. But here Thursday night, the best of the over-the-wall guys will square off, with $10,000 to $20,000 apiece on the line, in a made-for-TV venture, the annual NASCAR Sprint Pit Crew Challenge, at Time Warner Cable Arena.All teams in Saturday night's Sprint All-Star race will compete here in what may seem to be something rather gimmicky, with buzzers and bells and guys pushing their cars the length of the arena to a finish line.But the guys on the floor will be taking it all very seriously. And their drivers will be here cheering them on.Then Friday, the All-Star action will begin at Lowe's Motor Speedway, sometimes called "Jimmie's House," because Jimmie Johnson has dominated there the past several years. But this season, Johnson and teammate Jeff Gordon, and a number of others, have struggled with NASCAR's new car at mid-size tracks.Thus the betting action is likely on the tour's two hottest drivers, Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards.Johnson, who has had some hot streaks of his own, said it's sometimes difficult to understand why things are going your way."The thing you can never gauge -- or predict, or really understand -- is why you are on a hot streak... and why, when you're not," Johnson said. "Our team feels like we're primed, and would love to be on that tear, but it's not there for us."We were there the last couple of years. But our sport is cyclical."What happens this week might have little to do with what has been going on around the tour the past three months, because the All-Star race is sometimes unpredictable.The race has been run in Charlotte since the late T. Wayne Robertson created it more than 20 years ago. It is still sometimes hard to figure out -- the dynamics, the reasoning, and certainly the rules, which seem to change by the minute.But one thing it does create is an unusual energy for drivers and teams."The All-Star race, you try to come in and say, 'It's no big deal, it's just for some money, it's not a points race," Johnson said. "Then they have the introductions (typically with fireworks), and the crews are out there and the fans are there, and before you know it your heart rate is at 120 and you're not even sitting in a car yet. You're just jacked up and ready to go."Now in the 600, everybody is in the mindset of taking care of their equipment and making a long 600-mile race, and there is a different energy around that event."So when I think about this All-Star race, what really pops up in my mind is the energy of the event that gets into my head and helps me adapt to whatever is going to take place."Also on tap this All-Star weekend is a special "burnout challenge" for drivers, to see who can pull off the best -- and most accurate -- victory burnout.Johnson, though not known for his burnout prowess, will take a shot at it."It's just something different, something cool," he said. "We sit around all Saturday and really don't do much, so we might as well do something."I'll just see what the car will do. I'm not sure how much horsepower we'll have, or what the tire situation will be. But I'll watch the other guys."Hopefully I'm not the first."(Contact Mike Mulhern at mmulhern@wsjournal.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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