By MIKE MULHERN, Winston-Salem Journal

Clint Bowyer was last season's surprise in the Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship, coming from seemingly out of nowhere. He opened the 10-race playoffs with a victory at Loudon, N.H., and was the only guy who stayed in sight of Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon the rest of the way.

This season?

Rick Hendrick was NASCAR's hot-ticket car owner the last two seasons, winning back-to-back championships with Jimmie Johnson, Sunday night's winner here in a duel with Greg Biffle.

But this season, well, Hendrick all but rolls his eyes.

This may be judgment week for Patrick Carpentier.

Carpentier is making a racing comeback this season, in NASCAR no less, after most of his career in open-wheel racing. And he's incurably upbeat, despite numerous setbacks. But NASCAR is a performance business, and will Carpentier's numbers be enough to keep him in the seat of George Gillett's and Ray Evernham's Dodges?

Just back from a European vacation, Jimmie Johnson took Sunday's tire disaster at the Brickyard in stride, played his hand coolly, and launched what he and wily crew chief Chad Knaus hope will be a successful second half of the NASCAR season after a rather woeful first half.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Debacle, fiasco, blunder: pick any word to describe Sunday's NASCAR-Goodyear screw-up here, but the 250,000 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway deserved much better than what they got in the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard.

Perhaps it was just the perfect storm.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Safety is just taken for granted in NASCAR these days, mostly because of all the improvements made since Dale Earnhardt's death in 2001.

But two things -- the unexpected death last week of Steve Peterson, NASCAR's safety guru, and racing this weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway -- offer reminders of just how much things have changed.

Times are tough for NASCAR teams all the way around -- owners, drivers, crewmen and sponsors -- and those new to the Sprint Cup tour, such as promising rookie Regan Smith, have it rougher than usual. No matter how talented they are or how fast they're learning, it might not be fast enough to keep sponsors happy.

Steve Peterson, one of NASCAR's key officials, a veteran engineer whose work in safety areas the past 10 years have made stock-car racing safer than it's ever been, died unexpectedly Tuesday at his Concord, N.C., home, at 58, apparently of natural causes.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- So what happened to Dale Earnhardt Jr. in the final miles Saturday night?

He appeared ready to win the Coke Zero 400, or help teammate Jeff Gordon to victory lane, but Earnhardt got trapped in traffic late and suddenly faded from contention.

What a bummer.

Not Kurt Busch's win. Crew chief Pat Tryson had a good strategy, Busch won fair and square and the rest of the stock-car racing hot dogs all simply beat themselves by pitting for gas just before the clouds opened at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.