Could Kevin Harvick take off the rest of the 2006 NASCAR Busch Series season and still win the championship?

Almost.

Harvick has a near insurmountable 729-point margin over Carl Edwards with five remaining events. If he can leave the next race in two weeks at Charlotte with a 760-point margin, he’d clinch the title and wouldn’t have to race in the four remaining events.

While I could get on a pretty good rant here about Cup drivers like Harvick stinking up the Busch Series show each week, it’s better to throw the bouquets as Harvick here.

Just take a look at the numbers –

Harvick has competed in all 30 NASCAR Busch Series events this season. Saturday’s victory at Kansas Speedway was his seventh of the season giving him a 24 percent winning percentage.

Meanwhile, Harvick has a staggering 20 Top-5 finishes in those 30 events (66 percent) and has finished in the Top-10 an even more amazing 27 times (90 percent). Harvick’s worst finish of the season is 19th at Milwaukee. He has finished no worse than third in the last five NBS events winning two of them.

Perhaps most impressively is that Harvick has completed all 5,701 laps contested in the 30 NASCAR Busch Series events run this season.

Think about that for a moment –

Skill, luck, and a huge amount of behind the scenes preparation have made Harvick bulletproof this season. Win or lose a race, you don’t finish every lap unless the team behind the driver is doing something very special. To do it for an entire season is mind-boggling.

Unless he truly does sit out some events at the end of the season, Harvick’s championship-winning points total is sure to eclipse the previous greatest margin of victory set by Jeff Green in 2000 (666 points).

While the numbers will validate the season as one of the best in the history of the division, the untold time and effort put in by the crew to achieve such a distinction is the real achievement here.

Saw something pretty cool this weekend.

The USAR Hooters Pro Cup division got rained out 41 laps into one of its six-race championship events at Jennerstown, PA. Saturday evening. Sunday, in an effort to find out what’s going on at the race, I logged on to their web site – www.usarprocup.com - and viewed their real-time scoring page.

Thanks to that page, which posts all kinds of position and movement, current lap speed and fastest lap speed just to name a few things for each driver in the race, it was very easy to follow the race.

Given the USAR events are not televised live, this is an excellent way to keep up with the action if you can’t attend the race. There’s also a running news line on the site to keep you up to date as to what’s happening in text form.

Nice to see smaller series like this giving their fans some great added value by letting them follow the race on line.

If you’re looking for something special on your racing TV dial this weekend, look no further than Saturday’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Talladega (AL) Superspeedway. That’s right, the Trucks are heading to the mack-daddy of all superspeedways – the 2.66-mile Talladega oval.

Considered too dangerous to race on when it first opened in 1969, the then Professional Drivers Association (PDA) boycotted the inaugural NASCAR Grand National (now Cup) race at the track. Since then, Talladega has become part of NASCAR lore featuring some of the sport’s most famous close finishes and some of its most infamous wrecks.

There won’t be any boycotting Truck Series drivers this weekend as the event will also mark the first racing test for the all-new Talladega track surface which has been replaced since the Cup cars last raced there in May.

The new track paving renovation is the first for the facility since it opened in 1969 and should provide an interesting test for the Trucks, which began their existence on America’s short-track ovals a little more than a decade ago and are now a featured attraction the nation’s premiere super tracks like those at Talladega, Daytona, California, Michigan, Texas and Charlotte.

With no carburetor restrictor plates and their less aerodynamic shape, the Trucks will utilize old school moves like the slingshot to pass at high speed. This race will definitely be one to watch.

Saturday’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series event from Talladega will be televised live on The SPEED Channel beginning at 3 p.m. Eastern Time.

Last call –

If you’re in the LaCrosse, WI area this weekend, check out the annual Oktoberfest race weekend at LaCrosse Fairgrounds Speedway.

We’re talking three days of racing action featuring hundreds of hobby, sportsman, late model and super late model stock cars on the half-mile LaCrosse track. After hours, the thousands of on-site campers on the fairgrounds property make for some of the best-ever parties fans could hope for.

Throw in the stunning Wisconsin fall colors that usually accompany this event, and you have a winner all around.

Enjoy.