Earlier this year, Toyota pitted four racing stars against each other for the Toyota Racing Dream Build Challenge with a goal of making fans choose which driver’s name would be on a check for $50,000 for his or her charity. That idea alone is great, because we love when famous people and giant companies do good things for people in need. However, knowing that racing fans (myself included) are mostly insane and love crazy cars, Toyota’s challenge involved each driver taking a popular Toyota vehicle and turning it into an awesome racing machine. America, my friends.

NASCAR’s Kyle Busch (above) and Clint Bowyer and NHRA’s Antron Brown and Alexis DeJoria are the drivers currently competing for their causes, and with five days left in the voting process, before the winner is revealed at the 2012 Specialty Equipment Market Association show in Las Vegas on Oct. 30, Busch is in the lead with his “Rowdy” Toyota Camry. Brown and DeJoria are battling for second place with their respective “Family DragQuoia” (Sequoia) and “Tundra Pre-Runner” models. Trailing them all is Bowyer’s Prius, because fuel efficiency can kiss our red, white and blue butts.

But don’t count Bowyer out yet, because he thinks his Prius is capable of changing minds.

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One of the perks of writing for a sports blog is that I get to cover sports I have little to no experience writing about. For example, I write about soccer all the time, but I only know the basics (like “don’t use your hands” and “if you’re at a game and see a player you like on the field, run at him with fireworks”). So hey, if I say anything stupid in this posting about all three Joe Gibbs Racing vehicles getting oil pan violations, feel free to correct me.

Yeah, so all three cars were found to have unapproved oil pans, so they had to change them out, and NASCAR will discuss early next week if there will be any additional penalties assessed. As far as I can tell, there are two points of view on this:

1. This is no big deal, and bloggers have personal vendettas against race car drivers (for some reason) and try to make it sound all doom and gloom. Or,

2. Denny Hamlin, Kyle Busch and Joey Logano are cheating … crackers (?) who weighted their oil pans to increase performance, and that’s why they win races, and somebody oughta check the rest of their car for stuff like this, because it probably has hydraulic jump-legs and some go-go-gadget saw blades in the front like Speed Racer’s car.

I’d like to know more about these things, so if you’re one of those who looks forward to race weekends, drop me a comment and share your opinion. Opinions about Speed Racer are welcomed as well, as long as they are not negative and involve how funny it is to watch a monkey hit a henchman in the face with a wrench.

[h/t From the Marbles]