I don’t write about NASCAR nearly as much as I’d like to, so I was pretty stoked when I was told that 2011 Nationwide Series Champion Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. admitted that With Leather was his favorite sports blog on the Internet and he’d love to talk to us. Granted, that’s not verbatim and it may have gone more like, “You do what with leather now?” but after speaking with NASCAR’s top up-and-comer, I’m convinced that he may one day have a giant Lobster Dog on the hood of his car.

Which car? The legendary No. 6, originally driven by Mark Martin and the debut whip of the Roush/Fenway Racing team. Those are some undoubtedly big shoes to fill, but Ricky’s resume strongly suggests that he’s up to the challenge. Tomorrow marks his first Sprint Cup run at the Daytona 500 (1 PM ET on Fox) – the Super Bowl of motor sports, as a man with a Dale Earnhardt tattoo once told me – and that’s where you, our loyal-yet-rambunctious commenters come in.

Ricky is our official driver, so that means if he finishes better than the other drivers that have been assigned to other, less spectacular sites, one of you lucky animals is going to win an all-expenses paid trip to attend the Sprint All Star race in Charlotte, N.C. on May 19. So bring your commenting A-game and let’s cheer on the No. 6 car and our boy Ricky.

In the meantime, Ricky and I spent a few minutes discussing his ambitions, celebrity status, Twitter etiquette, when he’ll start dating Kim Kardashian, and, of course, the Daytona 500’s Grand(est) Marshal… Kate Upton.

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I once thought that a great idea for a magazine would be Haters – “The publication devoted to people who hate sh*t.” It was my billion dollar idea until I learned that things take effort and I hate that sh*t. But lately I’ve realized that my idea would have just been a knock off of the magazine that already has hate down pat – Forbes.

When it’s not busy hating people who don’t have money, Forbes is going out of its way to compile lists of people and things that we all hate. This week, it’s the annual list of the Most Hated Athletes in America. Sure, they call it the Most Disliked Athletes, but read between the capitalist lines, amigos.

So who, pray tell, are the most heinous and villainous prick athletes in all of the land, Forbes?

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Whenever I get low on The American Spirit, I can always count on Fark and the fine men and other men of ESPN NASCAR to dip said spirit in flour, deep fry it and shove it down my throat. In fact, that’s happened so many times now that my ass has expanded exponentially, and, having lost the ability to stand, I now require a broader seat upon which to rest my shame.

Good news, everyone!

Dover International Speedway in Delaware is hoping to make race fans’ experience a little more comfortable by widening seats in the track’s outdoor grandstands.

The speedway announced Thursday that the process of increasing seats from 18 inches to 22 inches will start next year and will be complete by 2014.

Denis McGlynn, president and CEO of Dover Motorsports, says the widening comes in response to fans’ suggestions. The change will reduce the capacity of the speedway from 140,000 to 113,000.

I’m guessing there aren’t a lot of vegan options at Dover International Speedway.

Before this post becomes too much of a fat wank, there are other explanations … namely, a 30,000 seat downshift helps compensate for declining attendance figures and make the track look more full, and the reality that even slimmer fans could use more leg room, especially when they’re wearing scanners or Jncos or enormous belt buckles. I just love that they’re widening the seats because of “fans’ suggestions”, like some 600 pound lady spent 40 minutes writing “wider seats” on a comment card before passing out and having the wind pick it up and carry it to the suggestion box. If I went to the speedway my suggestions would be “obstacles” and possibly “make it so the cars shoot turtle shells at each other”.

In today’s hottest “NASCAR driver might not have a great perspective on the world” news, driver Kasey Kahne offended every single human woman on Twitter when he saw a lady breastfeeding her child at the grocery store and jumped on the Internet to complain about it.

At first you’re like, “maybe he just turned out of the dog food aisle and suddenly there was a tit”, which is reasonably jarring.

But then … no, he was disgusted by it. He was disgusted by what he saw your body doing.

Yeah, you stupid bitch, how is he supposed to buy saltines and Mountain Dew and whatever else it is NASCAR drivers eat now? Unfortunately the expository tweet between the two was deleted, but if you need to know exactly what transported him from Kroger to Barf’s Burgers:

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I thought he was just a cereal box model, but apparently Jeff Gordon is a champion race car driver and B-Boy.

The breaking of dance occurred during the NASCAR “After the Lap” event in Las Vegas, a championship banquet referred to by the Las Vegas Sun as a “press conference on steroids” that plays out like the last 30 minutes of any Blue Collar Comedy Tour stop, right down having Bill Engvall sit there squinting and laughing while people around him try to be entertaining. The skinny (and white) from SB Nation:

Gordon said he started break-dancing in middle school because that’s what all the cool kids did. In fact, the four-time NASCAR champ said he’d sneak into the bathroom and break-dance every morning before school, because they weren’t allowed to dance in the hallways.

You can check out video of the hip-hoppery after the jump, but be aware that at no point during the clip does he accidentally kick Bill Engvall in the face.

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Down by 3 points to Carl Edwards in the Sprint Cup Series standings, Tony Stewart won the Ford 400 – the final race of the Chase – yesterday to tie Edwards, marking the first time in NASCAR history that the season ended at a draw. Fortunately for Stewart, he had 5 wins on the season to Edwards’ 1, which means that Smoke is the 2011 Sprint Cup Champion. And that’s awesome for Stewart and his fans, especially how he won in dramatic fashion after sucking for a good chunk of the year, but nobody cares about that today.

The other, much more scandalous story out of the Homestead-Miami Speedway is that First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden’s wife, Jill, hosted a barbecue for some military service members and their families before the race, and that’s awesome because I love anything that honors our soldiers and shows them some appreciation, whether it be some ribs and burgers at the racetrack or slow grinding against Mila Kunis.

So of course when Michelle and Jill – we’re cool like that – were introduced to the crowd before the race, they were booed. YOU GOT YER POLATICKS IN MAH VROOM VROOMS!

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