b1221kiurt

Welcome to the latest Happy Hour mailbag! You know how these work: You write us with your best rant/ joke/one-liner at happyhournascar@yahoogroups.com (note new address) or on Twitter at @jaybusbee, we respond to your messages, everyone goes away with a smile on their face.

You done with your Christmas shopping yet? Yeah, me neither. I get a total rush out of going to the mall, which is problematic because pretty much everyone else I know hates it and tells me about this thing called the "Internet" where you can do all your shopping. So I end up going to the mall by myself and sitting amid the Christmas carols and fake snow until somebody calls security on me. It's a holiday tradition.

Now, to your letters. Away we go...

This has been a rough week. I have been a Kurt Busch fan since he burst into Cup a decade ago. Knowing that the best car he could get into right now is the Golden Corral car that Dave Blaney likes to crash, I have decided to set a tournament to pick a new favorite driver. I have decided that it will either be a Ford or Brad K. I am wondering if you could ask the Yahoo! NASCAR world to help me out! Thanks!

— Rickie
Norfolk, Va.

Rickie brings up an excellent question. When is it time to pull the plug on your driver fandom? Some fans, of course, will follow their driver right up to the gates of Hell (even though said driver would probably skid right past said gates on his first pass). Others are more capricious, ditching their own underperformer in lieu of someone running better. (Woe to those who got on the 48 train this year at long last.)

But Rickie's got himself (herself?) an interesting dilemma. Rickie's driver has shotgunned himself right out of the top ranks of the sport. Where should Rickie's loyalty lie now? Should he stick with Kurt even through the down times, or has Kurt cost himself a fan too?

Let's throw this one open to the crowd. Friends, Rickie is now on the market. Make your best case to get him on your squad. And teams/drivers who are reading this, make your play as well. We'll get Rickie hooked up with someone new, pronto.

b1220kyle

Sure, it's the offseason, but that doesn't mean we can't throw out a few Power Rankings now and then. Today, we focus on the young bucks, the drivers under the age of 30 who will be dominating the sport for the next 15 years or so. Most NASCAR drivers don't seem to hit their peak until their early 30s, so we've got plenty of time to watch these cats in action.

1. Kyle Busch (26): His constant struggles in the Chase notwithstanding, Busch is far and away the best driver in this crew, and one of the top handful now in NASCAR. Love him or hate him, he'll be around for a long, long time,

2. Brad Keselowski (27): Kes probably would have struggled to make the top five on this list as recently as July. But his hot streak vaults him almost to the top, and he actually beat Busch in the 2011 season standings. Now, what does he do for an encore?

3. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (23): The 2011 Nationwide Series champ is very, very close to the big time. Question is, where's he going to drive on the Sprint

Hey, it's almost time for the holiday break, so let's all gather here in good cheer and talk some NASCAR or whatever. Bring a Secret Santa gift to share ... or just one for us, whichever. See you at 1 p.m. on Wednesday!

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Another NASCAR sponsor has moved teams.

Best Buy, which sponsored AJ Allmendinger's No. 43 for Richard Petty Motorsports in 2011, has moved to Roush Fenway Racing and will sponsor Carl Edwards and Matt Kenseth. The electronics retailer will be a two-race primary sponsor for Edwards and a nine-race primary sponsor for Kenseth and an associate sponsor for both as well.

From the Best Buy release:

"Best Buy is thrilled to announce this new NASCAR sponsorship deal with Roush Fenway Racing," said Drew Panayiotou, senior vice president of marketing for Best Buy. "Roush Fenway Racing is a great fit for Best Buy Racing. NASCAR continues to be a relevant way for us to connect with our customers. Our goal is to reach our target audiences in a meaningful way, while maximizing the value of our marketing and sponsorship investments."

This certainly throws a little wrench in the relationship with Roush and RPM, doesn't it? Roush supplies Roush-Yates engines and chassis to RPM, which fielded cars for

b1220biffGreg Biffle, like all NASCAR drivers, gets plenty of experience riding around and waving to crowds during prerace introductions. Now he'll get to put those skills to use as part of the Natural Balance Pet Foods float at the 2012 Tournament of Roses parade on January 2. (Hey, that's reason enough to sober up from New Year's Eve!)

The Natural Balance float will be a behemoth at 116 feet long, and will feature — no, this is not a joke — surfing dogs, who will ride 65-foot-long waves in a 6,600-gallon tank. (You can check on the progress of the float's construction right here.)

So, yeah, sorry, Biff, but most of us aren't going to be watching for you. We want to see those righteous surfing dogs. But we bet you'd get plenty of attention if you brought that rifle there.

The Tournament of Roses parade will be broadcast at 11 a.m. ET on January 2 on ABC. The Biff's float will be 54th out of 91. It's also powered by a Ford 6.8L 3v engine, and it hopefully won't have any handling malfunctions

b1219jj

For awhile this year, it seemed that Cup No. 6 was an inevitability for Jimmie Johnson. After all, this guy was the Golden Boy of the Chase, the driver who could win in reverse at any of the Chase tracks. Who could outrun him? Who could defeat him?

As it turned out, the only driver that could reliably defeat Jimmie Johnson was ... Jimmie Johnson.

Problems throughout the Chase killed his chances, and as Johnson noted in an interview with Scene Daily, the self-inflicted wounds hurt that much more. "I said all along, if we lose the championship because we get beat, that's one thing," Johnson told Scene. "If we beat ourselves, that's another. I feel that we beat ourselves this year. That's something I have to really look hard into myself and [crew chief] Chad [Knaus] and the team and make sure we don't do that again in the future."

The three primary issues were a collision with Kyle Busch in New Hampshire, a solo wreck in Charlotte, and a shuffle to the rear at Talladega. Combined, those

caratthemoviesWell, Michael Pratt is bold. Smart? Probably not.

While on a date at the movies, Pratt asked to borrow his date's car keys because he left something in the car. Innocent enough, right?

From the St. Petersburg Times:

She called him.

He laughed.

"I stole your car," said Michael Pratt, a 27-year-old from New Port Richey, according to the Pasco Sheriff's Office.

He hung up.

Believe it or not, Pratt got away with it for a while because the woman didn't call the sheriff's office until two days after the fateful date because Pratt wouldn't return her calls. Maybe he was a strict adherent of the 72 hour rule?

However, all dating rules probably go out the window after you've stolen your date's car. It would take a special bond for a stolen car not to come between people.

Ultimately, Pratt dumped the car in a Wal-Mart parking lot and was arrested on Wednesday. He was charged with grand theft auto, a crime he's already spent a year in jail for previously, among other things.

The  2011 season is over and done, and while there were several drivers who had outstanding seasons, there were quite a few who, well, didn't quite bust through. We're focusing on some of those still-fine gentlemen before we get to the big dogs. Away!

First up, Paul Menard, who was one of many drivers to achieve redemption this year by bringing home an improbable victory: