Ryan Newman (39) sneaks into the lead after Clint Bowyer, Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon crash. (Getty)

Undoubtedly, the escalating tension of a book or movie has kept you more and more captivated as the the ending nears. That's what Sunday's Goody's Fast Relief 500 at Martinsville was like.

Sometimes the ending is worth the dramatic build up. Other times, it's so farfetched and bizarre that you're left with a feeling of quasi-emptines -- that the appetizer was better than the main course. That was Sunday's race, too.

With a handful of laps to go at Martinsville, Jeff Gordon closed to the back bumper of Jimmie Johnson, his Hendrick Motorsports teammate. Gordon had the best car for the majority of the race and led the most laps at Martinsville. Johnson had perhaps the best car over the final stage of the race.

Gordon, the four-time champ, was searching for his eighth win at Martinsville; Johnson, the five-time champion, was going for his seventh, tying Gordon for most among active drivers at the half-mile track. And if either of them had won, it would have been Hendrick's 200th Sprint

"Coxswain" and "nipples" aren't words you often hear in NASCAR press conferences, and yet Carl Edwards curiously dropped them into his discussion about the techniques of racing at Martinsville. Has somebody been dusting off the ol' thesaurus? Playing Words With Friends? No, as it turns out, Edwards won a $10 bet with his brother by sneaking those words into his press conference.

Well done, Carl. Next week, sneak in "fulminate" and "stanky." A cool $20 if you can work in "antidisestablishmentarianism."

Junior tries very hard to protest his innocence. (Getty Images)Catching up with our year-long Fireball Cup competition, recognizing excellence in the field of NASCAR brawling. And through five races, it's been a pretty damn boring season, frankly. We could use some more anger and fist-throwing; everybody's just too darn calm these days.

Recall our rules, which can and do change on a whim:

• Verbal/Twitter exchange; slightly aggressive driving leading to issues: 1 point
• Bumping cars in an aggressive, making-a-point fashion: 2 points
• Spin, non-critical: 3 points
• Spin, critical: 4 points
• Out of car, punches thrown: 5 points

Fireball Cup stats, Bristol and California:

Jeff Gordon: 1 point for jawing at Dale Earnhardt Jr. over a flat tire. (Bristol)
Dale Earnhardt Jr.: 1 point for overly aggressive driving that knocked out Gordon. (Bristol)
Kevin Harvick: 1 point for threatening to put Tony Stewart in the wall. (California)

So that gives us the following standings:

Jeff Gordon, 4 points
Dale Earnhardt Jr., 3 points
Kevin Harvick, 1 point
Matt

Jimmie Johnson and Denny Hamlin have been sure things at Nashville, taking top 10 after top 10. But can they work their mojo this week? Both are solid right now, but so are several other cats. Your favorite NASCAR Jays, Hart and Busbee, offer up some cogent commentary on the odds of these two flat-track titans this weekend. Enjoy, and have your own say in the comments below.

Thousands of wrecks happen every day on highways around the world. It's safe to say most aren't like the one that happened Wednesday in northern Ontario, when a collision and resulting pileup spilled millions of dollars of cash and candy onto a Canadian highway.

The wreck happened when a Brinks truck struck a rock outcropping near Kirkland Lake. Much like the Titanic, the rock ripped open the side of the truck, spilling an estimated $5 million in Canadian coins onto the highway in an ankle-deep array. As one constable poetically put it, the crash scene was like "walking on a carpet of loonies and toonies." The coins had come from the Canadian Mint and were headed for circulation.

The driver of the truck and a passenger were hospitalized with life-threatening injuries. The wreck set off a chain reaction that involved a minivan and two other tractor-trailers. One of the tractor-trailers was carrying candy, and that too spilled atop the coins.

But don't go heading up to the Great

After the race at Bristol on March 19th produced lots of long green-flag stretches and many fans dressed as empty aluminum bleachers, SMI chairman Bruton Smith said that changes to the track would be possible before the Sprint Cup Series returned to Bristol in August.

Smith and Bristol announced Wednesday that the changes were in fact a comin'. But what those changes are is still unknown.

"The race fans have spoken," Smith said in a release. "We had input that included a wide range of opinions. But the majority we heard from said they wanted to see changes made. As a result, I have ordered the equipment and work will begin within the next two weeks to allow time to have everything ready for August."

The details of the changes will be announced in the near future.

While it's easy to assume that what is old — a single groove that required drivers to root and gouge for position on the bottom line of the track, resulting in lots of fender rubbing — will be new again with the changes, a

Danica Patrick, chilling in some righteous shades. (Getty Images)

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 or on Twitter at @jaybusbee, we respond to your messages, everyone goes away with a smile on their face.

So I was off NASCAR duty this past weekend covering the NCAAs. While the Cali race was proceeding, I was in the Georgia Dome watching Kentucky treat Baylor the way Juan Pablo Montoya treats jet dryers. And it got me to thinking: there were about 60,000 people in the Dome, and the place was absolutely rocking. We need to just start running NASCAR in smaller arenas. No more superspeedways. We ought to run NASCAR in, like, municipal auditoriums. Sellouts every week!

Your letters. And a rather dull race at Cali resulted in ... well, a mixed mailbag. Let's begin with an old favorite.

If I hear Ray Evernham or Marty Smith say one more time that the expectations placed on Danica Patrick are "unfair," I may smack them both! She chose this path and she is mentally tough - she can handle the expectations and doesn't need to be coddled.

I am astonished when I hear these journalists/commentators say I shouldn't expect her to be in the mix at the end of the race. There are still nuances that she hasn't quite grasped but she learns faster than a lot of drivers I've seen in the recent past, and one of her best strengths is that she FINISHES races, which is half the battle! She and Tony Stewart have made no secret of the fact she is planning a full time move to Cup next year. Is it really that "unfair" for me to expect her to be competitive in the series that develops drivers for Cup?

— Sue Bilger
Seattle

Danica Patrick is now a Rorschach blot. We each imprint ourselves onto Danica (not literally, you sickos; there are laws) and we see what we want to see. Is she a coddled, undeserving IndyCarpetbagger? Is she a courageous woman not afraid to take a stand in a man's world? Is she a hot little thang who spends a lot of time in something less than a firesuit? Depends on who you are and what you bring to the table.

I will say that Patrick has done exactly what she should have: risen above all this and been herself. She's sometimes witty, sometimes cranky, but never particularly apologetic about who she is. Which is exactly the right thing to do; the moment you start trying to be someone you're not, the masses will eat you alive. (Again, not literally. Laws against that, too.) Patrick will be just fine; you want an example of hype without sustainable results, take a look at Jeremy Lin. Let's give her the same margin for error we've given, say, Joey Logano, OK? Though let's not ask Joey to pose for Maxim anytime soon. The comparison only goes so far.

We're only five races into the season, but there's a saying: "Get to five, Chase hopes alive." OK, we just made that up, but it COULD be a saying. Anyway, the top 10 is stuffed with drivers who haven't been there lately, and quite a few well-known names — Carl Edwards, Kyle Busch, Brad Keselowski, Jeff Gordon, Kasey Kahne — are on the outside looking in. Who's staying, who's going? Your favorite Yahoo! Sports Jays, Hart and Busbee, are here to discuss the ins and outs of the Chase prospects. Have your say in the comments below.