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Happy Hour: Get excited for the All-Star Race

Nick Bromberg
College football and motorsports writer

It's time for Happy Hour. As always, tweet us your thoughts or shoot us an email at happyhourmailbag@yahoo.com if you want to participate.

Feel the excitement ahead of Saturday night's All-Star Race. It's palpable. Or something.

Consider this your reminder for how the All-Star Race is going to work. And make sure you pour one out for Sprint, as it's the final time the company will be sponsoring the race.

15 drivers are already qualified for the race. The Sprint Showdown qualifying race on Friday is three segments and the winner of each segment makes the All-Star Race (the driver who wins Segment 1 can't race in the other two segments). And then there are two fan vote slots. Our guesses for the fan vote are Danica Patrick and Matt DiBenedetto. The latter has support from Reddit, and while the rules are different for voting than the year Josh Wise got in to the All-Star Race, we think the support is going to be strong enough.

Our picks for the segment winners are Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott. We're the least confident in the Stenhouse pick and if he doesn't make it, we like Ryan Blaney for that spot.

There are three segments for the main race Saturday night. The first two segments are 50 laps each while the final segment is 13 laps.

Everyone will have to make at least a two-tire pit stop before lap 35 of the second segment.

Before the final segment, either the first nine, 10 or 11 cars will be forced to come down pit road and change tires. Those cars that are forced to pit have to start the final segment behind the cars that don't pit.

The idea behind the 13-lap final segment is tire fall-off. The hope is that those with the fresher tires will be able to slice through the field of slower cars (both because of older tires and because they were outside the top 10 before the final segment) and create thrilling racing.

In recent All-Star races, the driver who first gets to clean air has usually finished first. With tires at a premium – ideally – the effect of clean air is lessened.

We're also interested to see if the small changes NASCAR made to reduce skew in the cars will have a dramatic effect. The sanctioning body quietly made the changes publicly and the guess is that corner speeds will be slower as a result. If slower = better racing, the tweaks are good news.

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Big fan plz respond, is Kasey Kahne running the all star race in a Jr. Motorsports car?- Jim

It would be quite the All-Star Race story if Kahne could be competitive in an Xfinity Series car.

If you're wondering what Jim is referring to, it's got to do with Kevin Harvick's contract extension at Stewart-Haas Racing and the official extenguishing of thoughts regarding Harvick's future in the Cup Series.

Kahne could be a sleeper for the All-Star Race. His cars have been faster recently and had a good run at Kansas until his hood got dented. He really does have some of the weirdest luck.

The joke we made references NASCAR's penalty reports, which only specify the categorization of the penalty and not the penalty itself. Once NASCAR releases a penalty report, media members must then go to the rule book and find the listed sections to figure out what the penalty is referencing.

We're not complaining about the extra work – the NASCAR rule book app is pretty damn good. But imagine if Major League Baseball said Texas Rangers second baseman Rougned Odor had violated Sections 1.4.8.A.4.7.9 of the on-field conduct policy when announcing his suspension rather than simply saying he was suspended for punching Toronto's Jose Bautista?

It's all silly.

But back to the All-Star Race. There are three moments that stick out.

1. When Kyle Busch and Kurt Busch crashed.

2. Tony Stewart passing Matt Kenseth to win the race in 2009. It was Stewart's first win with Stewart-Haas Racing and the moment when it hit us that this SHR thing would work out just fine.

3. Chad Knaus and Jimmie Johnson outsmarting everyone with the rules in 2012 causing the rules to be changed for the 2013 race and making everyone do math.

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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!