The only points race this weekend (claims jumpers have the weekend off).  Trucks tend to put on a better show than either Cupsters or claims jumpers these days, so it'll be interesting to see how this shakes out.

Kyle Busch (yes, he really does have a Web site site called RowdyBusch.com ) is on the pole.  Shocker, right?

One of the many cool new features about SBN 2.0 is the ability to quickly scan through all stories on upcoming events as well as your favorite (or least favorite if you prefer, although why anyone would escapes me but to each their own) driver.  It's going to take some time as I have 1500+ posts to go through, but eventually you'll be able to pull up any post, click on either the event or tag links, and get a list of all related posts.  Spiffy, eh?

Also, while it's not yet complete (to put it mildly) I'm adding a complete race schedule for all three of NASCAR's main series along with IRL and NHRA.  From the main page, you can click on the Events link, pull up the schedule, click on any given race, and once I'm done tagging everything you'll be able to pull up all posts connected to that race, including all driver and team-specific previews, the live thread, and any post-race stories.

A more than mere words can say thank you to everyone at SBN who have put this all together!

Some serious showing off of its potential later on today.

Hey Restrictor-Plate This,

Today is the big day. We've switched your community over to the new SB Nation sports blog platform. My name is Trei, and I'm here to help you get adjusted to the new home we've built for you. If you have questions or trouble with the new system, post a comment in this thread and myself or one of the team (lovitt, sixfoot6 or odacrem) will try to point you in the right direction.

Before we begin, I want to let you know we still consider this a beta platform, so don't be surprised if you find a few bugs or if everything isn't exactly right yet. We hope you'll take the time to report any problems you encounter at bugreport@sbnation.com. We'll be continuing to make changes and improving things.

Please take a few minutes to read about what's new below. But if you just can't wait to jump in, here are some quick things to check out:

1. Sign up for your SB Nation network account and claim your old blog accounts
2. Once you're logged in, press your  Z  key in any thread with new comments
3. Explore your dashboard and setup your profile
4. Read the guide to the new FanPost editor
5. Install the FanShot bookmarklet and post videos to Restrictor-Plate This from YouTube or images from Flickr
6. Click the "Rec" button on posts and comments to help other people find the good stuff.
7. Customize display options on your Edit Settings page

What Has Changed

SB Nation Network Accounts - the Big Change

Readers across all of our blogs told us they wanted one account to use on every SB Nation blog. To make this work, we're requiring that everyone create a new SB Nation network account. In most cases you should be able to keep your old username, but a few of you may have to choose something new, since every other community in SB Nation will be going through this same transition. We tried to be as fair as possible in deciding who gets to keep which name, using a formula that takes into account length of membership and frequency of activity.

We want to make it as easy as possible for you to participate on all of our blogs, but we don't want to encourage everyone to start visiting rival team blogs and initiating flame wars. To maintain friendly communities we ask that you explicitly join each blog in order to participate. It's a two-click process, but it does means accepting each blog's community guidelines. Just as you join each blog individually, you can be banned on each blog individually.

You can claim old accounts from multiple SB Nation blogs, and your new username will be retroactively attached to all your old comments and diaries. So now you'll be able to access all your writings from your single profile page... like magic.

To get started, click here to claim your old blog accounts and create a new SB Nation network account.

FanPosts (the Section Formerly Known as Diaries)

We changed their name. Why? Because we took this major upgrade as an opportunity to leave behind some vocabulary that never made much sense for a sports blog. SB Nation is the network of, by and for fans, and these are the blog posts we make. So we call them FanPosts. When you're at a bar telling someone to check out your online sports opinions, you don't have to suggest they read your diary.

FanPosts are displayed differently on the homepage - we include your avatar to give more credit for the time you spend writing great posts. The new post editor has a WYSIWYG view that provides easy formatting. It also auto-saves drafts so you don't have to worry about losing your work when you compose a post within the web browser. And you can now associate teams, players and games with your posts: these tools promote your FanPosts on our new team, player and game pages - across the entire network.

The new system does not work like the old diary editor. For example, in HTML mode the new editor doesn't auto-create a new paragraph from two line breaks. But it does offer a whole array of new features. Look for the blinking help button on the right side of the FanPost editor for quick tips, and take a look at our full guide to writing FanPosts on the new platform.

IMPORTANT - if you write your posts in Microsoft Word or some other off-line editor, you will get the most reliable behavior if you cut & paste your post into the HTML view of the FanPost editor. And if you do that, remember to wrap <p></p> tags around each paragraph so your text doesn't run together.

Visual Redesign

This one is probably the most obvious change of all. Like other major websites working to improve readability for their audience, we've adopted a fixed-width layout optimized for the 1024 x 768 resolution used by the majority of Restrictor-Plate This and SB Nation network users. Use the switcher below the user menu if you prefer the wider layout designed for 1280 monitors. We've introduced a top navigation bar with quick links into old and new sections of the site. We also polished a few edges, made some things larger, others smaller and moved a few boxes here and there. More changes and adjustments to come.

Search

We've completely replaced the old search engine with a new one. We're excited to make it easier to find old posts and comments, but we've only taken our first pass on the tools we're offering. We're focused on making search even better than what you had before, so please know that we're aware search is missing key features and we're working on it.

What's New

Schedule, Scores, Stats and Roster

Restrictor-Plate This now has all the basic information about the sports and hundreds of other teams. During games you'll see a regularly updated line score, and as the season progresses we'll track team stat totals and leaders. This is just our first step, so look for us to publish more detailed and archival stats in the future. The best part about all this sports data is that we've integrated it directly into the blog so. We now have special pages that aggregate all blog posts written about games, players and teams.

Recommending FanPosts

Some writing deserves more attention and more conversation. If you want to bump a FanPost up to the top and keep it there for awhile, just click the 'Rec' link under the body of the post. When a FanPost receives enough recommendations it will make the recommended list.

Auto-refreshing Comments

You no longer need to refresh the page to see new comments. If you're logged in, new comments will automatically appear on the page every few seconds. When you post a comment, the page will not refresh either. If you want to quickly cycle through all the new comments, you can press the C key on your keyboard. Unmark a new comment after you've read it with the X key. And use the Z key if you want to umark comments as you're cycling through them.

As you use these shortcuts to cycle through comments, press the R key to reply to the current comment. All these helpful keyboard shortcuts are listed at the top of each comments section for reference.

Recommending Comments

Now you can reward those folks who take the time to look up stats and make smart arguments in the comments. Next to each comment there is an 'actions' link that you can click to find the recommend and flag options.

Flagging Comments

To help the moderators on a site, we've built-in tools that let you flag comments that are spam, trolling or just plain inappropriate. Only moderators can see those flags.

FanShots

Many members of the community just want to post that one link, video, photo or quote, but don't need a full FanPost. We've got you covered: FanShots let you share YouTube videos, Flickr or PhotoBucket photos, quotes from articles, portions of chat transcripts, top 5 lists and simple links. If it's a video or image we'll put a thumbnail on the homepage when you post it.

For those of you who are experienced internet hunter-gatherers of sports material, install the bookmarklet onto the links bar of your browser and share FanShots with the community from wherever on the web you find that killer quote or photo.

Archives

It's much easier to find that post about a certain deadline trade or prospect retro feature. You can browse by year and month.

Avatars

Upload an image so folks can see your custom avatar on your profile, your FanPosts, and all your comments.

Network Profiles

Now that we have unified SB Nation network accounts, your profile will be your central hub for all of your activity on any blogs where you are a member.

Network bar

The top bar stays with you on all SB Nation blogs. It's a quick way to login and logout. When you're logged in, you'll see your avatar and screen name which links to your profile. The icon to the right leads to your Dashboard area where you can edit your settings, profile, account details and any FanPosts or FanShots you've published. As we add more blogs to the new SB Nation network, the My Blogs menu will be a handy way to navigate between the blogs you've joined.

-------

There are plenty more small changes and additions we've made, so please take a careful look around and explore this new system. We appreciate your patience and hope you'll help us improve the new platform for this and all the other SB Nation blogs.

And in case you missed it, you'll want to start by claiming your old blog accounts and creating a new SB Nation network account.

Well, this was going to be the first day of RPT on the SBN 2.0 platform.  Unfortunately, there was an unanticipated issue...

... the power went out at the location where the switch was to be made.  Ah well.  Hopefully tonight.

Be back later on today with some blogging stuff.

... RPT moves to SBN 2.0.

In a word... WOO-HOO!!!

See you tomorrow.

1.  I finally have a new podcast ready!  Gee, it seems like months ago I... oh wait, it was months ago.  Ah well.  Anyway, the link is here.

2.  Tomorrow night, RPT will go offline for a few hours as it transitions to the SBN 2.0 platform.  This is a tremendously exciting development, and I know you'll love the new layout and features 2.0 provides.  Can't wait!

Never miss the chance to insert a Moody Blues reference, I say.  But I digress (and before even getting to the topic).

An excellent article by Jenna Fryer came out today mulling over the thought that Greg Biffle might be headed to Gibbs next year as Tony Stewart's replacement.  She lays out several sound reasons why this could be so: Biffle's intense competitive fire and primary focus on winning superseding all other considerations; his publicly expressed season-long frustration over equipment issues at Roush Fenway; how despite the oft-repeated chant from JGR that Stewart is under contract through next year he has one foot out the door and the other itching to follow.  Couple this with another point Fryer mentions, namely Biffle's lack of need for the spotlight, and it makes absolute sense why he would be a good fit at JGR since between Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin there's more than enough drama transpiring for one team.

Ah, but wait, one might think.  What of the wunderkind's wunderkind, the heir apparent, the Absolutely Positively Guaranteed Next Big Superduper Thing a/k/a Joey Logano?  Why, the moment he turns eighteen (or has he already  I forget) the NASCAR world is his oyster.  It must be true!  The PR says so!

While Logano's talent is from all accounts plentiful, it is Fryer's contention he will not be ready for a Cup ride next year and would be better served spending 2009 in apprenticeship at the Nationwide and/or truck level.  Logical; devoting a year to playing with some but not all of the big boys can only help, and if he's as great as he's being touted it will do no harm to let him run for a year in a less pressured atmosphere before throwing him into the lion's den of expectations running rampant.

But will logic win out?

Given the intense level of hype on Logano's behalf, including ads from NASCAR itself featuring him to the max ("don't miss this chance to follow the next big thing from the beginning!"), one can easily surmise that JGR will be sorely tempted to promote him straight into Cup as soon as possible.  He may be totally ready.  He may also be the next Casey Atwood, who in his teen years was widely heralded as a can't miss kid.  For the record, he missed.

How Logano will perform at the upper level obviously cannot be known until he actually straps into a Cup car.  Given how he'll have competitive equipment from the word go, this adds additional elements: the potential to win, and no option to claim the bad car excuse should he not perform up to -- there's that word again -- expectations.

It's always possible Biffle will re-up with Roush Fenway after all, making the entire subject moot.  In any case, it'll be fascinating to see how this plays out.  The logical path has been detailed.  Which one will be followed?  Stick around.  The drama has yet to begin.

And here we go with another Saturday night special.  Can Dale Jr. end the drought?  Can Greg Biffle notch his first win of the year?  Who will Kyle Busch run over?  Will anyone be able to pass anyone?  The possibilities are endless... just like references to Digger.

Back in a bit.

Lap 92: Sorry about being so late.  Doesn't look like I've missed much.

Lap 104: This could use a caution.

Lap 112: Oooh!  A pass for the lead!  Pit stops forthcoming.

Lap 127: I suppose that clip of Biffle by Kyle Busch was called for... (/sarcasm off)

Lap 140: After Kyle Busch's latest whine, do you think his pit crew is going to be all that pumped for the next stop?

Lap 141: If I just heard the chatter between Steve Letarte and Jeff Gordon correctly, the #18 has to come back in for a pit road violation.

Lap 148: They're not exaggerating... that was a brutal hit by Kevin Harvick.

Lap 158: The Biff is buff.  On the track, anyway.

Lap 178: Um... Saturday night sleeper at the moment.

Lap 187: Truex is catching Biffle bit by bit.  Pit stops once again forthcoming.

Lap 218: So will Kyle Busch wear out his car before he gets back up front?  Which would be such a shame... noreallyImeanthat...

Lap 226: Um... y'know, I'm sorry that Darlington lost the Labor Day race, okay?  Believe me, after going to last year's 115 degree roaster oven last September, I'd gladly swap tonight's date for Labor Day.

Lap 235: Well, that sucks for Greg Biffle.  On a completely unrelated note, it's currently 74 degrees in Fontana.

Lap 240: This just in: there's an ad for a spotter position on the Red Bull site.

Lap 250: Now why did the three main Hendrick cars stay out when everyone else came in?

Lap 259: Kyle Busch is on a tear.  Thrillsville.

Lap 274: So can anyone stop Kyle Busch?  Other than himself, of course.

Lap 279: I am assuming everyone will still need one more pit stop beside the one now taking place...

Lap 291: Way to hold that lead, Jeff... (sigh)

Lap 312: Kyle Busch continues to lead, but he's not running away with it.

Lap 328: Okay, he is running away with it.

Lap 355: Nothing like Kyle Busch running away with a race to dull any desire whatsoever to comment.  Because, frankly, there's not much to say.

Checkered Flag: Kyle Busch wins.  Yet another round of being told we must love him.  Uh, no.  As in never.  Ever.  Period.  Yes, he is a tremendous driver on a terrific roll.  But he's one of the, if not the, most dislikeable drivers in the sport for his churlish pouty attitude.  'Nuff said.

(Courtesy NASCAR Media)
Starting Line Up by Row
Darlington Raceway
Dodge Challenger 500
Provided by NASCAR Statistics - Fri, May 09, 2008 @ 06:42 PM Eastern