IS MORE SEAT TIME GOOD? What do car owners think about their investments driving other race cars?(Motorsports)

Byline: AL PEARCE

Even now, almost three weeks after, the videotape from Infineon Raceway remains unsettling. It shows Nextel Cup star Dale Earnhardt Jr. dazed and slumped forward as fire engulfs the cockpit of his Corvette. He finally tumbles out of the inferno and is hospitalized with minor burns. With relief help, he races at Loudon and Pocono the following Sunday afternoons.

No harm, no foul, right? After all, Junior didn't miss a start in his Budweiser Chevrolet and was the story that weekend. He is still third-ranked and a cinch to qualify for this fall's 10-race championship playoff. And isn't seat time-all seat time-a good thing? Besides, how often do drivers get seriously roughed up in one-offs?

But the bigger question is this: Will that oft-replayed crash-especially with fire an issue-move owners to bar their multimillion-dollar investments from moonlighting? Or will it take a call from a sponsor "suggesting'' its driver cool it awhile?

"Maybe, but how do you tell a racer he can't race?'' asked Len Wood of Wood Brothers Racing during the Pennsylvania 500 weekend at Pocono. "Tell Junior he can't do something often enough and he'll start looking for another deal. I doubt anybody ever told his father what to do or when or what to race. Maybe Teresa, but that's about it. A team is like a marriage, and drivers and owners have to get along. See how they fare if one or the other won't compromise. Drivers get better with experience, but they'd have to use their head during the 10-race deal.''

More than anyone, stock car drivers will race almost anything almost anywhere for almost any reason. Six Cup drivers have already run Craftsman races this year and more than a dozen have gone Busch racing. Greg Biffle is running the full Cup and Busch schedules and Kasey Kahne is almost as busy. It is no longer news when Kahne, Tony Stewart, Robby Gordon or Dave Blaney runs open-wheel or dirt-track races. And is there anything Ken Schrader hasn't driven between Cup starts?

"We have a simple rule,'' said Don Miller of Penske South. "If any of our guys wants to run something, even IROC or another NASCAR series, he must get permission. It's been that way since Roger had a disappointment with Gary Bettenhausen about 35 years ago. Gary ran a Sprint Car race Roger didn't want him to run, and Gary was in a wreck that basically ended his career. Even our test driver, Chad Blount, gets permission before any one-offs. That's written into our contracts with him, Rusty Wallace, Ryan Newman and Brendan Gaughan.''