Williams F1 announced earlier this week that they had partnered with Automotive Hybrid Power Limited to join forces with hopes of bringing a new technology into the automobile marketplace.

The companies are both interested in bringing energy recovery systems into the marketplace. Formula One is allowing such technology into the sport next year.

The step Williams is taking with AHP is to develop a flywheel that will capture and store the kinetic energy generated under braking to be used later by the car.

Of course, the immediate benefit to the company with developing this technology would be to the Formula One program, but it hopes to take that F1 experience with the technology and deploy it in the general marketplace.

By combining forces, the two companies should be able to bring it that much quicker to consumers.

"As AHP, we had begun to develop our own advanced flywheel technology for application in vehicles. As Williams Hybrid Power, we will make use of the higher profile and Formula One development program to accelerate development and bring it to market more quickly," Ian Foley, Williams Hybrid Power's Managing Director said.

Patrick Head, Williams F1's Director of Engineering is hopeful that this technology will lead to a reduction in carbon emissions.

"High-energy flywheel technology is a challenging field of engineering. We fully support the FIA’s positive initiative in energy recovery systems which we hope will allow Formula One to make some contribution to the development of an environmentally beneficial technology that could help to reduce the carbon emissions of vehicles," he said.

The FIA has taken a number of steps lately to have its sport develop greener technology for use on the streets.

These Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) are being touted as better than the current hybrid engines on vehicles today. Creators are making the claim that these systems are twice as efficient as a standard hybrid system.

Hybrid cars and KERS cars are still a developing technology. But at least the FIA and F1 car manufacturers are taking steps and spending money to develop this kind of technology.

In writing this week's feature for our new historical section I learned about how Tim Flock won a race on the beach and road course in Daytona Beach in 1954 but was stripped of the win when he was disqualified for an illegal carburetor.

Unlike NASCAR's era now, back in the early days drivers were actually disqualified from the race for various infractions, typically cheating but also for other reasons.

Besides Flock's incident, I found out about quite a few others that resulted in drivers being stripped of their finishes.

In 1949, Glenn Dunnaway won a "Strictly Stock" race but was disqualified when he was found to have "moonshiner springs" on the rear of his car.

The last time a race winner's victory was taken away because of cheating was the 1955 Daytona Beach road course win of Fireball Roberts. His car was found to have an illegal modification in its pushrods. In an odd twist of fate, Tim Flock was awarded that victory.

Another incident I learned about happened in 1960 when NASCAR disqualified six drivers in the first 600-mile race at Lowe's Motor Speedway, including Lee Petty, Richard Petty and Junior Johnson for spinning into the infield during the race. The drivers were explicitly warned prior to the race not to go in the infield.

It seems that back in the day, Bill France wasn't timid about showing the drivers he meant business with the rules. He had a rule early in the start of the sport where drivers couldn't compete in non-NASCAR sanctioned events. When Red Byron and Lee Petty competed in non-sanctioned events in 1950, they were both stripped of all of their championship points that year.

Byron challenged it a second year and lost all his points again in 1951.

He also placed lifetime bans on three drivers in 1961 for organizing with the Teamsters Union, with Flock being one and Curtis Turner and Fireball Roberts the other two.

My how times have changed. Jimmie Johnson's team gets caught cheating after his win in the Daytona 500 and he still shows for the rest of time as the winner of that race. His points penalty didn't even affect him much as he went on to win the championship that year.

Sure NASCAR's now increased its penalties to include more points, but Carl Edwards sure hasn't suffered too much from his penalty.

I guess maybe it's because drivers are not the ones actually doing the cheating: they didn't build or outfit the car. But neither did Fireball Roberts in that 1955 race. The engine builder made the modification, but the message was sure delivered more effectively when the driver was stripped of his win.

But drivers do create their own incidents and walk away unscathed in the DQ category. An example I can think of is bump drafting at Daytona. Like the drivers were warned not to go in the infield prior to that 1960 World 600, drivers have been repeatedly warned not to bump draft in the corners at Daytona. It then happens during the race and nothing comes of it, save for another warning prior to the next race.

NASCAR should take a cue from the past and bring back the penalties that will matter.

I guess the heat this past Sunday in Malaysia was pretty unbearable for some of the Formula One drivers.

The track temperature for the race was around 118 degrees, with the cockpits of the drivers' cars well exceeding that. And from what I've read, as far as specs go, the drivers don't employ any kind of real cooling system for themselves or their in seat replenishment.

Within Formula One's official webpage, they detail how drivers are exposed to extreme heat within the cockpits and can sweat off as much as three kg of weight during a race - or close to 7 pounds for us not on the metric system.

Second-place finisher Robert Kubica shared after his race how he struggled in the final laps of the race because of the heat. He had issues for most of the weekend because of the temperature.

The drivers weren't able to acclimate themselves to the temperature very much this year because the Malaysian Grand Prix was the week after the season opener in Melbourne, Australia.

"Our drink is already hot at the beginning of the race – extremely hot as in the cockpit we have massive temperatures, so I didn't drink a lot as the drink was too hot," Kubica said in the post-race press conference about his replenishment. "Next time I try to use hot tea inside the bottle."

Yuck, tea's not really my idea of a thirst quencher when subjected to extreme heat. Maybe the Formula One drivers should rather take a cue from stock car racing and implement an in-car drinking system that cools their beverages?

I guess Gatorade developed some special system to equip NASCAR drivers with cool beverages during their races. The system is hands free, holds plenty of liquid, can withstand a crash and keeps beverages cool around 45 degrees.

Maybe then, Kubica could enjoy iced tea.

Ferrari had an awful weekend in Australia to open the 2008 season, but hey at least they scored a point.

Thanks to Rubens Barrichello's disqualification, Kimi Raikkonen was bumped up from his ninth-place DNF to eighth, earning one point for the defending champion and constructor.

This extends the car maker's run of consecutive point-scoring races to 33, the second longest in the sport's history. (They also hold the record - 55 - set between 1999 and 2002.)

But although Raikkonen lucked out to earn one point, the weekend was troubling for the 15-time constructor champion. Well known for its reliability, Ferrari suffered engine failures in both of its cars this weekend, as well as with one of its client's cars - Red Bull's Sebastian Bourdais.

"We know how important reliability is and we were severely lacking on this front," Ferrari's Sporting Director Luca Baldisserri said. "It is absolutely ages since we have seen two engine failures in a race. We have to look at every detail of this weekend to understand what went wrong and how we can improve."

Looked upon as the favorites coming into this weekend, Ferrari now must figure out why they suffered the engine troubles and try to overcome the already huge 13-point deficit to the top of the points chart.

And they better do it quickly before sophomore sensation Lewis Hamilton leaves them in the dust completely.

Let's hope the sun is shining this weekend in Las Vegas because I for one couldn't stand to watch another disaster like that in California last weekend.

I'll concede that the running of the Auto Club 500 was the extreme when it comes to race management in times of detrimental weather, but there has got to be a better way to deal with rain no matter if it's a little sprinkle or a torrential downpour.

And I can't wrap my head around why the sport pushed so hard to run the race on its scheduled day,  especially when Monday's weather outlook was so rosy.

Of course the eco-conscious side of me is most upset about the waste of fuel in attempting to dry the track.

From an excerpt on the internet:

During the weekend, the jet dryers that circled Auto Club Speedway for more than 10 hours during several rain delays consumed more than 6,500 gallons of fuel. They burned 3,000 gallons on Sunday night as they tried in vain to dry the track. What could an airline do with that much fuel? According to Virgin Atlantic Airlines statistics, a Boeing 737-800 can fly 3,383 miles on 6,875 gallons of fuel.

The distance from Los Angeles to New York City is 2,462 miles. A Boeing 737-800 can carry a maximum of 162 passengers.

Now a simple fix for this issue and a great PR move on NASCAR's part, especially since this happened in California, would have been to offset the carbon footprint of the jet fuel used.

To do that might help appease critics on the waste of resources, but it still won't help all the fans who awaited the race. Especially those fans on the East Coast who waited well into the night to hear that the race was postponed.

And nothing will take back the wrecks of Dale Earnhardt Jr., Denny Hamlin, Casey Mears and Sam Hornish Jr. when they were out of the race as a result of a crash in the early laps of the Auto Club 500. Even while it wasn't coming from the skies, water on the track has been blamed for the accident. There was enough absorbed in the ground that it seeped through the cracks.

Hopefully NASCAR will learn from this weekend's trials and come up with a better way of dealing with the weather to present a full race that all fans can enjoy.

One friend of mine suggested a tarp system at the track. But I guess that would probably be too expensive and maybe a little bit difficult to implement effectively.

Maybe they could just make the decision to not run a race when rain is on and off throughout a day and moisture is in the air, because the cars are not built to deal with these conditions. Have a sunshine clause, at least one that is in place for when it rains before a race and is forecast to come again.

Like back in the day before jet dryers.

If it's raining, pack it up and go home for the day and try again tomorrow. That's the only way the race was redeemed in California last weekend, when the decision was finally made in the twilight of Sunday evening to run the race on a sunny Monday. I hope that because of this debacle, NASCAR makes that decision much sooner next time.

So I've noticed there's a lot of talk about Jimmie Johnson, both good and bad, for being the pretty boy of NASCAR. He's well-dressed, well-mannered and reserved, with a gorgeous wife by his side - very much living the life of a Ken doll.

Negatively, he gets put to task for being too perfect and it seems that he draws a lot of ire because of his looks and persona.

If the defending Sprint Cup champion represents the extreme right of metro-sexualism, always polished, primped and pretty, newcomer Dario Franchitti is bringing some yang to Johnson's yin.

Franchitti is raw and rugged in both looks and persona, seemingly the opposite of Johnson in that light, but similar to him in other respects.

A champion in his own right (IndyCar, 2007), Franchitti has a reputation of being one of IndyCar's most intense personalities. En route to the championship last year, he was involved in not one, but two spectacular crashes, which occurred consecutively during the summer, and which both saw him get airborne and walk away unscathed.

The licensed helicopter pilot, who's Scottish by birth, is also married to a coveted woman, movie star Ashley Judd.

Recently, he showed NASCAR his true colors as he shared a story about how he stopped a man from trespassing on he and his wife's property.

"I was just sitting in the kitchen, eating a bowl of cereal in my boxer shorts," Franchitti said. "I looked up and some guy is standing in front of me. He just walked in the house.

"I really don't think I was the one he was looking for, but the guy quickly turned around and ran out of the house. He got in his car and sped off. So what did I do? I got in my car and chased him.

"The police caught up [to] the guy before I did. And apparently some people in the Nashville media also heard on the [police scanner] about it, so they were there, too. They came up to talk to me about the time I realized I was still in my boxer shorts. I had to stay in the car the whole time."

I don't think much would be shocking if it involved the wild boy Franchitti, while even the simplest things outside the ordinary are shocking for Johnson.

Like when he broke his arm in the off-season, Dec. 2006. Johnson was horsing around on a golf cart when he fell off and broke it. The official report that first came out tried to play it off as an unfortunate accident that happened when Johnson fell out of the cart on a sharp turn.

The truth came out a day later that he was in fact goofing off when it happened. Ack, Jimmie Johnson goofing off?!?! Is it possible? His PR machine didn't want it to seem that way.

Maybe he can take a cue from Franchitti and realize that it's ok to be colorful and a little bit wild. Let his hair down, wear a shirt that has a wrinkle, stop trimming and waxing his eyebrows, bring some personality.

Jeff and I just had the opportunity to experience the United States Air Force Thunderbirds up close and personal and all I can say is WOW.

What amazing pieces of machinery and what amazing folks within the squad. What a great way to showcase one of our nation's branches of the armed forces and represent all of our friends and loved ones who are fighting for our freedoms.

The F-16 jets that the pilots fly are so sleek and powerful. For the flyover at Sunday's 50th Running of the Daytona 500, six jets will be flying in formation overhead at speeds around 400 mph, perfectly sychronized only feet away from eachother. Adorned with America's colors - red, white and blue - the jets' arrival will be perfectly timed with the ending of the National Anthem.

Check out our pictures from the meet and greet on the homepage and watch for some amazing video footage coming soon from Jeff.

But most definitely DON'T MISS this display on Sunday.

Two successful drivers are back in action this weekend after being sidelined last year by racing-related injuries - injuries that would've made me think twice about getting back behind the wheel if not kept me away all together were I in their shoes.

Bobby Gerhart is back in his No. 5 Chevrolet for Saturday's ARCA 200 at Daytona after being taken out of championship contention in 2007. In July at Pocono Raceway, Gerhart was involved in an accident that resulted in a back and neck injury which sidelined him for the rest of the season.

He's making his comeback in an event where he's the defending winner, three races deep, on a track where he's won five races in total and four pole awards.

"I'm feeling great," Gerhart said. "I feel better now than I have in many years. 

"Aside of the injuries, we had a championship run going, and we had it yanked out from under us. It was tough. But through it all, I realized how lucky I am to be surrounded by so many people who care, and these are the things you learn when you go through something like this. It's been a long road, but I'm feeling really good."

Gerhart may have worked so hard for a comeback for one more chance to win what is the most important race for him - the Daytona 200.

But another driver who's been just as successful, if not more so in his own career, is making a comeback this weekend after an even more damaging accident and horrific season.

Fourteen-time Funny Car Champion John Force has little more to accomplish in his career if you look at the record books. He's won more races (125), won more championships and won more rounds (992) than Don Garlits, Shirley Muldowney and Don Prudhomme, combined. He also holds a record, that may never be broken, of qualifying for 395 consecutive races.

But for all the records, Force was not immune to a devastating season.

At the beginning of last year, Force's teammate, protege and friend Eric Medlen died in a testing accident in Florida. And in the midst of his 30th season in the sport, Force was involved in the most serious accident of his pro career, one that left him with broken bones in both hands and feet and serious tendon and ligament damage to a right knee already weakened by the effects of childhood polio.

That season changed his outlook on his career from one solely built on winning to one where he wants to make the sport that he's lived for safer for the next generation of drag racing stars. That next generation happens to directly include Force's daughter Ashley as well as his son-in-law, Robert Hight.

"I'm glad I crashed," Force said recently during one of the physical therapy sessions to which he religiously has adhered the last four months, "because so much good has come out of it. We spent 35 years out here and all we ever thought about was an E.T. (elapsed time) slip. Now we're making things safer for the next generation.

"This new car may not work," he continued, "but if I don't win a race this year, I won't complain. I don't want to be remembered for the most wins. I want to be the guy that made Eric Medlen's life count for something."

Force implemented several safety changes on his team's cars after Medlen's accident and attributes those changes to saving his own life during his accident. Additional changes were made to the car before this weekend's season opening CARQUEST Winternationals at Pomona Raceway.

No matter what the reason for these two driver's returns to their sport, they sure are driven to compete. Hopefully they can both return to their winning ways and show folks that with determination, so many obstacles can be overcome.

I ran into a gentleman the other day at Daytona International Speedway who had some great Grand Am sports car stories from his 25 years of employment with the track. The Rolex 24-Hour Endurance race is in its 46th year.

The one I found most interesting was to hear him tell of times before they ran the race under lights. Back in the day, the track lights were only used for NASCAR events, as the sports cars have headlights.

He told of how the cars' brakes would glow so hot heading into the road course section. In the darkness, infield spectators could see the brakes glowing yellow heading into the road course, then turning red and he said, even blue before the end of the infield road course.

Wow, that's crazy to me. He also explained to me how the pit crew members can change an axle in less than 12 minutes and the brake pads as well in record time. They have some special gloves that can handle the heat of the pads.

During the course of the race, teams are able to change virtually anything on the car except the engine and the chassis.

Maybe I'm just easily impressed, but that all sounds pretty amazing :)

Wish I could pull my car in for a quick service. Mind changing the oil too?