NASCAR’s vice president of racing operations said on Monday it is doubtful the race would have been restarted after being stopped for rain on Lap 122 of a scheduled 188-lap event were it not for the sport’s new compressed-air drying system.

“If that was a year ago, it is highly doubtful that race gets restarted,” Steve O’Donnell told ESPN.com. “That track obviously is the toughest on the circuit to be able to dry. We were able to shave about an hour off [the drying process].”

Carl Edwards led when the race was red-flagged for about three hours and 36 minutes due to two storms that soaked the 2.66-mile track. The race ended under near darkness with one attempt at a green-white-checkered finish, which Ragan took advantage of to give Front Row Motorsports the unexpected win.

O’Donnell said Air Titan reduced the drying time from the normal three-plus hours to just under two. While that is not the 80 percent reduction officials hope to ultimately get from the device, they were pleased with the results that they believe would have been better had temperatures been warmer.

That the machine helped reduce moisture while rain continued, the first time it has been used in that situation, also was a positive.

“I’d give it a B,” O’Donnell said. “We got the race in, which is the ultimate goal.”

O’Donnell said it’s doubtful Saturday’s Nationwide Series race that had to be cut short by a few laps would have been run on the scheduled day at all were it not for the Air Titan. Looking at weather conditions in Talladega on Monday, he said the Cup and Nationwide races could have been pushed to as late as Tuesday.

“It definitely feels good to give fans a chance to see the finish of the race on Sunday instead of racing today when the weather was iffy as well,” O’Donnell said.

NASCAR has been using jet-fuel dryers since the mid-1970s. A few years ago, chairman Brian France challenged the Research and Development Center in Concord, N.C., to come up with a way to shorten drying time to lessen the inconvenience on fans and television partners.

The Air Titan concept was fast-forwarded after the 2012 Daytona 500 was postponed from Sunday to Monday.

The device was introduced during speed weeks prior to this year’s Daytona 500 where rain wasn’t an issue. It was used on a smaller scale at half-mile Martinsville Speedway to dry the track for the first day of practice.

But it wasn’t put to the full test until Saturday and Sunday at Talladega.

“We’ve got more work to do for sure,” O’Donnell said. “But the end goal is to ensure the fans that paid to see the race get to see it on the days scheduled. Obviously, we accomplished that.”

Air Titan works by using compressed air to push water off the racing surface and onto the track apron, where vacuum trucks remove the moisture. Jet dryers follow to blow off any excess water.

“We’re still in Phase 1,” O’Donnell said. “But we made some good progress. We’ve got to work on the power source to see how we can speed up the ability to get water off the track. Talladega really was the best test to date to see how it works under the worst conditions. Looking at the total drying time, we feel we cut an hour out of it, which ultimately enabled us to get back to racing.”

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The new nominees announced on Wednesday are 1999 Sprint Cup champion and ESPN analyst Dale Jarrett, engine builder Maurice Petty, Speedway Motorsports Inc. chairman Bruton Smith, 1960 Cup champion Rex White and five-time NASCAR weekly series national champion Larry Phillips.

Jarrett is the son of two-time Cup champion Ned Jarrett, a member of the 2011 Hall of Fame class. Dale Jarrett won 32 times, including three Daytona 500s.

Petty was the chief engine builder for Petty Enterprises. He is the brother of Hall of Famer Richard Petty, a seven-time Winston Cup champion and NASCAR’s all-time winner with 200 victories.

Smith built Charlotte Motor Speedway and is known as an innovator among track owners, introducing condominiums, VIP suites and club-like restaurants to the sport. As the chairman of SMI, he owns eight tracks that host 12 Cup events.

“It is a great honor to be nominated as a candidate for the NASCAR Hall of Fame,” Smith said in a release. “Bill France Jr. once asked me to help him build NASCAR and I have literally been building monuments to the sport for my entire lifetime. Millions of people have attended NASCAR events at our speedways over the years and we’ve tried to be creative and innovative in an effort to help push the sport to a higher level. It’s always been a perfect fit for me because I love racing and I love NASCAR fans.”

White was considered one of the sport’s most consistent drivers, recording top-five finishes in nearly half of his 233 races. He finished outside the top 10 only 30 percent of the time in collecting 28 wins.

Phillips won an amazing 226 times en route to an unprecedented five wins in NASCAR’s Whelen All-American Series.

The five nominees join 20 others previously selected by a 21-person nominating committee.

The five 2014 inductees will be selected from the list of 25 by a 54-member voting panel for the Hall’s fifth class on May 22.

The entire list of 25 includes:

• Red Byron: First champion in NASCAR’s premier series now known as the Sprint Cup series in 1949.

• Richard Childress: 11-time car owner champion in NASCAR’s three national series, including six with Dale Earnhardt in the Cup series.

• Jerry Cook: Six-time NASCAR Modified champion.

• H. Clay Earles: Founder of Martinsville Speedway.

• Tim Flock — Two-time Cup series champion.

• Ray Fox: Legendary engine builder and owner of cars driven by Buck Baker, Junior Johnson and others.

• Anne Bledsoe France: Helped build the sport with husband, Bill France Sr.

• Rick Hendrick: 13-time car owner champion in NASCAR’s three national series.

• Jack Ingram: Two-time champion in NASCAR’s second-tier series (now Nationwide) and three-time Late Model Sportsman champion.

• Bobby Isaac: 1970 Cup champion.

• Dale Jarrett: 1999 Cup champion and three-time Daytona 500 winner.

• Fred Lorenzen — Winner of 26 Cup races, including the Daytona 500 and World 600.

• Raymond Parks: NASCAR’s first champion car owner.

• Benny Parsons: 1973 Cup champion.

• Maurice Petty: Chief engine builder for Petty Enterprises.

• Larry Phillips: Only five-time NASCAR Whelen All-American Series national champion.

• Les Richter: Former NASCAR executive, former president of Riverside International Raceway.

• Fireball Roberts: 33 Cup wins, including the 1962 Daytona 500, and the sport’s first true superstar.

• T. Wayne Robertson: Helped raise NASCAR popularity as R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company senior vice president.

• Wendell Scott: First and only black driver to win a Cup race in 1964.

• Ralph Seagraves: Formed Winston-NASCAR partnership as an executive with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.

• O. Bruton Smith: Builder of Charlotte Motor Speedway and chairman of Speedway Motorsports Inc. that owns eight NASCAR tracks that host 12 Cup events.

• Curtis Turner: Early personality known as the “Babe Ruth of stock car racing.”

• Joe Weatherly: Two-time Cup champion.

• Rex White: 1960 Cup champion.

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“What I know is when the racing is tighter and there’s more passing, there’s just more excitement and more contact and more things that happen,” France told ESPN.com Tuesday as the Sprint Cup Series heads into its first off weekend. “That’s kind of what NASCAR is all about.

“Kind of what happened on Sunday was a prototype event for how we would look what a good event ought to look like.”

Hamlin suffered a compression fracture to a vertebra in his lower back when he crashed hard into a concrete barrier while battling former Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Joey Logano for the lead on the last lap. He is expected to miss six weeks.

It was the second time in two weeks the drivers were involved in an on-track incident. Hamlin spun Logano out while Logano raced Jeff Gordon for the lead a week earlier at Bristol.

But France said he has no plans to talk to them about settling their feud.

“No, because what they did, notwithstanding that Denny got injured, what they did in the last 20 laps is exactly what we would have expected them to do,” France said. “This is a contact sport. It’s always been a contact sport, especially late in the race.

“They were going at it. It probably didn’t hurt the competitiveness that both drivers didn’t want the other one to win. They also did want to win themselves. That’s how NASCAR racing goes. We won’t be having any conversation with them.”

But Hamlin’s crash raised the question of why there weren’t SAFER barriers on the inside retaining wall where his car hit, and why tracks aren’t required to have SAFER barriers everywhere.

France said NASCAR is studying Hamlin’s crash carefully, and that if experts recommend SAFER barriers are needed where it occurred, the governing body will make that recommendation to the track.

But France said the solution is not as simple as putting barriers everywhere.

“The reason, there’s not a one-solution-fits-all-problem with the wall,” he said. “Some walls, it might sling the car back into the racing groove at the wrong time. They’ll never put SAFER barriers up everywhere because that’s not the best approach.

“If the current approach can be improved, we’re certainly going to do that. We’re looking at the accident that Denny had very carefully.”

France has been busier than usual to start the season. He met with reigning champion Brad Keselowski in late February to discuss questionable comments the Penske Racing driver made in a newspaper article.

Then came a suspension of Nationwide Series driver Jeremy Clements for using a racial slur in front of an MTV reporter, followed by a $25,000 fine to Hamlin for criticizing the new Gen-6 car and the quality of racing at Phoenix.

France acknowledged it was primarily his decision to penalize Hamlin, and he stood by that decision.

“There’s always going to be, when we make decisions that are not black and white per se, we’re always going to have people all over the organization that may not have made that call,” France said. “But I did. I’m crystal clear with everybody about where the line is, what we can accept, and about how the sport is going today.

“And that is we give more latitude than any professional sport to criticize, speak their mind and say whatever they want. We encourage it, actually, including criticism that gets directed at us. But when the driver . . . begins to call out the quality of the racing or the rules packages, we have to make that call or opinions will shape what may not be reality.”

France met with Hamlin, who dropped his right to appeal the fine, and believes they are on the same page now.

France also believes the quality of racing is better than ever with the new car. He didn’t rule out tweaks in the future or a change in the package for restrictor-plate racing at Daytona and Talladega, but overall he is pleased.

“It’s hard to argue with five different winners and all the manufacturers seem to have a fair opportunity and they’re all in the winner’s circle,” he said. “And there’s a lot more passing.

“But I think it’s too early to say we’ve got the perfect package. That’s always going to be a work in progress.”

There have been 147 green-flag passes for the lead in 2013, up from 122 after five races a year ago and down from 203 in 2011 and 298 in 2010.

France also noted that television ratings in general are up, another sign the sport is headed in the right direction.

“We have some momentum,” he said. “Some really good things have happened to us. We all know ratings are still driven by storylines and matchups in a given weekend. You saw that last weekend where basketball ratings were up because they had better matchups than they’ve had or Tiger Woods was on the leaderboard [in golf].

“We’ll just keep working on what we can do. If we have close, great racing like we have, then the ratings will take care of themselves. For all the things that could have gone wrong with the new car and a new season, a lot of good things went really well and we’re pleased with that.”

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The deal represents a strong return for the Senators, considering Conacher has been one of the most impressive rookies in the NHL and can immediately join the Senators’ lineup during their playoff push.

The 5-foot-8 Conacher has nine goals and 15 assists this season and is second among all rookies with 24 points, only one behind Florida’s Jonathan Huberdeau.

But in Bishop, the Lightning immediately address their goaltending issues. The 6-foot-7 Bishop has been effective in Ottawa while playing for the injured Craig Anderson, posting a record of 8-5-0 with a .922 save percentage and 2.45 goals-against average.

The deal gives the Lightning another option at goalie for starter Anders Lindback, who has been inconsistent in his first season as an NHL starter. Lindback is recovering from an ankle injury and hasn’t played since March 20.

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Luongo showed his frustration with his contract and his current status as a backup goaltender Wednesday during a news conference with the Vancouver media.

“My contract sucks — that’s what’s the problem,” Luongo said. “I’d scrap it if I could now.”

“I think that he was very emotional,” Canucks general manager Mike Gillis said. “I think these days are emotional for everybody. I think he said that in a highly emotional state. I’d like to give him the opportunity to catch his breath and have a discussion with him.”

Luongo will spend the remainder of the season in Vancouver and will back up starter Cory Schneider, who has seized the starting job with a 2.27 goals-against average and .922 save percentage.

A three-time All-Star, Luongo hasn’t started a game since March 18.

“It’s a tough situation for everybody, no doubt,” Luongo said following Wednesday’s 3 p.m. ET trade deadline. “We’re obviously trying to make the best out of it and making sure that what’s best for both sides is done. Obviously, the time isn’t now, and we’ll have to wait.”

Luongo acknowledged that the remaining nine years on his contract made a trade especially challenging. His average salary cap hit is $5.33 million per season.

“I do feel obligated to trade Roberto and get him into a position where he’s happy,” Gillis said. “The needs of our team also play a role in this. Trying to balance them is a difficult thing. We’ve been doing that for six months.”

According to ESPN.com’s Pierre LeBrun, the Maple Leafs had discussions with the Canucks regarding Luongo, but the two sides couldn’t find a match. Luongo can reject any deal but claimed that it never came to that, even though he was pulled from practice early Wednesday.

“There was obviously some teams that were interested,” Luongo said. “Nothing ever materialized to a point where I had to give a decision whether I was going to waive or not. What the future holds is something you try not to think about.”

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The first mistake was bumping Logano too hard on Lap 349 in retaliation for the way the Penske Racing driver raced him earlier. The bump sent Logano into a spin when he was battling Jeff Gordon for the lead and ruined any chance he had of contending for the victory.

The second was for attacking Logano personally after a postrace shoving match between the crews that began when Logano approached Hamlin at his car.

“He said he was coming for me,” Hamlin said after the incident. “I usually don’t see him, so it’s not a factor.”

On the first mistake, Hamlin said he was trying to send Logano a message with a tap after Logano pinched down on him too hard earlier.

“I felt bad, and really if you could watch my in-car camera, you could see how frustrated I was to see he had damage to his car,” Hamlin said before the first practice at Auto Club Speedway. “I banged the steering wheel because I was, ‘Man, I didn’t mean to do that.'”

Hamlin said that gave the impression he was trying to “bully” Logano, which he was not.

“I wish the cameras would see what happened before the contact you saw on TV,” he said. “That frustrates me the most. I’m not trying to bully Joey around because of performance.”

Then came what Hamlin called “the big mistake.”

“At the end of the race I shouldn’t have degraded him as a driver,” he said. “It’s not my job to say who’s good or bad in our sport. That part probably should have been left out.”

Hamlin and Logano haven’t communicated since a battle of words Sunday night on Twitter. Logano indicated the issue that began at the Daytona 500 with Hamlin criticizing his driving wasn’t over.

“I feel like I’ve told him everything I can tell him,” Logano told ESPN.com earlier in the week. “I’ve got nothing to say.”

Hamlin considers the issue over because they haven’t talked.

“He has my phone number, and I have his,” he said. “I assume when Bristol is over with it’s over with unless spoken to otherwise. I voiced to him he had my number. If he had a problem with anything that went on, then we could talk about it. I’m assuming by no contact it’s over at this point.”

Logano said he is still upset over what happened.

“Until anyone says anything to me personally, no, it’s not over,” said Logano.

Hamlin isn’t concerned that Logano will retaliate Sunday.

“I don’t believe so,” Hamlin said. “We both have the same goal in mind. The first thing is you need to win races. The second thing is you need to make the Chase. Messing with each other on the racetrack is a huge distraction for that. You cannot do your job a hundred percent the way you’re supposed to if you’re constantly worried about somebody else.

“My guess is going into this weekend and beyond he’s going to be worried about his program and I’m going to be worried about mine.”

Logano said winning races, not wrecking Hamlin, is his top priority.

“You remember things like that, obviously,” he said of what happened at Bristol. “You don’t go out there aiming for somebody. Obviously, I’m out there to win races and run for a championship.

“But at the same time, you don’t forget what happened. You don’t forget three years down the road what happened. It’s always there. That’s the case for everybody I would assume.”

Logano said he and Hamlin weren’t buddies away from the track during his four years in the No. 20 Cup car at JGR. Hamlin said nothing went on in their relationship that would lead to what has happened this season.

“I felt like [it was] an OK relationship off the racetrack as teammates,” Hamlin said. “On the racetrack, we didn’t go to him for as much information as they probably came to us. I think at times during our tenure as teammates he felt like I probably raced him too hard at times. There was times when I felt he raced me too hard as teammates.

“That went back and forth a little bit behind the scenes, but definitely not the displeasure for each other like we’ve seen the first few races this year.”

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The Hurricanes will receive a sixth-round draft pick if the Penguins win the Stanley Cup this year, a source told ESPN.com’s Pierre LeBrun.

The acquisition of Jokinen is the latest improvement made recently by the Penguins, who also have added Jarome Iginla, Brenden Morrow and Douglas Murray ahead of Wednesday’s NHL trade deadline.

Jokinen, who turned 30 on Monday, has six goals and five assists in 33 games this season, his fourth full campaign with the Hurricanes.

Hurricanes general manager Jim Rutherford confirmed the trade on his official Twitter account.

An eight-year veteran, Jokinen has 121 goals and 225 assists in 569 career games with Carolina, Tampa Bay and Dallas. He enjoyed his best season in 2009-10, when he scored a career-high 30 goals with the Hurricanes.

“We thank Jussi for his great service to our organization during the last five years,” Rutherford tweeted. “This deal is important for our team’s financial flexibility moving forward.”

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General manager Steve Barkdoll told ESPN.com the 21-year-old younger brother of Cup driver Martin Truex, Jr. also will drive in the June 2 Cup race at Dover and the July 27 Nationwide Series race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Truex will be the fourth driver in the No. 51 Chevrolet that is a surprising eight in owner’s point when he gets to Richmond.

Regan Smith, who is scheduled for eight to 10 races while driving a fulltime Nationwide schedule for JR Motorsports, was seventh in the Daytona 500. AJ Allmendinger, who will be in the car this weekend at Auto Club Speedway in California, was 11th at Phoenix and 13th this past week at Bristol.

Austin Dillon was 21st at Las Vegas.

Allmendinger was scheduled to drive for James Finch’s single-car team based out of Spartanburg, S.C., on April 7 at Martinsville and May 26 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. But because of his IndyCar schedule for Penske Racing, he will be replaced in those events by Smith.

Barkdoll said the decision to put Truex in the car at Richmond and Dover was made “because he’s got talent and we’re trying different things.”

“This year is kind of open to a lot of things,” said Barkdoll, noting the 51 is unsponsored for Sunday’s race. “We think Ryan has some talent. He’s done some testing for some other teams and has done well.”

Truex ran the Truck Series opener at Daytona for owner Turner Scott Motorsports and hopes to run more races in that series. He started ninth but crashed and finished 28th. Truex won the K&N Pro Series East in 2009 and 2010, winning five of 21 races.

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Kolb was set to make a $2 million bonus if he was still on the club’s roster Saturday. He also had a $9 million base salary for this season.

Kolb’s future in Arizona became even cloudier Wednesday when the team agreed to a three-year contract with quarterback Drew Stanton.

Thanks to injuries and his unsteady play, Kolb appeared in just six games with the Cardinals last season, throwing for 1,169 yards with eight touchdowns and three interceptions.

Kolb, 28, threw for 17 touchdowns and 11 interceptions in two seasons with Arizona after being acquired from the Philadelphia Eagles. He was a 2007 second-round pick of the Eagles.

Star wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald, in an interview with ESPN Radio’s “SVP and Russillo” show Thursday, said he has confidence that new coach Bruce Arians would improve the team’s quarterback situation.

The Cardinals, whose offense ranked dead last in the NFL last season, also have tendered an offer to quarterback Brian Hoyer.

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NASCAR suspended Clements for using the “n-word” in a Feb. 23 conversation with MTV blogger Marty Beckerman at Daytona International Speedway.

Clements was informed of his reinstatement after completing a session of racial insensitivity counseling with Dr. Richard Lapchick, the director of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, on Monday.
“We’re pleased that Jeremy has taken these important steps and will return to racing starting this weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway,” Steve ODonnell, NASCAR senior vice president of racing operations, said Wednesday.

The 28-year-old driver, who runs the No. 51 for his family-owned team in Spartanburg, S.C., will be back on the track for Saturday’s race after missing the past two events at Phoenix and Las Vegas.

“It’s been a tough time for me for sure,” Clements told ESPN.com. “I learned a lot from that class. I learned a lot about different words, stuff I didn’t know before.

“I learned a great deal about that and myself, how it affects everything that has to do with family, friends, church, sponsors and the team. I’m excited to be back in the race car. Nothing like that will ever happen again.”

Clements said he used the slur as an adjective during a conversation with Beckerman and in the presence of a NASCAR public relations person who was looking for directions to Johanna Long’s hauler.

He has since apologized to Beckerman, who was at DIS writing a piece for his Guy Code blog, the PR person and others he may have offended by his remark.

He said the comment was not meant to be racist in any way, that it was just a word some use in the racing community he grew up around to describe a driver “roughing somebody up.”

Beckerman confirmed in an MTV news article that Clements didn’t direct the word at another driver, that he was illustrating that “if you drive roughly, you’ll be treated roughly.”

While not making excuses, Clements acknowledged it is a word he hears in rap music and movies all the time.

“There is no use for that word in our sport,” Clements said. NASCAR in a statement referred to the comment as an “intolerable and insensitive remark” that violated the sanctioning body’s Code of Conduct for actions detrimental to stock car racing.

The rulebook prohibits any “public statement” that criticizes, ridicules or otherwise disparages another person based on race, color, creed, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, religion, age or handicapping condition.

The comment came at a time when the sport was celebrating the first woman, Danica Patrick, winning the pole for the Daytona 500 and the arrival of black driver Darrell Wallace Jr. into a full-time Truck Series ride.

“We want as many different fans as we can get,” Clements said. “We want a diverse set of fans and people to be in the sport. I definitely don’t want people turned away from [NASCAR] just because that word was used one time.

“I definitely wasn’t very smart about it.”

Lapchick’s class cost Clements $2,400, plus travel expenses. One of his sponsors wanted to pay the fee, but Clements said he wouldn’t accept it.

Clements said the slur cost him one sponsor for one race. He said two more are waiting to see if there is any further backlash before committing.

“It just affects a lot of stuff, losing the sponsor, not being in the car,” he said. “We’re going to get through it. It seems to be the end of it. I just want to get back to racing and get over this.”

While he has picked up a lot of new followers on Twitter and Facebook since the suspension was announced, Clements said this is not what he or his underfunded race team wants to be remembered for.

“I don’t want to be associated with it one bit,” he said. “It’s embarrassing. I’ve been to schools [to speak] where there’s mostly African-American kids and talked to them and tried to get them to come to races. To think if they saw this … it’s embarrassing to me.

“I want to be the role model I was trying to shoot for before all this.”

Clements also doesn’t want to be forced to sit again. The only other time his racing career was sidetracked came in 2004, when a torque arm broke in his ARCA car, causing the drive shaft to pull out of the transmission and fly into the cockpit. The drive shaft shattered Clements’ right hand, resulting in 12 operations that sidelined him for a year.

“I think everyone deserves a second chance,” Clements said. “You’ve got to look at a person’s record. I’ve never been in trouble with NASCAR at all before this. It’s a shame it had to end like that with the suspension, but I would like to think it won’t hurt my future.

“I want to make the best of it I can and have people say he did the right thing, he did the best job with what he had and move on.”

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