There have been lots of NASCAR babies born this year (Kevin Harvick even got his baby boy a firesuit already).

And now we have a new player in the baby boom – Denny Hamlin. He announced Friday that his girlfriend Jordan Fish was pregnant, and “it's going to be exciting to be a dad."

Congrats. It certainly will be exciting Denny, as i can attest after raising my daughter for the past year.

I just have a word of warning to Denny is his unique situation here, being famous and all.
Get used to the Bible thumpers calling you out on not being married. I and most rational Americans don’t care, as I recognize marriage is not the requirement for having kids it used to be decades ago, and people are free to live their lives as they see fit.

But I’m pretty sure some of the holier side of the NASCAR fan base might object.

The question was already asked once actually, as if it was assumed a wedding was coming. And Hamlin very tactfully brushed it aside.

Asked if he had set a wedding date (a pretty ridiculous query, since he never said he intended to get married), he replied: “Especially now that all of this is going on and you want to be patient and everything. I am 31, so I consider myself pretty patient if I haven't been married yet. There's no reason to rush into it right now especially with everything that is going on. We've obviously got a busy six months ahead of us."

Good answer, and if asked again, I suggest you simply say: "None of your business"

A ride for Allmendinger?

While his NASCAR career is likely in shambles for the near future, that does not mean A.J. Allmedinger is completely on the outs. Grand-Am car owner Michael Shank said once A.J. completes his Road to Recovery program, he is welcome in a ride on his team. (A.J. won the Rolex 24 with Shank this past January, so you can see why he would want him back, despite the recent troubles Allmendinger has found.)

"He has to go through the Road to Recovery - which we all accept and we all agree with," Shank said. "That process, I'm told, can take anywhere from a month to three months. We'll be testing in Daytona in October and November with the Daytona prototype and some new stuff we have from Ford Racing coming. If that's the case, as soon as NASCAR says it's been satisfied, we'll get him back in."

Montoya: Surprise pole winner

I’m guessing that before the race, no one thought Juan Pablo Montoya would win the pole.
But he did, and even he was surprised

“To be honest with you, I’m not sure if I’m more shocked that we’re on the pole right now, how the last few races have been for us and how hard our season has been, or that I’m on the pole in Pocono. This is a place where I struggle in qualifying. It’s big. This is a big boost for everybody on the Target team. We’ve been working so hard and we really need a little bit of light. We know we’re working in the right direction. We feel the cars are getting a little better. But to actually get out there and get a pole is big. I just went to the hauler and to ‘Shine’ (crew chief, Chris Heroy) and all the engineers and they’re all happy and laughing. I’ve seen a lot of long faces and a lot of stressful faces and we really needed something like this as a company and this is big for us.”

He said a good run Sunday is very possible, but they have to do everything right and it won’t be easy.

“I know tomorrow is going to be a reality check that we’ve still got to work on it a lot. But, the race hasn’t even started and we haven’t seen how the car works in clean air. We know there’s a lot of really strong cars but you make the right strategy and if you get track position, we’ve shown we’ve got the speed. So, we’ll see. I’m really open-minded about tomorrow. I told people it’s today and let’s enjoy today. I think we’ve done our homework yesterday in race trim and we know where we need to go with the car, so we’ll see.

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