One Hot Summer of 'Boys, Have At It' NASCAR Highlights

The leaves are changing, and pretty soon it will be getting dark at 5 p.m. and the holidays will be hurtling at us.

We've still got five races to go in NASCAR's Chase to the Sprint Cup championship, and four more in the Nationwide series.

But on this rather slow Wednesday at the halfway point of the Chase, we thought we'd jump back into the summer for a review of some of the highlights and lowlights of those long, sunny, hot days of June, July and August.

The 2010 season will be remembered as a year that the economic downturn hit NASCAR hard, with vast swaths of empty seats at many race tracks. Even Bristol doesn't sell out anymore.

But NASCAR Vice President of Competition Robin Pemberton's open invitation of "Boys, have at it" in January had its effects, too, and throughout the season, the drivers showed a far greater willingness to mix it up on the track, and the NASCAR police stood down and let 'em race.

The results include these top-five candidates below.

"His Wife Wears the Firesuit in the Family ..."

The spinout of Joey Logano by Kevin Harvick at Pocono race occurred in early June, a couple of weeks before summer, but it produced the best heat-of-the-moment quote of the 2010 season thus far, so we're starting here. Logano's quip about Harvick comes at the 3:50 mark of the video. Kevin Harvick Inc. tacitly acknowledged the superior nature of the quote by quickly emblazoning "I wear the firesuit in this family" on its line of women's tops.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Wins in the Wrangler No. 3 Car

Two of our summer highlights come from the Nationwide series, including Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s stirring victory in the Nationwide race at Daytona International Speedway on Independence Day weekend.

No matter the size, every crowd at every track cheers loudest when NASCAR's most popular driver is in the thick of the fray, battling for the lead.

The Big One in the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona

What better for the NASCAR economy than to keep the body shop guys at all the race shops gainfully employed. The competitors certainly did their part in the Coke Zero 400, with three two-car crashes, a pair of three-car crashes, a four-car crash and the big one -- 19 cars in a riot of crunching sheet metal, smoke, steam and tire rubber in turn three on lap 148.

Twenty-eight of the 43 drivers were involved in one crash or another, and seven of them managed to get involved in two of the incidents.

The Hardest Crash of the Summer

One of the minor story lines this week is the trouble Elliott Sadler has been having finding a ride for 2011. It doesn't help things that he's been involved in a series leading 14 yellow flags for spins or crashes.

But none of the incidents compared to the crash he had at Pocono in July, when he went head-on into an Armco-lined earthen berm, hitting it about as hard as an earthen berm can be hit. Sadler had the wind knocked out of him and was sore afterward but otherwise unhurt in a crash he said NASCAR officials told him was the hardest they'd ever recorded.

Taking 'Boys, Have At It' to the Limit

Carl Edwards tested the boundaries of NASCAR's new, more freewheeling racing policy when, seeing that he was beaten coming off the fourth turn, intentionally turned Brad Keselowski in front of the field, causing a massive, dangerous wreck.

Edwards paid no price for his actions, except perhaps in his standing among the fans.

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