NASCAR NOTEBOOK News and notes

Unable to catch his boss: Jimmie Johnson would gladly have bumped his boss out of the way Sunday, if he could have caught him. Johnson, whose car is co-owned by Jeff Gordon and Rick Hendrick, finished second to Gordon in the Subway 500 at Martinsville Speedway, crossing the finish line about 5 car lengths behind. "Of course, I want to pass him," Johnson said. "Of course, I want to put a bumper on him. I wouldn't have wrecked him, but that's what I'm out there to do, race for the win. I'm racing him for points. I wouldn't have wrecked him, but I wish I could have gotten inside him and put on a good show and ended up the winner." Gordon, who is sixth in the season standings, moved within 40 points of fifth-place Johnson with four races remaining.
Tough weekend: Dale Jarrett crashed in qualifying last Friday, started from the rear of the 43-car field Sunday and spun twice during the race -- just your everyday 11th-place finish. "I thought we'd have a hard time running in the top 20," said Jarrett, a former series champion who is 26th in the season points standings. "We just struggled with this car." Jarrett said the backup Robert Yates Racing Ford was "nowhere close to a short-track car. But we just tried to make the most of it. It was just an interesting day, but we were able to have enough car on old tires that we could stay out there towards the end, and that worked in our favor."
Gas and go: NASCAR is fine-tuning its new "Lucky Dog" rule that gives a lap back to the highest-scored driver not on the lead lap when a caution flag comes out. Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway, a driver who gets a lap back will still pit with the cars a lap or more down before being allowed to pass the pace car. But he will no longer be allowed to come back in to top off his gas tank before the restart, taking away what was perceived as an advantage in this era of fuel economy runs. The original rule went into effect Sept. 21 at Dover as part of NASCAR's decision to no longer allow drivers to race back to the flagstand under caution.
Petty production: Director Callie Khouri said pre-production is well under way for a movie telling the story of NASCAR's Petty family. Lee Petty was a pioneer in the stock car sport, while his son, Richard, became a seven-time champion and the sport's greatest driver; his grandson, Kyle, is a longtime NASCAR driver, and grandson Adam was well on the way to a standout career before being killed in a crash in 2000. "It's a very emotional story and we'll have all four generations of Pettys in the script," Khouri said Sunday during a visit to Martinsville Speedway along with the movie's producers Lisa Stewart and Ian Bryce, writer John Warren and production designer David Homba. Khouri, a longtime screenwriter, won an Academy Award for her original screenplay "Thelma and Louise" in 1991. She made her debut as a director last year in "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood." The still untitled Petty family movie, which will be made by Walt Disney Studios, is scheduled to star Dennis Quaid as Richard Petty. Khouri said the next steps will be to complete casting and select locations for shooting. She said the movie could be released as early as February 2005.
-- Associated Press