GM Boss: Gibbs Should Have Stayed A Redskin

General Motors CEO and Chairman Rick Wagoner has really big issues to deal with every day, but that doesn't mean he doesn't sneak a little time every weekend to check out NASCAR to see how well his Chevys are doing. So it should be expected that he most likely wasn't too happy when Kyle Busch's No. 18 Toyota won last weekend's Kobalt Tools 500, becoming the first import to win a major NASCAR race. And don't even get him going about Tony Stewart's No. 20 Toyota coming in second, besting Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s No. 88 Chevy. Asked over a breakfast fruit plate Tuesday morning how two imports could beat the homegrown cars, Wagoner kiddingly took aim at the Washington Redskins and Joe Gibbs Racing, which Busch and Stewart drive for. "It must be something to do with you giving your football coach up and letting him run a racing team," he said, a reference to Gibbs leaving the Redskins this year to rejoin his racing outfit. "I just look forward to next week," he said.

He also talked about a couple of other non-auto issues.

On the Eliot Spitzer scandal, he made a joke about his hotel accommodations in Washington last night, a reference to the New York guv allegedly hooking up with a call girl at the posh Mayflower Hotel. After arriving at the airport, he asked his driver: "Where am I staying tonight? I hope it's not the Mayflower."

On a possible Michigan do-over primary for Democrats, he indicated that his Motown workers would like a second chance to weigh in. "I think it's fair to say our people would want to feel like they have a voice in the process, so sort of disallowing the votes would probably rumple the feathers," he said of the party's action. "It doesn't seem like where we are today is a very good final solution," he said.

By Paul Bedard