Kyle Busch and his crew had all three elements necessary to win the pole for Saturday night's Sprint All-Star Race -- speed on the race track, speed on and off pit road and speed from the pit crew during the mandatory green-flag stop at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Like so many other aspects of his early racing career, Dale Earnhardt Jr. made winning NASCAR's All-Star Race look all too easy during his first attempt at it in 2000.

Marcos Ambrose was answering questions in the media center at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Friday when he heard the roar of race cars on the 1.5-mile track just outside.

Kurt Busch and Ryan Newman were teammates at Penske Racing for three seasons, and their most notable moment during that tenure was the former pushing the latter to a victory in the Daytona 500. They were friends, Busch said. But after last weekend's saga at Darlington Raceway, that may not be the case anymore.

It begins with the sound of an electronic bell and the whir of impact wrenches, and ends with six men huffing and puffing to push a 3,400-pound stock car across an arena floor to the finish line. The Sprint Pit Crew Challenge brought thousands of enthusiastic fans and plenty of NASCAR insiders to Time Warner Cable Arena on Thursday night, to watch over-the-wall specialists ply their trade in a competition that paid more than $80,000 to the winning team.