Thirty-eight thoughts for digestion at your annual TD Bank 250 tailgate party, while we all root for a good, clean race and zero humidity at Oxford Plains Speedway:

1. Kyle Busch will win a heat no matter what starting position he draws, and he’ll be leading the main event by lap 10.

2. Putting customers first didn’t stop Jeff Taylor from getting his own ride back together in time for the big show. Maybe his chain-reaction wreck with New Jersey youngster Daniel Khilall in the most recent Saturday night points race means that the nine-time OPS champion Taylor finally got his annual kick in the, uh, lower abdomen out of the way BEFORE the 250.

3. The celebrated heat races have been relatively tame — check that, non-descript — the past few years. Here’s hoping race control borrows a page from the playbook of NASCAR’s Mike Helton and Robin Pemberton and takes a “boys, have at it” tone at the drivers’ meeting.

4. I’ll bet you the value of the fading signature Kyle Busch scrawled on your shoulder blade Friday afternoon that the attendance at today’s race will dwarf the number that walked through the gates for Saturday night’s PASS race. That’s not a weigh-in on the late model vs. super late model debate that refuses to die. It’s a tribute to the 250, which will prove again that’s an event with a life of its own.

5. Celebrity drivers I’d love to see at the 250 in the next five years, if I were allowed to spend promoter Bill Ryan’s money: Juan Pablo Montoya, Kasey Kahne, Tony Stewart, Ryan Newman and Carl Edwards.

6. What’s that? Dale Earnhardt Jr., you say? Hey, he’s Bill Ryan, not Donald Trump.

7. My favorite 250 is still my first one: Mike Rowe’s victory over Robbie Crouch and Butch Lindley in 1984. Eleven years into it and nobody from Maine could win the darn thing. It seemed right for the King of Oxford to be the first.

8. Barring an unforeseen last-minute offer, there won’t be a Rowe in today’s race. That isn’t the same as having nobody named Petty or Allison in the Daytona 500 because age and untimely deaths intervened. Mike and Ben are still active racers. Not blaming anybody. It’s just … weird. And made weirder by both of them competing in Saturday’s super late model race.

9. NASCAR Sprint Cup racing would stink a lot less if even one race out of 36 would use the 250 format. Draw for starting position. Run 20-lap heats. Have the main event the same night. Fly home safely.

10. I get a kick out of the upstart races that have tried to upstage or replace the 250, just in the last 10 years. It’ll never happen. If and when the 250 ever dies, it dies. Bob Bahre was a genius with a vision. You could never start this race today. The sport has changed too much.

11. Quietly missed at this year’s race is five-time OPS Late Model champion Travis Adams. He has retired from the sport with little fanfare at the ripe old age of 33, giving his complete attention to his family. Great racer. Better man.

12. Am I the only person who would pay the price of a ticket to see Geoff Bodine introduced to the 250 crowd, just to hear how loudly astute, experienced fans would boo him after 30 years?

13. Nice work by OPS officials giving fans multiple opportunities to meet Busch and get his autograph. Other drivers have been ushered in here, introduced on Sunday and given a 30-second, sponsor-laden sound bite on a finicky wireless microphone with zero crowd interaction. If you’re going to use the name to sell the race, the spectators deserve a chance to say hello.

14. For every 250 champion who used the win as the ultimate career springboard, there’s another who faded into obscurity just as quickly. Jeremie Whorff (2006) and Roger Brown (2007) already are out of racing, a consequence of their family teams folding. The sport gives, and the sport takes away.

15. Waste of a perfectly good tree: The 250 pole award. You happened to draw a number that put you in the first heat, and you won it. Big whoop. Five other guys won their heat, too.

16. No, this race is not on TV or radio. It hasn‘t been since 1992 and it never will be again. If you’re working or otherwise tied to a location that isn’t in the OPS bleachers, follow our blog at sunjournal.com from noon to whenever. It’s interactive, it’s live, and it truly is the next-best thing to being there.

17. The car count is what makes the 250 great. Twenty of the drivers who will start today’s heats won’t have any business being there, however.

18. Heck, no, I’m not going to mention any names. Although if you scroll back up to the top I suppose I already did.

19. Talked to a half-dozen local drivers at media day, and they all made nice when talking about racing against Busch. Their bite better be more scary than their bark, or none of them will win this race.

20. You didn’t hear it from me, but we’re due for a caution-fest. Too many clean years in a row.

21. Jamie Aube is entered. His name doesn’t mean much to fans under 35, and his two championships came a lifetime and at least three sanctioning body changes ago. But there’s something about him being here that’s super cool.

22. Let’s start a pool on the time between the final checkered flag of the last-chance races and the green flag of the 250. Put my name down next to 71 minutes.

23. Key line, all capitalized, in the 250 rulebook: UNDER CAUTION, CARS IN THE PIT WILL NOT LOSE A LAP.

24. I HATE THIS RULE. I suppose it throws a bone to parity and gives Joe Throttle and his three-man volunteer pit crew a fighting chance to change four tires and turn a wrench during a mid-race caution. But I’ve seen it taken advantage of, to the level of absurdity, too many times in other wannabe 250s at other tracks over the years.

25. It’s still better than the competition yellow at lap 125 of the 2008 race. I know, there were puddles on pit road. They dried up.

26. Dave Dion, Mike Rowe, Ralph Nason, Eddie MacDonald. That could be the list of three-time 250 champions at the end of the night. The three elders were either colorful or polarizing characters, or both. Eddie Mac is just smooth. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone boo him. Couldn’t fathom it, really. Maybe he’s the perfect face of the 250 for the Jimmie Johnson era.

27. I successfully picked MacDonald to win the race each of the last two years. This makes it hard to dredge up the self-deprecating humor that once made the Sunday-of-250-weekend column infamous.

28. Finishing last in the 250 is like being a 20-game loser as a major league pitcher: You have to be good to be that bad. Some of the giants who have won the booby prize over the years: Adams, Dale Shaw, Robbie Crouch, Jeff Stevens, Kevin Lepage, Ron Bouchard, Dick McCabe, Kelly Moore, Tommy Houston and Al Hammond.

29. Racing death that bothers me most out of the ones I didn’t witness in person: Scott Fraser, snowmobile accident, 2004. Damn, he was a great racer.

30. My guess on the number of cars that will attempt to qualify (written prior to the opening of the pit gate Saturday): 82.

31. The 250 is still the only race that’s ever had Richard Petty and soap actor/one-hit wonder pop star Michael Damian as grand marshals in back-to-back years.

32. Whatever happened to Karen Schulz?

33. That $100-per-lap-led carrot-on-a-stick hasn’t grown since the 1980s, but it’s still enough money in the eyes of the average racer at this level to determine who wins and who doesn’t.

34. You can be pro-life about Busch running this race and pro-euthanasia about him cherry picking the Nationwide and Camping World Truck series. They’re not inconsistent positions. One action helps to keep this race thriving. The other is killing NASCAR’s feeder system.

35. I successfully picked the 250 winner in print once in my first 17 tries. Guys used to offer me money, food and beer NOT to pick them, And I didn’t take any of it. Far as you know.

36. Busch will win, which means you’ll get Elliott Sadler or Paul Menard for a “big name” next year. 2. Brian Hoar. 3. Joey Polewarczyk Jr. 4. Shawn Martin. 5. Brent Dragon.

37. Reverse psychology? Or an honest attempt to dazzle you with my prophetic powers for the third straight year?

38. I’ll never tell.

Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. He will attend his 28th consecutive TD Bank 250 on Sunday. His email is [email protected].