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MARTINSVILLE -- The rain poured here Saturday, and the creeks rose and the red-clay valley filled with noise.

Racing returned to its roots this weekend in the midst of a chase no one seems all that interested in watching, a sport waning in the shadow of its own success and showing signs for the first time ever that all might not be well.

Of course, there have been times when all was not well before. But we just weren't shown the signs. This week, amid the rain and mud and swirling colors of half-mile madness on the banks of the Marrowbone, things got all stirred up by some unexpected characters and we were given a brief glimpse behind NASCAR's curtain.

We saw about what we thought we would see.

Our own Dustin Long is the cause of all this. He's a troublemaker from way back, a holdover from the days when the garage area was crawling with reporters like Dustin. There was a time when NASCAR was the best-reported sport in the world, bar none, and racing was a cauldron of unrest, suspicion and dirty secrets. Most of it got reported.

Now, in the age of information, NASCAR wants to control the storyline from start to finish. When it loses control is when things start to get interesting. That's what happened this week when Long began blogging about a round-table discussion he had recently with three of the best loudmouths we still have in racing -- Larry McReynolds, Kyle Petty and Jimmy Spencer.

In a blog series called "Frankly Speaking," which is recounted in today's News & Record, the three discuss the current state of racing affairs very frankly.

"This sport is in serious trouble," is how one of the segments began, and from there the forum got interesting. Over the course of five days, they had a wide-ranging discussion about, among other things, how bad the Car of Tomorrow has been for racing, how close the sport is to something cataclysmic like the IRL-CART split, how debris cautions are manipulated and how bland today's drivers are. Almost immediately, on its own Web page, NASCAR responded.

He could've just let it ride, but Ramsey Poston, NASCAR's managing director of corporate communication, fired back, calling the threesome "TV personalities" stirring up controversy. That would be one way to describe the son of Richard Petty, Mr. Excitement and Larry Mac, but it would also be wrong. They're pretty much part of the fabric of the sport, no matter how you measure it, and what they say resonates. Long is the president of the National Motorsports Press Association, not some blogger in his parents' basement.

Poston said NASCAR would take no action, but hinted that the threesome's television employers (Speed Channel and Fox) should. He hinted some other things that didn't make a lot of sense, but that's why this whole thing's been so much fun to watch. NASCAR tried for years to rein in reporters who were just as likely to be fishing buddies with the drivers and crew chiefs on weekdays and intrepid reporters on Sunday, thus NASCAR never got a break.

Over the years, the family business remained closed to outside influence, brought its drivers more in line with the company and homogenized racing to its current state. That's pretty much what Kyle and Jimmy and Larry Mac were talking about. And their comments aren't easy on the media, either. Part of the problem, they contend, is that the reporting is always negative, a refrain heard through the years. The working press has always been blamed for telling the story wrong, more these days with NASCAR trying to control the storyline and most of the drivers unwilling to stray from the script.

This strayed from the script, and that's why NASCAR responded and why it responded the way it did and why it was so interesting to read about. An unspoken truth among us old racing writers was we never pulled for any one driver but for the outcome that inflicted the most pain on the largest amount of people and NASCAR. That was only partly true, but it sounded good.

The truth here is, the panel discussion was interesting mostly because it was so unexpected. This just doesn't happen anymore. Racing has become predictable, and that's the worst thing that can happen to any sport. The sad part about this is NASCAR's reaction will likely be enough to keep it from happening again anytime soon.

What started as a simple 30-minute talk among the few remaining people around NASCAR with anything interesting to say stretched into a five-day Internet news cycle and briefly stirred things up here.

That's actually good for racing. There was a time when NASCAR understood that, but that was a long time ago.

Racing's not as much fun as it used to be, and that was the only point the three loudmouths were trying to make this week during a brief glimpse behind the curtain. The rain stopped falling Saturday morning, and Martinsville Speedway began to dry out and the curtain closed.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com