Joshua and Cheryl have been offering up their own personal sets of HeartRacers~HeartBreakers for each race. The moments that stirred them for whatever reason will fall in the HeartRacers category, and anything that makes them wince, cry, or throw stuff will be HeartBreakers. All cawsnjaws readers are invited to add on their own to share with everyone.

NASCAR fans everywhere were hungry for racing, as the Cup series returned from having had a weekend off. That, coupled with this race being the NASCAR circuit’s very special one held at Indy, had everyone’s racing appetite whetted for fast action and high drama.

HeartRacers:

• Speaking of drama, the ongoing story of what Robert Yates is going to do next continues on, and was definitely a hot topic coming into this race. Some individuals are definitely gone from the picture (Tommy Baldwin, Slugger Labbe) and some are rumored coming in (David Gilliland, David Starr). Fans everywhere are still wondering when, where, and upon whom the dust will settle.

• Ken Schrader qualified 11th, and finished 14th in his Little Debbie Ford. His commercial during the race (wherein his Little Debbie standup magically becomes real in the store, and drives the car in the race) was a hoot.

• Steadily and with the precision his team is known for, Matt Kenseth kept his No. 17 Ford out of trouble, and brought it from his qualifying position of 20th to second-place by the end of the race.

• Jeff Burton fans, once again, began the race with eyes wide and expectations high. With Burton on the pole, and then getting credit for leading the most laps, his fans had to be on the edges of their seats. That things went a wee bit sour around lap 115 notwithstanding, Burton remains third in the points. It seems it is almost a given that the No. 31 will be tooling into Victory Lane before the season is over. We expect that Richard Childress is sure about that, too, as well as being satisfied with Harvick’s third-place finish, and Bowyer’s fourth-place finish.

• The Jimmie Johnson fans must need a day off of work following the Allstate 400, to mentally recover from the down-and-up day. First they had to deal with such discouragements as blown and rubbing tires, and fires on pit road, and a car with a lot of scars. But somehow the No. 48 team overcame it all, and laughed all the way to Victory Lane. We hope the Johnson fans with weak hearts have gone to bed early and stayed in bed late today, and stayed away from the race recaps, and all of the headlines about the team’s first win at Indianapolis.

HeartBreakers:

• The Allstate 400 of Sunday was the 13th running of this particular race at Indianapolis. Perhaps ‘13’ isn’t so lucky for the Waltrips, as this was the first race is over 900 that no one with this legendary name was participating (Michael Waltrip failed to qualify on Saturday).

• We hope that the girls from the Allstate car insurance commercials that have crushes on Kasey Kahne didn’t witness his hard crash during the last leg of the race today. All Kahne fans must have felt the sting, especially since he was so strong at the beginning of the race. Kahne also fell four spots in the standings, and out of the top 10, into 11th position.

• It breaks our HeartBreaker’s hearts to once again express our sadness for Bobby Labonte and his team, as on lap 136 his day was over with mechanical failure. Labonte had battled forward from a 38th-place starting position, managing to get as far up as 18th.

• While we know that Jeff Gordon is pleased for Jimmie Johnson and his team, we are sure he wasn’t very pleased with his 16th-place finish. His fans can console themselves with the fact that for a time during the race he had fallen out of the top 10, but ended up after all was said and done in eight place.

• Fans of the Home Depot team had to go home with their heads hung low. Everyone knows how much a win at Indy means to Tony Stewart, and while finishing eighth isn’t exactly the worst thing in the world, we imagine anything after first is, at least to Tony.

• We award some other HeartBreaker’s sighs-of-frustration to Boris Said (for his wreck on lap 19), Jeremy Mayfield (his wreck on the wall on lap 56), and Elliott Sadler (for the wreck of that cool Snickers car on lap 3).