A few weeks ago I wrote a story about Michael Waltrip. His cheating scandal had just been wiped out of the headlines by the photo finish at the Daytona 500, and Waltrip had raced his way into the 500 after not qualifying on time. My story focused on Waltrip's seemingly uncanny luck that has been with him throughout his racing career. I boldly predicted that his luck would continue and he would manage to have a decent season despite his cars performing poorly throughout preseason testing. We are now two months into the Nextel Cup season, and I have to admit that I couldn't have been more wrong. Waltrip has been anything but lucky this year, and things keep getting worse on and off the track. In fact, I think Don Imus and Mike Nifong are the only members of the sporting world having a worse go of it right now and neither are actual athletes.

How bad are things for Michael right now?  Well for starters, he is dead last in the point standings after the first seven races. In fact, everyone in the world is currently ahead of Waltrip in the standings because he has earned a grand total of negative 27 points this year. He has been unable to qualify for a single race since the first week of the season at Daytona and as a result has been unable to overcome the 100-point penalty handed out by NASCAR for using an illegal substance on his carburetor. Being dead last in the standings of any sport is bad enough, but imagine being so bad that you would have been better off having never participated at all.

It must be hard for Waltrip to find any kind of silver lining in his situation because he hasn't even been close to qualifying for the races. He is consistently the slowest car on the practice sheets and backs it up with even slower runs in qualifying. Speed Channel should just use a recording of announcer Larry McReynolds saying, "That means Michael Waltrip will not race this weekend," to save Larry the trouble of saying it every week.

The one time Waltrip was close to qualifying for a race was at California, but he was knocked out of the field by a faster time from David Reutimann, who just happens to be Waltrip's teammate and a driver that Waltrip personally recruited. Talk about adding a little salt to the wound. Last week at Texas, Mother Nature spared Waltrip the misery of another failed qualifying attempt as rain washed out qualifying and kept Michael out of the race. He was the slowest car in practice anyway, so the rain was more likely a blessing than a burden.

Surprisingly, Waltrip is in worse shape off the track after an early-morning incident on Easter Sunday. Waltrip was driving his Toyota 4 Runner around 2 a.m. when he crashed and landed upside near his home in North Carolina. Waltrip then fled the scene and returned home without reporting the accident to authorities. When police came to Waltrip's home to question him, he failed to answer the door and said it was because he was showering at the time and did not hear them knocking. Waltrip said he simply fell asleep and was too embarrassed to report the incident. While there is speculation that alcohol might have been involved, police were unable to talk with Waltrip until 8 p.m. Sunday night and charged him only with failure to give notice of a vehicular crash.

Waltrip's struggles on the track and terrible publicity off of it have put his future in serious jeopardy. He was given a lot of money by Toyota as well his sponsors with the expectation that he would deliver at least some level of success. Instead his race team has been a complete failure up to this point, and Waltrip himself has been an embarrassment and a public relations nightmare. People that shell out millions of dollars won't put up with that kind of return on investment, and Michael has to be on thin ice.

In a desperate attempt to save face and appease his sponsors, Waltrip has taken to doing what he does best – shamelessly publicly promoting and endorsing as many sponsors as he can at every available opportunity. In interviews before qualifying he slips in the names of upwards of 15 sponsors and products, and after he fails to make the race he slips in the names of a dozen more. When he provides commentary for Craftsman Truck races, I have a hard time telling whether I'm watching a race or an extended infomercial. He might be a terrible racecar driver, but Waltrip sure is one heck of a spokesman. I'm just glad Hostess is sponsored by Danica Patrick and not Waltrip. I don't think I could buy Twinkies with a picture of him on the cover.

At this point Waltrip shouldn't worry about salvaging the season because it simply can't be done. He has dug himself a hole that no one could get out of. To use a cliché, he needs to take it week by week and focus on just qualifying for a race. As long he makes a race, he will finally have positive points even if he finishes dead last. Until then, he will have to deal with me telling everyone I meet that I still have a 27-point lead on him in the Nextel Cup standings.

As for being totally wrong about Waltrip in my first story and completely making a fool of myself in writing, I've made peace with it. After writing this story, I figure one of two things can happen. Waltrip will continue to run poorly and eventually lose his job or just to spite me, he will make an incredible turn around in the second half of the season, win some races, and I will be made to look like a fool again.