LOOKING IN ON: MOTOR SPORTS

Thursday, July 20, 2006 | 7:29 a.m.

Some guys just can't catch a break.

Kurt Busch, the 2004 NASCAR Nextel Cup Series champion and a Las Vegas native, earlier this year was named one of the "Ten Most Hated Athletes" by GQ magazine. Now, environmentalists have squashed his plans to be married on a Virginia beach overlooking Chesapeake Bay.

Original plans called for Busch's July 27 wedding to Eva Bryan to be held at sunset on a 175-foot pier he was to have built near a family friend's Virginia Beach home. Busch received permits to build the structure on the public beach as long as it was removed immediately after the wedding.

"Because of some of the articles that have been written" about the wedding, Busch said, "environmentalists have gotten ahold of different things, and now we can't do anything out on the beach because of tiger beetles.

"Those are the insects, I guess, that have their natural habitat on the Chesapeake Bay in the area we were looking to get married. Their big breeding season, mating season, is the months of June and July. With this being July, the environmentalists said, 'Whoa, whoa, we can't have a bunch of guys out there building a pier and a dock for this wedding because it's going to disrupt the environment.' "

Busch said the wedding will take place next Thursday as planned, but will be held on the front porch of the friend's home.

To learn that they couldn't be married on the beach "was a tough blow to Eva," Busch said. "To have her crying on my shoulder one night that she just didn't quite get her dream wedding out on the beach was tough."

Number of victories this season by Jeff Burton, who is third in NASCAR Nextel Cup Series points.

600

Consecutive NASCAR Cup starts made by Mark Martin.

To the point

Jimmie Johnson is less concerned with the quantity of his points lead than he is with the quality as he approaches the final seven races before NASCAR begins its "Chase for the Nextel Cup."

Johnson holds a 68-point edge after 19 races and said Tony Stewart proved last year that momentum is the key to winning the championship under the Chase format.

"Tony was able to take the points lead over going into the final 10 because of (the team's) performance," Johnson said. "It's nice starting first in the final 10, but there's more weight in the momentum of the team and the performance of the team."

Johnson, who won three of the first nine races of the season, is trying to emulate Stewart's strong "regular-season" finish of a year ago. Stewart won five of the 11 races leading up to the Chase last season and then posted seven top-10 finishes in the final 10 races and claimed the championship.

"Tony, last year, was red-hot at this point in time and kept building, and when the final 10 started, he was unstoppable," Johnson said. "That's more of a run that you're looking for, more of the consistency that we're hoping that we can get and really get on a hot streak here in the next month or so."

Also noted