2009 NASCAR running thread

On a road course? Sure. At Martinsville or Richmond? Sure.

At Daytona or Talladega or Atlanta (or anything bigger than a mile)? You're out of your mind.

 

I missed the race.

Did some guy named Dale win?

 

No. But he fucked nine or 10 other guys out of the possibility.

 

Totally. I have always enjoyed going to Atlanta.

 

It was all Brian Vickers' fault. How DARE he be in front of Free Pass Earnhardt and try to keep The Golden Boy from getting back onto the lead lap where everyone knows he rightfully belongs?!

 

I just got done trolling the thatsracin.com message boards, and to nobody's surprise, Dale Jr. nation is trying to justify what their hero did.

Vickers has been guilty of a lot in his career, including punting his own teammate at Talladega to win his only Cup race.

But he's almost blameless in this exchange. Yet the Dale Jr. fans are going to claim otherwise.

His Hendrick gig is rapidly becoming a fiasco. It's obvious he's not as talented a driver as Jimmie Johnson, Mark Martin or Jeff Gordon. And his redneck cousin crew chief and his spotter can't even lead him correctly to his pit stall.

I don't think Jr. is a terrible driver. But he's definitely in the bottom half of the series right now, and I would argue that, perhaps, even Vickers is better behind the wheel than Jr.

And, finally, you've got to feel for Elliott Sadler. The rains just didn't come quite soon enough.

 

Keeping in mind I know very little about NASCAR and how things work, is there any validity to the reason/excuse Junior gave about the crash? Was there any chance he was in the right and Vickers was in the wrong?

Either way, that race -- or at least what I watched of it -- was a big ol' snoozer.

 

I'm not that into NASCAR, though I did watch the race.

From my well-untrained eye, it looked like Earnhardt was trying to pass Vickers quite aggressively. Both were down on the track, near the yellow no-pass line. Vickers defended well, but Earnhardt continued the aggression, eventually making contact with Vickers' driver side rear tire. That led to the chain reaction crash.

Earnhardt may not have intentionally hit Vickers, but he was reckless. I think Busch said it best when he questioned why anyone a lap down would race that aggressively.

 

Posilutely.

 

I may be wrong, but I think Vickers was a lap down as well, and trying to defend his position so if a yellow flag came out he would get the lap back instead of Jr.

I seem to recall Kyle Busch sarcastically saying it was funny two guys a lap down would wreck a bunch of people on the lead lap.

 

Screw intent. I wish NASCAR would just institute a policy where if you do something stupid and it results in a wreck, they dock you. I've got no problem with aggressive driving, but in a race like Daytona, there isn't much incentive to play it safe.

 

Vickers was a lap down, just like Earnhardt, and he had the right idea in blocking Earnhardt. In the event of a crash coming out of a caution, Vickers would get back on the lead lap as the "lucky dog." Of course, that hinged on him not being in the crash coming out of the caution.

For Earnhardt to think Vickers should have just let him pass by so that he could be the first car a lap down is smug self-entitlement at its worst. And of course, Dale Jr. Nation is going to go right to the wall with its fucking hero. No surprise there.

Having had some time to reflect on my earlier comment about not feeling bad for Kyle Busch, he does make an excellent point. He had a solid car that dominated the race and it sucks that the jousting among two lapped cars cost him a chance at victory. But, here's where NASCAR must step up and take some blame. They took away the old practice of racing back to the start-finish when a yellow flag came out, the practice that actually encouraged lapped drivers to try to race their way back onto the lead lap - imagine that, trying to race your way back into contention. The mind boggles.

Anyway, they stick these lapped guys at the front of the inside row on restarts where they try to take advantage of crashes, which are as often as not caused by these same guys. But heaven forbid NASCAR has a consistent response to the unnecessarily aggressive behaviour that sometimes sparks crashes. "Jason Leffler, your ass is parked for five laps. Free Pass Earnhardt? Well, shuck'ns! We can't get mad at you! Not only did you not do anything wrong, your indignance at Brian Vickers was justified and will be supported to the nth degree. You can do whatever you want on the race track, just like your dear, departed daddy always could, and we will always do anything and everything we can to make sure you are always in contention! You rock!"

: