NASCAR rant: Not drinking the Daytona 500 Kool-Aid

Oh, please. They all had it floored. Restrictor-plate racing. I think Busch went back down low because if he didn't, he'd get caught with no "help" and finish much farther back.

 

That has to do with money, not quality of racing.

I echo the compalints that NASCAR is a) often boring and b) often way too good to be true when it comes to finishes. I wish I could find it online, but Robin Miller a number of years back (I think it was after Earnhardt won Daytona) did a piece about "making the call" -- NASCAR essentially telling everyone how the finish is going to go. He had some people -- anonymous, of course -- talking about it happening in such events as Richard Petty's 200th victory.

 

I'm bitching about the incompetence of the drivers in the last 10 percent of many races to avoid running into to each to create yellows, or failing that, NASCAR's brass bunching up the field artificially via those late race mystery yellows. None of that is compelling racing to me, and increasingly, NASCAR's long-time base of fans are drawing the same conclusions.

It just seems so rare these days for a NASCAR race to finish the last 25 percent of any race without a caution. Let the drivers do their thing over a long haul.

 

After the last 50 laps you had a sense that if they just raced a little longer every car would be upside down.

 

Let's not forget one thing about Juan Pablo Montoya - he left F1 because there were no competitive teams even remotely interested in signing him this year. He didn't turn his back on the international glamour, like I kept reading all week. His best option would have been with a backmarker like Spyker, and that wasn't even a sure thing. He came to NASCAR because his only other good options were CCWS or IRL. McLaren was more than happy to wave goodbye long before his contract was up.

 

In a way, isn't the Lucky Dog rule itself kind of an implicit admission that these drivers can't control themselves?

The genesis of the rule was the fact that drivers couldn't handle racing back to the start-finish line during yellows -- either they'd slow down to let some drivers get laps back, thus making it dangerous for everyone else, or they'd run into somebody trying to gain a position or get their lap back.

Either way, it was clear the drivers couldn't police themselves and couldn't avoid getting in their own way when they needed to, so they came up with the ridiculous Lucky Dog rule instead of just freezing the field where it is when the yellow comes out. Put simply it is the dumbest rule in all of sports. The tuck rule makes more sense than Lucky Dog.

 

Tell 'em PC!

And as far as A.J. Allmendinger is concerned lets not forget one other factor -- money. I don't think anyone is going to claim that Allmendinger's earning power is better in NASCAR over the long haul than CCWS.

But that doesn't make the racing in NASCAR better, it just means it has better financial clout.

So does Kraft when it comes to food, doesn't mean I'm buying their mayonnaise.

 

That's mostly right, Bubbler. The incident that set it off was a wreck at New Hampshire, where Dale Jarrett spun, turned around in the middle of the track and got to watch the whole field bearing down on him as everyone raced to the line.

The last thing the France family wanted was one of its recent champions (Jarrett) killed two years after its biggest star (Earnhardt), and on a track that already had killed two other drivers (Adam Petty and Kenny Irwin Jr.).

The rule makes sense, and it's kinda sorta easy to explain (unlike the seeding thing, this year's new Chase wrinkle). But, yeah, it's a weird one, and I can't think of anything like it in any other sport.

As for debris cautions, you're more likely to see them early in the race when one of the favorites is about to go a lap down.

 

I'm not an open-wheel guy who looks down his nose at NASCAR. I'm just willing to call a spade a spade.

NASCAR's "management" of races to ensure a photo finish every week (with the bogus late-race cautions to enliven a dull race -- last year's Brickyard 400, where half the media center broke out in sarcastic laughter as soon as the light started flashing -- being Exhibit A) makes everything seem contrived. The "Chase For The Cup" is extremely contrived -- making Nextel Cup the ONLY major (or semi-major) racing series in the world that does not award a championship based on performance over the full season. The spotty application of the green-white-checkered (and before it, when to red-flag and when to not red-flag) rule, with Sunday being Exhibit A, makes things look manufactured. The mid-season knee-jerk reactions on rule changes (whether it be air dam/engine changes, changing the "race to the line" rule, creating the "lucky dog" or implementing the green-white-checkered rule -- all of which happened at midseason) make things look contrived.

NASCAR sells itself as being an authentic, All-American, Southern-fried, good-ole-boy racing series that thrives on close competition and close finishes. But it's a series that shuns its Southern roots at every opportunity to make it look more legitimate to the average joe, where drivers get rides based on their looks and ability as a pitchman more than their actual talent, and where the close competition (restrictor plates) and close finishes (debris yellows) are manufactured.

And the racing, as Bubbler pointed out, can be really bad. Bristol races are almost unwatchable because of the amount of cautions. The last 50 laps at Daytona were dreadful because there were multiple accidents and multiple cautions.

I was a NASCAR convert six or seven years ago. All of that crap drove me away. I was able to find, in open-wheel, a more authentic (although much more poorly-marketed & presented) version of what NASCAR claims to be ... with much fewer yellows.

 

You mean the one where Petty and Yarborough raced to the final yellow at lap 158 with Petty making a slingshot pass to nip Cale by a tire-width? Oh, yeah. That was real orchestrated. Anybody stupid enough to think Cale Yarborough was going to let another driver win should be sent to adult day care on the short bus.

Mr. Miller, your bus is waiting.

 

Thank you. About f_cking time someone said it ... since I can't improve this much, I'll simply give my kudos.

 

Just a thought here: The terms "NASCAR" and "rules" really shouldn't be in the same sentence. I'm convinced they don't have any. Carry on.