There was a time when Talladega was the marquee event on the autumn NASCAR schedule, the race where anything could happen and carnage almost always ensued. Remember those times ... way back in, when was it, April? Yeah, those were great days.
Backstage secret: the comments where people rant about how NASCAR used to be better in "the good ol' days" (mostly, it wasn't) and how they're "done with NASCAR" (they aren't) usually drive me up the wall. It's usually one notch above kids stomping their feet and asking why they can't have another dessert.
This time, though ... this time, the whiners have a point.
Just hours before the flag dropped on Sunday's Amp Energy 500, NASCAR drivers were told -- in no uncertain terms -- that there would be no bump-drafting permitted in the corners, that there needed to be "daylight" between the bumpers of cars going into turns. The drivers, livid about the changes, staged their own little protest -- you want us to play nice, fine, we'll play so nice that we put everyone to sleep. Kevin Harvick joked about needing a spot to put his iPod, and Tony Stewart asked his crew for some No-Doz.
But all joking went out the window once Ryan Newman went wheels-up and another 13 cars got caught up and snuffed out all but the faintest championship hopes of Mark Martin and Jeff Gordon. Afterward, the drivers tore NASCAR a new one.
"Let us race," said Denny Hamlin, who was knocked out of the race early. "They gave us a car to race, now let the drivers handle it ... Pushing each other in the corners and all the way around, that is the safest driving you can possibly do because that's eight tires. The thing is, you'll see when the Big One happens, it will be someone just hitting someone down the straightaways because they were put in a box that said that was how they had to race." (For the record, next time I go to Vegas, I'm taking Hamlin with me, because he was dead-on right.)
Mark Martin, who got turned upside down in the final wreck, didn't even begin to address the issue, except with his silence:
Q: Are you okay?
Martin: Yeah, I'm fine.
Q: What happened, what did you see?
Martin: Nothing.
"It was probably the most yawning that I've done in a superspeedway race," Brian Vickers said. "Maybe that's what they want, I'm not sure." Vickers did say that he didn't believe that the boredom was NASCAR's fault, but "I'm not really sure what the intent was. I don't think [the new rules] accomplished anything that had anything to do with a big crash or a Big One."
But it was Ryan Newman who unloaded on NASCAR with quote adter damning quote. He said that the utter dullness of the race was "a product of this racing and what NASCAR has put us into with this box and these restrictor plates with these types of cars," Newman said. "You know, with the yellow line, no bump-drafting, no passing. Drivers used to be able to respet each other and race around each other. Richard Petty, David Pearson and Bobby Allison and all those guys have always done that. I guess they don't think much of us anymore."
As is so often the case, NASCAR had the right idea -- fewer catastrophic accidents -- but completely a fumble-footed way of implementing it. These things can be done more effectively and efficiently without ticking off both the fans and the drivers. Talladega verdict: fail.
I don't need to tell you this, but: your turn.
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