Speedweeks 2020: Busch Bash High/Low-lights First Weekend

Daytona pre-Clash 500 practice


NASCAR begins its 2020 season with Daytona Speedweeks and controversy is already in mid-season form.

The Busch Clash began as "an analytics race," to quote Kurt Busch, as there was some spirited combat but also quite a bit of single file running to pound out laps and potentially stretch fuel.   It turned ugly when Joey Logano threw two blocks on Kyle Busch and it ended in a big wreck.   Yet it wasn't all as a gagged restart led to another crash, then more blockheaded Ernie Irvan-esque swerves among Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson left only six cars to finish - yet they still put on a rip-roaring finish as the battered Toyota of Erik Jones drafted to the win with huge slam-draft help from teammate Denny Hamlin. 

The incidence of wrecks naturally left everyone outside of the race winner livid.   But drivers know who's at fault - themselves.   Drivers know holding their line better is a preferable option.  NASCAR shouldn't want to enforce a no-blocking rule but it may come to that. 

Others try to portray it as "what superspeedway racing has become." This though is an exercise in denial of responsibility.  Claiming "the current package just has the packs too tightly wound together with a (draft) that is just too prominent" is excusing the drivers.  The draft is supposed to be this strong, and the current wicker package has made the racing far better than it had been for a number of years.   If anything the wicker needs to be added to more tracks - all of them truthfully.   The intermediates and lower banked tracks like Pocono, Michigan, Indianapolis, etc. are supposed to be drafting tracks, certainly not to the same "extreme" as Daytona..........

.........but more like with the Modifieds at New Hampshire (here illustrated by the 2018 Eastern Propane 100),  Indeed the history of Atlanta, Charlotte, Pocono, Michigan, and the old Ontario Motor Speedway were long drafting histories.

As for the short tracks, there's no drafting effect to be had but the short tracks also have aero impediment issues and the wicker by all accounts has killed the "beachball" aero impediment effect that has plagued the racing.  I can't help but think having the wicker can help change aero impediment for the better at those places as well.

Matt Weaver's suggestion to run the Busch Clash at New Smyrna is his usual flippant annoyance, especially as short tracks are as prone to bad crashes as superspeedways and aren't that conducive to passing as shown in a pretty anticlimatic finish to the Skips 175, the first race of the revamped Eastern tour of NASCAR integrated into the ARCA division.


So Speedweeks 2020 is underway and we await more competitive excitement.