NASCAR Labors With Some Dumb Racing

The Southern 500 saw throwback week but the real throwback to some of racing's uglier moments erupted at Bowmanville's Truck race when John H. Nemechek swerved Cole Custer so violently it led to an on-track brawl

Southern 500 weekend resumed the theme of Throwback NASCAR with paint schemes conjuring up memories of NASCAR's past.  The most popular was Tony Stewart's Coca-Cola Chevrolet. It turned out to be an ugly race as Stewart swerved Brian Scott pretty gratuitously - reminiscent of Bobby Allison at North Wilkesboro in 1972 with these colors

Jimmie Johnson drove a Rod Osterlund-flavored Chevrolet and it wound up like Osterlund's team in June 1981 - it crashed

Richard Petty's team has always struggled at Darlington and 2016 saw yet another wreck there

Stewart-Haas Racing's frustration was team-wide as Kurt Busch and Paul Menard tasted the wall


So what to make of all this?   Several takes -

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The capacity for utter hypocrisy by drivers showed again with heavy driver criticism of Nemechek and seeming ignorance when Tony Stewart blamed "old tires" for taking out Brian Scott.  



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Kevin Harvick's reputation for frontrunning and then folding at the end got another notch, and his anger at his pit crew exploded again - one eye-popping stat said he lost an aggregate of seventeen seconds on pit road in the Southern 500.   Another eye-popping stat is he has finished second some twenty-four times since joining Stewart-Haas Racing.  

Martin Truex's win is the first time the Barney Visser team has won more than once in a season and is a sign his winning is only beginning, especially with a second car forming for 2017.

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Remember how NASCAR's low downforce package was supposedly making the racing better?  Remember how jazzed everyone was for the racing at Darlington last year with low downforce?  Even with the epic of yellows in the second half the racing wasn't very good - and the ugly Truck finish at Bowmanville earlier that Sunday showcases an embarrassing fact for Brian France - the Truck Series has become the most competitive series in NASCAR with deeply competitive races at Daytona, Kansas, Texas, Michigan, and now the most insane finish in years at Bowmanville; the series also saw some interesting competition at Kentucky.   And they're doing it exactly the opposite way the cars are trying it - with high downforce, substantially less horsepower, and a noticeably more raceable tire.    Combined that with spectacular Indycar races at the Brickyard, Pocono, and Texas and Brian France gets exposed as having no clue yet again.
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Reading reaction from former crew chief Barry Dodson to the Stewart melee, one ponders an age-old question - at what point does NASCAR flag off certain drivers for causing these wrecks?   The Nemecheck-Custer fracas brought to mind Ricky Rudd's penalty out of victory at Sears Point in 1991 for spinning out Davey Allison, which caused more than the usual fury of controversy (and was in keeping with Rudd's frequent outbursts in his four-year tour with Hendrick).   One is hard-pressed to recall similar penalties for dirty driving - the only other one I can come up with is Robert Black - later curiously blackballed by NASCAR - penalizing Dale Earnhardt out of Charlotte's BGN 300 in October 1991 after spinning out Phil Parsons. 

It is always a tricky proposition given that NASCAR overofficiates the races to an often-embarrassing extent.   Holding drivers accountable - especially recidivists like Stewart - certainly is a necessity, especially with the collapse of professionalism in the sport to where few of its winners display genuine character.  

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Lost amid all of it is Kyle Larson finished third while teammate Jamie McMurray had a respectable night, and with Chevrolet losing SHR next year one wonders if Ganassi's team may benefit from getting engineering help that was going to SHR.  


And so it went as NASCAR enters Richmond and hypes its ace of Chase.

The Good And Bad Of The Throwback Southern 500

NASCAR returned the Bojangles Southern 500 to Labor Day weekend and the return brought out a full-scale wave of nostalgia from the prerace to the telecast and also the MRN call, and it showed in the obviously stout crowd.   Darlington lost the Rebel 500 because of declining attendances but that region clearly would not let Darlington go, and with the Southern 500 on labor Day weekend again one can sense a defiant gratitude in fans in that area.

We take a look at the good and the bad of this Throwback Southern 500 -



The Good - The reverence paid to racing's past was pretty obvious from the start of the weekend as Rex White, Junior Johnson, Bobby Allison, Cale Yarborough, and Ned Jarrett were among the sport's legends getting the spotlight.    Given how life works, it added poignancy that Buddy Baker is no longer with us and David Pearson is still recovering from a stroke, though I am mildly irked that short shrift seemed to be paid to the late Harry Hyde and also Tim Richmond, both 1986 Southern 500 champs - would it have been too much to ask that Chase Elliott's #25 be painted in Folgers red?   

The nostalgia extended to the telecast and some of the neat throwback graphics as well as the return of Ken Squier and Ned Jarrett; MRN's throwback music intros were also a great touch.

The ultimate throwback was in the varied color schemes, especially such obscure schemes as the #11 sporting First National City Travelers Checks white on yellow, the 1978 scheme for Cale Yarborough here sported by Denny Hamlin's JGR #11.   The early-80s Valvoline colors for Dale Junior, the Mello Yello #42 for Kyle Larson, and Richard Petty's retro-1972 STP colors were also standout schemes.

It showed that NASCAR should be doing this retro effort more often, notably at Talladega in October.   




The Bad - Darlington in its heyday - and the heyday of Richard, David, Cale, the Allisons, Parsons, Baker, Waltrip, Elliott, Earnhardt, and Tim Richmond -  was hard to pass on, and NASCAR's low downforce setup and softer tires worked as well as one could objectively expect - that is, the combination didn't make for better racing.   What won the race for Carl Edwards was what has won almost all the time during the sport's Dead Lane Era - a fast pitstop effectively locked Edwards into the lead because once the green flew the leader was immune thanks to aeropush.    Some of the pursuit between Brad Keselowski, who looked unpassable all night, and Kevin Harvick did get skittish as Harvick got alongside twice, but it showed both how tough Darlington is and also how bad a combo low downforce and this tire package is that Harvick tried twice and that was it - any thoughts of a 1979 Waltrip-Petty epic or even a 1980 Earnhardt-Pearson showdown went out the window. 

Now I say this yet also note lower downforce is a better combo for Darlington.   That the 5&5 Rule ultimately doesn't work is true enough, but for Darlington one can actually make a case that the cars are better off looser than on other tracks; the same can be said for Kentucky after the race there.    The issue remains making the cars stable enough and making dirty air want to aid in passing instead of impede it.  

That Rusty Wallace kept trying to sell this low downforce package on the MRN call I found a little irksome.   That we've heard drivers who say they prefer this package is true enough, but looking at the big picture it isn't cut-and-dried; on the contrary we've had more than enough evidence to say the low downforce package isn't effective overall.   Again it appears it can work on certain tracks; most others there has been precious little evidence in its defense.



The Postscript - Talk about fall from grace - Chevrolet has been usurped from 2015's crown by Joe Gibbs Toyotas and Penske Fords, which once again monopolized the top finishers.   The top Chevys were Kevin Harvick and Kurt Busch, who survived a spinout and salvaged a top-ten; the same was true of Kyle Busch.   What makes the fall of Chevrolet all the more graphic is the decline of Hendrick Motorsports, which has - astonishingly - been routed by its biggest customer team in Stewart-Haas Racing.   One has to wonder what the factory dynamic has become with Chevy; that a customer team has routed Hendrick is by no stretch a negative for the sport, though the rumored switch of Martin Truex's #78 to Toyota reflects poorly on the Bowtie Brigade's myopia toward competitive depth.

Speaking of factory dynamics Ford's collapse was again illustrated by how much better Aric Almirola's #43 is compared to the Roush brigade, though neither organization has the muscle of the Penske squad.  

There was another less flattering display of retro in this Southern 500 - in 1977 Janet Guthrie wrecked; well, 38 years later Danica Patrick wrecked.  



So it was for the Southern 500 of 2015.   Throwback celebration was something to behold, and a good burst of positivity to the sport.

Harvick's Darlington Stripes And Stewart-Haas' Easter Abundance

The Southern 500 weekend has come and gone and with it has gone Winston Cup's season-opening string of different winners.   Kevin Harvick's win was hardly unexpected given he led 238 laps and a series of late yellows were mere stays of execution, though the fact Stewart-Haas Racing is now well above its Hendrick Motorsports suppliers is a head-scratcher; given the cutthroat reality of racing one wonders when the backlash from Hendrick comes.  

But then Stewart-Haas Racing, clearly a favorite in the Chevrolet racing hierarchy, has been defying such odds since Chevy helped Stewart buy into Gene Haas' organization.   They've now won 22 races in this, their sixth season.   And Gene Haas is ready to take the plunge into Formula One - and we can't fathom why, as F1 is even more viciously political than NASCAR and crashingly boring as a form of racing.   It's the first American presence there since the ill-advised Michael Andretti foray in 1993, and Michael didn't make F1 fans in the US out of anyone. 


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Harvick's status within the organization will go up if it hasn't already, as he appears to be top dog, and his absence from his former employer is also quite obvious as RCR has no moxie anywhere.   The rookie of the year race for Austin Dillon realistically is already over with Austin routed by Kyle Larson, this despite a decent finish for Dillon at Darlington, and it is absurd to expect much out of Paul Menard or Ryan Newman right now.

The only other Chevrolet team with any muscle is Ganassi-SABCO, and they got a decent performance at Darlington despite Kyle Larson whacking the wall a couple of times.   Curiously this outfit has led just ten laps all season, all of them by Jamie McMurray at Bristol.  


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And it's looking more and more bleak for any other brand to challenge Chevrolet.   JGR's Toyotas won Fontana and have shown some consistent muscle but this challenge has hardly been inspiring; JGR did salvage top-six finishes for Kyle Busch and the curiously-quiet Matt Kenseth.    The rest of the Toyota squadron has been left behind.

The Ford flotilla is the only other non-Chevrolet to have won, and while Penske's bunch are cooking since Carl Edwards' Bristol win the Ford challenge has been largely quiet.   The Fenway group that is part of Roush's bunch is starting out with a bad year overall between a poor Red Sox showing and mediocrity on the racing end.    No less ugly was the terrible effort of Aric Almirola at Darlington, though teammate Marcos Ambrose salvaged 14th.   


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Speaking of Chevrolet, their future contains a supreme irony, in that Chevy's newest star is a youngster whose dad is one of Ford's most famous champions.   Seeing Casey Elliott's win at the Rebel 200 evoked memory of the famous 1979 Rebel 500 finish, and also brought reminder of how time changes - Chase is winning in Chevrolets where his dad Bill was Ford's superman in the 1980s and as late as 1992.  


So ends the first portion of the 2014 Winston Cup season as Easter and Patriots Day beckon.    The Richmond 400 weekend and Stafford Speedway's Spring Sizzler come up in two weeks.

Will The Southern 500 Deliver?

Mike Mulhern on Talladega, EFI, the curious officiating at Richmond, the Southern 500 this Saturday night, and Penske Racing in the transition year from Dodge to Ford.


My Take: Mulhern nails it by noting the subpar quality of racing since Kyle Busch's Daytona Shootout win. While the Winston 500 was better than some make it out to be it nonetheless was a huge disappointment because the drivers had to breathe the cars instead of race.


"NASCAR's no-call (on Danica Patrick's cheap shot at Sam Hornish after the Nationwide thriller at Talladega) speaks volumes..."  It does, as NASCAR obviously thinks the inept Ms. Patrick can actually deliver something to the sport other than being a woman and a soft-porn model for a soft-porn website to boot.

As to whether Darlington will ignite a more competitive phase of the 2012 season, I'm not counting on it given that the racing there has been poor since 1993.