At Talladega NASCAR Gets Worse

And it gets worse for NASCAR. TV ratings for the Chase in 2015 have been dismal and the moving of the Diehard 500 at Talladega to NBC Sports Network instead of airing it on NBC (which aired the USGP for F1) was not a good sign for the Cup Series; adding insult to that injury, the Truck 250 was aired on FOX's over the air network.

But what transpired at Talladega is bound to anger even more people.  Not only was the racing once again enormously under-competitive due to NASCAR's ridiculous diktat against push-drafting, the finish was the biggest insult to competitive integrity in years, certainly since the absurd Regan Smith yellow line penalty that cost him a last-lap win in the 2008 Diehard 500.   NASCAR dictated only one green-white checker finish for this Diehard 500, apparently thinking having the normal three would produce more crashes; what they got instead was two, the first coming on what NASCAR disingenuously claimed was not an attempt - the green light came on as the cars hit the gas, but a crash occurred in the trioval and NASCAR waved the yellow, claiming it was not an attempt, this even though the radio chatter from drivers indicated it was an attempt. 

NASCAR tried again and as Joey Logano and Dale Earnhardt Jr took off Logano got the lead but another wreck, involving among others the eminently-forgettable Denny Hamlin after a bad day where he had to get a roof hatch repaired, erupted and NASCAR wasted several minutes trying to determine who was leading at what scoring loop even though it was obvious Logano was the leader and thus, under NASCAR's field-freeze rule, the winner.

The wreck happened because Kevin Harvick - who took out Denny Hamlin at Daytona and thus launched Austin Dillon into spearing the fencing - swerved into Trevor Bayne.   But of course Harvick refuses to be accountable for it - and NASCAR as usual will not hold the responsible driver accountable for it.

It combined the worst of everything for NASCAR.

Without push-drafting the cars basically are stuck sidedrafting with the leader basically immune from challenge; for most of the race the top five hogged the bottom line without any challenge, where the racing should have been about rocket-surges from midfield into the lead by lock-bumper two-car superdrafts, the lead thus changing at a spectacular rate, and the field able to keep up and sort out without being stuck in place.

Then there is the chronic problem that NASCAR gives the officiating tower the power it has to determine the outcome instead of the racers,   That the restart was declared not a restart by NASCAR was doubletalk; that it was important is also absurd both for the aborted start and for the one that was stopped after the leaders hit Turn One; because NASCAR ostensibly doesn't allow racing to the line, instead freezing the field when the caution comes out - this even after numerous examples (such as the 2004 Firecracker 250, the 2007 Daytona 500, the 2008 Talladega Truck 250, and the 2011 Firecracker 400) where NASCAR left the green out amid a crash and let the field race to the line.  The result all these times was that racing to the line is not the safety problem NASCAR seems to pretend it to be.

What transpired was Joey Logano was declared the winner, based not on the start-finish line but by the officiating tower reading a scoring loop.   No matter how it is sliced it is not a legitimate win; Logano didn't race to the line to earn the win.   Such rule-induced fraudulence has been a depressingly frequent occurrence, most infamously illustrated in the 2004 Winston 500 and 2004 Pocono 500.  

The tower wasn't supposed to make the call - it was supposed to be determined by racing to the stripe.   That it was officiated like this shows anew NASCAR's credibility problem.

At Talladega such problems are easily fixable - let the cars (and Trucks) push-draft again; it's the strongest power to pass ever seen, and what matters is passing, period; give the racing at Talladega and Daytona back the 60-plus lead change average it had just a few years ago.  Reduce the officiating tower's role and give some control of the racing back to the racers - let them race to the stripe and thus legitimately determine the outcome.   And stop pretending a restart is not a restart.  

NASCAR's credibility issues of course extend far beyond Talladega.   The Chase concept has no legitimacy and the disintegration of TV ratings shows it; drop the Chase, go back to the Latford Point System, and increase the points bonuses for the win and for most laps led - incentivize going for the win above everything else.   The issue of costs and team spending need to be addressed by NASCAR and the new Race Team Alliance - the low number of winners in 2015 (just eleven with the Talladega outcome) is indicative of a disturbing lack of competitive depth for the sport. 


*****


It was a lousy race even for the winner, and it certainly stunk for the rest of the field.   Joe Gibbs Racing was dismal even though it led some laps; Stewart-Haas Racing was basically MIA; so were any Fords outside of Penske Racing; Ganassi-Earnhardt had a forgettable day.   That racing always produces more widespread disappointment than cheer is true enough; that even the winners couldn't honestly feel good about how it all transpired merely shows how dismal a day it was for a track where it should always be so much better.

Frustration At The Firecracker 400

Daytona racing has a history of enormous competition, but when it goes wrong it becomes incredibly maddening and at time scary. The 2015 Firecracker 400, coming a week after the amazing MAVTV 500 Indycar race at Fontana, showcased some of the same issues as Fontana but also other issues specific to NASCAR.

Observations from the ugliest Firecracker 400 in years -


* - The cars regularly broke 202 MPH, and once again nothing good can really come from 200 MPH, though Indycars are far safer at 200 than stockers.   The idea that Indycars somehow lose something when the power is restricted to 200 MPH or that NASCAR loses something with restriction to 190 is baffling, especially when in 2001 the entire sport openly acknowledged - Rusty Wallace gave it specific utterance at that time and has repeated it since - that 194 MPH is the cut-off point for keeping the cars on the ground.  

The complaint about restrictor plate racing will come up again, as usual ignoring vicious melees at non-plate tracks, such as the Watkins Glen series of melees including last year's Ryan Newman-Michael McDowell melee, bad crashes at Charlotte over the years, and so forth (Indycar has this same myopia about the lethality of crashes in its "plate" races as opposed to melees on its street circuits, crashes that usually out-do superspeedway wrecks as we saw with Dario Franchitti and more recently with RC Erenson in the Indy Lights race at Toronto).

Worth nothing for context is that this past Friday at Stafford Speedway, CT there was a huge crash in the SK Modified race that took out the leaders (notably Ryan Preece)  and there have been numerous such incidents in a Stafford season where the racing has been unusually competitive.

As relatively uncompetitive as this Firecracker was, it was still superior racing to most non-plate races, and as with the California Indy 500 at Fontana it showcased that the sport needs pack racing - albiet to a point.  The real issue for NASCAR is Brian France's ridiculous opposition to push-drafting - it stopped the blocking that has become more of a problem in racing of late, and it created more outright passing than anything else can; push-drafting would have opened up far more in the way of passing and thus opened up the competition level above what it was here, and this was even more true with the Firecracker 250 for the Xfinity Series, where uncompetitive racing and resultant frustration led to melees that left the finishers all with weak racecars.   

80 lead changes, seen at Fontana, is a lot better than the 22 seen in this Firecracker.




* - The real cause of the Dillon crash was Kevin Harvick, and he's done this before, notably last year's above-mentioned Newman-McDowell crash at the Glen.   Harvick has led over 1,200 laps but hasn't cashed in that much on winning.


* - The Hendrick cars have the season pretty much to themselves.   There is no non-Hendrick challenge anywhere outside of Stewart-Haas Racing, and the only challenger there is Harvick.  Kurt Busch has surged since coming back so he can still offer some challenge.   Outside of him, the rest of the field is racing for fifth at best - only seven of seventeen races have been won by someone other than a Hendrick or Harvick/Kurt Busch Chevrolet.

The upshot of the Austin Dillon crash is it is an illustration of his career - racing for nothing and hitting the wall.


* - Aggravation at Chevrolet's dominance has been a long-standing gripe within NASCAR dating to the 1960s and surging with the 1970s comeback of the Bowtie Brigade, and it appears Chevy's success is driving away other brands in other series, with Indycar potentially losing Honda after Chevrolet returned to the series only a few short seasons ago.   Sanctioning bodies need to rethink whether Chevrolet is as good for their series as they might think - certainly racing needs a lot more success from non-Chevrolets such as Honda and Toyota and (call this a subtle lobby all you want) any comeback Dodge might contemplate.


* - The worst of the non-Chevrolet lot is Ford.   When Penske Racing is off - and it's been curiously off outside of two wins this season - then the brand has nothing.   Roush Fenway Racing is worse than an also-ran, it is a cancer now, between failures at engineering and a driver roster inferior to some of Roush's customer cars.   It is no accident that once again Richard Petty's #43 looked stronger than the Roush cars, and it may be Petty needs to switch manufacturers and thus not be dragged down further by the Roush alliance.


* - With all this, the potential for a first-time winner this year looks strikingly weak.   Nobody with Roush or RCR looks like they know which way is up, and even with some respectable darkhorse runs at Daytona nothing developed to indicate anyone can seize a first-time win.   If anything, some of the drivers tagged for future potential are only getting worse, notably Danica Patrick.   Kyle Larson curiously does not seem to be taking any next step, and that's it as far as drivers who might get a first win.


*- Interesting off-the-track point is made by longtime NASCAR writer Mike Mulhern.   The talk of a franchise system in NASCAR comes after a $1 billion deal by Nike for the NBA, and it leads him to ask a question worth pondering - "Could NASCAR do a deal like that without franchising?"   Stay tuned there.




So what's next? Kentucky for NASCAR, Milwaukee for Indycar, and the sport has to plug on and try to get something better.

1987 Daytona 500

Looking back at the 1987 Daytona 500. The racing, while not as competitive as earlier (such as 1971, 1974, 1976, and 1983) and later (notably 1993, 1996, 2008, 2010, 2011, and 2014) 500s, nonetheless is pretty good, and the cars for the most part are better looking than today's - Elliott's Thunderbird, Benny Parsons in Tim Richmond's Monte Carlo (renumbered 35 here), and Richard Petty's Pontiac 2+2 are handsomer racecars than today's sedans.

Of particular interest is the segment at 1:47:00 of this package - Dave Despain shows how the draft has largely disappeared from the racing and thus made passing more difficult. The draft had been effective even on intermediate tracks like Charlotte and Atlanta as well as flat big tracks like Pocono, Michigan, and the by-then-shuttered Ontario track. The disappearance of the draft combined with later switchover to radial tires from bias-plies all but eliminated passing - and the effects of both continue to be felt; one need only contrast the 2014 Indianapolis 500 with NASCAR's Pocono 400 held earlier today as this is written. The draft needs to be returned because that's where the most passing happens.

These cars in this 1987 period would have also benefitted from the roof blade NASCAR ran on and off 2000-10 - not only for a stronger draft but also to plant the nose of the cars onto the ground, as they had a problem of pushing.