The Daytona 150s were some of the best racing of Speedweeks and will be among the most competitive events of the season
The Winston Cup season of 2020 is now underway with the Daytona 500 and going forward the Cup tour has something to look back on with Speedweeks. Some quick takes on the race where dreams can be made but where they also go to die -
Chevrolet's ballyhooed new car ultimately didn't deliver. The 150s showed promise for the Chevrolet with its redesigned front, and Ryan Preece in Brad Daugherty's 47 led 24 total laps - but almost none of them happened after the race was postponed with twenty laps in to Monday afternoon. Chase Elliott led 23 laps but he's a driver who can never advance beyond doing less with more, and he didn't deliver when it mattered either in his 150 or the 500; in fact Hendrick Motorsports as a group personifies the continued weakness of the Chevrolet camp as William Byron won his 150 but crashed in the 500, Alex Bowman qualified on the front row and led in his 150 but faded and was mostly MIA in the 500 (finishing 24th), and Jimmie Johnson led three laps and contended for a long time but ended the 500 in 35th.
Only two Chevrolets finished in the top ten and neither got there because they were all that good or even decent at all - Brendan Gaughn, whose racing career never really recovered from collapsing at the end of the 2003 Truck season, and Kyle Larson, like Elliott a less-with-more underachiever whose commitment to Winston Cup now can be seriously questioned. The rest of the Chevy fleet didn't even do that well - RCR saw Austin Dillon run decently all week but with only 12th to show for it, Bubba Wallace finished an eye-opening fifth in his 150 but his car never really sucked up in the draft or pushed anyone, RCR's new rookie Tyler Reddick didn't look like an improvement in the 8 over his predecessor, and Stenhouse's JTG-Daugherty teammate Ryan Preece looks like a drafting failure.
Analytics racing doesn't work. The Busch Clash was an "analytics race," to quote Kurt Busch, and the first segment of the 500 looked like one as well, one that left everyone from drivers to media confused as to the purpose. The Toyotas forfeited the first segment before finally going for the lead, as Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch combined to lead 93 laps. In the end the analytics approach accomplished nothing.
Toyota's strength in lack of numbers isn't succeeding because it's a good strategy. Toyota deliberately backs only one organization - Joe Gibbs, with its satellite deal with Bob Leavine's team and Christopher Bell. There were thus five Toyotas in the 500 and only one finished higher than 18th. The notion that Toyota is succeeding because it limits its backing to one organization is seriously debatable; it seems absurd that Toyota would struggle if it backed two or three organizations, notably when JGR and the Barney Visser team were nose to nose for championships in the 2016-18 period, combining to win 45 races. If anything there truly is strength in numbers.
Joey Logano is Ernie Irvan. The Busch Clash began Joey Logano's roller coaster week. He swerved into Kyle Busch and wiped out a number of cars, and one of them was teammate Brad Keselowski, who was angry enough to lash out afterward. Logano then won his 150 in a terrific sidedraft fight, then took out a bunch of cars in the final laps of the 500 before getting wrecked himself a few laps later. It's always what he's been since the infamous January 2009 NASCAR Toyota All-Star Shootout at Irwindale Speedway.
An interesting side note; since joining Penske Logano and Keselowski have each won 21 races.
So the Winston Cup tour heads to Las Vegas, most of the field hoping something better develops of it.
So the 2020 Daytona 500 will not be remembered for terrific racing. It will be remembered for Ryan Newman's bad crash. That Newman as of this late-Monday authorship is stable albeit seriously hurt is a sign he'll pull through, though we seriously doubt he'll ever race again.
Newman started this entire mess when he swerved to chop off Ryan Blaney and got nailed.
Steve O'Donnell's statement on Newman's injuries following the 500
On social media there was widespread comparison to Dale Earnhardt's fatal 2001 crash - to which this mess has zero comparison. The 1995 Jimmy Horton crash where he was T-boned in midair by Ed Dixon is what the Newman crash resembled.
The epidemic of crashes at the end of the Daytona 500 came a week after melees in the Busch Clash, and both bring to the fore what a problem blocking has become in NASCAR. The first big melee on the backstretch was a slam draft gone wrong; the irony is the drivers had pretty well policed it following the Clash. Other wrecks such as the late Turn One mess were caused by blocks; again drivers seemed to have policed it reasonably following the Busch Clash.
It's been an issue for some years now with blocks going wrong, such as Aric Almirola's last lap crash in 2018 and Austin Dillon's disastrous swerve last July in the Firecracker 400 - ironically the first of now-three straight "plate" races that have been delayed or cut into two days by rain.
Correspondent Michael Dickinson makes an interesting analogy to the 2009 Keselowski-Edwards melee, ironically involving Newman, and which also illustrates the issue of blocking.
Contrast this with Grant Enfinger in winning the NextEra 250 on Friday night before the 500. He held his line and simply raced a challenging Jordan Anderson to the stripe. The two bounced off each other but none of it was gratuitous, and it made for a terrific finish to what had become a rip-roaring race.
Another, more historical, contrast is the famous 1974 Firecracker 400 finish where Richard Petty tried to stop David Pearson's pass but left room rather than wreck himself and Pearson.
These wrecks simply shouldn't be happening. I certainly do not favor adding more officiating to the sport - a sport that like all sports needs to start reducing incidence of officiating. But NASCAR does need to address the epidemic of blocking, and drivers need to police each other a lot more. Trying to protect the lead - we get that. Pushing another car to speed up him and thus yourself - we favor that. NASCAR needs to discourage the gratuitous blocking that's become a clear problem and drivers need to police it themselves better.
Terrific racing doesn't need wrecks. Nose to nose combat first on back is what it needs.
UPDATE: Newman was released from the hospital Wednesday afternoon.
With Pocono running a Winston Cup doubleheader in 2020 the concept has no doubt circulated discussion of more tracks perhaps trying the idea. With that in mind a possible Winston Cup schedule with doubleheader; Xfinity and Truck support races would of course be a major part of the majority of "Classic" doubleheaders -
FEBRUARY
DAYTONA 500
LAS VEGAS
MARCH
PHOENIX
CALIFORNIA 500 CLASSIC, Fontana
MIAMI 500 CLASSIC, Homestead
ATLANTA 500 CLASSIC
APRIL
MUSIC CITY CLASSIC, Nashville
TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
VIRGINIA 500 CLASSIC, Martinsville
MAY
TALLADEGA
KANSAS
WORLD 600 CLASSIC, Charlotte - two 300 lappers Saturday & Sunday
JULY
BRICKYARD CLASSIC (Truck race added; second Xfinity race added to Indianapolis as second, separate date for the road course, presumably during Indy GP week).
NEW ENGLAND CLASSIC, New Hampshire
GATEWAY IOWA CLASSIC
AUGUST
SEARS POINT
MOTOR STATE 500 CLASSIC, Michigan FIRECRACKER 400, Daytona
VOLUNTEER 500 CLASSIC, Bristol
SEPTEMBER
SOUTHERN 500 CLASSIC, Darlington
CAPITAL CITY 500 CLASSIC, Richmond
TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
TALLADEGA
OCTOBER CHARLOTTE ROAD RACE
KANSAS
PHOENIX
LAS VEGAS.
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.
NASCAR's change of its 2020 schedule has moved the Firecracker 400 weekend from July to early September, making 2019 the last Independence Day weekend for the time being at Daytona. We suspect the date will return to its tradition sooner instead of later a la the Southern 500. But amid all that an unwelcome semi-tradition returned - rain. It affected the Chicago 400 last week and plagued the Firecracker 400 weekend as well.
It has led to the usual griping about the racing not being "racing," with a Clint Bowyer quote about how at Michigan he passed a car then four others passed him back. Ryan Preece then added, "It's not what we grew up doing.....(we were) throwing a car into a corner harder, not driving in as hard, using the brake, letting it roll and pick up the throttle sooner.....(where now)...We're wide open....it's not easy because you still have to find the balance of your car but that's what it is."
It's impossible to take Clint Bowyer's opinion seriously because he's objecting that rival drivers are passing him. This is what competition entails. As for Preece, he won twenty two times (for team owners Jan Boehler, Eric Sanderson, and Eddie Partridge) on the NASCAR Modified Tour, where the cars are far more secure to the track and thus open throttle able than regular fendered racecars - though an interesting caveat is in twenty three starts at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, the tour's Daytona, he has seven top fives, five other top tens, 244 laps led - but is winless.
It brings to mind a scathing review of F1 and Indy 500 champion Jimmy Clark in Chris Economaki's bio LET 'EM ALL GO!
"....of every Formula One race that Clark competed in, you would find that he never passed anyone. He started on the pole in a Lotus and he left.
"When he was forced to battle wheel to wheel with someone, he invariably lost. I saw that at Riverside. Dan Gurney was driving Rollo Vollstedt's car and he beat Clark who was at the wheel of a superior machine.*** In 1963 (at the Indianapolis 500) Clark should have blown Parnelli Jones off and won the 500, but he didn't.
"Clark in my view was never comfortable with someone alongside him....to me he could not handle racing face to face with someone on the racetrack."
This has been manifestly true of a great many road racing drivers and also more than a few oval trackers - I've never been all that impressed for one with Bill Elliott, who certainly is a Hall of Fame champion but who always seemed to have a lower limit of combativeness on the racetrack. It bears repeating that not only did the 1998-2018 period of NASCAR showcase that the tracks with more horsepower and throttle response produced far lower incidence of passing than the plate races, but that a high number of quality drivers such as Rusty Wallace, Alan Kulwicki, Ricky Rudd, Carl Edwards, Kasey Kahne, Juan Montoya, Marcus Ambrose, and more recently Kyle Larson never won a "plate" race, where talent is ostensibly smothered.
The reality remains talent isn't being smothered, it's being exposed for what it is and what it is not.
That real talent comes from passing and repassing was showcased in the rain-plagued Firecracker 400 weekend.
It began when Brad Keselowski cheap shot William Byron - during practice - then afterward gave a confusing response stating he was angry at blocking and at crashing in a bevy of races the last few seasons. "I'm not going to lift," Keselowski stated.
Payback proved to be a Dani Beck when Kevin Harvick - famously benched for a race after a cheap shot in a Truck race in 2002 - after getting tagged off Two by Keselowski later let Keselowski have it - and the fans cheered. But the big mess came when Austin Dillon stormed into the lead, threw a massive block on Clint Bowyer, and Bowyer hooked him a la the Sterling Marlin-Bobby Allison crash at the similarly-flaky 1986 Talladega 500. The end result was Justin Haley, who'd stayed out when everyone else pitted, got a win nobody - least of all him - thought conceivable, especially as he'd been pretty much MIA all race. He is the first first-timer since Chase Elliott last season and the biggest upset winner maybe since Keselowski himself at the 2009 Winston 500.
The biggest upshot of the whole thing is the bizarre win is payback to NASCAR for its indefensible yellow line rule that cost Haley the 2018 Firecracker 250. And controversy was still circulating the day later over his team, Spire Motorsports, owned by the sport's largest driver agency and which put Haley in its #77 basically because Haley is one of their clients. The term "cash grab" has been used to describe Spire's tactics because the team was purchased from the remains of Barney Visser's former title winning team, and yet Spire didn't field an actual team, instead getting Premium Motorsports to do so. The company's co-founder Jeff Dickerson purchased the franchise because no one else tried to buy it.
Is there conflict of interest here? Frankly it seems no one knows with certainty, a point shown as Dave Moody recounts how Big Bill France raced in his sanctioning body's events and series sponsor RJR also sponsored Travis Carter's car in the 1990s - and it crosses over to Indycars where Marlboro sponsored races and the series as well as individual racecars, most famously Emerson Fittipaldi.
And suddenly the 2019 Winston Cup season, already by far more competitive and interesting than seasons of the last fifteen-plus seasons, gets more interesting.
*** 1967 Rex Mays 300, Riverside International Raceway. Gurney won after leading 68 laps; Clark fell out after 25 laps with a burned valve.
With all the inevitable squauking about the 2020 NASCAR schedule, a semi-idealized alternative is presented, including a few flights of fancy to illustrate a few historical tracks that objectively should still be here. The 2020 calender is used as the template - most weekends would entail double or tripleheaders involving the Busch-Xfinity Series, Gander Truck series, or both, with ARCA Menards Series on some weekends as well
JANUARY 26 WINSTON WESTERN GRAND NATIONAL, RIVERSIDE INTERNATIONAL RACEWAY - Once the shakedown season debut for the Cup tour, nowadays the speedway empires of International Speedway Corporation, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and Speedway Motorsports Inc. would in some combination have "rescued" tracks like Riverside and kept them in the Cup tour.
FEBRUARY 16 DAYTONA 500 FEBRUARY 23 PENNZOIL 450, LAS VEGAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY MARCH 1 TICKET GUARDIAN 500k, PHOENIX/ISM RACEWAY MARCH 8 MILLER HIGH LIFE/AUTO CLUB 500, ONTARIO MOTOR SPEEDWAY - As with Riverside the modern speedway empires ISC, IMS, and SMI would likely link together in some fashion to preserve OMS, the crown jewel of superspeedways, and thus nullified the need to construct the present Cal Speedway in Fontana MARCH 15 FORD MIAMI 450, HOMESTEAD MIAMI SPEEDWAY MARCH 22 FOLDS OF HONOR ATLANTA 500, ATLANTA MOTOR SPEEDWAY MARCH 29 INTERSTATE/O'REILLY 500, TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY APRIL 5 FOOD CITY 500 , BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY
APRIL 12 - OFF APRIL 19 KANSAS 450, KANSAS SPEEDWAY
APRIL 26 STP VIRGINIA 500, MARTINSVILLE SPEEDWAY
MAY 3 WINSTON 500, TALLADEGA SUPERSPEEDWAY
MAY 10 - OFF
MAY 17 MASON-DIXON 450, DOVER DOWNS INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
MAY 24 COCA COLA WORLD 600, CHARLOTTE MOTOR SPEEDWAY
MAY 31 MAPLE LEAF GRAND NATIONAL, CANADIAN TIRE MOTORSPORTS PARK - much has been made of the Truck Series here; while not ideal for the series Mosport certainly has history and the Canadian market is served
JUNE 7 PUROLATOR 500, POCONO RACEWAY
JUNE 14 MILLER HIGH LIFE/FIREKEEPERS CASINO 500, MICHIGAN INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
JUNE 21 GO BOWLING WATKINS GLEN GRAND NATIONAL
JUNE 28 BASS PRO SHOPS 500, BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY JULY 5 PEPSI FIRECRACKER 450, DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
JULY 12 CAMPING WORLD 450, CHICAGOLAND SPEEDWAY
JULY 19 FOXWOODS CASINO 300, NEW HAMPSHIRE MOTOR SPEEDWAY
JULY 26 CHAMPION SPARK PLUG/GANDER RV 500, POCONO RACEWAY
AUGUST 2 - OFF
AUGUST 9 BRICKYARD 450, INDIANAPOLIS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
AUGUST 16 TOYOTA/SAVE MART GRAND NATIONAL, SEARS POINT RACEWAY
AUGUST 23 PEPSI 500, MICHIGAN INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
AUGUST 30 QUAKER STATE 450, KENTUCKY SPEEDWAY
SEPTEMBER 6 SOUTHERN 500, DARLINGTON RACEWAY
SEPTEMBER 13 FEDERATED AUTO PARTS 450, RICHMOND INTERNATIONAL RACEWAY
SEPTEMBER 20 DELAWARE 450, DOVER DOWNS INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
SEPTEMBER 27 HILLYWOOD CASINO 450, KANSAS SPEEDWAY
OCTOBER 4 BANK OF AMERICA 500, CHARLOTTE MOTOR SPEEDWAY
OCTOBER 11 COORS ALL-AMERICAN 450, NASHVILLE FAIRGROUNDS - reportage to the effect some element of NASCAR is seeking to refurbish the Fairgrounds in the context of holding the annual season-ending banquet in the city has led to speculation of returning some series here. OCTOBER 18 DIEHARD 500, TALLADEGA SUPERSPEEDWAY OCTOBER 25 ALAMO/AAA 500, TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
NOVEMBER 1 COPPER WORLD 500k, PHOENIX/ISM RACEWAY
NOVEMBER 8 SOUTH POINT 450, LAS VEGAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
NOVEMBER 15 LA TIMES 500, ONTARIO MOTOR SPEEDWAY
No doubt sharp-eyed fans will notice what isn't there. A few tracks in this schedule have lost their second Winston Cup dates. The reason is simple; if people are serious about shaking up the schedule then at least two of the short tracks presently on the tour - three of the sport's weakest markets - would need to lose a date apiece; asking the bigger tracks to sacrifice dates for weaker markets (New Hampshire sacrificed one of its dates, but for the Vegas market) isn't smart business.
Also not here is a return to the presently-shuttered Rockingham track, this despite reportage that the area government will spend money to refurbish it. Rockingham had its chance when Andy Hillinberg reopened it; his effort deserves praise, but it proved futile in the end.
And the two non-point races, the Busch Clash and All Star Race? They really no longer serve a purpose for the sport.
Flight of fancy, yes, but also a more realistic assessment of what the NASCAR schedule needs to be.
NASCAR's first Winston Cup weekend hit Martinsville and soon after the 2020 schedule was released to great fanfare and a lot of wild speculation, some of which turned out to be true.
First up is the Virginia 500 weekend. Brad Keselowski annihilated the field for his second win of the season and Chase Elliott wound up second, the best finish so far for Chevrolet. But two issues rose above everything else - first was the dismal effort by Jimmie Johnson, and more than a few analysts noticed how badly he ran, with the inevitable speculation about what's wrong.
The other big picture story was that the writers suddenly noticed that aero matters on short tracks. The gripe was the bigger spoiler was somehow creating aeropush, but that's false. Aeropush was always there and the bigger spoiler allowed the drivers to blast through the corners more strongly. It wasn't harder to pass in this Martinsville than it was with low downforce; actually the opposite was the case - lower downforce made passing harder.
That aero was suddenly noticed at Martinsville shows how ignorant of history a lot of people seem to be. Bobby Hamilton in the 1990s was the first to articulate that aeropush was and is a short track issue. And the aero rake on short track cars - especially dirt cars - long ago proved aero is more, not less, important on short tracks - pavement late models look more like superspeedway cars than modern superspeedway cars look.
People need to give up this myth of "making the cars less dependent on aero." Because that's all it's ever been - "less dependent on aero" is a myth, through and through.
*****
The other story two days later was the unveiling of the 2020 Winston Cup schedule. Social media had some ridiculous speculation that some tracks would lose dates in favor of unimpressive locales like Villenueve Circuit, Mosport, Iowa Speedway, even Indy Raceway Park. That didn't happen as any sensible analysis could have predicted. Also not happening is elimination of the playoff format, the source of a pre-Martinsville rumor.
What did happen though led to expected puzzlement. The most bizarre is Pocono Raceway has to stack both of its Winston Cup dates into just one weekend - late June. Back to back 400 milers (they should be 500 milers) in two days compresses into too tight a window for teams with inevitable attrition, bringing back memory of the track's 1969 birth where it ran short track races on its now-defunct 3/4-mile interior oval and its ration of entries was always cut because of attrition at other tracks running the night before. Plus it is just one weekend, a revenue-generation reduction by any measure. No Steve O'Donnell (his presser transcript here), crushing two big races into one weekend isn't "terrific for the fans."
The bizarre move - the only such doubleheader - appears forced because NBC is airing the Summer Olympics in 2020 in July and August that year - which brings to mind the sport should not have constricted itself to two networks but instead should be getting four or five with CBS, TNT, etc. being brought in. It also leaves one wondering if this is thus a one-off experiment, one the sport really doesn't need.
The other changes are moving the Brickyard 400 to July 4 and the Firecracker 400 at Daytona at the end of August. One struggles to see what need ever arose for such changes, and Steve O'Donnell dressed Daytona's move in terms of NASCAR's misbegotten playoff format, since the Firecracker 400 is now the "regular season" finale and the Southern 500 kicks off the playoffs.
Darlington, Richmond, Bristol, Vegas, Talladega, Charlotte's stupid roval, Kansas, Texas, the Old Dominion 500 in November instead of September, and then Phoenix are the playoff races. This even though the playoff concept has never worked - indeed the fact of a rumor circulating to the effect of ending the experiment indicates there is understanding in the racing industry the playoff format has not worked despite NASCAR's stubborn insistence on shoving it down our throats.
In all the new schedule is "fixing" what had no need for a makeover. If NASCAR thinks this will spur renewed interest they're kidding themselves.
NASCAR's 2019 season has now run five races and the racing has noticeably gotten more competitive with the phase-in of the new draft duct package, the use of tapered engine spacers producing some 550 HP, and concurrent larger spoiler. And the TV ratings have improved noticeably each week, a good sign of momentum that needs to be maintained for the sport.
But as is common in racing there is a confluence of different yet at times related issues worth a look.
*****
The race that stood out aside from the Daytona 500 - competitive but poorly driven amid multiple crashes and a strikingly low number of finishers - was Las Vegas, where the full draft duct package kicked off after a promising January test. The result was not what anyone expected - there was no two-abreast battle of drafting packs and the draft appeared schizophrenic.
There was though a striking battle for the lead - scoring indicated there were some 47 lead changes, official and otherwise, by any measure an eye-popping number and an indication the draft duct package is indeed working.
The race looked at in some circles as a big test was Fontana, and it proved less than expected. Kyle Busch won it after a late yellow and subsequent showdown with Atlanta 500 winner Brad Keselowski and Vegas champ Joey Logano, but the general consensus was it wasn't a particularly competitive race despite a few spots of intense dicing.
Both completely ignore the worn out asphalt at Fontana (and also Atlanta and Chicagoland) and how teams were chasing the racetrack, trying to manage tires - do everything except go for the lead. What would Fontana have looked like had it been repaved by now? Like this.
....and also like this. A sharp observation from one social media observer is that Fontana needs to be repaved.....but also rebanked, higher, up to 28 degrees. In the past I was not an advocate of rebanking tracks because the racecars were the issue, but with successful up-bankings at some tracks over the last two decades I'm not necessarily opposed to the practice. If anything Fontana, Pocono, Michigan, and perhaps Chicagoland and Kentucky can benefit from some up-banking (as well as where needed new pavement). The shuttered Nashville Superspeedway would benefit greatly from up-banking and also conversion to asphalt. ****
There is clearly a divide in motorsports in fans, sanctioning bodies, etc. As one social media observer has noted, a lot of fans want pack racing and NASCAR has been listening to them. Of course given the superior level of competition fans should want pack-type racing. The core criticism I hear of pack-type racing is that somehow "anyone can do it." Following the Vegas race Kyle Busch - now of 200 wins between Winston Cup, Busch-Xfinity, and the Truck Series - mouthed off as he'd done in the January test that the package has taken "skill" out of the drivers' hands. Ryan Newman - another who has spoken out of turn over and over - claimed fans in the grandstands can now drive these cars with this package.
It brought a needed rebuke from MRN's Dave Moody. It's worth reminder of talented drivers who never won or haven't to date won a draft-pack aka restrictor plate race -
Rusty Wallace Ricky Rudd Geoff Bodine Martin Truex Kyle Larson Carl Edwards Kasey Kahne Alan Kulwicki Juan Montoya Marcus Ambrose Kyle Petty Ricky Craven Steve Park Jerry Nadeau Johnny Benson Jeremy Mayfield Joe Nemechek AJ Allmeindinger Lake Speed Elliott Sadler
The claim "anyone can run these races" simply isn't true. NOT anyone can do what they're doing out on these racetracks. And it absolutely takes legitimate skill to compete in draft pack racing. Moody for one notes the drivers "have traditionally been poor spokespersons for their sport."
It shows again when the issue of "putting on a show" comes up. Pete Pistone of MRN has had conversation to this effect recently. The opinion has circulated from the driver fraternity that "their focus is on succeeding and dominating, not on creating a good 'show' or an entertaining race." Which is true, but misses the point. The sanctioning body is supposed to set the competition parameter and the drivers compete within it. When the parameter is set where drivers are slicing and dicing for the front on a regular basis then it is "putting on a show" because it is competition in its purest form - combat for the win.
And while drivers seek to dominate, objective reality is the accomplishment is inherently diminished when it is domination. Kyle Busch's much-celebrated 200 wins across the Winston Cup, Busch-Xfinity, and Truck Series saw a disproportionate percentage of uncompetitive affairs, and even his Fontana win wasn't the accomplishment a hard-fought affair would have been.
To put Busch and Newman's opinion on its head - anyone can outrun the field; it takes a true racer to outright it
*****
Also getting a lot of ink has been Tony Stewart's interview with the Virginian Pilot, his now-famous "rich kids" interview. First he pushes that NASCAR needs more drivers with "personality," though what this actually looks like remains nebulous, and if anything the sport has choked on personality the last two decades.
He espouses one of the hoarist gripes in motorsports - one Richard Petty made in his 1986 biography with William Neely - the claim "kids with rich fathers and deep pockets that put them in racecars.....because they're eighteen years old, they think they deserve to be in a Cup car. I have a hard time with that."
Stewart of course doesn't name names, even though his argument would be more credible if he did - name who should be removed from Winston Cup rides and which of these "hundreds of thousands of racecar drivers across the country that have clawed and scratched their way at Saturday night short tracks and worked on their cars all their life to get where they are" should take those rides over.
Should NASCAR remove Austin Dillon and Paul Menard from their rides? How about your own driver Daniel Suarez, Tony? Suarez is a Drive For Diversity poster boy - diversity initiatives are another form of favoritism - who has had quality rides with JGR and now Stewart-Haas, and even won three Busch-Xfinity races and won at Phoenix in the Truck series - all in 2016 - and who since then has just ten top-five finishes in a combined 93 Winston Cup/Busch-Xfinity races - and just 87 career to date laps led in Winston Cup. Less with more. He would seem the kind of driver who should be yanked from his ride and replaced.
And the bigger question - is it possible the reason these hundreds of thousands of short trackers don't get Winston Cup rides because their fundamental skill set isn't compatible with Cup anymore? This is in essence why open wheel short trackers stopped getting Indycar rides even when the IRL went out of its way to put sprint car and midget car drivers into Indycars, only to find in test after test what National Speed Sport News quoted one team owner saying in 2002 - "We could never get them to stop lifting for the corners."
Stewart's general sentiment is sympathetic, but practicality and sympathy aren't the same thing.
Stewart also renews his idiotic advocacy for dirt tracks for Winston Cup. It bears reminder that the reason he wants Winston Cup at Eldora - despite the weak competition level there and inability to hold more than 13,000, never mind no particular evidence of sponsor interest for major league racing there - is TV money; the Trucks get nothing for TV money.
It's the same for the Busch-Xfinity Series and the other tours of NASCAR - and the real answer goes ignored. NASCAR needs to completely revamp its TV deal and get more networks involved into more series. CBS, TNT, TBS, and MAVTV - and even ABC despite the gross qualitative regression of ESPN - need to be involved with FOX and NBC to provide more TV money at lest cost to each network, with genuine TV money going to the other tours of NASCAR. Make the Truck Race at Eldora worth the financial while of the track so it doesn't need Cup. Get more TV money so Iowa, a track not capable of a Cup date despite sanctioning body ownership, is worth its while not having a Cup date.
*****
There's a Darrell Waltrip-ism that fits with this scenario - coop-etition, a mixture of cooperation between sides that aids their own competition endeavors. It's a term he coined to describe push-drafting by rival cars at Daytona and Talladega; cooperation that directly benefitted the competitive effort of the two cars involved.
Coop-etition fits to try and turn around the disaster that is Chevrolet's Winston Cup effort. It is known, as Andy Petree stated in 2018, that there is no inter-team cooperation within Chevrolet's Winston Cup program, and the signs point to that Chevy seriously cut its NASCAR budget. So the lack of inter-team engineering exchanges is baffling and harmful to the effort. If Hendrick, RCR, Ganassi, Petty, and the Brad Daugherty team opened up their engineering information to each other - a la the old Childress-Earnhardt-Petree alliance and the pioneering Pontiac inter-team alliance involving Petty, Sabates' team pre-Ganassi involvement, Joe Gibbs Racing when it ran Pontiacs, Bill Davis Racing, and Chuck Rider's team - they would far more effectively find and solve engineering, setup etc. issues with their cars - and be able to fight the Fords and Toyotas for wins.
NASCAR's 2018 season produced the most surprising moments seen in years and the Ford 400 weekend ended the season in appropriate fashion with an eye-popping affair won by Joey Logano.
Among the stories of 2018 is the disbanding of Barney Vissar's #78 team - and a striking aspect of the team's closure may have been overlooked in most analyses, as the indication is Joe Gibbs Racing vastly raised the price Furniture Row Racing had to pay to maintain its equipment deal with JGR - a practice JGR itself anticipated in 1995 when it won three races and began building its own engine shop to get off the Hendrick Motorsports engine dole before Hendrick - as that team had done to Bob Whitcomb Racing five years earlier - cut them off for outrunning his house cars.
If this is the case it's the kind of political backstabbing that is gross for motorsports, a sport where inter-team cooperation is a time-honored act of professionalism - as the late Chris Economaki had noted over his career, the sportsmen team owners who fielded cars at Indianapolis were indeed sportsman before the influx of the more ruthless types that permeated Indycars in the 1970s and onward. It is also bad business for JGR which drew immense engineering benefit from its deal with Furniture Row; in the three seasons FRR was part of the JGR effort, JGR won 29 races entering Miami alongside Furniture Row's sixteen wins. The upshot is Truex and Furniture Row got the last laugh, beating all of JGR's Toyotas - notably the car Truex will drive in 2019, the #19 now vacated by Drive For Diversity washout Daniel Suarez - and slicing it out with Logano in some of the most spirited racing of the season. The lead officially changed nine times in the last 120 laps, but that stat is an undercount as Truex and Logano - their ugly Martinsville set-to got replayed on numerous occasions - sidedrafted for the lead for numerous laps. That they raced each other clean after Truex's angry trash talk after Martinsville was a surprise no doubt to many - and a sign of professionalism the sport has needed in greater quality and quantity.
Professionalism on display at Miami was a strikingly overlooked but appropriate salute to the driver considered NASCAR's greatest. David Pearson was the professionals' professional and his passing before the weekend made for the saddest of goodbyes. Here we see his 104th Winston Cup win, the 1979 Southern 500 subbing for injured Dale Earnhardt in Rod Osterlund's Chevrolet.
In racing as in life there are always nits to pick and Monday Morning Quarterbacking or Crew Chiefing is inevitable. The Xfinity Series championship was won by Tyler Reddick but the points as tabulated without a playoff format show Daniel Hemric as the "true" champion. The Cup side has now run fifteen "Chase" playoffs and this is the ninth time the wrong champion was crowned as Kyle Busch wins the 2018 title based on the season-long format - as well as given his eight wins, tied with Kevin Harvick's eight wins, the most of anyone this season. Aric Almirola - fifth in "Chase" points - finishes 12th in the "true" title.
That the Chase format has missed the boat so often helps explain why the sport's popularity has shrunk as it has. This 400 is the closest the sport has yet come to recapturing the beloved 1992 Dixie 500 championship chase energy, and there has never been need for a playoff format, long proven unworkable for motorsports.
*****
There was some grumbling online about this race being "the end of an era" with the NA18D draft-duct package coming in 2019 - the irony is the spirited slicing for the lead showed why the sport needs the NA18D package; the fight for the lead would have been even more epic with the draft kicking in.
There was also the expected questioning of NASCAR honcho Steve Phelps about the 2020 schedule and the potential for more short tracks and a reduction of the "cookie cutter" big tracks - seemingly no one as usual remembering the short tracks the three major league divisions now have do not draw well enough to justify any relevant schedule change - weaker completion, markets, and crowds, this is what the short tracks in fact are. This race also illustrated the fundamental superiority of superspeedways with intense racing without the gratuitous slam-bang stupidity illustrated at Martinsville.
*****
As always happens in racing there was the majority who have little to nothing worth remembering from this season. Brad Daugherty's team, Richard Petty Motorsports, Wood Brothers Racing - naturally affected more than everyone else by David Pearson's passing - are three teams whose 2018 went nowhere. Chase Elliott and Austin Dillon won this year but their teammates were irrelevant throughout, as was Chevrolet in general despite the four wins and strong efforts by Kyle Larson. The Camaro was quite simply a poor racecar and Chevrolet's program is screwed up and in need of a major cultural change - one remembers Andy Petree's earlier missive about lack of inter-team cooperation in the Chevrolet camp. Also completely screwed up is the Roush team, winless and little better than garbage from the Daytona 500 onward.
For those teams, 2018 was a failure - and 2019 is in need of improvement for them and for a sport in general that nonetheless took an important step forward in 2018.
With a decision apparently coming down that NASCAR will phase in its NA18D racecar package - a restrictor plate, larger spoiler, and ducts in the nose blasting air out the front wheelwells - for some fourteen or more races in 2019, a look at those races to date that have run this package -
The first race to see this package was the 2017 Brickyard Xfinity 250 and it proved a spirited race won by William Byron
The 2018 All Star Race at Charlotte was the first Winston Cup race to run this package and it opened a lot of eyes by restoring the draft at Charlotte, where it had been a major fact as late as the 2000 National 500
Pocono's Xfinity 250 was next; it was dominated by Kyle Busch but also saw a huge battle to win Stage Two - history has shown the more teams work with this package then they catch back up to someone like Busch
Rain shortened the Michigan Xfinity 250 but the racing was competitive, and the increase in lead changes at Michigan with this package was noted all weekend
The 2018 Lillys 250 may have been more aggressive than 2017's running, with noticeably more blocking and highlighted by a four-abreast battle to win Stage One. The package by any objective measure has been a success, yet has caused pointless controversy and illustrated the disconnect of some drivers from racing reality. There is no credible reason not to run this package as the universal racing package.
Bubba Wallace was one of thirteen drivers busted in post-qualifying tech and thus had to start in the bottom ten - he was listed 39th but after about six cars went the back before the green he actually started 33rd - of the Gander 400. In a season of struggle and poor finishes he clawed toward the top-20 before his brakes exploded and this mess erupted.
There was chatter about so many cars flunking post-qualifying tech and the effectiveness of punishments, but it may not be so simple to deal with.
The Wallace wreck also led to some chatter about altering the hairpin-esque Turn One, though realistically catastrophic brake failure is something no configuration of corner can deal with.
Pocono's Summer 400 illustrated the mixed bag of NASCAR's transition period of late - while the TV ratings for the sport remain subpar, attendances overall have been solid, and fan enthusiasm isn't gone. A recent Forbes piece indicates the much-sought "millenial" audience in fact is taking to NASCAR, which seems to illustrate sociological assumptions about millenials aren't always accurate.
It also illustrated the strength of Kyle Busch (the winner), Kevin Harvick (fourth), and Martin Truex (a disappointing 15th). Busch and Harvick started in the bottom dozen while Truex started eighth. Harvick led 30 laps and Busch 52, while default polesitter Daniel Suarez led an impressive 29 laps - compared to just six led all season - and finished a spirited second.
The big story outside of the post-qualifying controversy and Bubba Wallace's ugly melee was the continued improvement of the Hendrick Motorsports fleet, as Alex Bowman, William Byron, and Chase Elliott all finished in the top seven, this as JGR put three Toyotas in the top five. The recent surge by Hendrick comes amid Andy Petree's radio interview where he noted the Chevrolets have not worked together, and this lack of cooperation will now just get worse because now Hendrick Motorsports can believe it doesn't need to work with any other Chevy team - and one wonders if, a la the old Childress-Petree-Earnhardt engineering alliance of 1998 onward or the Pontiac inter-team alliance of 1994 onward, there will be even closer interaction between RCR, Petty, and the JTG-Daugherty team that put AJ Allmendinger to a decent 14th.
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There is the old debate - is domination as seen from Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, and Martin Truex good for the sport? It's a debate that can never truly be decided, for while one does see surges of attention when someone starts dominating, attention surges more when someone else takes down the dominator(s). One certainly can admire three superstars at the top of their game, yet other teams surging and toppling the dominators and growing competitive depth is something always good for sports.
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What Pocono (and almost every other track) can use most is making the draft effective again a la last week's Eastern Propane Modified 100 at New Hampshire. And a Lee Spencer report published the night before the Pocono race indicates NASCAR in 2019 will implement what is called the NA18D package, a modified form of its draft duct package at Vegas, Fontana, Texas, Kansas, Charlotte, Michigan, Chicagoland, Kentucky, and Indianapolis. The intriguing tidbit is that NASCAR apparently wants to use a smaller engine spacer rather than a restrictor plate and have two unrestricted engine packages - the open motor and the "NA18D" engine set at 550 hp.
The curious aspect is the set of tracks apparently overlooked for this NA18D package - Pocono, Atlanta, New Hampshire, and Homestead. New Hampshire has certainly demonstrated in its 29 seasons of Whelen Modified Tour competition that the draft can kick in, and the other three are more than large enough for the draft to make a huge difference. And even more curious is why Daytona and Talladega are not yet targeted for draft ducts, which certainly can only help the effectiveness of the draft at those places as they have elsewhere they've been used.
One can certainly hope such a package improves the racing as the present version unquestionably already has. For now the series surges to Watkins Glen - which has seen plenty of melees that make Bubba Wallace's wild ride look tame.
NASCAR's Kentucky weekend began with two surprising winners in Ben Rhodes in the Kentucky Truck 225 and Christopher Bell in the Alsco 300 Xfinity race. For Bell, it was his third win in twenty-five Xfinity races to date, atop seven wins in the Trucks. For Rhodes the win was only the second in his Truck career, both in Thorsport vehicles.
The Quaker State 400, in contrast, was the same script seen throughout 2018 - the fourth win of the season for Martin Truex and yet another near-monopoly by Truex, Kevin Harvick (with five wins), and Kyle Busch (also five). Not only that, the racing wasn't competitive and the rest of the field has gotten perceptibly weaker compared to the new Big Three - or as Dave Moody put it, "Hope is a lousy business plan."
It led yet again to pathetic social media condemnation of the track (best shown in hostile reaction to a Darrell Waltrip tweet about the track which he helped build), of 1.5-milers in general, of NASCAR, and advocacy of dragging the sport away from big tracks to the podunk bullrings - "get the sport back to its roots" is the catchphrase, always ignoring the reality that the short track model doesn't work for major league racing. Added to this was a ridiculous commentary during the Honda Indy Toronto weekend where NASCAR's Canadian tour ran, and where Andrew Ranger jumped when race-leader Alex Tagliani bobbled on a GWC restart for the only pass of the race. Some were advocating NASCAR add a street race to the major league tours - this even with a race as typically pathetic in competition as this was.
"Fans have long complained about a lack of competition.....And yet, after discovering a promising potential remedy for those complaints at the All Star Race, NASCAR waved it off under pressure from its athletes.
The hypocrisy of fans and drivers has long been a laughable reality of racing. As more than one observer has noted, fans who decried the crashes at Daytona were celebrating crashes at Chicagoland. Add to this that fans long raved for "the old Bristol" - the Bristol with just one groove where no one could race and tearing up over half the field was the norm.
"Fans have spoken. They want fewer "rubber stamp" 1.5-milers and more short tracks, more road courses, more new, more exciting."
Moody advocates adding four short track races to the Winston Cup schedule, such as Hickory, Nashville, Oxford Plains, Berlin Raceway, Myrtle Beach. But he notes NASCAR would have to basically throw away making any money off such weaker markets and venues and teams would have to accept seriously lower purses. And one has to ask - for what?
Fans are angry at 1.5-mile tracks yet are advocating going to tracks that are even less competitive? Bristol's per-race average of lead changes is a paltry thirteen, compared to 22-plus for Pocono, Michigan, etc (fans also still lament the passing of North Wilkesboro Speedway - which only averaged seven lead changes in 93 career Winston Cup races). The objective illogic should be readily apparent yet seems not to be for a lot of people - especially given the three short tracks on the Winston Cup tour have been hurt more in declining attendances (some recent Bristol races especially look like ghost towns) than the superspeedways. To further illustrate fan hypocrisy - would fans support dropping Richmond or Bristol or Martinsville for Iowa?
The sport's problems have solutions - those solutions just need to be implemented and all involved need to give up something worth giving up.............
Run the plate package with larger spoiler and perhaps also larger draft ducts -
Drivers need to give up complaining the cars are "too slow" or "too easy to drive" - what is needed is making the cars more secure to the track and making the draft stronger and thus more important, and thus opening up greater combat up front.
Add downforce, stop fighting against it -
If the cars have more downforce to where they are "slowish" at 190 at Michigan et al they can get back more power; basically find the draft-horsepower-downforce balance Indycar nailed with the DW12 car that exploded in lead changes 2012-17. Racing has to give up the myth that downforce is bad.
Eliminate the playoff format and adjust the point structure to make wins and most laps led paramount -
NASCAR has to give up the myth of "Game Seven Moments" because they don't exist in racing; also give up the myth of the 1992 Hooters 500; it was a once-in-lifetime moment, stop trying to replicate it. Instead put all incentive into going for the lead, going for the win. This is a championship format everyone can recognize without much complication and it makes the races themselves more important again.
Take more TV money out of Winston Cup and put it into NASCAR's supporting series -Instead of moving Cup dates to smaller markets, make those smaller markets worth their while to hold stand-alone races in Xfinity, Trucks, the Mod Tour, the Canadian tour, and the K&N/ARCA tours. This is part of the motivation for the Truck Series when it started - the goal was to make it strong enough that smaller tracks like presumably Rockingham and North Wilkesboro could replace their Cup dates with Truck dates and thus free up those dates for better tracks and markets. Iowa, Nashville, and Gateway for instance would benefit from more TV money and the lobbying for Cup dates at those places would be made unnecessary. TV networks shouldn't object, as such a change doesn't hurt them at all; Cup tracks, which make enough money, also should not object to a slightly smaller TV money slice.
Put some races back to 500 mile distances and earlier start times -
TV networks and the marketing hacks who work for them have to give up the myth that longer races are not what fans want - when challenged to lengthen their attention spans fans respond to the challenge well. Later start times have made it too inconvenient for fans to go to a lot of races. 500 miles is a better test of racecars and drivers than 400 milers.
No midweek races -This idea has gotten tossed about of late due to the Eldora Truck race, always run on a Wednesday. There has never been any evidence that running on a Wednesday has created any benefit for anyone. One wonders who thought this is a good idea and why this idea is being pushed.
Solutions are there to be had - everyone involved in racing needs to be more objective about these issues to find them.
Just before the Firecracker 400 weekend a controversy was stirred up by the Race-Stream Media over a remark by John Saunders, president of International Speedway Corporation, Daytona's parent company. Saunders noted a mild regression in ISC track attendances the last six race weekends; the controversy stemmed from this -
"We still have an issue with star power. Hopefully this stable of young drivers coming along will start to win and build their brands."
The controversy that ensued was summarized by Brendan Marks of The Charlotte Observer in a piece where he claimed that Saunders was laying all blame on NASCAR decline on lack of star power. Marks was not the only writer to make a controversy out of Saunders' remark, but oversells it (as did other writers judging from remarks from such drivers as Ryan Blaney) and thus uses driver comments in response to attack Saunders by saying "NASCAR's attendance issues predate any of these young drivers' time (in Winston Cup)........it's a faulty argument attributing all of NASCAR's decline to the departure of a few drivers."
Marks notes the retirement of drivers Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. - both now TV analysts, widely praised as such, Junior in particular earning much attention for his "Slide job, slide job!" call on the Kyle Larson-Kyle Busch set-to at Chicagoland, a call humorously reminiscent of "BERGERON! BERGERON!", the call of a game-winning overtime goal by Patrice Bergeron of the Boston Bruins in 2011 by the Bruins' then-play-by-play announcer Dave Goucher, now the TV play-by-play man for the Vegas Golden Knights.
Other drivers who have retired in recent years are Tony Stewart - still an active car owner with Gene Haas and the owner of Eldora Speedway - Carl Edwards, and Brendan Marks also cites Danica Patrick. This is where his argument gets weaker - NASCAR's attendance declines where happening during elements of their peak as drivers, and also Marks oversells their star power. There has never been any evidence Danica Patrick brought anyone to racing that otherwise would have ignored the sport, while the unlikeability of Stewart and Edwards weakens their star power. If anything the sport has gotten a certain freshness now that the abrasive and periodically dangerous Edwards is no longer participating.
Carl Edwards authored two of the most malicious melees in recent NASCAR memory - to imply his star power is something the sport misses is nonsensical.
In short, Marks exaggerates the star power of those drivers he lists who have retired. He also is ignoring the obvious when it comes to the young guns. He quotes Ryan Blaney's argument -
"We're trying. We're trying our hardest. It's not like I go out there and I'm happy for fifth every single week. Any other guys under the age of twenty-five I'll just say is the same way."
The issue is less whether the young guns are trying hard enough - it's always open to debate just how hard drivers are trying; one certainly wants to believe they truly are fighting as hard as possible, yet given how much importance is put into points as opposed to going for the lead, doubts become inevitable. The issue is - is this class of young guns really that good?
Chase Elliott by default is the "leader" of the young guns and with his third Winston Cup season droning forward his inability to finish the mission is becoming more and more of an issue. He's posted 26 top-five finishes in Cup so far, yet has shown no evidence of learning how to win. Running up front has never been an issue; actually doing what it takes to win is the issue.
Ryan Blaney, meanwhile, stunned the sport by winning at Pocono in the Wood Brothers #21, and thus were expectations raised with the switch to a third Penske Ford in 2018. And running up front hasn't been a problem. If anything it's surprising that Blaney hasn't won to date in Penske's Ford.
Erik Jones' Firecracker win adds to the issue, as one now awaits how he follows up the win. He's been the quiet member of the young guns with the win and just six other top-fives in his two seasons in Winston Cup.
Overall, Brendan Marks gets it wrong - the young guns are not being given an undue burden because of Saunders' remark. The sport instead is seeing a generation of young drivers who were promoted as something they really are not. The old racing saw is a driver needs five years to see if he's truly that good, yet this has been forgotten given the immediate success of rookies like Davey Allison (1987), Jeff Gordon (1993), Tony Stewart (1999), Dale Junior and Matt Kenseth (2000), Kevin Harvick (2001), Jimmie Johnson and Ryan Newman (2002), and Kyle Busch (2005). So rookies are supposed to win right out of the chute, that's no longer any kind of unfair expectation.
Now some of the young guns of this season may indeed blossom into legitimate powers and thus "build their brands" as Saunders put it. But they have to actually do it first. The young guns have to win, they have to prove they're not doing less with more.
NASCAR's ridiculous yellow-line rule cost Justin Haley the victory in the Firecracker 250 and led to an interesting question on social media by Brad Keselowski, whose question about having two or four tires below the yellow line illustrated the EIRI clause that has forever dominated the NASCAR rulebook and also illustrated that no matter how Steve O'Donnell calls it, he can't justify this rule. This helps explain why so many question the sanctioning body's credibility, because the rules put in place too often are there only to justify more control, not to address actual problems. The blunt reality remains there never should have been a yellow-line rule.
Why has Ricky Stenhouse only won twice in Winston Cup? His Gurney Ernie Irvan antics in the Firecracker 400 showed why, right down to drivers openly calling him out a la calling out Ernie Irvan back in his day. That the uncompetitive Roush Fords led as much as they did in the Firecracker was something of a surprise, and we doubt it will carry over to greater muscle down the road this season.
So what to make of this going forward? Some takes -
--- It's now manifestly clear to everyone, including the Race Stream Media that treated Chevrolet as though it were on the brink of winning again, that Chevrolet's program is fundamentally flawed. For all the hype about Hendrick Motorsports putting three cars in the top four in qualifying, the Chevrolet class was still clearly behind the Fords and Toyotas. For Hendrick Motorsports in particular - especially Jimmie Johnson - the failure in the Firecracker, despite showing some legitimate power, indicates whatever progress is being made with this racecar is weak at best, and the Chevrolet program is simply screwed up. We frankly doubt Chevrolet will win again in 2018; there simply is no reason right now to think Chevy can get this thing turned around.
Which begs the question - what exactly has gone wrong? Part of it is this Chevrolet more and more looks like a terrible racecar. The bigger part is the engineering effort clearly has no answers, and one should start questioning the competence of the engineering leadership in Chevrolet's racing program. Tied into the engineering is inter-team cooperation - Chevy teams claim their is genuine cooperation between them, but MRN's Dave Moody has noted either information isn't being properly used by Chevy teams, or someone in the Chevy camp is not giving everyone everything needed to make these cars better. I suspect the latter is the case; if it weren't the Chevy effort would be much farther along by now.
--- The young guns of NASCAR were hyped by the sanctioning body despite having little evidence of potential accomplishment, and even with Erik Jones' surprising Firecracker win the young guns overall have simply not shown much firepower. Jones' effort the last three races has gotten notably better with top-tens at Sears Point and Chicagoland before the Firecracker win; the same cannot be said for Chase Elliott, with just six top-tens overall, just three in the last nine races, and only nineteen laps led overall (compared to 64 by Erik Jones just at Texas earlier this season). It holds my view that Elliott is not a budding superstar but the next Mike Skinner - an overhyped hack with the greater issue that he's been shoved down the sport's throat.
There needs to be a lot more out of the young guns to justify the hype from the start of the season.
--- The Firecracker was one of those rare good paydays for the smaller teams with top-tens by Brad Daugherty's two cars, Archie St. Hilaire's Ford, and Ron Leavine's Chevrolet. Jay Robinson, Mark Beard, and the Gaunt Brothers also had respectable days. The funniest irony is the "independents" accounted for most of the nine Chevrolets that finished in the top-ten.
Elliott Sadler and a plethora of others battled for the lead in a spirited LTI 250, the latest race to feature NASCAR's restrictor plate-draft duct package
Michigan International Speedway's 2018 season kicked off and immediately NASCAR's new rule sagacity debate took center stage in a Friday presser by Brad Keselowski. Keselowski's presser concerned NASCAR's new restrictor plate-draft duct package introduced to MIS for the first time, run in the Michigan Xfinity 250.
Keselowski's missive expressed "concern" - aka opposition - to expanded use of the plate-draft duct package by NASCAR, and it included all the usual nonsensical allusions to driving skill and talent and how they are supposedly stifled by this plate package; his missive got endorsement from Mark Martin via social media but also earned sharp rebuke on NASCAR's satellite radio network from Dave Moody.
The focal area of Moody's rebuke was Keselowski's startling claim that "the best drivers" would avoid racing in NASCAR if this package is integrated into more tracks because in such a scenario they would not be able to showcase their skills.
First, as Moody noted right away, Keselowski's breakthrough in the Winston Cup level was in a restrictor plate race.
Second, that drivers from other series have come to NASCAR stems from the series being the strongest in motorsports, and it is worth noting these drivers such as Juan Montoya, Dario Franchitti, Max Papis, Sam Hornish, and Scott Speed did not succeed in NASCAR outside of two Winston Cup road race wins by Montoya.
And finally to Brad Keselowski - just what is the definition of "driver skill and talent," anyway? It is an old debate and the answer is usually along the lines of "throttle control, braking, and acceleration points." This begs the question - would Keselowski throttle-control his way to victories if he was still in James Finch's Chevrolet?
But the strongest rebuke to Keselowski comes from Kaz Grala's superb run in the slapped-together Tony Eury Xfinity car, storming into the top-ten and challenging for the lead in the race. Far from stifling driving talent, this package by making the draft more important is opening up driving talent.
This is a fact Keselowski seems oblivious to here. For driving racecars and racing them are not the same thing. Passing and repassing is what brings out true racing talent, and Kaz Grala's wildcard victory bid displayed a talent more impressive than Keselowski's prerace pedantry.
Here's what you need to know about race drivers as frauds and hypocrites - Kyle Busch griped about the restrictor plate-draft duct package being phased into NASCAR "It's boring as (hell)." Then in the Pocono 400 he screamed "Can't f---king pass," this with aeroclean bodies and unrestricted power - and resultant superior throttle response.
It is all part of what is becoming the raging rule sagacity debate in the sport - the restrictor plate-draft duct package first used in the 2017 Lillys Xfinity 250 at Indianapolis, then used in the All-Star Race and open at Charlotte, and now debuting at Pocono and later Michigan for the Xfinity series. The racing with this package has seen a palpable increase in passing with Ontario-style passing and repassing at The Brickyard and at Charlotte there was passing and drafting reminiscent of 1970s-era Charlotte racing as well as reminiscent of circa-1993 Daytona racing. In its debut at Pocono, the package took a distant back seat to Kyle Busch's annihilation of the field; he routed the field in Stage 1, got a penalty so he had to pass the field while Paul Menard got into an eye-popping two-by-two push-draft slugfest to win Stage 2, then stormed to the lead on the outside of the Tunnel Turn on the ensuing restart and ran off. He then flunked postrace inspection.
The Paul Menard car-cam view of the Pocono Green 250 - the fight for the lead swelled into an epic in the final lap of Stage 2
The plate package was easily the talk of Saturday and also in prerace for Sunday. Word has now circulated that NASCAR will run the plate package at more Winston Cup Monster Energy series races in 2018, with scuttlebutt identifying potential sites as Kentucky, New Hampshire, and Indianapolis; also supposedly considered are Pocono's Summer 400 and Michigan's Yankee 400 weekend with both tracks seeing the package used in the Busch/Xfinity series.
NASCAR's Director of Aerodynamics Simulation and Design, Eric Jacuzzi, issued an apology for the perceived failure of the plate package at Pocono (curiously deleted) -
Eric Jacuzzi need not be hard on himself, for objectively the plate package did indeed work at Pocono. The four-car draft battle where all four raced side-by-side all the way around the track - including all the way through the Tunnel Turn, something considered impossible even when in 1995 Tim Steele and Mike Wallace did so for the lead on some three separate laps in the ARCA Syracuse 150 at Pocono - indicated it in fact does work well. And the more teams work on this package the better they will make it.
Some historical perspective is needed. In 1990 Dale Earnhardt was in essence unpassable on the plate tracks - indeed the common theme among rival drivers was the draft no longer worked, especially when Earnhardt was out front. Teams worked on their cars and engines, especially in the November-March open-season on testing allowed by NASCAR back then, while NASCAR made a spoiler enlargement to boost the power of the draft, and in 1991 the plate races erupted in memorable competition in all four races, especially that July's Diehard 500.
Elsewhere commentary on the plate package has been animated and after Pocono came the usual nonsensical criticisms that NASCAR needs to drop these big tracks for "more short tracks," never mind Pocono and other superspeedways are superior venues in competition, market strength, etc. The gripe has come in some circles that "short tracks don't need aero packages to make good racing," a claim belied by the fact fendered short track racecar classes run downforce-style bodies with big clear-vu spoilers, some form of engine restriction, and bias-ply tires - and even the Modifieds on the Tour as well as local Mods also run some form of engine restriction and bias-ply tires. In other words short tracks need "special packages" because the model of low-downforce aeroclean bodies with unrestricted power and radial tires simply doesn't work.
Kyle Busch's runaway in the Pocono Green 250 brings to mind his dominance of the 2017 Overtons Truck 150 at Pocono - a racing vehicle package that is a good approximation of the plate package used in 2018's 250 - until his wreck on a mid-race restart. It is an indication he's figured out how to engineer his racecars for this track like few others have, though his postrace penalty in 2018 casts some shadow.
There is also the angle of the 400 - what if that race had run the plate-draft duct package? As it was, Martin Truex's semi-upset win showed Kyle Busch and erstwhile race dominator Kevin Harvick weren't the duopoly this race seemed to have for so long. One thus suspects the Menard-Custer-Allgaier-Cindric epic in the 250 would have been replicated and then some by the Cup guys in the 400 if that race had run the plate package.
So it's become that for now every race will be some kind of forum on this plate package given its success at opening up passing. It also is a raging discussion amid a noticeable surge in enthusiasm for the sport in recent races, with widespread fan enthusiam for Martin Truex at Pocono in clear evidence as he surged to the win.
NASCAR thus can see something it has lacked for so long - a positive outlook for the future.
The inaugural Schaefer 500, the debut race at Pocono's 2.5-mile triangle, July 3, 1971
Pocono International Raceway is, by both design and circumstance, the most unusual major racing facility in the country. It is virtually a 1,025-acre gravestone to the frenzied superspeedway-building craze of the 1960s.........
So wrote Richard Benyo in SUPERSPEEDWAY: The Story Of NASCAR Grand National Racing in 1977. 2018 marks the 50th season of racing at Pocono International Raceway and the speedway's history has been curiously overlooked in racing history. It began with the rapid development of the Pocono Mountains region in the 1950s with the expansion of the Interstate Highway system. Read a 1970 historical outline for the track...........
In the mid-1950s the concept for Pocono International Raceway was born as the product of informal discussions between Pocono Mountain business people. Each agreed that as racefans they would like to see a major championship racing facility on the East Coast. Their initial interest led to the formation of Racing Incorporated in 1957 and the resulting plans for Pocono International Raceway
Doctor Joseph Mattoili, a Philadelphia-area dentist, and his wife Rose, a foot doctor, were the prime movers behind Racing Incorporated, but when a 1,025-acre site near Long Pond, a famous duck-hunting stream, was purchased - at $100,000, a strikingly affordable land deal - the company was run by fellow fan David Montgomery, but he faced that he had no one to run the track. He hired short track veterans to help run the company.
The track was built as five tracks in one - a 3/4-mile oval within the main superoval; a 1.8-mile road course and a 3-mile road course, a revolutionary 2.5 mile triangle, and the mammoth frontstretch would serve as a drag-racing strip. With just three turns, each turn was banked differently, each turn representing another speedway - Trenton for the 14-degree banked Turn One, Indianapolis for the eight-degree second turn, named The Tunnel Turn because it bridges the tunnel entrance to the infield, and Milwaukee for the relatively sweeping 6-degree Turn Three.
The 1975 Schaefer 500
By 1969, however, only the small oval and the mammoth frontstretch was finished, when the very first race was run on May 4. It was a supermodified race and tragedy struck right away with the death of Troy Ruttman Jr. in the ensuing race. The track ran week after week as it struggled to finish the superoval. By 1970 Montgomery was fired and Mattioli was in command with USAC veteran Bill Marvel hired as GM. Pocono got a five-year agreement for a 500-mile Indycar race for 1971, but to get the 500 Pocono also had to run a 500-miler for USAC's stock car division, something other USAC tracks weren't required to do.
The Schaefer 500 took off in 1971 and despite period rain over the years Pocono drew well. The USAC stock car race, under ACME Super Saver supermarket sponsorship, first ran in September 1971 but rain interruption led the race after 1971 to run in late July, an off-week for NASCAR's Winston Cup Grand National tour. Richard Petty and Bobby Allison thus entered the ASS 500 with Petty winning it in 1973.
USAC withdrew its stock car division after a late-April 1975 500 won by Ron Keselowski - he of the now-famous Keselowski NASCAR clan - and NASCAR arrived in August 1974 with Purolator sponsorship.
It was 1975 that NASCAR at Pocono first established itself as compelling competition with controversy over David Pearson's win and a highly competitive affair. 1976 was even more exciting as the lead changed 47 times and Pearson's blown tire with two to go sent Richard Petty to a popular win.
Petty's 1980 crash, which broke his neck, was a fateful turning point for his career.
The decline in Indycar racing hurt Pocono as it continued with the race until 1990; driver complaints about the physical plant were addressed with money freed up from the cancellation of the Indycar race. NASCAR's rising popularity benefitted Pocono as it did other speedways, with highly competitive racing year after year.
The 1982 Mountain Dew may have been Pocono's greatest race.
Tim Richmond, of Ashland, Ohio, was brought to stock cars in the 1980 Coca Cola 500 and he won four times in the 1982-84 period, but it was hooking up with third-year team owner Rick Hendrick that erupted Richmond's career to legendary heights, with the 1986 Summer 500 Richmond's greatest win.
The track also ran the Modifieds, in the 1970s running them on the 2.5-miler. By 1980 they'd switched back to the infield short track.
The track saw spirited competition as well in 1990 in an exciting Geoff Bodine win.
Hard crashes have been a reality in Pocono's history.........
.........and when Darrell Waltrip took out rising superstar Davey Allison it became one of the worst.
Davey's death before the 1993 Summer 500 rocked all of racing and his memory permeated postrace reaction.
With the sport's technology arms race the racing was affected, but in the mid-1990s Pocono saw a renaissance of passing.
NASCAR's new Truck Series arrived and in 2010 saw a spirited affair
And in 2017 an even more exciting affair broke out.
Indycars returned in 2015 and the most competitive running ever broke out in 2017.
Happy 50 years, Pocono - keep at it for fifty more, and beyond.
