By Jenna Fryer - Associated Press
There are only a few things you can count on each year from NASCAR, and a great race at Talladega Superspeedway is pretty much guaranteed.
By great, I don’t mean the spectacular wrecks that have come to signify NASCAR’s fastest track. What makes Talladega so special is the bumping and the banging, the slicing and dicing for position, and the white-knuckle race to the finish line.
So if Sunday was your first exposure to Talladega, well, you sat through a tremendous letdown. That race fell far short of expectations, and nothing NASCAR says or does is going to convince anyone otherwise.
A pre-race ban on bump-drafting through the turns essentially neutered the race.
Warned by NASCAR president Mike Helton that bumping the car in front of you would only be permitted on the straightaways, the drivers were forced to back off each others bumpers and create “sunlight” between themselves. Since NASCAR was playing the judge, jury and executioner, nobody had any idea just what would be deemed illegal or how it would be punished.
It meant after an initial period that saw drivers going two- and three-wide in an attempt to gauge just what kind of car they had, they then pulled into one long single-file parade lap for a huge portion of the race.
Where were the daring lane changes? Or the dive bombs into holes that used to close in the blink of an eye?
Again, this isn’t about accidents, which for the record were reduced because of this strategy. This is about the lack of action at a track where excitement had previously been ensured for all 500 miles.
There were stretches of Sunday’s race where Tony Stewart complained he was having trouble staying awake, and Kevin Harvick’s crew joked they were going to find a place inside his car to install an iPod for his in-race enjoyment.
Others grumbled that the race should be cut in half, or even a 50-lap shootout, because the bulk of the event was being spent logging laps until it was time to actually go racing.
So things briefly did get interesting, somewhere around the 450-mile marker, when the action picked up and the race was plagued by two frightening crashes. A chain-reaction crash with five laps to go sent Ryan Newman straight up into the air, then back down on his roof, where he first landed on Harvick’s hood before sailing into the infield grass.
Newman was stuck there on his roof, which he said was akin to being in a tomb, for at least 10 minutes as the safety crew had to turn his car before needing another five minutes to cut away the crumpled sheet-metal roof. Newman was physically fine when he got out of the car, but the outspoken safety advocate was in a bit of a foul mood.
“I wish NASCAR would do something,” Newman said. “It was a boring race for the fans. That’s not something that anybody wants to see, at least I hope not. If they do, go home because you don’t belong here.
“Just a product of this racing – what NASCAR’s put us into with this box, with these restrictor plates, with these types cars, with the yellow line, with no bump-drafting, no passing. Drivers used to be able to respect each other and race around each other. Richard Petty, David Pearson, Bobby Allison – all those guys have always done that. I guess they don’t think much of us any more.”
The second accident came during the two-lap sprint to the finish, and this time Mark Martin’s car went airborne and rolled. Martin, with 1009 career NASCAR starts, said it was his first time upside down.
These two incidents are what Sunday’s race will be remembered for. They overshadowed Jamie McMurray’s surprise victory, and Jimmie Johnson’s dumb-luck sixth-place finish.
But shame on NASCAR if they don’t pay attention to the disgruntled drivers and fans who all thought Talladega was a major disappointment.
Here are five more things from Talladega: Click here to read the rest of the article
