Stop plate-racing madness
Drivers should move to end perilous packs at ’Dega, Daytona
Chris Buescher’s expression sufficed. He was done with this place Sunday. Riding inside a 3,400-pound race car as it barrel-rolls down the backstretch of Talladega Superspeedway will harden such opinions.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. said he just wanted to go home, after being involved in two wrecks at nearly 200 mph. His accidents weren’t the normal byproduct of this restrictor-plate business. But already it was getting ridiculous out there, and he was willing to watch the rest from his couch.
That was the safest and wisest place for him. Even for NASCAR’s active wins leader on the restrictor-plate tracks of Daytona International Speedway and Talladega, where horsepower-choking devices are used to curtail speeds on the expansive high backs but create a form of racing where packs of cars inches apart are puppets in an absurd theater of aerodynamics and, invariably, spectacular wrecks.
The parade of drivers exiting the infield care center after Brad Keselowski won ahead of a final melee at the finish could have been mistaken for prerace introductions. Instead of smiles and waves, there were looks of concern or maybe relief. Two of four of these menace races are done for the year.
Thirty-five of 40 cars were involved in accidents Sunday. Several were destroyed. Two went airborne. Drivers spoke of anxiety and unease and underpinned it all with the spoken hope that safety and engineering would provide sanctuary with so much else out of their control.
They should take control. Now more than ever, there could be a means.
Perhaps as they left the scene of the last attempt at NASCAR unionization, the nine members of the Sprint Cup drivers council texted each other concerns about this long-standing bane to their existence but key part of their livelihood. Maybe, flush with recent successes in getting their voices heard and seeing change, they will press for some better resolution to this problem than hoping science can stop race cars from flipping.
Or maybe they’ll forget about how they felt Sunday afternoon.
Twenty-one cars were collected in a lap 159 wreck in which Kurt Busch appeared to turn Jimmie Johnson while aggressively drafting forward in a pack.
Less than 30 laps later, a midpack push by Clint Bowyer into Michael McDowell sent Danica Patrick into Matt Kenseth, whose No. 20 Toyota went upside down and skirted an interior wall on its hood. Patrick’s No. 10 Chevrolet slid into a vicious steep-angle hit into a wall fortunately swathed in a SAFER barrier. Patrick extricated herself quickly and strode to a wall, where she dropped her hands to her knees as an ambulance came to collect her and Kenseth. She called it the worst wreck of her career.
As if that wasn’t enough — and for the morbidly insatiable appetite of those entertained by the volume and viciousness of wrecks, it never is — the coda came at the finish with Kevin Harvick’s race car skidding on its side along the wall in front of thousands of fans holding their breath.
That, some will say, was entertainment. That should be insulting to every driver in the field.
For many fans, the shred of metal is a tangible part of the show at Talladega or Daytona.
“If they’re cheering for crashes, man, it’s not a good thing,” said Austin Dillon, who at the end of the summer race at Daytona last year was involved in a brutal wreck that devastated his car and a large section of catchfence and left five fans injured.
“I’ve grown up in racing, watched a lot of bad crashes,” Dillon said after finishing third. “I don’t think they’re true fans if they like the excitement. I think it’s more of a, you know, person that doesn’t really know what goes on.
“We don’t like to be a part of crashes. It’s not what our job is, is to crash. Our job is to compete and have fun out there and put on a show. Putting on a show, in that crashes happen.”
Drivers begrudgingly acknowledge that restrictor-plate racing is part of the job. But don’t expect the bull to enjoy the bullfight.
There are four Cup races a season at Daytona and Talladega — including the series’ prestige event, the Daytona 500 — and those are not likely to go away. Those drivers dutifully acknowledge the safety innovations NASCAR has accelerated, such as sturdier and more forgiving race cars, and adopted from other series such as IndyCar, namely the SAFER barrier, since the death of Dale Earnhardt Sr. on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500.
Eventually one of these wrecks again will create a scenario for something the human body can’t take. There will be great handwringing and wonder over how this could have happened. Sunday is how it can happen, and July 2015 is how it could have happened.
Drivers don’t like this. Part of the perverse paradigm of restrictor-plate racing is that, while it’s a form of racing that drivers consider random in many ways and not necessarily representative of their skill, it provides an inordinate amount of glory.
“I hate it. I’d much rather be at home,” said defending series champion Kyle Busch, who has two restrictor-plate wins but broke his foot and leg in a wreck at Daytona last February in the Xfinity Series opener and announced in January that he would no longer race at plate tracks in the lower-tier series. “I’ve got a win (this season.) I don’t need to be here.”
Keselowski, understandably basking in a fourth win at Talladega, acknowledged the racetrack required a daredevil mentality but said, “I’m a capitalist. ... There are people still paying to sit in the stands, and there are sponsors still on the cars. There are drivers still willing to get in them. It sounds like it’s self-policing and there’s enough interest to keep going. So we’ll keep going.”
They shouldn’t.