Brickyard road race under scrutiny after very chaotic ending

NASCAR has a lot of problems to fix

INDIANAPOLIS — One by one, drivers sped across the deteriorating curbing in the fifth and sixth turns late in the Brickyard 200. One by one, they veered off course.

When the NASCAR Cup Series race restarted Sunday after track workers removed the curbing, seven more cars had similar results in the same section of the Indianapolis road course.

It looked like a demolition derby and race organizers have plenty to reconsider before the 2022 race.

“Obviously, we had our problems,” NASCAR vice president of competition Scott Miller said. “We’ll take a lot of learnings away and come back and put on a better event, obviously avoiding the problems we had [Sunday]. But I think that we saw some exciting action out there and I think that the course itself puts on a really good show.”

The entertainment value proved costly.

Nine of the 11 cars that didn’t finish were involved in crashes. Many of those running at the end looked like they had been involved in a rough-and-tumble short track or dirt track race rather than a road course.

As a result, most Cup teams will spend this week scrambling to repair and rebuild their cars after consecutive road races. They return to an oval Sunday at Brooklyn, Mich., and for some it can’t come soon enough.

Organizers likely will investigate whether the wear and tear of three days of practice, qualifying and racing on a rare crossover weekend with the IndyCar, NASCAR Xfinity and Cup series played any role in the chaotic finish.

“The curbing is the same style we’ve had since we built it. It’s been replaced, repaired,” Indianapolis Motor Speedway president Doug Boles said. “We’ve not ever really had an issue with those curbs. We looked at that section every session, looked at it every night, every morning there was no indication there was ever anything wrong with it, so it’s a little bit of a surprise to us.”

Drivers were surprised, too.

William Byron, the pole winner and the first to crash, prepared for the first Brickyard on the 14-turn, 2.4-mile course by working on a simulator with IndyCar driver Rinus VeeKay. And yet, Bryon said he had never experienced anything like it.

Others went public with their complaints.

“I’m missing the oval already,” playoff contender Austin Dillon said after being knocked out in the second melee.