Catchfence

The Brickyard 400 is considered one of the sport’s prestigious races; every driver at every level wants to win here. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is the track that quite literally invented the sport of auto racing in the US from its 1911 debut. The 500 was the marquee race in American motorsports and was must-see viewing on ABC from its debut there in the 1960s. NASCAR attempts to race at IMS dated to the mid-1950s; it was Anton Hulman’s brush-off of Big Bill France that helped spur France to build Daytona International Speedway, the track that changed stock car racing forever – so much so that some 40 years after the France-Hulman feud Hulman’s grandson brought NASCAR to the Brickyard.

Which leads to an interesting discussion – what are the most prestigious races in NASCAR? It is not a new discussion but has usually not been framed properly, for some events that are called prestigious are more hype-driven than truly worthwhile events. There are also events that were once held to high esteem (by both fans and the sanctioning body) that fell on hard times.

It’s a discussion that got a major shot by the 2008 running as a less-than-capacity crowd turned out for a race that, by any standard, was abysmal. The race saw several crashes and was run with a steady stam of competition yellows to alow pitstops thanks to unsafe tire wear. In the prestige-versus hype issue both seemed to lose – the racing has never lived up to the hype of the Brickyard (especially compared to Daytona, to which the 400 is so often compared) and this running was worse than normal, raising questions about whether this event really deserves much prestige.

It’s doubly troubling because this running of the 400 illustrated everything wrong with NASCAR in general and this race in particular. Here is a list of what we don’t (and thus at the Brickyard didn’t) see in NASCAR this year -

* – There was no possibilty of a darkhorse or first-time winner. The only real surprise of this 400 was that the JGR Toyotas didn’t mop the floor with the competition like they have so often this year. Hendrick Motorsports dominated qualfying and that was it as ar as serious challenge went. Darkhorse teams were all racing for, at best, a top-ten spot, and there wasn’t a non-winner or darkhorse within a straightaway of Jimmie Johnson. Nor has there been any race other than Talladega where darkhorses did anything. With only six winning teams so far this year (Hendrick, Roush, Gillett-Evernham, Gibbs, RCR, and Penske), there isn’t anyone else showing any kind of upset muscle, illustrating that 2008 may see a dubious hoor – the first season since 1993 without first-time winner – and also see the fewest number of winning teams since the darkest days of the 1970s.

* – Goodyear has served up tire issues like this multiple times over ten-plus years; that they seem to repeat the same mistakes so often shows how little competence they seem to have here. Year after year there will be at least two races where the tires are not safe, and Goodyear will blame “aggressive setups” or some other outside influence (the Brickyard’s diamond cutting of tiny grooves for more grip got considerable public blame this time around) nd the media will repeat it, and never will Goodyear be taken to task nor suggestion that another tire company might be better suited to the job.

* – The COT. ALWAYS, the COT. The downforce isn’t there, and the cars skated around noticably, all of them unable to run in dirty air due to the machine’s abysmal design. We’ve seen this movie again and again, and it never gets even marginally better. And astonishingly the media still won’t call out the COT as a failure.

* – 26 lead changes does not constitute a good race. Yes, we’ve seen races in distant years where 26 was only the official number of lead changes; we don’t have that caveat anywhere in sight here or almost everywhere else.

* – The sanctioning body is still refusing to act. NASCAR sees all these issues – uncompetitive racing; bad tires; a bad racecar package; the same few teams winning all the races and the rest of the field reduced to irrelevence; dwindling crowds; sagging TV ratings; sponsors suddenly realizing NASCAR is not the growing sport they thought it was and that they can’t afford to participate in it with team budget now in the hundreds of millions of annual dollars -this on top of NASCAR and speedways horning in on the act themselves. And there are never answers.

Prestige and hype got ruined in this Brickyard 400; the question remains, though, whether the sport will ever see any kind of legitimate answers to questions that get worse and worse.