Catchfence

Talladega managed to outdo itself in the Alabama 500 weekend of 2009, with a pair of races that won’t be forgotten and a busload of controversy and the making of history for good measure.  In a season desperately in need of great racing, Talladega delivered again.

The history that was made came in not one, but two first-time winners, and in virtually identical scenarios against identical foes.  In the Alabama 312 the top two were Ryan Newman and Dale Junior; in the 500 the leaders with two to go were Newman and Junior.  In the Alabama 312 it came down to the final quarter-mile when Junior tried Newman and Newman sideswiped him, Ragan shot the gap, then stormed high and sideswiped Newman out of shape enough to win at the stripe.  The finish resembled Ron Bouchard’s 1981 Talladega win in reverse.

In 227 combined ARCA-NASCAR starts Ragan had a grand total of one win (at Lanier Speedway in 2005′s ARCA race) and 33 additional top fives, and now he’s broken through at the Nationwide level in a season where his Sprint Cup efforts haven’t been so productive.

He didn’t figure in the 500′s finish but his teammate Carl Edwards did.  Edwards stayed out back all day, then got a huge drafting blast from Brad Keselowski and stormed ahead of the Newman-Junior draft, but when Newman and Junior began closing back up, Keselowski looked high and Edwards made the mistake – he swung up to open the bottom, then, outmaneuvered and knowing it, tried to slam it shut.

It is here that the issue of drivers and wrecks needs to be addressed, for all the talk after the huge melee in the trioval centered around the hoary old gripe about “NASCAR has put us in this box.”  There was more than a little verbiage along the lines of “We’re forced to block,” etc.  It has been going on for years at Talladega and it became tiresome long ago.

Drivers need to stop blaming the rules and start blaming themselves.  Jeff Gordon’s wreck happened because someone didn’t hold his line properly.  Jimmie Johnson likewise got crashed out with others because someone didn’t hold his line properly.  Crashes – even multicar crashes – are not as rare away from the plate tracks as the argument often makes it, and the cheap rhetoric about “we’ll race like this (at Talladega) until we kill someone” rings false after seeing fatalities at Michigan, Atlanta, Texas, Charlotte, Homestead, and New Hampshire over the last two decades.

That seven spectators were injured is certainly cause for serious concern, but it also bears remembering that the fencing did its job.  It also bears the realization that the cars are still too fast, and a smaller restrictor plate is necessary for the sport’s two superovals (they’re necessary elsewhere as well but this is a seperate argument).

As for the issue of flipping racecars, perhaps it is time to acknowledge the futility of the whole roof flap effort.  Certainly six airborne wrecks in 1994, the debut season of roof flaps, indicated their ineffectiveness.  The incidence of airborne racecars never got better in the roof flap era, as shown by a three-season span at Atlanta in the 1990s of cars tumbling with greater violence than even Carl Edwards’ tumble, by Derrike Cope’s Texas tumble in October 2000 where he nearly landed in the infield, and other such melees.   The reality is that keeping the cars on the ground is not foolproof, even with slowing them down more than is presently being done.

Keeping the sport safe is always paramount, but when it butts into a reality of futility, there’s no need to pretend otherwise.  And there remains no value in allowing drivers to blame the rules instead of themselves for crashes they – the drivers – cause.