Catchfence

The first road race of the 2009 season arrives and the usual surge of road racing interlopers comes with it in the form of drivers such as Boris Said – who’s been flittering on the periphery of NASCAR since the mid-1990s and has basically nothing to show for it yet seems to still fancy himself a legitimate NASCAR racer – Ron Fellows, Tom Hubert, and Brian Simo. The presence of these ringers, though, has gotten noticably less play in recent years as their relevance to the outcome of the races themselves has eroded. A ringer hasn’t won a Winston Cup road race since Mark Donohue in January 1973 at Riverside and it’s been a long time since a ringer was key to the outcome of a NASCAR road race at either the BGN or Truck levels; the last one I can remember who really made a strong effort was Ron Fellows around 1999 when BGN and the Trucks raced Watkins Glen as a stand-alone double-header and Ron Fellows won the Truck race and came home second to Junior in the BGN event.

With the Sears Point run this weekend has come yet another fit of online and written verbiage about road racing and whether NASCAR should add a road race to the schedule or even shift one of the two road races to the Chase. That the Chase is still in the sport is absurd enough given the fact it has added nothing to the competition or the sport’s popularity. That some writers etc. want a road race in the Chase is foolish in and of itself, as it assigns a level of importance and competitive worth to road racing that is manifestly not there.

We hear about how different from oval races the road races are, and of course they are different. The problem lies in the fundamental nature of road racing. It simply is the least competitive form of racing there is.

Passing is the core action of racing, and in road racing there simply isn’t a lot in the way of passing. We hear a lot about the skill of the drivers and how they have to really drive their cars on a road course. This argument, though, ignores that driving a racecar and racing are not the same thing. The dearth of passing in road races is graphic illustration of this, and also illustrating this is the utter lack of success of NASCAR’s road race stringers.

When looking back at NASCAR history there have been some dramatic moments in road races – Darrell Waltrip and Neil Bonnett’s surprisingly savage duel at Riverside in 1980; Waltrip’s late charge to win there in 1981; Tim Richmond’s final NASCAR win there in 1987; Ricky Rudd’s swerving block of Rusty Wallace at Watkins Glen in 1988; Davey Allison’s controversial win after Ricky Rudd spun him out at Sears Point in 1991; Ernie Irvan’s charge from a Lap One black flag there in 1992; four lead changes in one lap between Rudd, Irvan, and Geoff Bodine at Sears Point in 1993; Bobby Hamilton and Jeff Gordon’s hard fight in 1998.

But when one looks back at the whole, moments like these may be memorable but they’re the exceptions that prove the rule. Road races generally lack the sport’s truly dramatic competitive moments; with possibility of passing so limited on a road course the events become frustrating exercises in driving technique, attrition, and fuel mileage. They may be different, but road races simply are not racing.

Adding a road race to the Chase adds nothing to the concept’s competitive value; road racing is not the display of driver skill it gets hyped up to be because it’s not about racing, it’s only about technique and track position.

The sport races road courses twice a year; that’s twice too many times. Dropping Sears Point and Watkins Glen is an option the sport should take more seriously than it does, for there isn’t anything to miss from not having road races.