Catchfence

For the longest time it appeared New Hampshire’s early-summer 301-miler would follow the form so long seen. Hendrick Motorsports totally controlled the race between Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon, and Hendrick’s direct-satellite outfit in Stewart-Haas Racing was hanging with them and even tried to steal the win. It wasn’t anything we hadn’t seen in spades before. But a 2009 season that had already been strange has suddenly became outright bizarre, to the point that one was looking for Rod Serling’s cue.

I think it’s fair to say most race watchers had pretty much written off Joey Logano, the rookie whose previous Winston Cup starts had frankly given no one reason to think he would pull anything out of the hat. Indeed, in this New England 300 Logano looked as lost as he’s looked at most tracks in this COT. There wasn’t any time in the first 220-plus laps where he was even close to the top-20, and he’d needed one Lucky Dog to get back on the lead lap already, then he sideswiped Ryan Newman, blew out his left rear, then spun trying to pit under green.

So what happens? Something out of Rod Serling’s teleplays. Because he’d pitted under a late yellow, Logano had fuel to stay out when the leaders pitted under green in the Lap 220 and forward range. Logano wound up the leader and then the rain hit. Once the drizzle started – with Logano having some six to ten laps of fuel left – one had to know the race was done, and thus it shocked no one when NASCAR called it an official finish about ten minutes after the red flag was thrown.

This was the second time this season a race was cut short by rain that would have run the full distance with an earlier start time. “I’ve thought a lot about this,” Kurt Busch, who finished third after by far his best hustle in weeks. “When you go to a baseball game or a basketball game of an NFL football game they always start at 7 or in football they start at 1 or 4. If we had a consistent start time for our day races and a consistent one for our night races, that would be better for our fans and that would create more viewership. You’d still have odds and ends times like on Memorial Day but if we went back to 1 PM starts we’d have finished this race. I remember starting the engine at 2:07.”

The argument is one that stretches across pro sports, notably the World Series and NBA Finals, whose game start times are preposterous to an extreme. The argumebnt always advanced is that later start times mean bigger ratings, yet nowhere in the argument does anyone advance a credible case that potential loss of viewers by earlier start times would be enough to require late start times – the idea that the NBA Finals or the World Series would lose any statistically relavent amount of audience if their games started at 7 PM Eastern Time – or even if they were played on afternoons on weekends instead of evenings – simply has no reason to be believed.

In NASCAR’s case later start times have done nothing to increase audience – on the contrary, all they’ve done is increase the inconvenience of the audience, especially the live gate, and slapping the audience in the face like that is never good promotion. The networks agreed to 1 PM or earlier start times for East Coast races in the no-so-distant past; NASCAR can put start times back before 1 PM again.

—————-

The other development that stood out from this race was the ferocity of the restarts. The double-file restart rule didn’t make anything better in the first three races it’s been used, as instead of increasing competitive intensity it seemed to have the opposite effect. At New Hampshire, in contrast, the rule did everything it was hoped it would do. The battle for the lead became an actual battle, something familiar to NHMS fans who’ve witnessed the track’s Modified, Busch North, and Camping World East races over the years. The battle for the lead on restarts was almost always between Kurt Busch and Jeff Gordon, and the lack of a truly raceable bottom groove, especially in Turn Two, was played to perfection by Gordon as he restarted on the outside all but once and thus left Busch spinning his tires on the bottom.

It all added up to a race that begins rebuilding the excitement and anticipation for the next one that the sport has needed. The season’s third first-time winning driver of the season makes it even more interesting, and now with the second half of the season kicking off at Daytona and even with the still-real issues of costs and so forth hanging over the sport, there’s actual reason for hope for a lot of racers, something that one couldn’t say for years.

The only thing missing is the philosophical showdown between Burgess Meredith and Fritz Weaver – after all, right now NASCAR is proceeding through The Twilight Zone.