Monday
Burton Has No Right To Complain
By Michael DalyNow we have yet another rules dispute on NASCAR’s hands. The double-file restart rule has been in place since Pocono, and after a sluggish start it has now become a serious issue, as Chicago’s 400-miler saw several late restarts and suddenly burst into a short series of actual hard battles up front, something NASCAR has lacked for virtually all of the last 25 years aside from Talladega and too-infrequent bursts of good racing at Charlotte, Pocono, and other speedways.
There were two incidents that caused tempers to flare. First came a crash that knocked out Jeff Burton, and his angry reaction has become something of a catch-cry – “But I’m tired of it. I’m about done with it.” Others were fuming on a later restart when Denny Hamlin forearmed Jimmie Johnson out of the lead and spent over a lap nose-to-nose with Brian Vickers. Mark Martin stormed past them both and took off, making for yet another anticlimax of a race, but for a few minutes the sport finally had real racing on a track other than the restrictor plate tracks.
Jeff Burton’s comments have become the kind of rhetoric that ruins the credibility of drivers and degrades the value of interviewing participants with regard to rules controversies. That he got involved in a wreck is regrettable, but his comments are an insult. Because what the double-file restart rule has done is put some real racing back into the sport.
It certainly isn’t enough. The Chicago 400 wasn’t a competitive race for its bulk and it was just another Hendrick Motorsports win, nothing to celebrate. But the competition that erupted, however briefly, was necessary.
Certainly the crashes are a concern as they’ve been the last two weeks at Daytona and New Hampshire and the old “rubbing is racing” cliche is utterly false, but all these incidents have the common thread of being driver issues. “Everybody just started running into each other” was the common view afterward, and it is an issue not of the rules, but of drivers.
Drivers do need to use some better judgment in racing, but better judgment never comes from attacking rules packages that increase lead changes. If Jimmie Johnson gets blown out of the lead on a two-abreast restart, that’s good for the sport; if the lead suddenly is a fight between more than a few competitors who have struggled for a long time, that’s even better for the sport.
Ultimately, Jeff Burton has no right to complain. Racing is about lead changes and aggression, and Burton, among the more timid drivers on the track, needs to start fighting harder for the lead instead of complain about restart procedures. The double file restart rule is now working, and Chicago showed what can happen with it.
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Views expressed by the writers are not necessarily the views of Catchfence
Article Tags: Chicagoland Speedway, Double-File Restarts, Jeff Burton, LifeLock.com 400, NASCAR, NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, NSCS, Winston Cup
Maybe Jeff Burton needs to start complaining to his car owner Richard Childress. Take a look at the RCE teams: Burton (seems to be scared to drive in and challenge for positions on the track); Casey Mears (only thing keeping him in NASCAR is his last name, not his talent); Kevin Harvick (how the “mighty ” have fallen); even Clint Bowyer (and he has been inconsistent so far this year). They seem to be happy getting top 15s! RCR cars have absolutely NO SPEED to be able to run up fornt with the HMS and JGR cars. Even MWR and RPM have victories with lesser talents and resources. They can blame GM’s financial problems and cutbacks only so much, but their engine department just cannot find any speed if it came and bit them on the butt!. RCR cars drive like they are fully loaded dump trucks stuck in quicksand!
RCR is in bad straights, and while one can only go so far in blaming GM’s economic issues, those were never really relevant to anything here to begin with – far more relevant has been GM’s history of favoritism in its race team backing. People forget that RCR, DEI, and the now-defunct Andy Petree team had to work together in the late 1990s-early 2000s to improve their racecars because they simply weren’t getting enough help from Chevrolet. Childress managed to get outside sources of revenue, enough to hire some engine people from Ilmor Engineering to beef up his engine shop; it paid off in 2006 but the resource edge is clearly gone.
You are correct in criticizing Burton and Mears for their talent or lack thereof. Burton has long struck me as someone who simply won’t fight hard enough for anything. Bowyer is more mixed and Harvick looks plain lost.