Catchfence

In the drivers meeting before the Autumn 500, Mike Helton of NASCAR stood before the drivers and issued a bluff. After the Autumn 500 drivers bitter because racecars got wrecked issued a bluff. And in the end, all they did was insult the intelligence of the sport.

Jimmie Johnson griped about knocking the banking down, never mind the greater lethality of wrecks on smaller and flatter tracks and the hideously inferior competitive quality of the racing thereupon. Ryan Newman cited his engineering degree, as if this gives him more knowledge of the real world of racing than others. Dale Junior talked about how “we’ve out-engineered this racetrack somehow,” yet as usual with race drivers he had it backwards. Out-engineering a racetrack is when the cars are too fast for what the track can handle, when handling in general and dirty air in particular stop passing, when the driver cannot make up for bad track position by passing the field under green, when pit strategy is more important than out-fighting the field, when it’s about the car instead of the driver.

This is why teams like Hendrick Motorsports, Roush-Fenway Racing, and Joe Gibbs Racing are virtually alone in competition in modern Winston Cup. Their success has to do with engineering and resources and using that to out-engineer the tracks as well as the other teams – what’s left of other teams, really. Their success is not about drivers who outfight the field even when they have situations where their drivers do just that.

At Talladega little of this applies. In April Brad Keselowski won because he outfought the field – he didn’t outrun it, he didn’t win with superior engineering, he didn’t win because track position stopped his competition from racing him. He won on racing skill. This time around Jamie McMurray displayed what real racing skill is about – he didn’t win because of pit strategy or because aeropush was stopping his foes from taking the win – he won because he outfought the field, because he was able to sidedraft the field and thus beat them.

The drivers’ bluff was repetition of the myth that what they went through at Talladega is somehow so uniquely lethal as to require fundamental changes. In this decade of safety revolution to the point of safety overkill, the dangerous tracks have NEVER the plate tracks; the safety issue has never been in the “big one” crashes or on the plate tracks in general – it has always been with the flatter tracks. We forget how Sterling Marlin’s near-fatal spinal injury of 2002 was on a flat track; we forget Jerry Nadeau’s near-fatal crash on a short track; we’ve forgotten the deaths on smaller tracks than Talladega; we’ve forgotten the melees on the road courses. Instead yet again we get caught up in the spectacle of crashes at Talladega and ignore the more insidious nature of “safer” tracks.

The drivers’ bluff needs to be called. They need censure for acting scared instead of manning up and taking on the superior challenge of superspeedway racing. When Ryan Newman called the race boring, he should have been corrected with note of the 58 lead changes among 25 drivers that had occurred – this is competitive depth every other track wants; certainly Gillian Zucker understands this for Fontana. When Jimmie Johnson or anyone else advocates tearing down the banking, they need reminder that this place is safer than Charlotte, New Hampshire, Homestead, Texas, Atlanta, and Richmond, etc. – those are the places were drivers die or suffer hideous injury.

And there is the angle of what actually went on before the infamous Mike Helton drivers meeting speech – the drivers lobbied for “no bump” zones not for safety, but because they were mad that in April two pairs of cars locked bumper-to-bumper broke away from the field in the final three laps and left the race to themselves. As Jim Utter puts it with refreshing acidity, “If I were Helton, I’d throw each driver who asked for the rule change under the bus.”

Talladega is what the sport is about; it is time the drivers stop hating the racing and start becoming men about it.

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NASCAR’s bluff needs to be called as well. Mike Helton’s warning about push-drafting in the corners was 100% bluff, as much as 2006′s identical “no bump” zones at Daytona, zones that saw a lot of push-drafting in the 500 then and where there was push-drafting (some of it visible on bumpercam closeups) at Talladega this time around. The notion that there would be drivers flagged off the track for pushing another car forward through the corners has no credibility because NASCAR has no credibility here. No one truly takes them seriously because their warnings are vague; the way they write rules or issue guidelines is done with playing CYA seemingly always taking precedence over actually addressing issues. In the end NASCAR always assigns itself room for interpretation – the EIRI clause takes precedence.

And the bluff that is the whole philosophy involved needs to be called. NASCAR’s reaction to issues has long been blanket changes – in the infamous NH 300 of 2003 Dale Jarrett crashed, the leaders slowed, but Michael Waltrip barged through to put a car a lap down; NASCAR responded by banning racing to the flag, and the result has been repeated incidence where the wrong winner was declared because the issue was called away from the stripe; nowhere has this rule improved safety, not with crashes happening anyway as cars slow down for the caution. NASCAR’s tardy yellows at New Hampshire and Martinsville this past autumn telegraph realization that not racing to the stripe violates competitive integrity.

NASCAR needs to stop with blanket reactions to issues. Instead, it needs to single out and punish the specific indivduals responsible. The proper reaction to the 2003 incident at New Hampshire would have been some kind of hard penalty on Waltrip – a five-lap penalty, parking of his car, even a race suspension plus a hefty monetary fine. In recent incidents in restrictor plate races the proper reaction would have been punishment of the specific driver involved – a fine and one-race suspension to Brad Keselowski for the Winston 500 melee and also for the last-lap fracas thie time around; a fine and one-race suspension for Tony Stewart for blasting Kyle Busch into the wall; a fine and one-race suspension for Brad Keselowski for the Mark Martin mele; a fine and one-race suspension for Robby Gordon for punting Marcos Ambrose into the wreck that sent Ryan Newman upside-down.

Drivers for their part also need to stop the blanket indictment of rules and instead single out the individuals responsible – Ryan Newman’s anger should be directed at Robby Gordon, not NASCAR; Jimmie Johnson et al’s anger should be directed at Brad Keselowski – telling is one who apparantly does get it, as Kurt Busch’s crew chief ripped Keselowski’s driving for numerous incidents

There was precedent this past weekend for such an approach – NASCAR put AJ Allmendinger on probation for his drunk-driving incident. Why NASCAR cannot likewise target the specific driver responsible for punishment is mystifying even though some drivers over the years have faced probation for on-track controversies. It is reminiscent of 1991, when anger at Ernie Irvan was as brutal as anything we’ve seen in decades, albiet it did not lead to any kind of suspension.

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It boils down to these realities -

1 – NASCAR needs to get the officiating tower out of policing the racing. No more yellow line rules – if it’s paved, it’s fair game. No more “no bump” zones – push-drafting is not why wrecks are happening. No more pit road closure and pit speed limits (discussed in an earlier piece). No more incidence of David Hoots or whoever issuing warnings to drivers. The officiating tower is there to prevent drivers from causing trouble; it is not there to meddle in the racing, because it’s not making anything safer – “We have to protect the drivers from themselves” hasn’t worked and arguably can’t work.

2 – NASCAR needs to stop the blanket reaction and instead go after specific drivers responsible for problems.

3 – NASCAR needs to make more tracks like Talladega – 58 lead changes among 25 drivers is supposed to be the sport’s norm. Pocono, Michigan, Fontana, Kentucky, Kansas, and Chicagoland are some excellent areas for conversion to Talladega-level specs.

4 – There were three periods where the field just pounded out laps instead of raced. To stop it, NASCAR needs to award so many more points for winning the race and so many more points for most laps led as to make it impossible to win the championship without most wins and most laps led.

5 – The roof flaps are a failure – this needs to be acknowledged. A smaller restrictor plate is needed to make it physically impossible to exceed 190 MPH (the well-acknowledged cut-off point for safety in the sport).

The bluffs of NASCAR and its drivers are self-defeating, and at Talladega the bluffs got called again.