NASCAR’s Boys Have At It Tour hit its mid-July bye week at the Winston Cup level but saw an eruption of fireworks at Gateway International with a late-race showdown that for awhile was a superb demonstration of how “cookie cutter” tracks (though Gateway doesn’t entirely qualify as such) can produce superior racing than the bullrings so often given message board hosannas but in the end it produced a climax that was bush league as well as Busch League and leads to some questions about Carl Edwards.
We’ll start with Mr. Edwards as he is considered a potential winner of the upcoming Brickyard 400 but who had spent most of the last two seasons displaying a curious mixture of bullying and timidity in his racing – since his 2009 Talladega melee Edwards seemed to have lost something in his racing to where he’d become surprisingly timid in terms of actually fighting for anything on the racetrack.
Whatever he lost, he seems to have found in a finish at Gateway that will make people forget the embarrassment of losing the lights for the track’s scheduled Friday night Truck feature. I can’t remember Edwards showing this much fight to actually win a race in several years, certainly not since getting blasted into orbit at the Winston 500 two seasons past.
The wreck raises continuing questions about Edwards and his relationship on the track with Brash-Brad Keselowski and also about the safety of NASCAR’s “Boys Have At It” approach to on-track thuggery. That Edwards is displaying a disturbing similarity on the racetrack to “Mad Max” Mel Gibson ought to concern people – it was flagrant reckless endangerment by Edwards and racers are not supposed to race this way.
Making it doubly disturbing is that Edwards and Keselowski had before that staged a superb four-lap battle for the lead where they took Gateway’s tricky turns nose to nose; despite what appeared to be a sideswipe by Edwards that resulted in a nice save by Keselowski, the battle was clean, green, and stirring, the kind of racing the sport really needs to win back the fan base, the kind of racing that puts the bullrings to shame.
The sport needs to ask whether Carl Edwards should be allowed to race. It also needs to get real about what “Boys Have At It” means and what it doesn’t mean.
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Before this the sport saw yet another Mad Max episode from one Juan “Don’t Call Me Roger Murtaugh” Montoya. His own on-track idiocy was aggravated when he trash-talked Mark Martin, the sport’s ultimate gentleman. What right he has to say what he did is a mystery, and of course Juan Montoya will get a lot of attention for the Brickyard, for it was in this race last season that his micro-renaissance in NASCAR began, and his return to the race where NASCAR’s own stupidity cost him a win will certainly warrant heavy media coverage.
Montoya won’t be the only Chevrolet getting attention, as Jimmie Johnson has overcome this spring’s dip in performance and the RCR fleet has of recent becomes a real juggernaut despite some bumps encountered at Chicagoland.
But when it comes to the Brickyard the name on everyone’s lips will be Roger Penske, as Kurt Busch comes to town with Mr. Keselowski alongside and ex-500 champ Sam Hornish a straightaway back.
Then of course we have win less Ford, between the Roush-Fenway fleet and the Petty-Gillett group; the Petty-Gillett group has shown real fight pretty much all season and it remains curious that this group hasn’t broken through yet.
Finally, there is the JGR behemoth, curiously quiet the last few races after racing to the front with a vengeance. It seems unlikely JGR’s bunch will stay quiet come the Brickyard, especially Denny Hamlin.
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Then there is ESPN, which telecast the Gateway race and takes over the NASCAR television deal with the Brickyard. Does ESPN put its announcers through a course in how to lie to viewers? For the announcer to plead ignorance when reviewing the replay was cowardice. Announcers are suposed to tell the truth, yet “Edwards hooked Keselowski head-on into the wall” apparently doesn’t qualify.
Brock Yates wrote back in 1987 about how ESPN’s “reputation for low-ball production values has diminished, not increased, the appeal of motorsports to the masses.” The production values are better, but the broadcasts still leave a lot to be desired, especially when honesty is required.
The bottom line remains that the Brickyard comes at a juncture when NASCAR needs something positive. If it gets a battle up front like the four-lap side-draft between Edwards and Keselowski it will succeed; if it gets chaos like the finish at Gateway it will have failed.
