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Pocono Turns Into Talladega

An Opinion



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August 6, 2009

By Doug Demmons


Doug Demmons
Somebody needs to launch an investigation.

Somebody needs to find out who stole Pocono Raceway and replaced it with Talladega.

Four wide going into Turn 1? At 205 mph?

Seriously? At Pocono?

Pocono is supposed to be the race you watch on TV when you need to catch some zzzs on the couch. If you look Pocono up in the NASCAR dictionary, it says boring.

Did they tear the place up over the winter and put in 36-degree banking while I wasn’t paying attention? Did NASCAR officials sneak into the garage at night and put plates on the carburetors?

Even Jeff Gordon was freaked out.

“I can't even explain to you how insane it was out there,” Gordon said after Monday’s race. “And when you get guys that have no tires that have stayed out, or two tires, against guys that have four tires, it just shakes it up so much because you've got such a speed difference and guys trying to hang on to position and guys fighting hard to get 'em and I mean it was just nuts.

“I saw so many guys rubbing, banging, smokin' sideways, three-wide, four-wide, and I was right in the middle of it at times as well,” he said. “It's not the most fun, but when you make it out of it, you're like whew, and you know it's awesome racing to watch on TV and from the grandstands."

Was it another consequence of double-file restarts? Race winner Denny Hamlin thinks so.

“Just double file restarts, everyone trying to get everything they can,” Hamlin said. “And I think a lot of the reason you saw two at the end of the race is you had guys with better tires 10th to 15th, and the guys that stayed out were top 10.

“You were going to see comers and goers,” he said. “Especially with me, I was impatient because I had the guys that I knew I had to race for the win right on my bumper. I had to go. I had to get away from those guys and separate myself. That's why you saw the banging around that you did, is 'cause comers and goers, guys look at the top 10, the guys that haven't won yet.”

So double-file restarts turned what used to be cars doing parade laps for three hours into a 2.5-mile version of Bristol. Makes you wonder why NASCAR didn’t go to double-file restarts years ago.

Makes you wonder what double-file restarts will look like at the real Bristol.

Also makes you wonder how something so simple could fix something that just a few months ago looked so perplexing. Maybe NASCAR should hold town hall meetings more often.

A relatively simple solution also came to the rescue of the IndyCar Series last weekend. IndyCar was getting hammered this year for putting on boring oval-track races. Drivers even apologized after the Richmond race for the snoozefest they called a race.

And then on Saturday night at Kentucky Speedway it all changed with some aero tweaks and the push of a button -- the so-called press-to-pass button that Honda implemented to give a temporary boost of horsepower to its engines.

Voila! It was wheel to wheel between Ed Carpenter and Ryan Briscoe for lap after lap with Briscoe winning by 0.0162 seconds.

If they had that button a couple months ago maybe Richmond would be on the IRL schedule for 2010. Makes you wonder.

So, has the new restart rule saved Pocono? Because Pocono is always the track that gets mentioned whenever the subject comes up of moving races somewhere else. After all, why should such a boring place have not one, but two races?

The answer is a definite maybe. It’ll improve TV ratings and ticket sales but it’s going to hurt concession sales. Who wants to go stand in line for hot dogs when carnage could break out at any moment?




Doug Demmons is a writer and editor for the Birmingham News ~ he writes daily and weekly auto racing columns ranging from NASCAR to open wheel to Formula One, local tracks and more... you can read Doug's columns online at Blog of Tommorow

Follow Doug on Twitter: @dougdemmons


You can contact Doug Demmons at .... Birmingham News

You Can Read Other Articles By Doug Demmons


The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.

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