August 1, 2008
By Rebecca Gladden
Unless you were on another planet last Sunday, you're well aware that the Brickyard 400 was a failure of a NASCAR race. Many drivers and pundits have called it the worst race in NASCAR history.
Several factors - including the series' much maligned Car of Tomorrow, Goodyear's one-off tire compound, Indy's abrasive diamond-ground surface, and the lack of a series-wide track test - combined to produce an event that was a flop for fans and an embarrassment for the sport.
In the interest of safety, NASCAR micromanaged the 160-lap race in 10-12 lap segments with mandatory cautions in between. Even that didn't prevent at least two drivers, Matt Kenseth and Juan Pablo Montoya, from suffering dangerous tire blowouts that mimicked small bomb blasts.
There is more than enough blame to go around in terms of the root causes of this debacle. Ultimately, the buck has to stop with the sanctioning body itself.
Which is why NASCAR's actions shortly after the race ended earn my first "That's Just Wrong" award of the week.
The (unprecedented amount of) tire dust had barely settled on the track Sunday evening, with stunned fans sitting at home still trying to digest the "race" they'd just witnessed. Meanwhile, NASCAR Public Relations was busy cranking out a press release entitled: "Challenging Circumstances at Brickyard Balanced by Increase in Green-Flag Passing."
Yes, you read that right.
Just hours after the Big Brickyard Blunder ended, NASCAR attempted to "spin" (no reference to tire explosions intended) the race by claiming, "There may have been a record number of caution laps for the race, 52. But the green-flag passing numbers, gathered by NASCAR's Loop Data, showed a total of 1,545 green-flag passes during Sunday's event, up from 1,431 during last year's Indy race - a difference of 114 passes."
I don't suppose the fact that the field was brought together every 10 laps for the entire race, never allowing cars to spread out as they normally would during longer green-flag runs, had anything to do with that - right?
Sorry, NASCAR, but that's just wrong. The race itself was bad enough. You should know better than to play your fans for fools.
Or, as Judge Judy so succinctly puts it, "Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining."
That same caveat goes for the recipients of my second award - town officials in Kannapolis, North Carolina, hometown of Dale Earnhardt.
A published story last week reported that the Town was asked (and agreed) to remove the banners marking the "Dale Trail" - a tour that commemorates the life of the town's most famous and popular citizen.
Sites along the trail include Earnhardt Road, once a country road where a teenage Dale Earnhardt drove his bright yellow 1956 Chevrolet; the Junction Cafe & Grill, proudly serving Dale's favorite tomato sandwich; and Curb Motorsports, home to the 1980 blue and yellow Chevy in which Earnhardt won his first Winston Cup Championship.
The flags marking the Dale Trail were apparently removed to avoid upsetting California billionaire David Murdock and members of his party, who would soon be visiting Kannapolis. Murdock is financing a multi-millionaire dollar science research campus in the area and town officials felt the banners were too dirty and torn to leave in place.
As soon as the story broke, NASCAR fans flooded the mayor and town council with outraged complaints. City officials are now backpedaling on their decision: "We are in no way abandoning our history and heritage," they claim.
But the bottom line is that money talks.
The flags were removed.
And that's just wrong.
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