Pedal To The Metal – Bristol race lacks its old excitement
I have never seen so much controversy over a Bristol race being boring, or not being boring, as I have seen this past week. Most drivers think the race was great. The controversy comes from the fans and reporters who watched the race.
Most of the coments came from those who watched the race on TV and most were negative. I watched the race on TV and was not happy with what I saw. Gone from this race was sparks flying as drivers pushed and shoved their way around the track. Gone from the race were the heated confrontations between drivers that always arise at a short track.
Who can forget Rusty Wallace slamming a water bottle against Dale Earnhardt’s head in 1995? Or four years later when Earnhardt slammed Bobby Labonte so hard on the final lap that Labonte spun out and gave the win to Earnhardt?
Fans come to Bristol to see incidents like Ward Burton flinging his heel pads into Dale Earnhardt Jr’s car after Jr. spun him out. And this was only for a 12th-place finish. Or watching Jeff Gordon boot Rusty Wallace out of his way on the way to victory.
What the fans didn’t come to see was two drivers lead 487 of 500 laps as Kasey Kahne (305) and Carl Edwards (182) did. The most exciting moment during the first 125 laps came when Johnny Sauter stopped along the outside wall and Kahne showed some great driving skills to narrowly avoid hitting him. It was interesting to watch green flag pit stops occur, a rarity at Bristol. These caused havoc when a yellow comes out in the middle of the stops as was the case in this race.
Michael Waltrip was two laps down when the leaders came up behind him. Waltrip raced the leaders hard for a number of laps allowing others to catch up with the two most dominating cars. I don’t find fault with Waltrip since some spice was injected into the race. Kahne was Mr. nice guy and just followed along. Edwards finally got tired of all this and moved past Kahne and ‘moved’ Waltrip out of the way. Edwards went on to victory. Finally, a spark of the old Bristol racing.
Since I wasn’t at the track, I did the next best thing. I called a friend who went to the race. Rob is a loyal Bristol track fan and didn’t seem to want to knock the race. What he did tell me in a diplomatic way was that he went to the concession stand at lap 100 for a brat and beer. He said that he had never done that before in 20 years of going to the track. He didn’t want to miss a minute of the on-track happenings. I’ll take that as meaning boring!
Most think the way the race progressed was a result of repaving the track which allowed for two and three racing grooves, the hard Goodyear tires, the COT, and conservative driving because of the chase for the championship. Hopefully all of these factors can be ironed out and we can get back to what real race fans expect at Bristol.
‘ Roger Penske plans to put IndyCar Series champion Sam Hornish Jr. in a COT for the final 5 or 6 races this year. What’s up with this?
Other race teams may also put development drivers into some of the remaining races to prepare them for next season. How can we have a true championship race with so many non-contenders in the same race? I thought the first 26 races were run to weed out the also-rans. Maybe we should contact the NFL and ask that all 32 teams be included in the Super Bowl.
Wake up NASCAR!