POST-TALLADEGA RACINDEALS

WOW: Was that some race or what?

NASCAR INCONSISTENCY: NASCAR,
if you’re going to black flag drivers who get below the yellow line, then you
need to black flag everyone. Casey Atwood was driven below the yellow line by
Sterling Marlin, and you black flagged Atwood, costing him a decent finish. Todd
Bodine made a pass by going under the yellow and you black flagged him.

So, Ward Burton, Rusty Wallace, Buckshot
Jones, and several others get a free pass. They all went below the yellow line,
and if they were penalized for it, Fox didn’t tell us about it or make as big a
deal about it as they did for Atwood or Bodine.

How about some consistency here?

DRIVER SAFETY: We’ve heard a lot of
stuff in recent months about how sponsors are now more concerned about the
safety of their drivers. That’s all well and good, but it seems a little
hypocritical to me that they don’t insist that their drivers wear full-face
helmets in commercials. Yes, I know the racing scenes in the commercials are
staged (how can you not know that when the trunk of one car is full of wood?).
And I realize that the reason they wear open faced helmets is so that we can see
the drivers face. But I still don’t believe it’s consistent with being concerned
for driver safety. 

WHAT BIG ONE?: NASCAR Winston Cup
drivers are the best drivers in the world…period, end of sentence. I’d like to
see one of those F1 guys run 500 miles at Talladega (course they’d have to learn
how to pass first). 

We saw another great race Sunday, with
drivers running three wide lap after lap. Yeah, there was a little bumping here
and there, but that the "big one" didn’t happen attests to the fact of
how skilled these guys are.

Maybe it wasn’t a self-fulfilling prophecy
after all.

NETWORK CONFUSION: There are some
people out here in the net who are confused (how’s that for stating the
obvious?). They’re criticizing Fox because their local affiliate chose to run a
baseball game instead of the race. Repeat after me: contact your local
affiliate, not Fox.

Speaking of networks, I’ll bet Chris
Berman is ecstatic that ESPN didn’t have to relegate their coverage of the
"suspenseful" NFL draft to ESPN2 this year.

COMPETITION: I’ve written about
this before on this site, but after Sunday’s race at Talladega, looks like it’s
time to say it again. I’ve seen some comments this last week talking about what
a boring race it was, or how it’s not competition or whatever. Sorry, but I
don’t get it.

The conventional wisdom that the
conventional press wants us to believe is that each driver has his place in the
field. There are the front runners, the mid-packers, and the back markers. When
you get those all mixed up, then trouble is sure to happen. But at Talladega,
there was one pack. People who don’t normally run up front ran there. People who
don’t normally run in the back ran there.

To me, that was refreshing. But some would
say that a race is supposed to have two or three dominant cars, and the rest of
the field shouldn’t have a chance. If there are more than a handful of cars on
the lead lap, then too many back markers are running where they shouldn’t.

If I honestly thought that only a handful
of teams had a shot at winning a race, then I’d go watch something where I
didn’t have an idea of the outcome, like professional wrestling.

NASCAR Winston Cup racing has to have
elements of both pure competition and entertainment. If it were true
competition, then the purists would always have their front runners, their
mid-packers, and their back markers (watch an F1 race for a great example of
this). And if it were pure entertainment, then NASCAR would be deciding who
wins. But it’s a mixture of both, which is why the sport is so popular. With the
rules at Talladega like they were, no one team had a big advantage over the
others. The drivers had to use their driving skills in combination with the
skills of the other drivers in order to obtain a position. That’s competition.