TALLADEGA: WHITE KNUCKLE WEEKEND THOUGHTS
Got the chance again to cover the
Talladega races from the press box. I know the drivers hate
restrictor plate races, but from a fan’s standpoint, they have the
potential to be the most exciting races of the season.
Earnhardt proved again why he’s
called "Mr. Restrictor Plate." He sliced through that pack like
a hot knife through butter. Earnhardt proved that all those stats
you see about where past winners have started are meaningless. If it’s a
‘plate race and he’s in it, he’s got a shot at the win.
Speaking of stats, I think there
were 32 lead changes during the race. That’s the ones that they count at
the start/finish line. If they could count the number of times the lead
changed hands within one lap, you could probably triple that number.
And that’s what makes a race
exciting. There have really only been a handful of exciting races in the
Winston Cup Series this year. This was arguably the most exciting race all
year. NASCAR talks about "parity" all the time, but if we had
true parity, you wouldn’t have one or two teams dominate the races. That’s
a formula for boredom, and that’s not good for the sport.
I can’t believe how many drivers
were injured in the ARCA race on Saturday. And a couple of the wrecks that
resulted in injuries didn’t look too serious.
But when you have that many drivers
hurt in a race, the sanctioning body needs to look at the age of the cars
and the construction of those cars.
Something’s not right.
Dodge had a press conference on
Friday for some reason. I was at the conference and for the life of me
can’t figure out why they had it. They’d announced the previous day in New
York (that Mecca of NASCAR popularity) about their intention to return to
Winston Cup racing in 2001 with their primary team owned by Ray Evernham.
It looks like they’re going to
ignore the Busch Grand National Series completely, which is a big mistake.
With NASCAR’s push of the Series this year, it’s popularity has got to be
at an all time high.
The freebies they gave to the press
were slick though.
Everyone expected that Exide would
announce on Sunday that they’d be filling in the void that Winston will
leave when their involvement in the NASCAR "Weekly" Racing
Series (formerly the Winston Racing Series) is over.
They were fooled. Exide is
going to be the sponsor for the second tier of the Weekly Racing Series,
the newly named Exide ShorTrack Series.
NASCAR did announce that the Weekly
Racing Series top tier division will be fully funded next year as far as
the points money goes, and that they expect to spend next year searching
for a sponsor for 2001.
That’s good news for the 100 or so
short tracks across the country that are involved in the program.
It looks like NASCAR will be making
some rule changes for qualifying at restrictor plates next year.
Kenny Wallace said that they were staying in Talladega today (Monday) to
test some things for NASCAR. The most rumored change is that NASCAR will
issue qualifying shocks to the teams like they do restrictor plates. We’ll
see.