TALLADEGA LOTTERY

There’s been an awful lot of hyperbole
expended about Talladega and the "new" Winston Cup restrictor plate
rules. When Dale Earnhardt came from eighteenth to first in the last five laps
last Fall, writers were falling all over themselves to call it the
"greatest NASCAR race of all time" and other such nonsense. Still
greater heights were reached last week when Michael Daly wrote in a piece for
RacinDeals.com, that the "competition we have now at Daytona and Talladega
is as close to the ultimate apex of racing as ever been reached."

I suppose that I probably have a bad
attitude, but I wonder if all these folks waxing so enthusiastic also cheer for
the ping pong balls before they’re drawn at the lottery? "Oh look!
Different numbers are on top with every spin of the drum! How could it possibly
get any more exciting than this?"

Yes, Dale Earnhardt came from eighteenth
to first in the last five laps last Fall, but were you aware that every single
top-ten finisher in that race was outside of the top ten with five laps to go?
That statistic hasn’t gotten quite as much press.

To me, Saturday’s Busch race and Sunday’s
Cup race provided a wonderful example of how the new rules have reduced the
Winston Cup plate races, particularly at Talladega, into little more than a
lottery. Over the final few laps of the Busch race, there was plenty of
excitement and uncertainty about whether Mike McLaughlin could hold off Jimmy
Spencer, or whether Todd Bodine or Jeff Green, or maybe even Mike Skinner, could
make a bold move and take the point.

In the final analysis, it’s possible that
the only real differences between the first and fifth place Busch teams were
luck and circumstances, but one would be hard pressed to argue that there was no
qualitative difference between the performance of the first and twentieth place
teams. In the Cup race though, less than a second separated the first and
twenty-third place team at the end of 500 miles. Can anyone really argue that
there was $101,700 and seventy-six championship points worth of difference
between Bobby Hamilton’s performance and Sterling Marlin’s?

On Saturday, the good teams ran at the
front all day long, and the mid-pack teams ran in the middle of the pack. Some
of the good teams suffered misfortunes and fell by the wayside. But the teams
that battled for the win over the last few laps were all teams that had clearly
performed better than the teams that were still running but weren’t up front.

On Sunday, every team was a good
team as long as their shocks and tires held together and they didn’t get nailed
with a stop-and-go. Only seventeen teams failed to lead at least one lap, and
only four weren’t in the top ten at one point or another. Different numbers were
at the front with every lap of the track! How could it possibly get any more
exciting than this?

Bobby Hamilton led three laps and won the
race. Sterling Marlin led fifty-one laps and finished 994 milliseconds behind,
in twenty-third place. Sterling picked the wrong time to get shuffled to the
back, and Bobby won the lottery. The Cup race may have tied an all-time record
for most different leaders, but it wasn’t even the greatest race of the weekend.