Verrrry Interesting
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I bid you welcome, gentle readers, and a cordial “Hi
Y’all” to the one that drew the lucky straw at NASCAR and was assigned to read
us on this fine day. It’s only Monday as I pull up to this well-used keyboard
and begin to assemble a few coherent thoughts on the race at Dover. It will no
doubt be Wednesday before that is accomplished. One of the first words I wrote
to a friend shortly after the Dover race blessedly ended was “Interesting.” And
that it was!
Jimmie Johnson started on the pole, but was forced to
start last on the field owing to a gear change. He led a total of 7 laps on the
day, and took the lead for a final time on a restart on lap 405. (We’ll get
back to that; have no fear)
Your scribe must have experienced a clairvoyant moment
when choosing last week’s topic. It was a Lady in Black rundown of the spring
Dover race in 2004. She described it as a wreck-strewn disaster that ended in
total chaos because NASCAR at that time started cars that had been caught in
the pits or had just visited there on green-flag stops on what they called the
“Tail end of the lead lap”, but restarted them directly in front of the leader!
That race had 11 cautions. This week’s race scored 15, with the final one
coming on lap 406… of a 400-mile race on a 1-mile track… and similar to the one
I told about last week, this one too ended in chaos.
Among a long list of who spun into whom, probably the
most spectacular in the early going was when Kurt Busch got loose on a restart
and made a right hand turn into Brad Keselowski, taking the Deuce out of
contention for the second week in a row. Kurt’s own day would be shortened some
time later. With 15 cautions, we won’t be reliving them individually. I’m sure
there are videos available and once declared “Official”, NASCAR has taken to
putting the full video on YouTube. I like that. See, they do have a friendly
side… at times.
Another “Interesting” thing was that of 14 cautions that
warranted a Lucky Dog, over 1/3 or 5 of them gave the Award to Jeffrey
Earnhardt… and he still finished 6 laps down to the leaders. In last week’s
piece, it was Kirk Shelmerdine who received multiple Lucky Dog promotions… and
did so having only run 12 laps for each. Tell me again about that minimum speed
thing! Lucky Dog is a rule I’ve never cared for but for the same 13 years, they
keep hauling it back every year. In a perfect world, it should at least be
modified in some way… if a driver lost a lap through no fault of his own, then
apply the Lucky Dog. If he’s been passed by the leaders while at speed on the
track, it shouldn’t apply. For as long as it’s been here, this scribe has
begged for a sensible limit as to how many times the same driver is eligible to
receive it… maybe twice? I guess they’ll give it away every 12 laps to the same
guy, and if there’s a caution every 12 laps, then so be it. I know we don’t
have cautions every 12 laps as a rule, but we came very close to that at Indy
in 2008 when Goodyear invented the “dusty tire”, which put down a white dust
instead of black rubber and lasted for an average of 15 laps. I guess things
like that happen, but should they?
More “Interesting” things came to pass as the race
progressed. On one of the fairly early cautions, there was confusion, mayhem
and an errant air-wrench in Kyle Busch’s pit. Jackman sees tire changer hit all
5 lugs and drops the car. When the car drops, Kyle takes off like a scalded
cat. All seems right… but wait… the rear tire changer has his hand in the tire
well and was trying to adjust something. To my knowledge, we’ve never heard if
his hand is still attached to his arm, but I do hope that is the case.
What he was trying to adjust was the air-wrench, which
somehow wound up in reverse and instead of tightening the lug nuts, was undoing
them. Kyle never made it all the way down pit road before that tire took off
and came close to beating him back to the pits. His car sustained quite a bit
of left rear fender damage as a result of having to drive back around on only
three wheels. The one thing we were spared was Darrell Waltrip breaking into
his now infamous rendition of “You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Loose
Wheel.” The youngsters won’t get that one, but be grateful for that. Not
everything about the “Good ol’ days” was all that good.
The entire race was strewn with exploding tires, usually
but not entirely limited to the right front Goodyear. When that happens,
accusations are typical… teams blame Goodyear and Goodyear blames their skewed
set-ups and too low air pressure. Probably 50-50 there, but it sure does make
for a lot of laps run under yellow… 72 in this race.
They say that all good things must come to an end, but
this one just didn’t want to end that soon. With Kyle Larson enjoying more than
a 2-second lead over the rest of the field, David Ragan’s right front chose lap
398 to go Boom and David was hard into the SAFER barrier. That of course, would
precipitate a re-bunching of the field and “Overtime”, formerly known as
Green/White/Checkers.
Cleanup lasted through lap 404, and so it was that they
took the green on lap 405, and things got really “Interesting” in a hurry. Larson,
who chose to start on the outside, didn’t get the start that Jimmie Johnson
got, but wished he had. They made it back to the white flag, with Speedy-Dry
aka kitty litter flying everywhere, but never saw the checkers. Behind the
leaders, young Ty Dillon just flat lost it and managed to erase most of the
field before they were done wreckin. Naturally, that
wreck played havoc with the finishing order, leaving a lot of really good cars
far down the page from where they’d been running just a moment before.
Enter another “rule” made to further explain another
“rule” that shouldn’t exist in the first place. The first and seemingly most
important thing amidst all that mess was whether or not the leader had made it
past the “Overtime line” situated in the middle of the backstretch. Nope, I’m
not even going to try to explain all that to you because quite frankly, I don’t
understand it myself. What I do understand is that all those rules are to
insure that no race ends under caution. This race did so anyway. “Interesting!”
Maybe we need some more rules!
The winner, as we already saw earlier, was Jimmie
Johnson, and this win tied him in CUP wins with his childhood hero, Cale
Yarborough at 83. One more will tie him with Ol’ DW at 84 and a second win will
tie him with Bobby Allison at 85. Never mind what the NASCAR records show. I’m
right; they’re wrong. Still… I was at North Wilkesboro in the spring of 1990.
The record books say that Brett Bodine won that race. After a colossal
45-minute red flag for bookkeeping, NASCAR still got it wrong and everyone
there that day knows it. DW actually won that race, so if all were right with
the world and NASCAR, they’d still be tied, not at 84, but at 85. Interesting!
Oh, and just a quick sideline… another “Interesting”
this week was that no one “dropped” a mic this week during post-race press
interviews. Kyle Larson was his usual sweet self, though he had to be sorely
disappointed when such a huge lead was taken suddenly away, almost within sight
of the checkers. I guess no one wants to interview a 16th place
finisher. So be it.
Harkening back to the “Big One” at Dover, those involved
in it include but are not limited to Jamie McMurray, Austin Dillon, Kasey
Kahne, Trevor Bayne, Clint Bowyer, Ryan Newman, A.J. Allmendinger, Cole Whitt,
Erik Jones, Michael McDowell and of course, Ty Dillon. As the video shows,
several of those sustained race-ending damage and had to be scraped up off the
concrete and placed on a wrecker. Two races, 13 years apart, and nothing has
changed except that we now have more rules… and more rules… and more rules…
One way to end this sort of madness, and to this
scribe’s way of thinking, the best way, is to just do away with “Overtime.” Big
Bill, and his namesake son had a mantra. The race runs the advertised distance,
barring divine intervention, such as rain or snow. Even then, it has to be past
the half-way point to be declared a final race. This race was advertised as a
400-mile race and no matter what color flag is waving, at 400 miles, the
checkers fly. If they share the stage with the yellow flag, so be it. 400 miles
ends the race.
No one came to the race expecting a marathon. Dover has
been shortened from a grueling endurance test for both man and machine of 500
miles. 400 miles was an act of kindness and should be enough! For being billed
as the “Best in the world” by the talking heads on TV, these drivers “should”
be able to handle a restart, but they prove time and time again that is not the
case. Rather than bunch those cars up one more time just to see the mayhem
“Moment”, let the race end the way it always did… at the advertised distance…
until that fateful year of 2004, when ALL the rules changed so radically.
Allow me to put it in the language currently spoken in
these parts… It does not enhance a race to have a moment that results in over a
quarter of the field being encumbered and unable to finish. That has to make
the stakeholders behind all those crippled cars very unhappy; perhaps even
disgruntled. As I said in the beginning, the race was “Interesting.” I never
said it was good or bad; merely “Interesting.”
Time now for our Classic Country Closeout, which will be
another in the series we’ve been watching, with Stars of the 1950s bringing us
wonderful songs and sweet memories of another time. I promise, for every
Country Music fan, this will be far more than just “Interesting.”
Be well gentle readers, and remember to keep smiling.
It looks so good on you!
~PattyKay 
