Is the NASCAR Sprint Cup racing action better than ever or worse than ever? That depends on whom you ask.
I have heard versions of defense for both sides. Like trial lawyers firm in their convictions making a closing argument with all the drama of Perry Mason. Like reverends at the local church yelling a sermon and bordering on evangelical.
“Today is the good old days of tomorrow. There are close to forty cars finishing a race and we sometimes have close to thirty on the lead lap.”
“Today it is all follow the leader. Nobody can pass. It is like watching a parade. I am tired of hearing about track position.”
In some form I see both. Each opinion has a point and some statistics as evidence. But I know from my experience that stats can be presented to make them favor any angle you wish. I have had several supervisors in my day, and from different companies, that like to show me a percentage or a graph to make a point. In my head I can always picture another angle that proves something different, but at that moment in time a have no hard copy to highlight in front of the group.
I see many more cars on the lead lap than in years past but that trend also continued in all our years of racing the “twisted sister”, prior to the Car of Today’s introduction. Parts are more reliable and crews take more preparation, learning from failures of years past. In all the time I have observed motorsports, reliability has constantly increased.
More cars are finishing and more cars are closer together. The Cup cars are very tight competitively. As reliability has gone up disparity has gone down. With as many people turning wrenches and bending steel trying to make their car faster than everyone else’s, the lap times of the entire field are as close as ever.
What I am seeing less of is plain old-fashioned passing and hard racing. Sure I watch more cars finish races on the lead lap now more than ever. The teams are close. But I don’t seem to see as many positions changing as I used to.
The argument is made that, for instance, if twenty years ago one car finished on the lead lap of a race, the race stunk. Well maybe it did and maybe it didn’t. Was the critical person there? Did this person actually witness the event and remember details? Or are people just looking at the box score, making an assumption, and talking something down because it makes them feel knowledgeable and raises their own self esteem?
I can remember a few instances “back in the day” where I saw great racing, just not for the lead. September 1986 brought the Winston Cup series to Dover, Delaware and there were three principals involved in the autumn championship tussle, Darrell Waltrip, Dale Earnhardt, and Tim Richmond. Earnhardt and Richmond fell victim to crashes during the race and spent many laps in the garage area. The latter part of the race featured your typical crashed cars with all of the sheet metal cut away ahead of the front firewall.
The Wrangler and Folgers sponsored Chevrolets found each other in the paved one-mile’s high banks and put on a whale of a show. They raced each other hard and swapped their track spots back and forth and entertained the group I sat around. For the record Earnhardt finished sixty-eight laps down and Richmond was 201.
Ricky Rudd was victorious on a sunny day that saw three cars finish on the lead lap. But I can confirm I did indeed witness some good racing.
This spring’s 600-mile grind in Concord, NC had an interesting confrontation between Tony Stewart and David Reutimann. I heard Stewart’s radio transmission to his spotter and it went something to the effect of ‘you tell that ignorant (deleted) that if he holds me up again he is going to beat traffic out of this place. We have 450 miles left to race. Why is he racing me so hard?’
Reutimann did not let Stewart by easily when Tony caught him. Feeling he was faster, David should have shown some courtesy and allowed him around. Or at least that was how I interpreted that. This was where the infamous “Billy Bad Butt” anointing came from when a Reutimann crew member came to his driver’s defense.
I know this courtesy happens a lot in today’s racing. I had never heard of such a thing until the mid-1990s when Mark Martin described his race strategy. He felt it was better to lose three-tenths all at once by letting a faster car around than keep losing a tenth a lap trying to hold him off and not running your own race.
This has grown to where Cup drivers expect for a car in front of them to move over and give up a spot in an event’s first half. And when someone actually wants to race, or give a ticket buyer their money’s worth, some of our millionaire friends get upset.
I am quite surprised Stewart would be someone to be bothered like this. His sprint car, short distance background and race anything, anywhere attitude would have me presume otherwise. But he has a lot of championships and race wins so he certainly knows what he is doing for his own success. What does not sell tickets is when Reutimann moves over and lets him by.
And that is part of our problem. Some fans want to blame the C.O.T. But when a driver is complaining another is ‘racing me too hard’… well, what kind of statement is that? What is this sport all about? ‘Racing too hard?’ Huh?
I was brought up going to the Danbury Racearena in Connecticut. The Saturday Night feature for the modified class was twenty-five laps on the one-third mile oval. Twenty-four cars started. The top eighteen starters were handicapped. Meaning the better you performed the farther away from the front you started. When the green waved, the hammer went down. That is how racers race.
NASCAR and the C.O.T. get thrown under the bus while I am not sure those two entities are solely responsible for what we see. I will write it but some people may not want to hear it. Portions of our forty-three-car Cup field are steering wheel holders collecting a healthy check. And I don’t mean the poor guys relegated to start and park status just trying to survive.
I suppose the crux of the debate is what is someone’s definition of good racing? Is it thirty-five lead lap drivers following each other? Is it door-to-door action for fifteenth?
I like to see drivers give it their all, every lap. That is what fans pay their hard-earned money to see. That could be part of our attendance problem. There is too much riding around, courtesy, and give and take. I don’t want to see that. You want me entertained? Let’s see all forty-three Cup drivers race like every lap is the last lap.
From a race team standpoint, that is not smart racing. From the paying fan’s perspective, I think they need to be really inspired to part with their hard earned money when it is tougher and tougher to make ends meet and still possess disposable income. Polite driving until the last 100 miles does not inspire me.
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The problem with today’s racing is more follow the leader tracks and they can’t pass because the majority of the cars are fairly equal. The cars are too boxy also. Yes there are more cars on the lead lap. There ought to be with the free pass and now the wave around rule. If you had to race your way back onto the lead lap, it really would tell the story about how awful these cars are and how bad racing really has become.
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