Please enjoy this limited viewing We are allowing a certain number of articles to be read each month. For one, the Daytona 500 is their premier race, and one of the most popular races in the world.
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That’s not entirely true about Talladega, which more times than not turns into a mess of wrecked race cars. AP wirephoto Nobody needs to be reminded that racing is inherently risky. But drivers know it might not always end up that way. The driver swap took just over one minute to complete.
They could, they would, and they did Sunday at Talladega in a race that was notably chaotic, even at a track where chaos is baked right into the festivities.
Among the unhappy drivers were Matt Kenseth, Chris Buescher and Kevin Harvick, whose cars all left the track during wild multicar crashes. For example, I won’t be giving you a Dale Jr. performance report every week, nor will I talk about certain drivers more than others (unless they deserve the talk). She later called it the worst wreck of her career.
And why not? Earnhardt is one of the best the sport has ever seen in restrictor plate racing.
That excitement came with a hefty price tag.
“All in all, millions of dollars’ worth of cars ended up totalled”.
There were several other incredibly hard hits as well, and NASCAR was fortunate everyone walked away. In Kenseth’s accident, Danica Patrick hit hard into an energy-absorbing wall that seemed to buckle upon impact.
Part of the problem for NASCAR is that plate racing, as a spectacle, is so good.
That’s all fine and well because everybody knows what they signed up for, right? “The cars are going to draft”.
Watching this particular crash will have you wondering how a few cars jostling could possibly cause another to take off, swiftly picked up off the ground like a feather in the wind.
Patrick was running in the top 10 in a race where wrecks collected all but a handful of cars at one point or another.
Appearing on SIRIUS/XM NASCAR radio, Earnhardt was clear about how he regarded the situation.
Improved communication between NASCAR, owners and drivers should lead to solutions.
“Racing has always been that balance of daredevils and chess players, this has always been more of a daredevil-type track”, said Keselowski. “We went and tried to engineer the plate package in the past and it’s not really had good results, so I don’t know if we need to keep changing without knowing what we’re changing and why we’re changing it”.
“We may go to Daytona and Talladega without changing a thing and not having anything that looks anything like we had Sunday”. He has faith that NASCAR understands the drivers’ concerns.
“We all kind of raced to halfway, then all raced to the rain that was coming and all raced to the end”, she said.
Keselowski said those blocking moves were the ones he had to make, and they weren’t reckless. Initialized by Jamie McMurray drifting up into Austin Dillon who was then sandwiched with Gilliland, the crash also impacted the cars of Jimmy Johnson, Carl Edwards and Michael Annett. “We don’t want them to land in a fan’s lap”.
It’s important to put Sunday’s demolition derby in at least a little bit of perspective.
It’s sacrilege, but when does it become time to seriously consider 400-mile races for Talladega? Do you know how many cars finished on the lead lap that day?
QUOTE OF THE DAY, No. 2: “It didn’t end up as well as we liked to”.
It meant the pace was much faster from start to finish.
“It was so quick, never had any time to react”, Buescher said.
One of those heavy pushes turned Danica Patrick, who had X-rays to her chest (they were negative) after she felt pain while breathing after an accident. It’s been 103 starts since Biffle’s last victory and June 22, 2014, was the last win for Roush Fenway Racing, 66 races ago.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. has had as much success at Talladega Superspeedway as anywhere on the NASCAR circuit.
Not everyone is convinced the racing needs to be fixed.
HOW KESELOWSKI WON: It was a matter of survival of the fittest, as the No. 2 stayed out of trouble nearly the entire race, stayed in or near the top-10 and grabbed the lead for good with 17 laps remaining (Lap 172).
“I’m a capitalist. I love capitalism”.
Stewart began the race but made a driver switch to Dillon mid-race as safety concerns forced the former, who is recovering from back surgery, out of the auto.
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“It sounds like it’s self-policing and there’s enough interest to keep going”.
