The Truth

The Sharpie 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway is undeniably THE hottest ticket in NASCAR and is on almost all top 10 lists of must-see sporting events. If you have a ticket to this race, you are the complete envy of every race fan that does not. It is the race that saw Senior send both he and Terry Labonte sideways across the finish line in a failed attempt to wreck yet another potential winner in 1995 and then see him succeed in winning yet another cheaply won race by wrecking Labonte again in this race in 1999. Yes, it was a cheap shot by the king of the cheap shot artists and was rewarded by NASCAR. Earlier in that same 1999 race, Jerry Nadeau was penalized two laps for an unintentional wreck of Dale Jarrett, who was out there crawling around with a beat up car, and eight years earlier at Infineon, Ricky Rudd pulled the same move on Davey Allison and took the checkers, only to have their finishing positions reversed by NASCAR for excessively aggressive driving.

This history of excitement and controversy has been completely ruined by the Chase for the Nextel Cup. Do not get me wrong, the Chase for the Nextel Cup is the greatest change in the structure of stock car racing since its inception solely because without it, at this point in the season you are lucky to have two, maybe three drivers with a realistic shot at the Nextel Cup. Without it, Junior in 10^th place is irrelevant and Denny Hamlin in 6^th is just another rookie having a good season. But with the Chase format, drivers in the third race before the Chase are looking for a good finish much more than for a win. Even the #24 team, a team with tremendous success at this track, said they were only going 95% to help solidify themselves in the top 10. This is very smart, but whatever happened to racing for the win?

This would be true of any track in this position, not just Bristol. The spring race here is now the premiere event at the track regardless of what NASCAR, Bruton Smith, and Bristol Motor Speedway say. It is the fifth race of the season, which has huge implications. If you are not in the top 35 after the spring Bristol race, you have to qualify on time the very next week at Martinsville, which is something no driver wants hanging over him. Also, there are 21 races until the Chase when you leave the track, not two, so a win still trumps a good finish. No wonder Bristol Motor Speedway is doing its best to have the spring race moved four to six weeks further down in the schedule to make it another night race. It wants the excitement the Sharpie 500 used to provide.

The Food City 250 on Friday night far outshined the Sharpie 500 on Saturday night, proving yet again that Busch Series racing is better than Nextel Cup racing. Smaller cars with more down force racing without point implications for fewer laps will always put on a better show. They proved not only that Bristol is a two groove track, but also that Nextel Cup cars are one groove cars. Matt Kenseth pulled an incredible move to the outside of Kevin Harvick and passed him in the second groove, something nobody thought could be done here. The bonehead move of the race goes to the NASCAR officials for not throwing the yellow when Aric Almirola spun his #19 car off of turn 2 in front of the field. He was pretty much by himself and a yellow would have alerted the cars coming up behind him of the problem, but nope, no flag. This caused cars starting with Burney Lamar’s #77 to start spinning out and eventually led to Tim Sauter’s #36 being smashed into by DEI’s latest reject Shane Huffman in the #88. Sauter had to be extracted from his car by the safety crew and spent the night in the hospital. Way to hold that flag, NASCAR dumbasses!

As far as the Sharpie 500 goes, I am glad I DVR’ed it. The sports bar we went to was showing the Ultimate Fighting Championship so we had to watch the race with no sound. The best I can tell, the UFC consists of street fighting in five minute rounds of which the fighters only have enough energy for maybe two out of each five minute round. Evidently this is exciting because people were going crazy, but I thought it was monotonous and extremely boring. Unfortunately, so was the race. Jeff Burton dominated most of it only to once again lose handling late in the race and wound up ninth. Now I am not saying anything about Scott Miller and his ability as a crew chief, but why does this car get so tight at the end of races? My guess is other teams are better at making changes.

Tire problems brought out 4 of the 10 caution flags, meaning that driving on rebar is not as nice as driving on concrete. Time to start resurfacing and stop worrying about screwing it up the way they did in Charlotte! Hopefully, you picked the number of 14Sterling aliases to pop up this week over the number of cautions in the race as the 10 cautions were the fewest in eight years. Kenseth won by being smart, Kyle Busch was second by being ugly, and Junior was third by Eury being smart. The bonehead move of this race goes to Reed Sorenson for trying to stay on the lead lap while driving on a flat tire. Surely he knows if he brings out the caution his position is not frozen, right? He eventually wrecked and in the process nicked Kurt Busch’s car, starting his downward spiral out of the Chase. Kurt had a second pit violation in three races, further proving that he sometimes has shit for brains.

It deserves mentioning that Scott Riggs was the only driver to appear racy on Saturday night, and for it he was rewarded fifth. First, he gets into it with David Stremme and they swap paint during a caution. Then, he has to move Jeff Gordon out of the way in the last few laps to get into the top 5, which did not sit well with Gordon. In his post-race interview, Gordon pretty much said that sixth place was good enough for the #10 team and they should have been happy with it. No Jeff, that was him going 100% and you going 95%. He did not wreck you for the position the way you did Kenseth in Chicago, so as Riggs said, “He’ll get over it.” Also, when you look at the stats for the year, Riggs is averaging only 15.6 points fewer per race than Kasey Kahne, the poster child for Evernham Motor Sports, and is averaging 11.6 more points per race than Kahne over the last 5. Pretty good for a guy who missed the Daytona 500!

This week’s Benny Parsons watch finds him back in the booth and sounding much better than he did at Watkins Glen. While it is nice to see him doing better, we have to be tortured by his stupidity once again. At least it makes the commercial breaks less annoying as they offer a three minute reprieve from his ramblings. Can’t handle it?  Tough shit, it’s THE TRUTH!!!!

The Fan