“Attaboy” to NASCAR and Sprint for One Helluva All-Star Race
Harrelson/Getty Images for NASCAR
My job is to be critical, but also objective. If I see something wrong, long-time readers know I’ll raise a fuss.
But I also have been known to give a well-deserved “attaboy,” as rare as it may be, every now and then.
And even though I remain in complete disagreement with the way NASCAR is handling the entire Jeremy Mayfield situation, I have to give the sanctioning body and the folks from Sprint a personal expression of thanks for giving us such a great all-Star race this past Saturday night at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.
The excitement, drama and storyline most definitely lived up to all the hype of Saturday’s race being the sports’ 25th annual all-star event.
Winston and R.J. Reynolds started the all-star concept, which was eventually inherited first by Nextel and then Sprint. And while the latter two companies made some well-publicized errors in altering the format over the six years that they’ve ridden herd over it, the return to the 10-lap shootout for this year’s event showed that Sprint finally listened to the wishes of long-time, diehard all-star race fans.
The way those last 10 laps played out, first with Jeff Gordon looking like he’d win, followed by Gordon, Kyle Busch and Ryan Newman wrecking – all in just the first two laps of those final 10 trips around the 1.5-mile surface at Lowe’s Motor Speedway – planted the seeds of a night to remember for a long time.
And then, when Tony Stewart emerged from the pack to take the lead and go on to win his first race as a Sprint Cup team owner – it doesn’t make a difference if the all-star race wasn’t a points-paying event – spoke volumes of how far Stewart and the people he’s hired to work for him have come in such a very short period of time.
So, for once, I’m not going to knock NASCAR. Instead, I’m going to say “attaboy” to both the sanctioning body and Sprint for giving us one hell of a race.
Now please, please, please – don’t go back and change the format once again for next year’s race, feeling that the second quarter-century of the race should have some type of new gimmick.
Stick with the old-fashioned, tried and true, and we’ll have many more years, if not decades, of great all-star events to come.
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