NASCAR’s blind faith gave fans a race not worth watching Sunday.
The belief that tire problems would fix themselves as they have in recent years at Indianapolis Motor Speedway proved naive and misguided. Eleven cautions—including six specifically to keep tires from blowing and cars wrecking—left fans with no more than 13 consecutive laps of green-flag racing in the 160-lap event.
“It’s embarrassing,’’ Jeff Gordon said.
“A ridiculous race,’’ Ryan Newman said.
“I apologize to the fans,’’ Matt Kenseth said.
Only winner Jimmie Johnson could be happy, but even he admitted that “nobody wanted to be in this situation.’‘
While blame will go to Goodyear and NASCAR for a race that wasn’t as much about competition as survival, the real culprit is a way of thinking. “We work off a lot of history,’’ said Robin Pemberton, NASCAR’s vice president of competition, of the sanctioning body’s decision-making process. “We try to develop new stuff, but we also have to rely on a lot of history to get us through some of these things.’‘
That philosophy works as long as it’s not too rigid as it seemed to be this time. The new car’s first race at this speedway changed how the tires reacted to the track surface.
“We’ve got to work real hard and find a tire that doesn’t lead us down the road of having faith that it’s going to be OK,’’ Jeff Burton said. “We got to have a tire that is definitely going to be OK and we know is going to be OK.’‘
Despite the problems, many drivers applauded NASCAR for calling cautions—leading to about one-third of the race being run at reduced speed—instead of waiting for wrecks. With all the tire problems, only four cars crashed and no one was hurt.
“People are going to complain it didn’t go the way it was supposed to go down, but with the way things were today, that was the best NASCAR could do,’’ Earnhardt said.
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