Thoughts On A Bad Weekend: For the record, though there were boring races back then. There were days when a petty or a Pearson would just storm the competition. Fairness demands that there occasionally be mismatches.
Carl Edwards’ Ford was clearly dominant, but it wasn’t like he didn’t have to earn it. He fell behind late in the race on pit road. In the stretch drive, he had to pass both Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, who, between them, have won six championships. It was a miserable, mismanaged weekend. That’s not the racers’ fault, though. They put on a decent show at a track that’s too wide, too easy and too much like too many others. It’s a good sport, even on bad weekends.
Timing Couldn’t Be Worse For NASCAR: I went to the NASCAR race in Fontona and all I got was 87 stinking laps.
It’s sort of natural, at this point, to conclude that someone in Darlington, S.C., knows how to stick pins in voodoo dolls. NASCAR took Labor Day out of Darlington, which was a little like taking the temple out of Jerusalem, and ever since, Auto Club Speedway of Southern California (quaint new name, huh? ) has been visited by one plague of locusts after another.
NASCAR Obscures Race, CoT Step Forward With All-Wet Decisions: - The mantra for NASCAR this year is “back to basics. ” Sadly California was a weekend when basically everything went wrong.
“We should not be racing on that racetrack right now, ” said Denny Hamlin “We got going a little too soon, ” said Dale Earnhardt Jr., “There were a lot of wet spots out there. You do the best you can.It’s impossible to beat Mother Nature, and battling the elements is part of every outdoor sport. NASCAR is no stranger to rain and even snow delays, several which are inevitable during the course of a long, 10-month season. “
What The Hell Was NASCAR Thinking: Fans hung out and waited. They loitered around Emril’s little café and ate gourmet snacks while doing bad imitations
I’ll bet that the few fans that stayed Sunday night but weren’t able to stay Monday knew what NASCAR was trying to do and appreciated that fact. They’ll be the ones saying ‘I’ll be back’ with bad Austrian accents (hey it’s the law after all)
NASCAR Debacle In California: - Speed the NASCAR train gained at Daytona was lost during a miserable weekend that featured a leaky track, childish commentary, endless rain and a mindless five-hour vigil into early morning.
California fans (many of whom arrived at the track at 7 a. m.) shivered in the cold and damp conditions, viewers on the East Coast were kept waiting… and waiting. As race officials kept hoping for a miracle, NASCAR families in the Mountain Empire were treated to an especially provocative episode of “Sex and the City.’’ Viewers in stock car country of North Carolina were offered some tasty infomercials. Of course, the underlying issue here is Auto Club Speedway. Weather extremes aside, the track is flat, wide and boring, plus few folks in Southern California care about the sport. How funny was the crude Kyle Busch joke during prerace ceremonies by the Hollywood comedian. Can you say crickets?
Race Restart Handled poorly by NASCAR Officials: The rain delay should have been a formality with the dreary weather that was coming down all Sunday, but NASCAR drew it out for hours and kept everyone in limbo.
Having to sit there on Sunday and be given false hope that the race would be restarted was a bit insulting. It seemed pretty evident that it was not going to restart, but as fans if we are given a little bit of hope to see a sport we like to watch, we are going to try and wait it out. As for the fans who had to sit in the stands for all those wasted hours on Sunday - I feel even worse for them.
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