The Cool Down Lap: Euphoria of Smith’s victory aside, NASCAR has much to ponder

The Cool Down Lap: Euphoria of Smith’s victory aside, NASCAR has much to ponder

 

By Reid Spencer
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service

 

(May 8, 2011)

 

DARLINGTON, S.C.—In the afterglow of Regan Smith’s feel-good victory at Darlington, NASCAR has a lot of nastiness to discuss.

 

For the record, Smith, who drives for Colorado-based Furniture Row Racing, pulled off a feat most had considered impossible with two laps left in Saturday night’s Showtime Southern 500. On old tires, he held off Carl Edwards, one of the hardest chargers in NASCAR racing, to record his first Sprint Cup victory.

 

Smith is the fifth driver for a single-car team to win a Cup race since 2000, but he’s the second this year. Trevor Bayne was the surprise winner of the Daytona 500 in his second start in the series, but Smith’s victory may be every bit as popular.

 

It also represents the meting out of cosmic justice. On Oct. 5, 2008, driving for Dale Earnhardt Inc., Smith thought for a fleeting moment that he had won the AMP Energy 500 at Talladega. That was before the powers that be in NASCAR race control became strict constructionists and penalized Smith for passing Tony Stewart below the yellow out-of-bounds line that separates the racing surface from the apron.

 

Smith took the punishment—demotion to 18th as last the last car on the lead lap—with grace and resignation, not knowing if he’d ever have the chance to win another Cup race.  His ride with DEI was to end at the close of the season, but his pairing with Furniture Row—first for a partial schedule and subsequently full time—ultimately gave Smith the opportunity to pull off one of the major upsets of the past decade.

 

Daytona and Talladega in particular are known for producing unlikely winners. Darlington is a racetrack where champions take the checkered flag.

 

Two drivers in the thick of this year’s championship fight injected discord into what should have been an unmitigated celebration. Contact between Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick ignited the Lap 363 wreck that gave Smith the chance to beat Edwards in a green-white-checkered-flag finish, but it also triggered a postrace confrontation that NASCAR will have to address.

 

The wreck was a product of hard racing between Harvick and Busch, who made contact several times on Lap 363. Coming off Turn 4, Clint Bowyer was three-wide to the inside with Harvick in the middle and Busch to the outside. Harvick bounced between the cars like a pinball between bumpers and sent Bowyer sliding out of control into the inside wall.

 

Busch then spun Harvick as the cars approached Turn 1.

 

After the race, Harvick blocked Busch’s entry to pit road, climbed from his car and took a swing at Busch, who was still sitting in his car. The punch didn’t connect, because Busch began to drive forward—and pushed Harvick’s car out of the way. Luckily, no one on pit road was injured by the rolling car.

 

Busch said he was simply trying to get away from Harvick.

 

“I made a judgment call there, and it wasn’t one of the best choices that I had, but I pushed his car out of the way on pit road, and, unfortunately, there were men (Harvick’s crew) walking down pit road,” Busch said. “I hate it that somebody could have gotten hurt, but I was just trying to get away from it and get back to my hauler and go on with my own business.”

 

After the confrontation, NASCAR summoned both drivers to its hauler. Neither driver would comment on the discussion.

 

NASCAR has a lot on its plate this week. In addition to the Busch-Harvick incident, the sanctioning body is still discussing the Ryan Newman-Juan Pablo Montoya fracas from the previous week at Richmond. Montoya did little to help his cause on Saturday, when he spun five-time champion Jimmie Johnson on Lap 84 moments after Johnson had passed him.

 

“I think NASCAR needs to be the one to say, ‘Hey, here’s too far,’ ” J.D. Gibbs said after the race. Gibbs is president of Joe Gibbs Racing, which fields cars for Busch.

 

Gibbs is right in one sense. With on-track incidents escalating and payback becoming commonplace, it’s time for NASCAR to start defining where sanity begins and “Boys, have at it” ends.