It’s time to get the politics out of plate racing

It’s time to get the politics out of plate racing

 

By Reid Spencer
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service

 

(October 24, 2011)

 

TALLADEGA, Ala.—There were two redeeming aspects to Sunday’s Good Sam Club 500 at Talladega Superspeedway.

 

First, Richard Childress Racing teammates Clint Bowyer and Jeff Burton settled the issue between themselves, side-by-side at the finish line—rather than one pushing the other to the victory. Bowyer won the drag race through the tri-oval by .018 seconds.

 

Second, the two drivers racing for the win had been racing hard all day, running at the front of the field and keeping their focus sharp. They led an aggregate 51 of the 188 laps. They deserved to battle for the win.

 

Team owner Richard Childress put it best. He wasn’t about to second-guess the racing posture of his cars, even though Kevin Harvick, the only RCR driver in the Chase, was an innocent victim of a Lap 104 wreck, finished 32nd and fell 26 points behind Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup leader Carl Edwards.

 

“I was really proud of RCR cars all day,” Childress said. “These fans pay a lot of money. I hate it for Kevin, but he was doing what he was supposed to be doing. All of our RCR cars race to give these fans a show. We didn’t sit in the back and ride ’til the last minute. Our cars ran all day long. We don’t get paid to ride in the back. I’m proud of every one of ’em. I’m proud of Clint getting the win.”

 

Unfortunately, the rest of the race was more about politics than competition. Since one car pushing another is about 15 mph faster than a car riding alone, deals are made—and broken.

 

Facing a restart with two laps left, Trevor Bayne agreed to push Jeff Gordon. Bayne, however, was also a backup plan for fellow Ford driver Matt Kenseth, whose title hopes are very much alive. When David Ragan, Kenseth’s drafting partner, failed to accelerate on the restart, Bayne was pressed into service.

 

He abandoned Gordon, to Gordon’s great displeasure. The way it looked on the racetrack was almost comical, Gordon trying to fall back to Bayne’s front bumper, and Bayne inching back to Kenseth behind him.

 

Bayne obeyed team orders to help Kenseth, but breaking a promise to Gordon, who had worked with him at Daytona in February, upset the 20-year-old Daytona 500 winner. So did the abuse he took on Twitter.

 

“That’s why I’m so sick about all this,” Bayne responded with a post on his Twitter account. “I won’t race restrictor plate races next year before I’m put in that situation.”

 

Kenseth made it clear the team orders didn’t come from him.

 

“Wow … for the record I had no verbal contact with @tbayne21 (Bayne’s Twitter handle) today, or for that matter weeks,” Kenseth posted. “Not sure who ‘strong armed’ him but I assure you it wasn’t me.”

 

Later, Kenseth added, “Some of you are wound tight, I am frustrated also and didn’t invent this silly two car tandem shove thing … I would much rather race!”

 

Amen. In abandoning Gordon, Bayne also abandoned his best chance for a good finish at Talladega. Gordon and Bayne restarted eighth and ninth, respectively, with two laps left. Had they hooked up as planned, there’s a good chance both cars would have moved forward.

 

Instead, Bayne lost ground while falling back to Kenseth and finished 15th. Without a partner, Gordon plummeted to 27th.

 

Fundamentally, it’s not racing when a driver is forced to subjugate his own best interest in favor of another. Racing is best when it’s selfish, when it’s every man for himself.

 

There’s a growing disenchantment with tandem racing. The novelty is gone. It’s abundantly clear that NASCAR isn’t enamored with the two-car hookups, but, thus far, team engineers have been able to defeat measures designed to make two-car pushing more difficult—larger restrictor-plate openings, lower settings on pressure relief valves and bans on lubricant on the bumpers.

 

In Thursday’s test of electronic fuel injection at Talladega, NASCAR experimented with smaller spoilers, designed to reduce downforce and drag. What NASCAR really needs to effect is a radical redesign of superspeedway cars. If the noses don’t line up with the rear bumpers, pushing becomes much more difficult, if not impossible.

 

The bottom line is that the sanctioning body must do whatever it takes to restore competition to restrictor-plate racing while keeping the politics to a minimum.