DW: Blame the moon for All-Star Race fiasco
Yes, seriously that is the title of my column this week. Sadly our society has evolved into one where when things don't go as expected the first thing to do is find something or someone to blame. So let's get right to it.
Saturday night the Sprint All-Star Race was a mess. That's what everyone has been talking about and will continue to talk about for a while. I hate it for Sprint because they have done so much for our sport and this was their last All-Star race and quite unfairly it will be remembered as one of unmitigated confusion.
So whom do you want to blame? Do you want to blame Brad Keselowski who put forward the new format? Do you want to blame NASCAR for not being more proactive in fixing the problem? Do you want to blame Sprint for backing this new format? I say let's just blame it on the Moon because if you look deeper at what happened Saturday night, you'll see we had some seriously great racing.
As we all know, Mother Nature reared her head and made Friday a complete wash-out, so the Sprint Showdown was moved to Saturday. Trust me, it was worth the wait. We saw the reemergence of Roush-Fenway Racing. Not only is that great for their organization, it's great for Ford and, more importantly, great for the sport.
How about those two young men out there Trevor Bayne and Chase Elliott battling for the win in Segment 1? Trevor punched his ticket into the All-Star race by beating Chase by only .005 of a second. Does it get any closer to that?
Then in Segment 2, Bayne's veteran teammate Greg Biffle used fresher tires to hold off Kyle Larson to put a second Roush Ford into the All-Star race as well.
That brings us to Segment 3 where Kyle battled Chase Elliott in an awesome 10-lap race. Kyle won by .016 seconds. Clearly it was one of the closest finishes in Sprint Showdown history.
So Kyle then joined Trevor and Greg in moving on into the All-Star race. Chase and Danica Patrick, who were the top vote getters in the Sprint Fan vote, then rounded out the 20-car All-Star race field.
Since Mother Nature had rained out Sprint All-Star qualifying, which was really disappointing because that component of the event is just breath-taking, the All-Star field was set by points putting Kevin Harvick at the top with Kyle Busch, not in his familiar No. 18 Toyota, but a special edition No. 75 Toyota in honor of M & M/Mars 75th Anniversary, on the outside pole.
Even though he was less than happy after the race and pretty darn vocal about his unhappiness, I think it was a nice tribute to Tony Stewart by Sprint and NASCAR to have him give the command to fire the engines for the 32nd running of the All-Star race.
Now to say that Segment 1 was an absolute mess is probably the understatement of the season so far. The drivers had to make a green flag pit stop during that first 50-lap segment. Everyone did except for Matt Kenseth, who was leading the race when Jamie McMurray spun out, which brought out the caution.
Since caution laps count as laps, there wasn't enough time for Matt to make his required green flag stop before Segment 1 ended. Matt got penalized a lap and since he was technically the race leader, if it was illegal, the end result meant nearly half the field was trapped one lap down and unable to take the wave-around.
Drivers, teams, fans and yes, even us up in the FOX NASCAR booth were confused as this all played out. What can't be overlooked is the thrilling finish that saw Joey Logano win his first All-Star race in six attempts.
Folks were upset that NASCAR didn't step in and fix things. As I mentioned at the beginning, Brad Keselowski was the architect of this new format so naturally he was the first to defend it stating "There was a next-to-last-lap pass for the lead. There were several passes for the lead. The last four (All-Star) races, there hasn't been a pass for the lead in the last 20 or 30 laps. I think our fans deserve a better format than that, and they got that today. I don't know how you can get much more compelling racing than what we saw today, so they need to get unconfused and enjoy the racing."
Should NASCAR have stepped in and tried to untangle things? Probably. See I've always believed a special race deserves special rules. We've seen it happen in the past. How about a few years ago when the cars got all wadded up at the start of the All-Star race due to rain? NASCAR let teams repair their cars and in some cases go to backup cars.
I was proud of NASCAR for stepping up and admitting they probably should have done things differently. NASCAR senior VP of competition Scott Miller summed it up the best I think. "Hindsight is really easy, and we didn't really have a mechanism to correct the situation in our race procedures. We have, obviously, a format we have never done before. We worked diligently trying to come up with every scenario and an answer for every scenario that might crop up. We ran into a situation where our race procedure didn't give us the opportunity for a wave-around and it created a lot of confusion.''
Will things be different next year? You betcha'. With a new title sponsor coming into our sport in 2017, they may want to scrap the new format and come up with their own special All-Star format. I hope they don't, but they might. Again, I maintain, though, that for a special race with a million dollars on the line, you need special rules. That's for next year, though. What none of us can lose sight of was the great racing we saw from the start of the Showdown to Joey winning a cool million dollars later in the evening.
Looking past the Segment 1 debacle, I am excited for what might be in store for us Sunday evening in the Coca-Cola 600. Remember, it's our longest race of the year. It tests not only driver but also his machine. Those extra 100 miles have a tendency to see the gremlins come out in your car when you least expect it. Trust me, being blessed to win five of these Coca Cola 600s, I know all about how nerve-wracking those last 100 miles are.
I look for the Toyotas to be fast. That should come as no surprise as they are fast every week and have won seven of our first 12 races. Keeping up with the changes in the track is the ultimate key to winning. We start late in the afternoon, then we transition to dusk and from there into nighttime.
You are going to see cars early on that are bad fast but by the end of the night will look like they are junk. You are going to see cars early on that look like they can barely keep off the wall, magically come alive and be battling for the win.
Saturday night was a special event. Sure it had its share of missteps. Blame whomever you want. I'm just going to blame the Moon as it's just as easy to blame it as anything else.
The actual racing part was exciting and that's what you can't lose sight of. I'll tell you something else you better not lose sight of. It used to be the rule of thumb that a veteran would win our longest race of the year, but I'm just telling you there will be some kids out there Sunday night who want to break that rule. Keep your eye on the Kyle Larsons, Chase Elliotts, Trevor Baynes and Ryan Blaneys of the world.
I still maintain they are on the verge of busting through for their first NASCAR Sprint Cup win. One of these "stars of tomorrow" might be shining pretty bright in their first Victory Circle Sunday night at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
If you don't believe me, come up to the FOX NASCAR booth and ask my new broadcast partner Jeff Gordon, who got his first-ever win in the Coca Cola 600 in only about a year and a half of racing full time for Hendrick Motorsports in 1994. We saw where that first win took Jeff and we might see it be the start of another shining star in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.
