 | | David Newton says Talladega needs more than just new pavement. Credit: Autostock |
By David Newton, NASCAR.COM
October 7, 2006
05:13 PM EDT (21:13 GMT)
TALLADEGA, Ala. -- NASCAR officials say they're all about safety, that they made the last-minute change on the restrictor plates for Sunday's race at Talladega Superspeedway for the protection of the drivers and the fans. If they really were concerned, they would have reconfigured the track during the recent repaving process. They would have ripped out the high banking that makes the speeds so high and restrictor plates so necessary. Yeah, right. NASCAR is concerned about safety only to the point it doesn't adversely affect attendance and revenue. This isn't to suggest they purposely put drivers or fans in danger. They don't. But people don't come to the middle of Nowhere, Ala., for the fine dining and hotels. They come to watch four- and five-wide racing in packs of 20 to 30 cars inches apart. They come to watch cars go airborne and flip end over end as Elliott Sadler did in 2003 and 2004. They come anticipating the so-called "Big One'' that takes out half the field. "I for one don't know why you'd change the most competitive racetrack in the world,'' track president Grant Lynch says. "It's too good a racetrack and there are too many good races here. The fastest 500 miles in history was run here. The only time 26 different drivers have ever led a race occurred here. "Any statistics you come up with -- closest finishes, number of lead changes, number of drivers that get to lead the race -- we blister our competition. No one is even in the ballpark with us.'' No one is in the ballpark in the number of "Big Ones'' either. That puts drivers and fans at risk, the latter which probably had as much to do with the decision to reduce the size of the plates as anything. One can only imagine the lawsuits if a car somehow got over the safety fences, which are higher than ever since the IRL accident at Lowe's Motor Speedway a few years ago. "[The fans] need to be here to enjoy the racing and not us joining them in the stands,'' says Dale Jarrett, who will start on the outside pole. "As much as we want to go fast, it's what we have to do for safety.'' Again, if NASCAR or International Speedway Corporation, which owns the track, were totally focused on safety, they would have changed the track when they had the chance. Then we wouldn't have to worry if the magic number for a smaller hole in a plate is 200 mph or 198, as was the case on Friday. "Somebody smarter than me is figuring out what makes these cars safe in terms of speed on the racetrack,'' car owner Jack Roush says. "I'm just a dumb racer. I would have rather they configured the track differently so we wouldn't need restrictor plates at all.'' Roush has gone to NASCAR with his concern. Their reply is what one might expect. "These are the high banks, the cornerstones of NASCAR racing,'' Roush says. "It's marquee, and they won't reconfigure the tracks.'' Translated: People pay to come see this type of racing so we're not going to do anything. Not everybody agrees the track needs to change. Dale Earnhardt Jr. certainly doesn't. He says it was perfect the way it was on Friday when 36 of 49 cars were faster in the first practice than the fastest time in May. He says it's so easy to get around that his mother could do it. He has a point. David Gilliland, who has wrecked more cars than owner Robert Yates can count since he replaced Sadler in the No. 38 Ford, is on the pole. Earnhardt doesn't see the need to change the banking anymore than he saw the need for a smaller plate. But there's no denying a change in the banking would solve many of the problems. You may not have large packs too close to get the first page of a lawsuit between them. You also wouldn't have cars looking like a gymnast in a tumbling routine. It's a conflict that likely never will be resolved as long as 175,000 cram into the stands and campgrounds for Mardi Gras in the backwoods. Just read between the lines when Jim Hunter, NASCAR's vice president for corporate communication, was asked if changing the plates in the middle of the championship Chase could be compared to changing the size of a baseball in the World Series. "Safety is the top priority,'' he says. "Maybe the casual fan wouldn't understand this, but the hardcore fan understands it. And Talladega is Talladega. We've had great races here and want to continue to have great races here. "And this is a tough decision. This decision wasn't made without a lot of thought and conversation. We think it's the right decision to make.'' The tough decision would have been to take away some of the high banking. Traditionalists such as Richard Childress will say that's what the sport was born on. NASCAR did away with tradition when it moved the Southern 500 from Labor Day weekend in Darlington to California Speedway for the money of the Los Angeles market. "They want excitement, and I don't think there is any track on the circuit that offers more excitement than this track,'' four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon says. "It's a tough balance between excitement and safety.'' Kind of like the balance between empty seats and paying the bill. The opinions expressed are solely of the writer. | 
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