INDIANAPOLIS -- It is the grandest and most famous automobile racecourse on the planet, a place so imposing that it defines the city that surrounds it. Indianapolis Motor Speedway is a place for greatness, for heroics, for the kind of feats that make history and win championships. This 99-year-old track is extraordinary not only because of its longevity, but because of the magnitude of the events that have unfolded upon its 2.5-mile surface.

That's why people come here, hundreds of thousands of them, even though you can't see all the way across the racetrack and the facility's narrow straightaways don't always make for the best action. They come to be a part of something momentous -- and not witness an event like the one that unfolded Sunday, when the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard slowly and painfully disintegrated like so many Goodyear tires rubbed down to the bare cords.

It was a difficult thing to watch, like the sight of a once-great athlete disabled by a crippling disease. There were six competition cautions and a speedway-record 52 caution laps as NASCAR slowed the race about every 20 laps so teams could change tires that were rapidly turning to black dust. It progressed in fits and starts, like heat races in a World of Outlaws event. Everything came down to track position and pit stops, with Jimmie Johnson claiming his second Brickyard title after winning a seven-lap shootout in the end. By then, the victor seemed almost incidental to all the chaos that had preceded him.

"That wasn't a race [Sunday]. It's ridiculous," said Indiana native Ryan Newman. "That's a lack of preparation from NASCAR to Goodyear to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to put on a show like they did for the fans [Sunday]. It's disrespectful to the fans, and I wish that it didn't have to be that way. That's not the way NASCAR racing is supposed to be."

Especially at Indianapolis, this nation's holiest house of speed. A debacle like the one that unfolded Sunday shouldn't happen anywhere. But it cannot -- absolutely cannot -- occur at Indianapolis, by any account the second-most important event on the Sprint Cup schedule, a big-money, high-profile race some would rank right next to the Daytona 500 in terms of prestige. Sunday was akin to the Sugar Bowl being delayed because nobody could find a football, the Final Four being held on a too-slippery basketball court, the PGA Championship being contested on greens that were tearing up -- exactly what occurred in 1995 at Riviera Country Club, a venue the PGA of America hasn't returned to since.

Such things are not supposed to happen; can't happen, without a tremendous amount of embarrassment being suffered by all the parties involved. Welcome to Sunday, when NASCAR did everything in its power to prevent the Brickyard from becoming a dangerous crash-fest, sacrificing one of its crown jewels for the sake of its competitors. Give them a little credit -- when something not too dissimilar happened prior to a Formula One race at Indianapolis in 2005, all but six teams refused to start. Two years later, F1 was gone. At least NASCAR went through with the show, even though there wasn't much to watch. (Continued)