Tough trucks or just tough luck? Crafton penalty unfair

Tough Trucks. Tough drivers. Tough racing.

If NASCAR truly believed its own promotional slogans, it would've added up to tough luck for Ron Hornaday and Todd Bodine in this past Saturday's Camping World Truck Series race at Gateway International Raceway -- and let's move on to New Hampshire.

But instead NASCAR went limp, forgot the advertising hype and all of a sudden, it was just plain tough for Matt Crafton and everyone watching the Copart 200.

Gateway to trouble

Then leader Matt Crafton was held in the pits after being black-flagged for rough driving.

• Bodine gets wrecked
• Hornaday gets wrecked
• Drivers' points of view
• Winner Skinner's take

As a competitor all you can ask for is fairness and consistency when your league's ruling body hands down decisions. If you get that, you'll lose some and you'll win some -- but the bottom line is you'll have a pretty good idea of what to expect no matter what you did to prompt the ruling.

On Saturday, it appeared fairness and consistency went out the NASCAR control tower's window.

On a single-file restart with eight laps to go, series points leader Ron Hornaday led Todd Bodine and Matt Crafton, Hornaday's biggest rival for the championship. Hornaday got a great start and Crafton a better one than Bodine, who moved down the race track to block Crafton -- and even admitted it later.

The unwritten rule on blocking still remains: Block if you want to, but if it doesn't work and you end up wrecked, remember, you blocked a competitor who was probably faster than you.

Crafton was going for the win in another one of NASCAR's secondary series where power-robbing restrictor plates have made it absolutely necessary to seize opportunities to pass whenever they appear. He shouldn't have lifted and he didn't. And he didn't turn his steering wheel, either.

Bodine and Colin Braun were wrecked, several other trucks were involved and after several more caution laps and a red flag came another restart, now with four laps to go.

This time Crafton's move was to the inside of Hornaday, and while it wasn't as cut-and-dried as the other, the dynamic was no different.

• Bodine, Hornaday wrecked, Crafton black-flagged, Skinner wins

This was racing for the win and when Hornaday chose not to give Crafton -- who was right down on the white line at the bottom of the track -- any room to race, he turned around when he came down onto the right-front corner of Crafton's truck.

Crafton received a black flag for aggressive driving, came to pit road and received a "tail end of the longest line" penalty for the green-white-checkered finish. In those two laps, he was able to pass six of the 12 lead-lap trucks and finished sixth.

• Purchase your race tickets

You gotta ask: When can you ever not drive aggressively and expect to win races in NASCAR? It certainly couldn't be expected in the rock-tough Camping World Truck Series, could it?

Now remember fairness and consistency? I'm sitting here wondering how this was much different than Bodine spinning out Travis Kvapil at Texas in 2007 and going on to win -- not to pit road to serve a penalty.

Or Hornaday lifting race leader Mark Martin's back tires up on a restart at Fontana earlier the same year and, when the caution eventually fell, allowing Mike Skinner to score the win. Was that aggressive? You betcha, and we're still waiting for the penalty on that one.

I'm sure there are the remains of some wrecked race trucks sitting somewhere after an aggressive move in the Daytona tri-oval created a big accident. Uh, no, Todd Bodine wasn't penalized for that, either.

And just to show you how old school it gets in the Truck Series, there was the infamous one at IRP back in the day when, I'm told, Jack Sprague's white gloves were a dead giveaway that he turned right and wrecked Hornaday on their way into Turn 1, to win the race.

Don't bother looking up the penalty report. Not only was there no such report at that time -- Sprague wasn't penalized.

So the plea becomes this, as it remains to be seen exactly what the ramifications of this will be at New Hampshire Motor Speedway this weekend -- and trust me, I can't wait to see 'em.

Will we see tough trucks and tough drivers and tough racing? Or will we have to start a campaign to demand that NASCAR drop its silly, inconsistent and, unfortunately after this past weekend, untrue promotional slogan?

Carl limps on

Carl Edwards' broken right foot was in pretty extreme discomfort following his Nationwide Series victory this past Friday at Richmond International Raceway, and the reason was a case of "good news, bad news" for Edwards.

"It really, really hurt," Edwards said Saturday evening, after he'd locked in his Chase position. "And I wondered about it, but then I realized that I had completely forgotten it was broken for half the race."

Now that's focus. And Edwards admitted that with the improvement his foot had shown from Atlanta, where he first had to deal with the injury he suffered playing Frisbee with friends, to Richmond, he had complete confidence -- especially with only one race to run this weekend -- that it would be totally no issue.

Wins: Through Richmond

	2008	2009
Cup Series	8	4
Nationwide	7	6
Truck Series	3	4

Kyle Busch Victory Watch

If you actually believe in moments of truth, this weekend at New Hampshire might be one for the Shrub, as he continues to strive to eclipse his 2008 record total of 21 wins: 8 Cup, 10 Nationwide, 3 Truck.

The critical thing, if you could blame intense Chase pressure for Busch's lack of a Cup victory in the last third of last season, is that Busch, despite running in the top five at Richmond, failed to make the Chase.

So this weekend, if he's able to win either the Cup or Truck race, would mean he'd exorcised some of the evil he experienced in last year's Chase opener, but that he'd also get back on his 2008 pace. Right now, Busch is stuck at 14 wins: 4 Cup, 6 Nationwide, 4 Truck. Last year at this point Busch had 18: 8 Cup, 7 Nationwide, 3 Truck.

The opinions expressed are those solely of the writer.