Editor’s note: The views expressed in this column are solely those of the author.
DOVER, Del. — Where’s the drama?
If you mean the pushing and shoving, the name-calling, the on-track paybacks, then no, the start of this year’s Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup has seemed tame by those standards.
If you mean three- and four-wide battles for position from the drop of the green flag right up until the checkered flag, then no, that’s not been the case either. (But seriously, how often does that happen?)
But drama? It’s still there. Maybe not to the scale some folks have come to expect, but it’s been there nonetheless.
Chase teams continue to battle in an effort to advance to the second round. Those outside the Chase haven’t stopped trying to get back into Victory Lane. Both groups face issues every week. Some overcome. Some do not.
In a series where every point matters, every lap does, too. Every decision on the track has consequences while the potential for disaster rides along with every trip to pit road.
No altercations? No major disputes? That doesn’t mean teams are mailing it in. The teams that are struggling continue to try to get better. The teams that run up front on a more regular basis aren’t exactly resting on their laurels. Recall how strong the Joe Gibbs Racing teams were during the regular season? Those teams haven’t been bad in the Chase by any means, but it certainly has been no cakewalk. And you can bet they are trying to regain any advantage they enjoyed earlier this year.
“It’s so hard to make everybody happy,” Jimmie Johnson said Friday at Dover International Speedway.
That some feel the action hasn’t lived up to expectations doesn’t sit well with the six-time series champion and driver of the No. 48 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports.
“It actually frustrates me to hear that,” he said.
Johnson opened this year’s Chase with what would on the surface appear to be two very humdrum finishes of 12th at Chicago and eighth last weekend at New Hampshire.
Far from it, according to Johnson, who called the opening race of the 10-race playoff “about as exciting as any Chicago (race) I’ve ever had.”
For the first time all season, he led more than 100 laps. He was in contention for the win, battling with teammate Chase Elliott in the latter stages of the race. But a mistake on pit road led to a speeding penalty during a late round of green-flag pit stops. And any chance at victory went out the window.
Maybe that isn’t spellbinding for some, but for Johnson and a host of others, the start of this year’s Chase has been intense.
Fellow driver Jamie McMurray compared the action in the first two races to “trying to have a good finish in every single race.”
“You’re not going to have that, and that’s what makes the exciting finishes so great,” McMurray said, and that’s about as spot-on as you’re going to get.
“I guess it’s circumstantial. Normally (for) the restarts at (New Hampshire), somebody always gets tangled up, and the fact that it’s one of the first Chase races there is usually some drama there. We just didn’t have that this year.”
Dover, site of Sunday’s Citizen Soldier 400 (2 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR) is “one of those places where we could have that and we could shake it up a little bit,” he said.
Two races into this year’s Chase and no one’s car has gone flying through the air or burst into flames. No driver has rushed up pit road after the race to accost another competitor or used his car to exact a bit of vengeance out on the race track.
Maybe that’s become the expectation. But while bemoaning the lack of those things, folks are missing some pretty good competition out on the track, too.