Sunday, July 27, 2008

The Brickyard Hits a Brick Wall

Nascar attempted to hold the 2008 Brickyard 400 race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway Sunday, but Goodyear Tire & Rubber put a sad stop to any real competitive racing. There were 11 caution flags in the race, 9 of them Nascar induced. "Competition Cautions" were the proper Nascar given names for them. Why not leave the descriptive 'competition' out of it? You sure as heck left it out of the race itself. I confessed to you back in May that I am no longer a big Nascar fan. I think the governing body has such a strangle hold on its sport that its just one step away from being up there with the WWE. They control everything but the outright winner, and they go a long way in influencing that at times. O.K., back to this race. There was not adequate testing at the Brickyard to get the tire formula correct, and Goodyear and Nascar both knew it. So they staged an event that they hoped would pass as a stock car auto race. They failed miserably. It was no race at all. It was a series of sprints followed by a preordained caution flag. In the end it was a 7 lap run for the "Checkers". As I understand it, the individual race teams buy the tires for each race from the manufacturer. Goodyear has already said it will look into some compensation back to those teams for the tires used in this race. It's too bad Nascar can't do the same for the fans, because they sure as heck didn't get to see a race that they paid for. After all, isn't that why they came in the first place?

No comments: