Hello again, gang.
So many themes, so many thoughts, an empty head devoid of things to write about I am not after wasting three hours of my life watching whatever the heck NASCAR assumed they were doing at the tri-oval in Talladega on Sunday.
Folks, you were robbed on Sunday, if you took time out of your daily lives to watch this absolute and complete sham of a race.
The title of this editorial might bring up mental images of the 1978 heist movie, ‘the Great Train Robbery’, but unfortunately, there were no thrilling chase scenes, no daring actors running along the rooftops of moving trains, no, there was nothing but 43 cars doing formation flying for 500 miles. In fact, there was nothing even remotely close tying the movie ‘The Great Train Robbery’ to the race at Talladega on Sunday. The only things that the race and that movie have in common is that both involve trains; The movie was focused around a train, the race was a train wreck….and a lot of people were robbed of hard-earned money in both instances, the guys who were robbed in the movie, and the race fans who paid to go see the race.
The race, which was supposed to be an action-packed thriller, with Death hovering everywhere on the track, a three-hour cliffhanger that was supposed to keep everyone on the edge of their seats.
However….things didn’t quite go as planned. NASCAR insists that an actual race happened, but everyone that watched will neither confirm nor deny that it took place.
Last time I checked, racing in general, whether it be in cars, on horses, on your feet, or on the back of a great, majestic ostrich, whatever the means of forward propulsion, racing involved the act of TRYING TO ADVANCE YOURSELF AHEAD OF THE NEXT GUY, AND IF YOU GAIN THE LEAD, YOU DO WHAT YOU CAN TO STAY THERE.
Racing does not involve 43 cars flying around a freaking track in formation, with everyone from the poor schmuck stuck in the car, to the crew chief sitting on the pit box, and everyone in between being nervous Nellies, too afraid to try anything too daring to get ahead. And with the drivers being prevented by the NASCAR rules Gestapo from trying to bump draft in corners, simply because it allows two cars to pull away from everyone else (we don’t want to allow that sort of thing to happen during a superspeedway event, do we?)….in addition to these tragedies in modern engineering being unable to pull away from anyone else….everyone is forced to sit in a pack, while NASCAR brags, ad-nauseum, how ‘close’ the racing is.
Newsflash to NASCAR: After Sunday at Talladega, nobody cares. Or, to quote the late Chris Farley, in his classic, ‘Matt Foley, motivational speaker’ role:
“Well, lah dee freaking dah!!!”
The COSHAT is a complete and total failure, folks. (For those of you just tuning in, ‘COSHAT’ stands for Car Of Some Hideous Alternate Tomorrow, a twist on ‘Car of Tomorrow’). We were promised closer racing, and a more-level playing field, when the COSHAT was foisted upon the stock-car-racing world.
I will admit it; NASCAR has kept their promise, as nobody can pull ahead of the rest of the pack at either Talladega, or Daytona; the shoddy engineering and gigantic hole in the air that the COSHAT punches into it pretty much guarantees that nobody will run away with a superspeedway event. The problem is that NASCAR hasn’t figured out how to make this artificial, last-lap ‘Horse Racing’ excitement (whoops, I almost said excrement) format work at any of the other tracks that are on the Sprint Cup schedule.
With the old car, we had some close finishes, and then we had cars that absolutely dominated entire races. But since they weren’t ‘close’ enough for the Brian Trust down at Daytona Beach, the search was on for an engineering solution to the artificial excitement creation question….and lo’ and behold, the Car of Tomorrow showed up, which looked more like a cartoonish assemblage of billboards and advertising space instead of a real race car; or in some cases, a close facsimile of a car you might buy at a local car dealership, hence the ‘stock car’ title.
Of course, NASCAR did allow versions of a car you’d find at a local dealership onto their tracks; unrelated to NASCAR, the Automotive Manufacturing world has had some problems over the last two or three decades concerning automobile styling, producing the most bland-looking cars ever seen on the face of the earth. I own a modified 1992 Ford Thunderbird Sport 5.0 (inherited from my mother after she died last year; I sold the car off, but now it’s back); with a few tweaks it is a phenomenal car in how it out-handles ANYTHING from the 1960’s, and ride is more stable and comfortable to boot. The problem is that my car’s hideously-boring, BMW-derived styling (take a look at a BMW 635I two-door sometime, and compare it to the T-bird) styling produces yawns and sighs, never mind it’s also more aerodynamic than anything built in the 1960’s.
Here’s the problem; NASCAR had no clue that the cars being put out by Detroit over the last couple of decades, and used by the sanctioning body, were quite possibly some of the most unpopular cars ever sold in America. The Impala, Lumina, Monte Carlo, Thunderbird, Taurus, Intrepid, whatever, are more likely to be found in the vast fleets of the Rental Car Armada, or in the driveways of some seriously boring people (yes, I know I own one of those cars listed), instead of more aggressive-looking cars which were passed over (Camaro, Mustang, Corvette, Viper, etc), which are found in the driveways of seriously-boring people….with bigger bank accounts.
NASCAR made a stab at fixing the problem of ‘boring’ race cars, soulless bubbles with stickers of headlights and a generic shape that might hint at the nameplate on the front end of the car….by replacing it with an even more boring, even more soulless bubble of a car.
However, over in Nationwide, as evidenced by the Mustang and Challenger joining the ranks of the cars running in that series in 2010, someone has seen the light. True, these cars aren’t much else other than bubbles with somewhat-generic front clips that look something like the original car they were named after, but it is at least a start to acknowledging that Detroit has been getting it all wrong over the last two decades, that race fans (and customers) do actually appreciate cool-looking cars….hence the explosion in classic car interest over the last two decades. Yes, they might have been piles of horse dung from an engineering standpoint in the 1960’s, but those cars were a styling movement that hasn’t been duplicated since.
People still love these cars. They will spend tens of thousands, and in some cases, hundreds of thousands trying to re-live their childhood, or re-live someone else’s childhood in a car that looked cool, and in some cases, actually ran great, too. That’s why the move by Nationwide to allow these retro car bodies in might be something to generate some spark back into that ailing series; as it is, it’s something new to think about, even though it’s the Nationwide version of the maligned Sprint Cup Series COSHAT.
The current COSHAT, however? It was destined for failure. Instead of taking a chance, and trying something new to encourage fans to show up, by giving them something cool to cheer about, they tried a vast socialism experiment and tried to make everyone equal.
Whoops, I don’t think it worked.
With some lucky breaks, where a few other drivers have won this season….Rick Hendrick Motorsports/Racing/Whatever has been the team to beat for ALL of 2009. I’ve been finding it incredibly difficult to watch the Chase this year, simply because I can place a huge bet on either Jimmie Johnson or Mark Martin to win a chase race, and win most of the time. It’s almost like the #48 is an entirely different car, a R&D project that got completely out of hand, and NASCAR hasn’t gotten around to stopping the party yet.
With the exception of Denny Hamlin winning last week (Johnson finished second, however, no point in pushing the car to win when you don’t need to)….there’s almost no point in watching the races anymore, the winner is almost a foregone conclusion.
Which reminds me, I’d like to congratulate Jimmie Johnson on winning the 2009 Sprint Cup championship, and also becoming a four-time NASCAR champion. I believe he’s a ‘four-pete’ winner, winning it four years in a row (the first to do so, if I recall correctly)….by the way, I have this joke about Pete and Repeat; Pete and Repeat are in a boat, and Pete falls out. Who is still in the boat? Pete and Repeat are in a boat, and Pete falls out. Who is still in the boat? Pete and Repeat are in a boat, and Pete….
I know we still have three races to go, but I think it’s already done.
….which gets me back to the failure that the COSHAT is….this sort of ‘dominance’ wasn’t supposed to occur with the new car, was it? Chad Knaus, whatever he’s doing over there, whether it’s cheating and not getting caught (which wouldn’t surprise me), or if they simply found a computer program which will compute track setups better than anyone else’s program will (more likely), the ‘equality’ reason for replacing the old car with the Car of Tomorrow has been tossed out of the window like a still-lit cigarette butt.
We don’t have close racing. We don’t have thrilling finishes. We don’t even have solid racing for the bulk of each event; on almost all of the tracks, due to the COSHAT being a pig of a car with very little front downforce, the tires are gone after ten or so laps, so the bulk of the passing is done right after a 2 or 4 tire pit-stop, and as the tires go away, the one pulling to the front is the one who’s tires didn’t go away as much as everyone else’s did.
And then we have formation flying on the superspeedways, on the four times NASCAR visits them on the Sprint Cup schedule, with artificially-close racing, so the guys in the announcing booth, over a space of three hours, can tell us all just how great of a job that NASCAR isn’t doing, and just how close the racing is out on the track.
Actually, I shouldn’t complain about the COSHAT. Ryan Newman is a firm believer in the Car of Tomorrow; he firmly believes that the roof of his car shouldn’t have collapsed as much as it did in such a ‘safe’ car, and firmly believes that what the fans saw during that ill-fated, three-hour, 190-mph, 43-car Love Boat cruise definitely wasn’t racing….and in that vein, I firmly believe that Ryan Newman is correct.
To that end, all of us who watched the race, from the fans in the stands, to the gnomes in the homes….we were all robbed. I feel especially sorry for the poor fans that actually paid good money to go to the track and see the race in person; the only thing I’m out is three hours of my life that I will never get back….and now it’s gone.
I want my three hours of lifespan back, Brian France.
