It’s time we saw a good NASCAR race at Indy
Jeff Owens
Jeff Owens has been covering NASCAR since 1991 and began covering the circuit full time in 1993. He has been with Street & Smith's Sports Group since 1998.
The Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway is one of NASCAR’s biggest races.
There’s no debate about that. It probably ranks second behind the Daytona 500 and slightly ahead of the Southern 500 at Darlington and the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte.
But when it comes to competition and action on the track, NASCAR races at the Brickyard are typically far from scintillating.
In fact, Indy rarely produces a thrilling stock-car race. Instead, it has produced some of NASCAR’s biggest stinkers over the years, particularly when it was plagued by tire problems a couple of years ago.
And it rarely produces an upset. Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Jimmie Johnson have won the last six Brickyard races, with Johnson winning three of the past four.
The only real upsets in NASCAR’s 16 years at the track were Ricky Rudd’s win in 1997 and Bill Elliott’s in 2002. The rest have been somewhat predictable.
The drama at Indy is in the history, tradition, and bigness of the event, in the festive atmosphere and the emotional celebration afterward.
But Indy needs something else to solidify its place as a significant NASCAR event – a good race. One with an intense battle for the lead and a thrilling finish.
Gordon, a four-time winner at Indy, argues that Indy is special even without that.
“A great race is not always two- and three-wide racing. A great race could be pit strategy, it could be a car dominating, then makes a mistake, who capitalizes on the mistakes,” he says.
“I think the racing itself, while it's not what we come to expect at our high-banked race tracks, it still is very exciting. Most of it's because of the history of the track, because of the prestige of the race, how that forces people to push as hard as they possibly can, which a lot of times can force you to make mistakes.”
All those points have merit. But I want to see a good race at Indy.
It’s time the famed Brickyard delivers.
