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Talladega still on the minds of several Sprint Cup drivers at Texas
By SceneDaily Staff
Friday, November 06, 2009
Roush Fenway Racing's Jamie McMurray (26) beats Kasey Kahne in last weekend's Amp Energy 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway.
David Griffin
NASCAR Scene
FORT WORTH, Texas – NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers Mark Martin and Tony Stewart said last weekend’s race at Talladega Superspeedway was hardly boring, contrary to what many fans and critics have said.
NASCAR told drivers before the Amp Energy 500 that it would enforce the no bump-drafting rule in the turns of the 2.66-mile track. No drivers were penalized, though there were a couple green-flag stretches of single-file racing.
So what, Hendrick Motorsports’ Martin said.
“I don’t believe that was a boring race,” Martin said Friday at Texas Motor Speedway. “I didn’t like it, but I certainly think it has been blown completely out of proportion that the cars got single-file for a while in the race. When I finished 15 years ago, it was me, [Dale] Earnhardt [Sr.], Ernie [Irvan] and one other car was in the lead draft. That was all.
“No one complained that was a boring race; it was just Talladega. No one said anything. Now we have 40 [cars] nose to tail, and that is a problem? For me, I am just a little confused about everything that I have read and listened to this week. I just don’t know what to say.”
Stewart-Haas Racing co-owner/driver Tony Stewart said to his team over the radio during the Talladega race that he needed his crew to help him stay awake. But at Texas, Stewart seemed to change his tune.
“It's not the perfect race, I wouldn't say,” Stewart said. “I mean, the thing is, the hard part is, we got you guys [in the media] saying they're boring, so when you guys say that, all you do is keep reinforcing to everybody that it's boring. …
“The races are exciting. It's like everybody wants the perfect race every time. You can't do that. I mean, the drivers think about how they can be smart all day. You know, it's a situation where the race is so long that you can fight your guts out to try to get to the front in the first hundred miles, but what have you accomplished?
“You haven't accomplished anything, absolutely nothing. There's nothing you've accomplished till those last 10 or 15 laps. That's when you got to start working your way to the front if you're not already up there.”
Stewart and teammate Ryan Newman were among those drivers who tried that strategy, but it didn’t work for either driver. Both were caught up in late-race accidents, including Newman’s spectacular flip.
Stewart said the first 170 to 175 laps at Talladega don’t really matter but that only the final 10 to 15 laps do.
“The hardest thing is we got this [media] room in particular that keeps telling people that it's a boring race,” Stewart said. “So we leave, and then we listen to the fans complain because it's something that they read in the magazine or read in a paper, that everybody keeps trying to reinforce to them that it's a boring race.
“It wasn't a boring race. There's cars that are all nose-to-tail. But I don't know what else everybody wants. I mean, it's a strategic race. That's all there is to it. It's not a situation where you can do anything on your own. It never has been.
“I don't know what everybody's really wants out of the situation. I mean, everybody wants to decide whether it's a boring race or not a boring race.”
Roush Fenway Racing’s Greg Biffle said the drafting rules had nothing to do with the impression that it was a boring race. Biffle said that drivers have been told for the last several restrictor-plate races that bump drafting was not allowed in the turns.
Biffle added that “about 70 percent” of accidents at Talladega and Daytona happen because of improper bump drafting.
“For instance, the previous Talladega race when [teammate] Carl [Edwards] spun me out it wrecked half the field,” Biffle said. “He tried to push me in the middle of the corner. NASCAR has to say, ‘Don’t push in the middle of the corner. We’ve told you over and over and over, do not do it. Now, we’re gonna penalize you if you do it.’”
Biffle pointed out that the 2007 fall race at Talladega ran single-file for a long portion of the race.
“I was running fourth,” Biffle said. “I was smiling because we were gonna end up finishing, no wreck, everybody is staying straight, and then all of a sudden guys started dropping down on the bottom. I knew that if we all stayed up at the top the bottom row couldn’t get a run, and I think David Reutimann blew up in front of me, but we were running single-file against the wall when that happened, so we’ve done that before.
“We’ve done that a lot, and that race track has taught us that you can get up there and hold off the guys behind you. That’s all we were doing. When you’re back there in 25th you’re frustrated because you can’t go, but that’s a product of what we’ve learned.”
As to what can be done to “fix” the racing at Talladega, Biffle said he doesn’t know what else NASCAR can do.
“We’re always learning,” Biffle said of drivers and teams. “We learn if we get up against the outside wall it keeps the guys on the bottom from getting a run on us for some reason – because the air buffeting off the left side of the car doesn’t give the guys enough to get up there. We’ve learned all kinds of things. That’s just the evolution of restrictor-plate racing.”
And part of that evolution is multicar crashes, like what happened last week. Like Newman, Martin’s car flipped, too, though the impact wasn’t as violent as Newman’s crash.
Still, Martin said something needs to be done to make sure cars don’t fly through the air and land in the grandstands.
“My car turned over so fast, it makes me wonder if the nose of the No. 1 car [of Martin Truex Jr.] didn’t go under the rear frame rail behind the rear tire and tip my car over,” Martin said. “I know they do tend to turn over when they go sideways that way because they are heavy left side. They tend to go over; all cars always have a little bit. But this thing went so fast, and it didn’t feel
like it just kind of went up. It felt like it was shot over, so I’m not sure why it went over like it.
“Newman’s crash was not atypical of the past 15 years as far as his car going up. I don’t know if there is any phenomenon whatsoever about a wing with a car backwards or not. But I went up like that and just didn’t quite have the ride that he had in the early '90s.
“I really feel like from reading everything and listening to everyone, I feel like what happened there in some ways was sensationalized and just blown way out of proportion. It was a horrible wreck that Ryan had to go through and it was a horrible thing, we need to try and fix that. But that was not different than what we have seen for a good solid 15 years if not more. It is really hard to stop the cars from doing that when they get around like that. I think that we need to work on it, but we did keep the cars out of the grandstands.”
Biffle said perhaps NASCAR needs to look at ways to improve the way roof flaps work and deploy, but he’s not sure major changes need to be made.
“Normally, you go sideways for a little bit before it ends up backwards and cuts the speed off,” Biffle said. “Those spins were pretty fast to be backwards, so you’re pretty much full-speed backwards, so it may be hard to keep those cars on the ground. That’s just restrictor-plate racing. We could have a half-dozen of them upside-down, or we could have none for a year or two. It all just depends.”
2009 Sprint Cup Race for the Chase Standings
Driver Standings after the Checker O'Reilly Auto Parts 500
| 1 | Jimmie Johnson | 6492 |
| 2 | Mark Martin | -108 |
| 3 | Jeff Gordon | -169 |
| 4 | Kurt Busch | -211 |
| 5 | Tony Stewart | -285 |
| 6 | Juan Pablo Montoya | -289 |
| 7 | Greg Biffle | -321 |
| 8 | Denny Hamlin | -352 |
| 9 | Ryan Newman | -411 |
| 10 | Kasey Kahne | -476 |
| 11 | Carl Edwards | -520 |
| 12 | Brian Vickers | -666 |
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8 responses to "Talladega still on the minds of several Sprint Cup drivers at Texas". Post a Comment.
Kangaroo_Meat said:
Nov 6, 2009 at 10:48 PMI think that if the wing was hinged at the bottom front of the supports and held in place with shear bolts, that when the car spun backwards the force from the air hitting the wing from behind would snap the bolts and flip the wing upside down.reducing the uplift and actually push the car down.
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» Confirm Abuse Reportwmvjr1960 said:
Nov 7, 2009 at 12:39 PMSo glad Tony S. has now schooled us on why the fans thought it was boring, "because the media told us so and we repeated it." Wow! He must not have a very high opinion of the avg. Nascar fan's intelligence. What a condescending, patronizing thing to say to your core fan base. We are all stupid and can't formulate our own thoughts, we rely on the media for that. My goodness, Tony. No more Old Spice for this fan... sorry pal. Put a sock in it.
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» Confirm Abuse ReportWerner said:
Nov 7, 2009 at 1:04 PMsound familiar?...from the year 2000...."[The rules] took NASCAR Winston Cup racing and made it some of the sorriest racing. They took racing out of the hands of the drivers and the crews. We can't adjust and make our cars drive like we want. They just killed the racing at Daytona. This is a joke to have to race like this"......so for 9 years the sport has gone on......
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» Confirm Abuse ReportSTP43FAN said:
Nov 7, 2009 at 1:15 PMBiffle, you weren't wrecked by bump-drafting - you were cheapshot. NASCAR has no business policing this; if you're truly concerned, then lobby for suspension of drivers who cause accidents.
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» Confirm Abuse Reportnascarnutsheeler said:
Nov 7, 2009 at 6:31 PMThe reason it is boring for me is I want it over so they will go back to real racing the next week. The ghouls that wait for the wrecks are not fans.There is nothing great about a wreck.
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» Confirm Abuse Reportchristine said:
Nov 7, 2009 at 7:26 PMto #2----if a comment from smoke that you don't agree with makes you stop be his "fan", you weren't really one anyway. Your mentality should make you an 88 loyalist.
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» Confirm Abuse Reportmilbucks01 said:
Nov 8, 2009 at 10:17 AMHey chritine, nowhere in this article is Earnhardt mentioned. Yet you show up to the party to take a cheap shot. You have Kyle fan written all over you. LOSER!
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» Confirm Abuse ReportSTP43FAN said:
Nov 9, 2009 at 12:28 PMNASCARNUTSHEELER - get back to real racing? At Talladega they fought for the lead harder than they do anywhere else - that is what real racing is.
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