With the Cup Series delayed until at least Tuesday, I figured we’d take a look at an incident that took place during Saturday night’s Nationwide Series race at Atlanta. Late in the going, Justin Allgaier got into Turner Motorsports teammate Reed Sorenson in turn two, causing a wreck that ended the night for Sorenson and Trevor Bayne. Allgaier’s move underneath Sorenson appeared to be a bit overzealous, as there wasn’t really an opening, and he effectively took his teammate four wide in the corner. It was a choice that shouldn’t have been made, and we heard owner Steve Turner was none too pleased with Allgaier following the race.
What made the incident look doubly bad for Allgaier, was the fact that coming into Atlanta, Sorenson only trailed points leader Ricky Stenhouse Jr. by ten points. But following the race, Sorenson now sits 40 markers behind Stenhouse. Both Turner drivers were running in the top ten at the time of the incident, and appeared to be on their way to good finishes. Now, Sorenson’s #32 team faces the daunting task of trying to make up 40 points with only eight races remaining.
As an owner, it’s got to be difficult to stomach seeing one of your cars wreck another of your cars. Not only does it kill any chance for a good finish, but its also going to cost thousands of dollars to repair the wrecked car. You can be sure that if I was that owner, a serious butt chewing would be coming to my driver.
In this case, it’s interesting that it was Allgaier who made the bad move. You don’t usually see him put himself and other drivers in bad spots. He’s a talented driver and a good kid, and you could see in his post race interview that he was upset with what happened. But everyone makes mistakes and hopefully Allgaier learns from this one.
As I close, I just want to wish everyone a safe and happy Labor Day from both myself and Journo.
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For Tony Stewart, Saturday night’s Cup race at Bristol was one to forget. After qualifying a dismal 42nd, Stewart rode around in the back all night and finished 28th. He was never higher than 28th on the leaderboard, and of the drivers that ran the entire race, Stewart had the seventh worst driver rating. It was his second finish outside the top 25 in his last three races. Smoke’s performance was almost surreal to witness, as watching the Office Depot Chevy fall three laps down in a race simply because it was too slow is not something we are used to seeing. Remarkably, Stewart is still clinging to the last spot into the Chase, but 2011 could go down in history as the worst of his career.
Through 24 races this season, Stewart has only two top five and nine top ten finishes. His average finish to this point (15.0) is the worst of his Cup career, and he remains winless. Keep in mind that Stewart has never had a winless Cup season in his career. He’s won as few as one and as many as six races every year going back to his rookie year in 1999.
With twelve races remaining, Stewart certainly has plenty of time to turn his year around. Smoke is known for being a much stronger competitor during the second half of the season and he’s got three career wins each at Atlanta and Richmond (our next two races). But as frustration mounts, especially with teammate Ryan Newman getting hot (five top tens in the last seven races), don’t expect Stewart to remain patient. This season’s dismissal of competition director Bobby Hutchens showed SHR isn’t afraid to make changes, and more are not out of the question.
Plenty of other notable drivers have struggled this season (see Jeff Burton), and I’m sure all would gladly trade places with Tony Stewart and his current hold on tenth place. But when expectations are as high as their are for Stewart, tenth place just isn’t good enough.
It’s official… NASCAR has released the schedules for the 2011 season, and seasons of speculation are finally over – both Kentucky and Kansas got their long-anticipated Cup dates.
I’ve never been the biggest advocated for giving Kentucky a Cup date and Kansas a second Cup date. They’re really just more of the same. That said, I’m glad NASCAR, ISC and SMI are bringing racing to fans who appreciate it.
Though I haven’t been the biggest proponent of adding dates to those two tracks, I (and TC) have been a proponent of taking a date away from California. The racing is never very good and for whatever reason the crowds just couldn’t be maintained. Some markets just cant support two dates.
I believe that’s the story in Atlanta. Though I like the track and the racing it produces, it too was having issues with attendance. From a business prospective it made more sense giving its second date to Kentucky – a place I think will be able to support the event.
Other welcome news was that SMI didn’t pull a date from New Hampshire – I thought for sure Bruton would use the police issue in Loudon to give Las Vegas a second date. The man in the gawdy sunglasses surprises.
Overall, while the 2011 schedule does bring us changes, there aren’t really a ton of surprises. As always, the internal politics of NASCAR, ISC and SMI keep the possibility of changes to a minimum. I’d certainly like to see a Chase that was more representative of the whole schedule, but I’m good with what is hopefully just the beginning of a truly improved schedule in NASCAR.
Some Thoughts on the Truck Series Schedule
With 24 scheduled events for the 2011 season, and another one TBA, the Truck Series schedule is much improved over this year’s. Gone is the three week break between Daytona and Atlanta, and the two week break between Atlanta and Martinsville. Those successive breaks were a little excessive – not to mention they killed the momentum of the season.
There are a couple of two week breaks early on in 2011, and a month long break in the middle of the summer, but all in all they’ve done a much better job keeping the series flowing.
As far as filling that TBA date, why not have a triple-header at Richmond in September? There might be some logistical issues with the haulers, but who wouldn’t love to see the trucks make their RIR return?
I’m not sure what NASCAR is working on for that date, but my plea is that they keep them at a short track.
And finally a couple of disappointing spots. Pocono is back on the schedule. I think we all know my thoughts on that. And I don’t really understand the reasoning for moving the Phoenix date. It’s going to be weird for them to have an off-weekend before the season-finale at Homestead – and we’ve had such great end of season showdowns there.
What are your thoughts on Kentucky and Kansas and all three schedules for the 2011 season?
Filed under: Carl Edwards, Sprint Cup
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Two incidents, two very similar stories. Two drivers enter a turn, two wide. The one on the bottom slips up and wrecks the one on top. The one who was wrecked has his car repaired and returns to track. He goes out and wrecks the one who wrecked him. One incident ends with a car on its top, the other ends with a car in flames.
Less than two months into the season and driver payback is quickly becoming the story of the year. This weekend at Nashville, we got our second taste of on-track payback in an incident between Jason Leffler and James Buescher.
These incidents have got you guys talking. Following the race a reader sent us a question. He asked:
“Do you think the time will come when some of the drivers get the message that “It was just a racing incident” won’t work and if you get loose it is your fault?”
Is that a message that needs to be sent?
The fact is the impetus for the payback on both occasions occurred because of accidental contact. No one means for these things to happen, and more often than not drivers are more than willing to take responsibility. Unfortunately we seem to be coming to a point where this type of incident is grounds for payback.
In the case of Carl Edwards I’ll give him a bit more credit because of the history between he and Brad K. That said, the contact in that case and the most recent one is not excusable.
I don’t think payback is deserved or OK when the contact occurs accidentally (I think it should be used sparingly in any case). These things happen during the course of a race; there are 43 cars moving at high speeds on a tightly packed racetrack. It happens. Jason Leffler’s and Carl Edwards’ careers are not free of contact that was unintended. I can’t recall their cars being destroyed by an angry competitor though.
At the end of the day all of these guys are adults and they need to start acting like it. It sucks to get wrecked. It sucks when you’re the victim of an inexperienced or over-eager fellow competitor’s mistake. But as I’ve already said, this is racing, it happens. The sooner these guys grow-up the safer everyone will be.
I’ve been following the Carl Edwards/Brad Keselowski reaction all week, because I was curious how everyone would respond to the incident. Between Twitter, forums, blog comments, and the writers, I’ve read a lot. Journo weighed in on the topic here on Monday. Some folks have made some really great points, and I can understand most sides of the controversy. What I don’t understand, is those that think this decision by NASCAR is going to somehow turn the drivers into wreck ‘em derby maniacs who now won’t fear the consequences.
This idea that somehow some horrible precedent has now been set in terms of how NASCAR will govern the on track action just isn’t true. The sport’s leadership handles these special situations on a case-by-case basis, and will dole out penalties accordingly. They actually handled this specific incident very similarly to how they’ve handled other recent retaliation situations.
In this country, many courts of law decide cases by precedent. Past decisions do affect how future cases are decided. But guess what? NASCAR isn’t a court of law. They don’t need to take past decisions into account when they are trying to figure out penalties for a special situation. Why? Because absolute consistency isn’t necessarily needed. When Denny Hamlin wrecked Keselowski at Homestead, a one lap penalty was sufficient because Hamlin did what he came to do and NASCAR couldn’t let him get away with it. At Atlanta, Edwards was obviously furious, and he needed to be parked for his own good.
I understand that before the season started, they basically told the drivers to “have at it.” And while this may have played a role in their decision making, they actually went harder on Edwards then they did on Hamlin and Juan Pablo Montoya at Homestead last season; and those wrecks happened before they changed their stance. So trying to say that NASCAR went easy on Edwards because of this new philosophy just doesn’t hold water.
When issues like this arise, it always seems like we hear somebody say that NASCAR needs to lay out a penalty schedule so that every infraction is dealt the same penalty. Well guess what? Just like every other sport, NASCAR penalizes the regular infractions the same all the time. Unapproved adjustments, engine changes, pit road speeding, and a ton of other infractions are dealt with the same way.
But in special situations, like the one we saw in Atlanta, NASCAR must decide penalties on a case-by-case basis. Why? Because there are too many factors that go into what went down, and there is no way for the sanctioning body to be prepared for every possible dust-up. We’ve seen NFL commissioner Roger Goodell handle many different player incidents all separately, and I don’t see anyone calling for his job.
Moving forward, you aren’t going to see drivers wrecking each other and going crazy because Carl Edwards wasn’t suspended for life. There will be no “vigilante justice,” as one writer suggested. Drivers know NASCAR is in charge and that they will rule on events as they see fit. The powers that be have shown plenty of times in the past that if they feel a situation has become out of control, they will step in with harsh penalties to send a message.
As I’ve said before, if Keselowski spins harmlessly through the tri-oval grass, we are never having these discussions. There would be talk about how Keselowski got what was coming to him, and how Edwards overreacted to a racing incident. Endless discussions of precedents and rules and governance would have never entered anyone’s minds.