Strategy won the race, not Kurt Busch

By Mike Mulhern
Media General News Service
Published: July 1, 2008

What a bummer.
Not Kurt Busch’s win. Crew chief Pat Tryson had good strategy, Busch won fair-and-square and the rest of the stock car racing hot dogs all simply beat themselves by pitting for gas just before the clouds opened at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
However there is the nagging sense that those 101,000 NASCAR fans may not have gotten their money’s worth in Sunday’s Sprint Cup event in Loudon. In fact, they might well have gotten cheated.
What they got was almost surreal.
Yes, it all went down according to the rules, with rain at the end and all that. And Tony Stewart, who had the field covered most of the afternoon, was in almost a no-win situation, certain to run short of gas if the race were run all 301 laps.
Yet Kurt Busch?
And not kid brother Kyle, who had a miserable weekend in New Hampshire, and then got caught up in an ill-fated, meaningless battle with Juan Pablo Montoya?
Yes Tryson made the perfect call, and his rivals blew it, and Busch wound up with his first tour win since Michigan last August. However up until then, Kurt Busch was soundly beaten, not even a player.
Tryson said he didn’t need the rainy ending: “To be honest, we were rooting for it not to rain, because we had the fuel mileage to make it to the end, and the other guys were going to have to pit. We weren’t really counting on the rain.”
So at the finish line — or rather, when NASCAR called the race finished, with the drivers standing outside their cars in the rain, under umbrellas — it was Kurt Busch, Michael Waltrip and J.J. Yeley.
A Vegas bet on that would have been a killer.
Now rival crew chiefs should be kicking themselves in the rear end for not playing the end game any smarter: rain coming, no question, late in the race, so why stop for gas? Hire better weather men.
Better question: Why did NASCAR and Turner TNT start the race at 2 p.m.?
No wiggle room there.
If the race had started at 1 p.m. or 1:30 p.m., the fans would probably have gotten a better finish.
Not that the race had that much action anyway, with Stewart running away with things, in what was shaping up as a fuel-mileage finish.
Another fuel mileage race?
What’s wrong with these guys? Their racing gas is free anyway, courtesy of sponsor Sunoco.
Can’t these guys bump-and-run and race anymore?
If this car can’t provide any better racing action than what it has this season, it’s time to junk it.
So another fairly boring NASCAR race ended with a less than satisfying ending.
Busch and Tryson made the right call but did NASCAR?
And with gas for the family sedan now higher than $4 a gallon, well, new track promoter Jerry Gappens may have to bring in some dancing elephants to sell out the September event.
What was learned from Sunday’s rain-fiasco?
Two thing: That every NASCAR track needs full lighting. Loudon has no lights. And that these 2 p.m. starting times are for the birds.
Putting in lights everywhere and moving starting times back to no later than 1 p.m. local time would give NASCAR officials a lot more leeway on race day when confronted by rain.
This season all but one of the tour’s 36 regular season events start at 2 p.m. or later. The Daytona 500 was set for at 3:20 p.m. starting time but that track does have lights. And the season finale at Homestead is set to begin at 3:45 p.m.
Maybe that helps NASCAR promoters sell more Coke, beer, hotdogs and souvenirs. Maybe it does something for TV ratings. But it doesn’t give race officials much wiggle when rain threatens.
And do these late race starts really provide any added value for the fans.
The fans who spend good money and brave horrendous traffic jams to attend these high-dollar races deserve better.
Meanwhile some NASCAR executives are finally showing signs of “getting it,” with this einged race car that drivers — and apparently many fans too — don’t like: They’ve proposed wide-open testing for 2009.
It’s about time NASCAR opened that door again.
And NASCAR should make an open-testing rule immediately effective: starting with a two-day test at Indianapolis Motor Speedway the Monday and Tuesday after the July 12th race at Chicagoland.
The way the sanctioning body has had it the past several years has given the big-money teams an unfair edge against the smaller budget teams.
Changing the rules now, though, may be too late to save some struggling stock car teams.
How to manage wide-open testing?
One way would be to open each track a day early, and let that extra day serve as a test day. And then bar any other testing at that track the rest of the season. Yes, some teams would still be flying up to Milwaukee to test for Loudon but a Thursday or Friday test day at each track, with the correct Goodyear tire combination, would be much preferable, and cheaper. Open it to the fans and give them free hot dogs and Cokes.
Another way would be to limit teams to one specific test track each week, rather than let them simply roam the country.
And there are other ways, too.
In short, it would work, and it’s about time NASCAR opened things up.
NASCAR’s fans deserve better entertainment than they’ve been getting lately.
At least this week’s NASCAR tour stop, Daytona, is still an almost can’t-miss track for fans.
Ford’s Jamie McMurray edged Kyle Busch — then in a Rick Hendrick Chevy — in last summer’s race.
“I didn’t know it was the last lap until we were going down the backstretch,” McMurray said. “I asked how many laps were left…because I’ve been in position before with two or three to go and you’re trying to get yourself in the right position but if the guys behind you don’t cooperate, it doesn’t matter.
“We came off turn four, and I saw Kyle come up and try to side-draft me. It seemed a little early for him to do that, so I side-drafted back on him.”
Side-drafting is a technique that changes the aerodynamics and slows the leading car.
“I knew when I got on the outside of Kyle that there was like five or six to go, or 10 to go,” McMurray said. “But you’re just doing your thing and you can’t get too excited at restrictor-plate races. You have to stay very calm.
“You’re trying not to let the guy behind you make it three wide, or get to the inside or the outside of you. You’re so focused on what you’re doing that you’re not counting the laps down.
“Even on the last lap you don’t know where you’re going to finish, especially with the car-of-tomorrow. You get such good runs and pushes with it that, man, you never know where you’re going to finish until it’s over.”