March Atlanta Race - Busch Whoops Field

It's getting more and more difficult to defend NASCAR to the uninitiated let alone entertain questions about the sport. And it's not as if there are long lines of the NASCAR-curious. I get the feeling NASCAR management has wrung just about every new fan out of the big wet towel that is the North American sports-minded audience. Perhaps I'm being swept along in the seeming flood of "What's wrong with NASCAR?/What can we do to fix NASCAR?"-themed articles, blogs and comments but I'm more inclined to list my gripes with the Cup series these days than rave about how fantastic the racing has been this year.

It hasn't.

The race at Atlanta wasn't a bad race but it wasn't a great race. No doubt about it, Kurt Busch and his boys put a whoopin' on the field and on his own car. Did you see the right side of the #2 after the race? That much should appeal to the grassroots. By Kurt's own admission the run-in's with the wall came at moments in the race when he abandoned his strategy of racing the track instead of racing his competitors. Maybe Kurt bought into the weekend's theme that the Atlanta track has become the "new" Darlington with its reported lack of grip and worn surface? I think he deserves all the more credit for winning if the conditions were that bad.

What a shame then that he had to diminish his win with that silly reverse victory lap. This I expect of someone like Michael Waltrip but not a past Champion. In a series that now rivals professional wrestling for shtick, gimmicks and cringe moments this was a new low. On one hand the broadcasters present a picture of the drivers as fearless warriors, risking life and limb in the quest for glory. On the other hand they come across as mindless corporate shills mugging for the camera awkwardly playing "Garage Band". I'll forgive Kurt Busch this episode as a misguided attempt at originality in a homogenous sea of bland.

One positive thing to say about the teams performance is the point that a driver or a team or a car does not have to be 'off' by much to be really off. Aside from a strategy call win last year the #2 team had very little to show for their efforts at the end of the year. There 43 teams each week all clambering over each other to get to somewhere. Not all of them are striving to get to the top judging from the start and parker's. (Overheating? Really? I think the Bliss team's first item to work on is their imagination.) In a sport measured in terms hundredths and thousandths of seconds there are an enormous number of cracks to fall into. And it doesn't take too much to fall out of sight. My point being is it very difficult to succeed at this level of racing. Kurt Busch didn't forget how to drive. They were just a little off. And no knock on the skill and determination of any driver or team that becomes entirely dominant but it is much more interesting and exciting to see teams rise and fall over the course of weeks and months and seasons. Seems the Busch (elder) team is on the rise.

Lastly, I've developed a new rule of thumb for anticipating the level of excitement to expect during a race, restart, etc. It's an inverse rule. The more the broadcasters (Yes, Fox, I'm looking at you) go bananas and claim the proceedings are "fixin' to get good", the less likely it is something exciting will happen. On matters other than technical I regard the opinions of Mike, Larry and Darrell on par with those of politicians. Luckily they still maintain a chemistry which is enjoyable.