Racers were angry. Racers were complaining. Racers were questioning everything, live in HD on our television sets.
Awesome. Welcome to the postseason.
On Sunday night in the 73rd edition of the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, NASCAR’s oldest speedway and its still-new race car joined forces to send the sport through a time machine and a garbage disposal all at once. When the checkered flag flew and the smoke quite literally cleared, Erik Jones drove a car into Victory Lane that hadn’t won this race in exactly 55 years, Richard Petty’s always famous but often feeble No. 43. Meanwhile, Chase Elliott, the driver who led the 2022 Cup Series standings all season, ended the night and started the NASCAR playoffs finishing dead last.
As noted NASCAR fan (probably) Maximus Decimus Meridius once asked, “Are you not entertained?!”
Honestly, Max? Yes. Yes, we were. We have been all season long. And we will take nine more weeks of it, from here until the final lap at Phoenix Raceway on Nov. 6, thank you very much.
Granted, none of us is Elliott (unless he is reading this, and if he is, hey, man, thanks), who now sits ninth in the standings while staring cautiously at the two tracks that will be raced upon before the postseason field is whittled from 16 to 12. He finished 29th at Kansas Speedway earlier this year and 25th at Bristol Motor Speedway in its last non-dirt event one year ago. None of us is Kyle Busch, who led 155 laps at Darlington, seemingly en route to getting his title run back in order … before popping an engine and finishing 30th.
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And none of us is Kevin Harvick, who slogged through most of the regular season, then won two in a row to seize momentum heading into the playoffs, in search of his second series title. But his night ended in South Carolina with him escaping a fire-engulfed Ford, reigniting his bemoaning of NASCAR’s new one-size-fits-all Next Gen car as being unsafe.
“What a disaster for no reason,” the 46-year old ironically known as “Happy” said on NBC Sunday night. “We didn’t touch the wall. We didn’t touch a car and here we are in the pits with a burned-up car, and we can’t finish the race during the playoffs because of crappy-ass parts.”
His irritation is understandable. Harvick is now ranked last among the 16 playoff drivers. Busch sits in 11th. The previous eight years of NASCAR’s so-called Elimination Era say that they are in…
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