Throwback weekend at Darlington Raceway has become something of a springtime Halloween for NASCAR. You have throwback schemes, fans dress up as crew members from the 1980s and on-air commentators dress as if it was 1948.
Despite the throwback motif, I wouldn’t necessarily describe Sunday’s Goodyear 400 as a throwback race. Too many shenanigans for that to be so.
The Goodyear 400 will be best remembered for the wrecking that occurred late in the going. First, you had Martin Truex Jr. squeezing Joey Logano into the wall to cause a multi-car crash on lap 281.
Clint Bowyer was right to make note of the bumping between Ross Chastain and Kyle Larson on the restart entering turn 1. It seemed unnecessary. Larson even stepped that up by squeezing Chastain into the wall while Truex was wrecking behind them.
Of course, there’s something resembling beef between the two drivers from prior to Darlington. Remember that it was Chastain’s aggressive move on a restart that resulted in a multi-car wreck at Talladega Superspeedway last month where Larson was t-boned by Ryan Preece.
Chastain thought that he was wronged on that restart. He’s got a point. That was unnecessary. As a result, he raced Larson hard on the next restart. Then, this happened.
The broadcast booth thought that this situation was inevitable. The discussion after the race made it sound like Chastain was responsible for the whole mess, but in all honesty, he and Larson were probably equal for Darlington.
There was good camera work here, including the continuous shot (linked above) of Larson providing the response to Justin Marks’ statement on pushing. I just wish that stuff didn’t happen, and Larson and Chastain could have just raced it out. Now, we just have hard feelings again. Criminy.
Basically, we came out of Darlington discussing a lot of the same topics as we did after Kansas Speedway. The only difference is that no one went after Chastain this week. Even with “Boys, have at it” in play, I strongly believe that NASCAR would frown upon a confrontation in or around the infield care center.
For Sunday’s race, FOX Sports went all out with guest analysts. A total of four guests were in the booth. When it was announced, I was looking forward to what Carl…
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