For those of you who aren’t aware of it, this past weekend’s race at Martinsville Speedway was the 40th anniversary of the first win for Hendrick Motorsports. It was only mentioned 4,872 times during the myriad of programs over the weekend. When the checkered flag flew, three of the four Hendrick team cars were at the front of the field. Social media immediately blew up with every armchair crew chief bellowing about how the race was fixed.
This just in my tin foil hat-wearing friends, the concept of rigging a NASCAR race at the highest level is simply an impossibility. The exception might be on superspeedways, where a tapered spacer with larger openings could definitely make it possible for one car to be superior to all of the others (see the 2001 summer Daytona International Speedway race). Any other race simply could not be rigged because there are too many factors involved, the biggest of which is the hundreds of individuals in the garage who would never stand for being part of letting someone else be predetermined to win.
The barriers to fixing a race are almost too numerous to even count. Let’s look at some of the main ones. The top of every pit box has the brightest minds in racing, between crew chiefs and race engineers. They pour their lives into squeezing every ounce of power our of their cars and gaining every tenth of a second they can possibly knock off of their times.
After months and years of missing family events, time with loved ones and many other special activities so that their car is as fast as it can possibly be, there is no way in hell they are going to agree to let someone else simply finish in front of them. The vast majority of the crew chiefs are friends. There is not a snowball’s chance in hell that they are going to agree to let another one of them just waltz into a win.
Secondly are crew members. That group of people at the track, along with the teams of people back in the shops, have busted their asses to dot every I and cross every T to make the car as perfect as it can be. They have practiced pitstops incessantly to make sure they are as efficient and thorough as possible.
After all of that effort and putting their bodies through all of the abuse to make everything as perfect as possible, they’re just going to say ‘OK, let the other guys have the win.’ The guys on the teams and in the shops know each other. Is there any chance whatsoever that, if a plan to throw a race came down…
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