When Talladega Superspeedway comes up on the schedule, I get nervous.
As we all know, the 2.66-mile tri-oval in the middle of Alabama has a history of heck going down there. The recent issues with flipping cars had me a bit on edge.
Thankfully, no one ended up on their head this past weekend. That made me happy. That said, there are some issues coming out of Talladega that are going to have to be addressed.
Sunday’s (Oct. 6) YellaWood 500 will probably be best remembered for the huge crash on lap 184 on the backstretch when Brad Keselowski hit leader Austin Cindric and spun him out. Chaos ensued.
Criminy.
Looking at this crash and the sheer number of stranded cars after everything came to a head, you’d be surprised to find out that only seven cars of the 28 were eliminated in the crash.
Many more than just seven cars were stranded afterward. A number of cars were outright towed back to the pits, then continued after repairs. The thought was that such a move wasn’t allowed under the Damaged Vehicle Policy. Basically, NASCAR created a nightmare with its decisions.
Amy Henderson wrote about the issue in Monday’s edition of Big 6. There, she argues that perhaps the DVP should be a thing of the past.
It’s gotten exponentially worse since the Next Gen car was instituted in 2022 with the well-known issues with flat tires and dumb stuff happening on a near-weekly basis. It’s embarrassing to the sport at this point. I do not doubt that NASCAR doesn’t want to have Josh Berry ranting about this situation back-to-back weeks.
In regards to the coverage of this issue, the broadcast booth knew that the towing issue was controversial from the start. For example, Chase Briscoe’s crew chief Richard Boswell was on the radio stating that the series director told him that he could get a push and to prevent the safety crew from lowering his window net. Yes, Briscoe stayed in the race, but he lost six laps trying to get back to the pits.
Given how wild the racing was on Sunday, the idea that something huge was going to go down wasn’t surprising. So, the booth wasn’t really surprised that it happened.
However, that’s been the case at Talladega for decades. Take ABC’s coverage of the Big One in the 2000 DieHard 500 for example.
It should be noted that the Big One in 2000 wasn’t as much of a foregone conclusion as it is these days at…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at …