Motorsport News

Championship Sunday Is Not Fun

2024 Cup Phoenix II pack racing IV - Joey Logano, No. 22 Team Penske Ford, and Ross Chastain, No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet (Credit: NKP)

Championship weekend. Crikey.

You know where the entire focus of the broadcast was on Sunday (Nov. 10). With Martin Truex Jr. stepping away from full-time racing after Sunday, that meant that the championship contenders weren’t the only focus. Regardless, it was overwhelming at times.

Entering Sunday, the big story outside of the championship battle was the complete shambles that was the finish of the Xfinity 500 at Martinsville Speedway, as it should have been. Christopher Bell’s comments were featured.

There were two significant takeaways from this segment.

One is that Kyle Petty thinks Bell is a crybaby since he spent a decent chunk of his press conference trying to play the victim. He believed that Bell was rightfully penalized for violating NASCAR’s no wall ride rule. I’m not going to argue that fact. NASCAR penalized him for something pretty obvious on replays. It just took forever to make the call.

What was somewhat surprising here was the tone taken in regard to the manipulation. We know it’s bad for the sport that this garbage went down. You just hadn’t seen the verbiage used Sunday in the week leading up to the race.

The term “point shaving” was broached. This is usually used regarding scandals in basketball (although it can happen in other sports) where players or referees are paid off by gamblers to throw games. Nowadays, sports gambling is legal in more and more places, so a new threat of players gambling for or against themselves is possible.

Once we got into the race, the first big moment was when Ty Gibbs crashed on lap 2. Jeepers, that man has to be happy that the season’s over now because his team went straight into the toilet in recent weeks.

It seemed like the booth didn’t notice the first wall contact for Gibbs when it happened. If the announcers were looking out the window of the broadcast booth at the time, it would have occurred right below them, so there could have been a blind spot for them. Having never been to Phoenix Raceway, I can’t say so for sure.

Regardless, this was an ugly hit for Gibbs. It looked like something broke on the car with how quickly the No. 54 Toyota hung a right. However, Gibbs’ explanation made it sound like a bump caused him to lose control.

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