So it’s been a couple of days following the NASCAR Cup Series race at Circuit of the Americas, a very solid race that fell prey to terrible driving habits in the closing laps.
It was exciting, after years of road course racing with little strategy variance, to have that back. Both Tyler Reddick and William Byron had some standout racing for the lead throughout the day; it really seemed for a period of time that NASCAR had found its footing with the new low-downforce package after losing it at this discipline last year.
But then the cautions kept coming. And they didn’t stop coming. The drivers fed to the (lack of) rules and hit every restart running.
It didn’t make sense, and it didn’t look fun. Their brains got smart due to the win-or-nothing point system but their heads got dumb, slamming into each other every late restart going into turn 1.
It was a very miserable experience watching the triple overtime finish with no onions. Reddick very clearly had the fastest car and had it won. It was just a matter of if he made a very rare mistake or, more likely, somebody behind him wrecked him.
Multiple drivers have complained about the driving standards shown during the race.
And no, it wasn’t just the guest drivers saying it. Plenty of regular drivers were complaining about the lack of steak in their dinner too.
The falling NASCAR driving standards have apparently become a big story in this early season. I’m really only around NASCAR for the big races and road courses now due to my other commitments at Frontstretch on the open-wheel side of things, but even I heard what Kyle Busch said at Atlanta Motor Speedway last week.
So it seems like it might have been time for NASCAR to address its drivers. Driver relationships with NASCAR hit an all-time low last year, but seemed to improve, however marginally, due to more meetings with executives. Surely, said executives will make a strong statement to try and fix these driving standards going forward.
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