I Hated the NASCAR Race at the Indianaplis Road Course or How NASCAR Embarrased Itself Worse than F1 did in 2005

 Over the course of my 27 years as a fan of motorsport I have seen a bit of everything. I’ve seen the triumphs like Dale Earnhardt finally winning the Daytona 500 in 1998, the tragedies of Dale Earnhardt and Dan Wheldon along with many others. I have also seen a piece of the track take out Jeff Gordon at Martinsville, the Daytona 500 have a several hour long red flag period because the track fell apart and had to be patched. And of course as we all have I have seen a jet dryer explode because a broken car hit it. Despite all of those things the strangest thing I have ever seen live in motorsports was this weekend’s cup series race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Grand Prix circuit. And yes it even tops the nonsense that was Indycar at the Nashville street circuit a week prior. 

I wasn’t alive for Davey Allison winning The Winston in 1992 and the sanctioning body forcing the team to take victory lane photos without knowing if the driver was alive or dead, but I do think that was at best stupid and at worst a look into the attitude of NASCAR on driver safety and whether or not they cared. The racing at Indianapolis was fine for the first 60 to 70 laps, there was strategy, a bit of on track actio, and restarts after the stage breaks. The stage breaks have nothing to do with what caused this race to be literally the worst race I have ever seen unfold that did not involve someone dying. 

The kerb in turn 6 failed with about ten laps to go. This required a red flag to be brought out after a massive accident with 5 to go. William Bryon was the first car to start sliding and eventually Joey Lagano ended up having a head on crash into a tire barrier. Tire barriers do reduce energy from impact, but not as well as a SAFER barrier would. This brought out a red flag for over 15 minutes. The ensuing caution period when the red flag was lifted seemed to go on forever because another car leaked oil on the track. And it did actually go on through three separate NBC commercial breaks. 

During this lengthy stoppage of the race I took the time to check twitter and a common theme was people hoping for the race to simply be called at that point because of the belief that the sport will not keep getting lucky with the big accidents it has been having over the last couple of seasons. Especially at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the deadliest race track in the United States and behind very few in the world, mostly tracks that feature motorcycle racing being above it. I agreed with this. The odds of the race coming to an end without either a serious accident or something stupid happening were low. 

The first attempt at overtime led to another accident and a red flag, it also had the premier motorsport in the United States get preempted and moved to NBCSN for amatuer golf for the final restart after it went well over an hour past the TV window. 

It was another large accident and we did not see Austin Dillon get out of his car on the broadcast, we would find out on the post race that he was fine. This led to another red flag where they literally removed the kerb. 

Daytona 500 champion Micheal McDowell on the second overtime launched himself willingly over the remaining turtle curve and there was not a caution thrown for the accident he caused. 

At the front Denny Hamlin got away with the lead, Chase Briscoe then took the lead after cutting the course and gaining an unfair advantage. Briscoe would concede the spot to Hamlin, but the rule stated he must stop at turn ten to serve the penalty for a track limits violation. Instead of simply stopping and allowing the race to play out Briscoe spun Hamlin from the lead and was the leader on the road. Hamlin fell down the running order to finish 23rd. Briscoe never actually served his penalty; he simply made another mistake going off track somewhere around turn 9 or ten. Because of this and spinning the leader while under a penalty Briscoe was given the black flag and relegated to finish one lap down. 

All of this handed the win to A.J. Almendinger the man who once lost a full time cup ride with Penske for a failed drug test getting his second career win at the track the captain owns. 

I have just looked on Youtube and the full replay of this race is nearly five hours long. Meaning including red flag periods this race lasted just under the time it would take to complete almost the entire Coca Cola 600. This race was 200 miles long. 

Tony George once said, “Stock cars don’t belong at Indianapolis.” Perhaps he was right about that as it seems the NASCAR races at the Brickyard at least since 2008 have been nothing but controversy. 

I hope to never see the stock cars run on the grand prix circuit again, the last 2 hours of the race were as embarrassing as the 2005 United States Grand prix.