One of the best NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races every year is the annual Daytona night race on the Fourth of July weekend. But this year, the Coke Zero 400 did NOT live up to its name.
What you usually expect is great side-by-side racing, even though it is clearly manufactured by the restrictor plates.
This year though at all these restrictor plate tracks, we got tandem racing, which just doesn’t look right at ANY track.
If you were watching at home, you might have thought there were 21.5 cars on the track instead of 43 (because they were always hooked up with one other car).
Yes, there were 58 different lead changes…but the excitement wasn’t there because of the lack of big pack racing. They were all spread out and there really was NO action from lap 30 until the final few laps.
Plus, the drivers don’t like it at all. Dale Jr. went crazy over it after the race.
And he spoke out about it all week long. The quote that sums it up for me is when he said, "I’d rather have control of my own destiny and be able to go out there and race and just do my own work and worry about my own self."
Can you blame him? You’re driving around a track at 190 miles an hour and CANNOT see over the car in front of you. Real safe, right?
What NASCAR should do at this point on these big tracks (Talladega and Daytona)…let the guys loose! There is no need for restrictor plates anymore.
It’s much more safer going 212 miles an hour SPREAD OUT instead of having pack racing and cars hooked up going 190 miles an hour. Sure, NASCAR then will not have a lot of good racing it can use for its promos anymore, but stick to racing NASCAR.
It’s time to let racing take priority over your sport. I promise it will benefit you because people like real racing (not manufactured, built for entertainment racing).
It’s my advice to you because if this racing that we saw Saturday is supposed to be entertaining, you will start losing fans VERY soon!