From Wild to Wimpy

If you watched the wild finish to the rain-delayed race at Watkins Glen, it probably whet your appetite for more NASCAR action this weekend. Uh, might want to think again, because this week’s race is at Michigan.

This is nothing against Michigan, you understand. It’s more of a treatise on why the racing is generally not as exciting there as it is elsewhere. It’s the shape of the track, the technological box the teams are forced to operate in (think really tiny) and the fact that everyone is racing the track and the fuel gauge rather than the other cars.

Sure, fuel mileage was a factor at Watkins Glen. It’s a factor everywhere. You need fuel to go fast, and there’s only so much in a tank. You need tires, too, and that has its own metrics. But the race track at MIS is so wide-open, so (relatively) easy for the teams to race on, it takes a lot of the bump and grind away from it.

It’s a two-mile oval, so there’s going to be less in the way of push-comes-to-shove from the get-go. Understood. There’s even a scintilla of strategy that makes the racing at MIS more interesting. Do I stay out, or do I wait on a caution flag (for debris, almost certainly) is a question asked a lot at MIS.

But there is no way, short of one or more drivers completely losing their minds, that you’re going to get a Watkins Glen-type finish at Michigan. Not to say that couldn’t happen, because it has, but…

SCOOP Sr. has covered a lot of races at MIS, and he has by far the best line concerning how media folk look at races there. “Set a wake-up call for lap 180.” It was funny when he said it, and it’s still funny today, unless you’re an MIS staffer or work for the International Speedway Corp.

I get that NASCAR drivers and series compete on a wide variety of tracks. I even get why the rules are the way they are, for the most part, but what I don’t get is why, on a wide, banked oval, you can’t have more entertaining racing.

There is the fact that it is wide, of course. That enables the drivers to solve handling issues by trying one of about seven different lines around the place. When you have 20 drivers racing different lines, you can have widely varied outcomes, and that’s good…for the drivers.

For the fans? Eh, not so much. Even though the drivers are racing their Nomex-covered fannies off, it looks a little like traffic on I-94 from the stands. Same goes for Talladega at times, when everyone is sitting there with their dance partner, making laps until it’s go-time, but the draft makes that more palatable.

They draft at MIS, too, but it’s not the end-all, be-all it is at Talladega or Daytona. There is no restrictor plate at MIS, which means that all the cars have the full complement of ponies to use and don’t need another car to drag/push.

What does it come down to, on most occasions? If you said anything but fuel mileage and pit strategy, go to the chalkboard and write, “I will pay attention to my favorite sport and its tactics” 100 times.

Strategy is key in motorsports, but there is such a thing as too much when it comes to EVERY race coming down to fuel windows and late-race cautions. It’s kind of the like the regular season in the NBA…interesting, but generally pointless. It’s the playoffs that matter, stupid!

Speaking of playoffs, there’s a push on for the wild-card. Brad Keselowski is 11th, currently, and Denny Hamlin holds onto 12th by the hair of his chinny-chin-chin. Paul Menard is two points behind BK, and that’s all the players for today.

David Ragan’s big crash at the Glen pushed him out of the top 20 and behind winner Marcos Ambrose in the points, 22nd and 23rd.

This could be far and away the most interesting stories of the next four races. Oh, heck, it is the most interesting story…the top seven in points are next to set for the Chase, and the bottom three are at least 25 points up on 11th.

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