NASCAR’s rain-delayed Daytona weekend was an costly and crash-filled mess.
In keeping with NASCAR’s field rating knowledge, not less than 80 of the 114 vehicles within the Daytona 500, second-tier Xfinity Collection race and third-tier Truck Collection race have been concerned in a crash throughout their respective races. And in actuality, that quantity is nearer to 85.
A handful of vehicles have been concerned in what’s listed as a two-car crash at the beginning of the ultimate lap of the Daytona 500 and quite a few vehicles have been concerned in a last-lap crash throughout the Xfinity Collection race that didn’t convey out a warning.
The quantity skyrockets even additional if you wish to add vehicles from the fourth-tier ARCA Collection race to the weekend crash whole. Official field rating knowledge isn’t posted to Racing Reference, however the 80-lap race featured 9 cautions and it will take far much less time to determine which vehicles weren’t in wrecks than itemizing people who have been.
It’s extraordinarily truthful to estimate that lower than 30% of the drivers who participated within the 4 races throughout the Daytona weekend weren’t concerned in a crash. And it’s a bunch that doesn’t embrace the race winners both. Together with Daytona 500 winner William Byron, all 4 drivers who visited victory lane performed not less than a small half in a crash over the course of their victories.
Crashing over 70% of vehicles over a race weekend is just not sustainable. Or the product of excellent racing. And it actually received’t be the norm because the NASCAR season marches on. However the mass attrition seen at Daytona is a product of the principles that govern the racing at Daytona and Talladega. It’s turn out to be commonplace sufficient to imagine that the handfuls of destroyed vehicles and vehicles on the finish of every Daytona and Talladega race weekend is what NASCAR desires.
The 2 massive and high-banked tracks have lengthy been identified for his or her harmful racing. NASCAR applied guidelines to gradual the vehicles down — and subsequently hold them nearer collectively — after Bobby Allison’s horrifying crash at Talladega when his automobile went flying into the frontstretch catchfence.
Within the many years since Allison’s crash, NASCAR has consistently tweaked the principles at Daytona and Talladega to get what it thinks is the most effective sort of racing. Longtime NASCAR followers will keep in mind wicker payments sticking up on the roofs of Cup Collection vehicles within the early 2000s to assist them move within the draft. Much more will keep in mind the two-car tandem draft within the early 2010s as drivers realized the quickest means across the monitor was for one automobile to actually push one other for so long as attainable.
However every iteration of drafting guidelines has include its personal set of challenges and scary crashes. Followers have been injured when Carl Edwards went flying into the Talledega fence in 2009 and when Kyle Larson’s Xfinity Collection automobile flew into the Daytona fence in 2013 so violently that its engine was ripped from the chassis. On the finish of the 2020 Daytona 500, Ryan Newman was hospitalized for days after his automobile flipped the other way up and was t-boned by one other automobile at full velocity.
With vehicles unable to drag away from one another because of choked down engines and aerodynamic guidelines to extend drag, components of the tandem draft are as soon as once more taking part in a distinguished position in NASCAR and resulting in the wreckage followers noticed this previous weekend at Daytona. Drivers know the quickest method to make a move is to slam into the again bumper of the automobile forward and push it ahead.
It’s a apply that additionally has little or no margin for error. Errant pushes are the first crashing trigger. The 22-car crash with lower than 10 laps to go within the 500 got here when Byron acquired squirrelly after a push from the vehicles immediately behind him. It was a crash that had been constructing for laps; it will have been way more shocking if the race had gotten to the checkered flag with out a wreck.
“The pushes are silly the entire time,” Joey Logano stated after he was taken out in that crash. “The entire thing — everyone simply will get increasingly intense. You understand it’s gonna occur. Anybody can see it occurring. You simply understand it. It occurs yearly. With 10 to go there’s gonna be a warning.”
If the drivers know a crash is inevitable within the closing laps, so do NASCAR officers. However the longer NASCAR goes with out altering the Daytona and Talladega guidelines to attenuate the significance of pushes, the simpler it’s to surprise if NASCAR is snug with the concept half the sector may be taken out at any time because of an errant push.
“When you get that few laps left within the race it’s gridlock, so that you’re just about doing all of your finest to push,” Austin Cindric stated.
It would not be unprecedented for it to implement sweeping guidelines adjustments earlier than the April race at Talladega. However the sanctioning physique hasn’t made any important rule adjustments to chop down on aggressive pushing since Newman’s crash. And no tweaks seem on the horizon, both. Three-wide racing seems to be thrilling to informal followers at first look when 30 vehicles are all in the identical pack.
If something, you’ll be able to argue that NASCAR is embracing this random and rough-and-tumble model of racing. The second race weekend of the season is at Atlanta, a monitor that was lately reconfigured to supply racing just like Daytona and Talladega with extra wrecks and vehicles nearer collectively. Odds are, the second race weekend of the season can be lots like the primary.
