This is my 22nd season of watching NASCAR and paying attention to what’s going on. I haven’t written one of these in three seasons. Usually, (The two other times I did this) I would write in the off season and look into the new season. However, since the events of last week seemed to blow up the internet, I thought maybe it’s time to take a look at some things, even though my opinion meens nothing.
The advantage to having an opinion that means nothing, and a blog that nobody reads or takes seriously, is that you can write about anything without having to worry about if your are popular or not.
With all that said, let’s take a look at some things.
This is the move that made people blow up. “How dare Austin wreck Joey AND Denny in the same move!” Something like that anyway. Joey was so mad that he endangered people on Pit Road after the race was over.
This is actually more worrying to me than the stuff that happened on the track. Joey has clearly lost his mind. These are regular people out there that he’s trying to run over. To be fair on the other side of it, there probably shouldn’t have been that many people on Pit Road at that particular time.
This is not the first time this has happened to the Austin.
There was no penalty for this, and yet because this time Joey the popular one was involved, now Austin gets his race win help taken away. When 5 years ago, this kind of stuff was just fine.
I have nothing to say against that because I race that way in the video games. It’s a great video game move. The more I watch it, the more I dig it. Kind of more dangerous in real life when you consider that people could get hurt. You can get hurt anywhere in this sport. Injuries are never a good thing and it’s good for people to be healthy, but it’s part of the risk involved. Hard to say that Austin did the wrong thing here when it’s what I would have done. He’s had a terrible season, and he had an opportunity to win a race. Who knows what positive things could come from that win? He also knows that people would do whatever it takes to win. Especially Joey. Let’s take a look at this other moment in history.
Joey really wanted to win this race. He could have tried to pass Matt cleanly, just like Austin had the opportunity to pass Joey cleanly, but instead Joey happily wrecks Matt to win the race. He even admits it with his teeth and everything later in Victory Lane. “Yeah, I wrecked him!”
There was no penalty from NASCAR for this incident between Joey and Matt, even though it’s quite similar. These things do have a way of working themselves out naturally. There was a penalty for this one, but it came from Matt.
Flashing forward to now, it appears that Joey can dish it out but he can’t take it. Look at this video. Listen to him whine. Yes, it’s a terrible deal for you, Joey, but you’ve put people here yourself before.
Everyone gets frustrated about contact in racing all the time. You can’t blame God for that. It’s a thing that happens since the beginning of racing. If we are to take away wins now for contact do we start ending races for cars that make incidental contact with other cars during the race? Where is the line. Other similar incidents have not been treated this way. Hopefully some consistency will come out of all if this. You can’t decide to penalize someone just because things didn’t work out for your favourite racer. Or can you? This is the question that needs to be answered the same way from this moment forth. I also wouldn’t be surprised if there were natural consequences to Austin’s actions as well.
Moving On: The New Charter Agreement
I don’t know much about the particulars about this, just that the drivers haven’t liked what NASCAR management has been giving them for the new deal. Hopefully they will be able to strike something fair soon. I wouldn’t want to see a split in this series. One stock car thing is plenty to keep track of. They have til the end of the year to sort it all out. It would be nice to know before then though.