For the first time ever, the Daytona 500 was run under the lights in primetime on Monday night, with the sudden potential for attracting new fans and showcasing some of the best racing in the world in the sport’s biggest event.
Instead, NASCAR’s prime time debut will forever be remembered as the night the jet drier exploded after getting slammed by a race car.
I love NASCAR racing, I really do. But last night set the sport back in the wrong direction on so many levels it’s mind-boggling. Who can blame anyone for considering NASCAR to be a backwoods, redneck phenomenon with nothing interesting beyond the crash highlights on SportsCenter when the most memorable moments of the biggest race of the year involved a gigantic fireball, a forklift, and a garden tractor trying to blow away kitty litter and tide detergent as officials desperately tried to clean the track up during a two-hour delay for a freak accident that, in all honesty, should never have happened.
Worse than that, the on-track action barely managed to live up to any standard of good racing. For the most part, the 2012 rules created follow-the-leader racing where drivers never really tried to pass, preferring instead to ride around until the end. As the race neared its end and the racers actually started racing each other, the results invariably ended with a wad of wrecked cars. Very little passing, very little entertainment. And the majority of the blame falls squarely on a rules package that created highly unstable cars, with vestigial regulations dating back twelve years designed for a different car and a different style of racing altogether.







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