Brickyard 400

I'm a casual NASCAR fan. I keep track of who's winning, who's losing, who's dumping their team to go elsewhere. And I generally catch a majority of the races during the season. I don't revolve my schedule around NASCAR races like I once my have...but I try to keep track and definitely catch the big races like Daytona, Charlotte, Bristol. The good ones. And, despite the lack of good racing, I always try to catch the Brickyard 400 because it's at Indianapolis and it's a big race.

Well, imagine my disappointment yesterday when I wasted a better part of my Sunday afternoon watching one of the biggest NASCAR debacles I have ever seen. In case you missed it, NASCAR had to throw a caution every 10 laps because the tire Goodyear brought to Daytona kept falling apart. If you ran more than 11-12 laps on the tire, you were going to tear up the racecar. I couldn't believe what I was watching and I can only imagine the disappointment of the 250,000 fans who paid to watch one of NASCAR's premiere events.

Goodyear obviously brought a poor tire to Indy but the blame must fall on NASCAR who did not require mandatory testing at Indianapolis. The new COT has eaten tires at just about every track and to think it would be different at Indy is asinine. I don't think there's much NASCAR could do every the race started but there was plenty that could have happened before it began.

Oh well...I guess that's how things go sometimes. It was an embarassment for NASCAR and I'm sure they won't let it happen again. Given the choice, it was better to throw the cautions every 10 laps instead of letting everyone wreck trying to stretch it a whopping 11 laps. But I'm not sure there were any winners at Indy yesterday other than Jimmy Johnson. I know NASCAR and Goodyear definitely lost. As did the fans.