NASCAR ought to refund the ticket money to every single person who attended the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis on Sunday (July 27). It is unfathomable that a NASCAR Cup race was run entirely under the issuance of 'competition yellow' flags. Apparently, NASCAR felt that the teams were incompetent to police themselves when the Goodyear tires were shown to be extraordinarily poor in performance on the track. NASCAR's answer? Throw a caution every 10 or so laps, to force the teams to pit and change tires. Amazing. This effectively turned one of the true gems on the NASCAR race schedule into a colossal deadly bore of a race. Add to that the unusually poor ESPN quality of transmission--several times the television screen went totally blank--and it all added up to NASCAR's version of Much Ado About Nothing.
It is not racing to run a 400 mile event stopping every 10-12 laps. This sets a new height of absurdity in NASCAR micro-management of racing. They should have let the race run. If a driver felt a tire was going down he certainly could have pitted to prevent damage or wrecking.
We thought we'd seen everything. Leave it to NASCAR to come up with yet another twist.
