Despite Late Race Action, Daytona Wasn't Racing

Daytona and Talladega have always been famous for big pack racing and drivers having to work through that pack using the draft and some skill to place their car into holes the might not normally fit in to try and win the race. That is until this season's Daytona 500. Since then, the fast way around the track is to get somebody behind you to push you around the track as fast as they can. No draft. No skill. No exciting passes. That all adds up to no racing.

Yes, the pack racing Daytona made famous is gone and has been replaced with a series of two car conga lines making their way around the 2.5 mile tri-oval. Just following each other until the one behind builds enough of a run to pass the one ahead of it. There is no more slingshot passing and two and three wide racing ten rows deep. Those aspects of the old Daytona that made it so exciting no longer remain. But we also know that the slingshots, three wide racing and last lap passes are what made the racing so thrilling and what made the fans stand on their feet and cheer. They never cheered for two cars pushing each other, building a head of steam and passing another two cars.

The Coke Zero 400 Saturday night should not have even been classified as a race. What the "race" should have been called was the Daytona Lotterty 400 presented by Coke Zero. It's all a gamble. These drivers take a chance that the car they're pushing won't get loose, spin out and ignite the pileup known as "the big one." We saw that happen last night when a wreck on a green-white-checkered took out fifteen cars and another wreck on the final lap involved another fifteen. Saturday night saw twenty five total drivers race 400 miles and all they had to show for their efforts were some bent sheetmetal. A garage full of wrecked race cars does not a great race make.

This isn't just an issue for the fans. Several of the drivers also can't stand it, the most vocal of whom is Dale Earnhardt, Jr who was wrecked as a result of the new racing on the last lap and who called the event a "foolish, frickin' race" afterwards. When asked why there was no last lap pass for the win, Junior said "what kind of move can you make? I mean, Jesus, man! What kind of frickin' move can you make when you're racing like this? There ain't no move you can make. You just hold it on the mat and try not to wreck each other - and you see how good we are at that." When the fans don't like the racing it's one thing, but when the drivers can't stand it, it's something else entirely.

The only solution to this problem is a change to the body styles of the cars. If Nascar raised the rear quarter panels so that a car could lift another driver's rear wheels off the ground if it pushed hard enough, that would definitely deter drivers from pushing the whole way around the track. Maybe when Nascar changes the cars in 2013 to give them more brand identity that will become a reality.

Nascar racing has always been about one thing: speed. It's every team's goal to have the fastest car come race day. It has never been about the guy who starts and parks every race getting lucky because the right guy pushed him to the lead. With the old pack racing, drivers had to earn a victory by racing three wide all day long, drafting in and out of traffic. They never won by waiting around and getting a teammate to push them with ten to go. In light of this new form of plate racing, fans need to ask themselves one question: Is this still racing? Or is it just a waiting game played at 190 mph?