Top Row Seat - Bristol Mayhem
Dateline: 08/30/99Bristol Motor Speedway under the lights is the toughest ticket in NASCAR. This weekend Dale Earnhardt made sure that Bristol night race tickets would be hard to come by for years to come. Unfortunately, although the race was incredibly exciting, this race highlighted NASCAR's biggest problem... inconsistency.
The last lap incident between Dale Earnhardt and Terry Labonte has caused many race fans to strongly question NASCAR's fairness. Although I believe that NASCAR tries very hard to make the best decision available for any given situation it's the appearance of inconsistency and favoritism in this case that makes this non-call a concern.
The Comparison - Incident #1
Earlier in the race Jerry Nadeau received a two lap penalty for what was clearly a mistake. Jerry stood to gain nothing by spinning Jarrett and was simply racing to try to stay on the lead lap when he got into Jarrett's crippled car while racing off of turn four. However, NASCAR felt that there was a valuable lesson to be learned and penalized Jerry for the incident.
Incident #2
Flash back to Sears Point in 1991 when Ricky Rudd followed Davey Allison down into the final corner. In a strikingly similar move to what Earnhardt did weekend Ricky got a little too aggressive and got into the back of Davey spinning him and taking the win. In that instance NASCAR reversed the race results and gave the win to Davey Allison.
Incident #3
The Earnhardt - Labonte incident was clearly intentional contact (Earnhardt admitted he hit him) and certainly Earnhardt stood to gain by taking Terry out. However, NASCAR did not feel that this incident warranted sanctioning of any type.
I'm having a hard time reconciling these events into one cohesive, fair, and just set of rulings.
What Next?
I believe that NASCAR needs to make the rules much clearer. What is a punishable offense on the race track? It is undoubtedly a grey area. Just a couple of years ago Jeff Gordon made the exact same bump-and-run move on Rusty Wallace in the final turn in Bristol to win. Although many chastised Gordon for his racing ethics nobody was calling for the results to be reversed.
The real question is one of limits. Where do you draw the line between a tough pass and a deliberate punt? It's a question NASCAR will have to answer.
What do you think NASCAR should have done? Did they make the right call? Tell the world on the bulletin board. Or you can talk about all things NASCAR in the chat room Wednesday night from 8-9pm EST.
