Sunday’s race at the California Speedway in Fontana, California was one of weirdest decision making days in NASCAR history. There was an abundance of rain that messed with practice runs and qualifying all week long and they new that rain would be a big issue going into the Sprint Cup race. NASCAR made the decision that television time was a bit more important to them than the safety of their star athlete drivers.
Sunday is the day that NASCAR gets to reach out to millions of viewers and put their product on display. Not only is it a big day for NASCAR but its also a huge money maker for Fox Television. This had to of played a huge factor in deciding whether this race was going to go on or not and to be truthful it was easy to see that NASCAR was going to run this race no matter how long it took.
Before this race even went under a green flag the television audience and the fans in the seats knew that this was going to turn into wreck city and caution flags galore. Barely into the race these feelings turned into reality and on lap 15 Denny Hamlin careened into the wall on turn 3 damaging his car pretty good. Casey Mears was the next casualty. He hit the weepers only six laps after Hamlin coming out of turn one which would end up being the worst wreck of the day. After smashing into the wall he slid down the apron right into Hendrix teammate Dale Jr and also Reed Sorenson. Sam Hornish Jr saw smoke and already had his hood smashed up into his windshield as he barreled into the back of Mears flipping Casey over.
The most embarrassing part of all was the amount of track workers it took to get this track right after it was red flagged shortly after Casey Mears wreck. They had cement cutting saws making cuts in the asphalt to let the water leak out of the track. This went on for hours upon hours and after a while you just wanted the race to be postponed because you where sick of hearing the announcers make up stories to pass the time.
If this isn’t something to learn from for NASCAR than I don’t know what is. They have taken giant leaps into making these race cars as safe as possible and having the drivers wear suits and protective gear to keep them as safe as they can in a wreck. So why are they not as worried about the conditions that they allow their drivers to race on. The competitors and the fans who waited more than 10 hours to watch a race deserve better than this. Once again money determined the outcome of an event, congratulations it didn’t pay off!
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