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Bob PockrassNASCAR
CONCORD, N.-C. – The new Charlotte Motor Speedway road race, an all-round playoff event in the NASCAR Cup Series, could have gone from cool and innovative to ridiculous.
Fortunately, this is not the case. So Sunday was a victory for NASCAR at a time when he could really use it.
"Change is important to us and it's something that I thought was good.I think ultimately that people would vote to say it was a race and an arrival," he said. the owner of the team, Roger Penske.
Penske was right in thinking that his pilot, Ryan Blaney, had won the first edition of Bank of America Roval 400.
Ryan Blaney won the first race on the "roval" at Charlotte Motor Speedway in a chaotic arrival in which he slipped in front of leaders Martin Truex Jr. and Jimmie Johnson when they wiped out the win.
A late wreck gave Jimmie Johnson an eighth place in Charlotte. He was eliminated by a tiebreaker to qualify for the second round of the playoffs of the NASCAR series.
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But it was more than another race. NASCAR, plagued by declining viewership and television ratings, was in desperate need of a boost. In the corridors of its headquarters, a new president (Steve Phelps) takes office Monday and we hope it means clear ideas and new ideas.
Sunday's race featured unclear minds and fresh ideas on the new 2.28-mile road course. Thank God.
Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch were among the leaders who entered the wall when they were too hard to take a 90-degree turn with only six laps to go, creating a pile of 15 cars.
"I guess we're all stupid and we do not know where to break, taking into account the appearance of our tires, so we all went into a 90-degree wall because we had nothing better to do. to do ", said Busch.
"That kind of sucked."
This allowed a spectacular arrival, with a restart at three laps from the end. Several playoff drivers were injured, hoping to reach the end and save their championship hopes.
Jimmie Johnson, second behind Martin Truex Jr. was one of the drivers who did not cause damage. He was hoping to win his first victory in 2018. A seven-time champion also lost his mind and took the win. finally lost enough points not to move to the next round.
Johnson was shocked and the fans seemed delighted. Blaney, one of NASCAR's new stars, won the second victory of his career. And they saw a pilot who seemed not to care about points and aim for victory.
"I would have liked not to be so focused on a race win and able to transfer and keep my championship hopes alive, but we had such a good car and it was only one of those decisions." "It's a fraction of a second to run for the win instead of for the points and it bit me," Johnson said.
Blaney had no intention of winning the race as he had 20 laps left to stay on the same strategy as the other drivers – Alex Bowman and Clint Bowyer – who he thought would fight for the last places in playoffs.
But as the wrecks were happening – Blaney was actually a big player and thought he might have some damage, but he absolutely could not afford to pick a pick – Blaney stole the win.
"Whenever you win something like that, it's a strange feeling," Blaney said. "I do not really want to call it an undeserved feeling, but it's just a strange feeling, but we put ourselves in a good position and it worked for us.
"When I was third, I just thought about the points – we were good points and I was cool to ride in third position – but that situation happened and we ended up there."
The 17-lap route of Charlotte has been designed for these dramas. NASCAR did not have a road race during its playoffs and its refusal to withdraw races from existing facilities prompted the President of Speedway Motorsports Inc. to invest millions of dollars in renovating his current course, which included -mile oval.
He did it well, with synthetic turf and awesome paint job. It was not easy. The track chose to remove some internal bends early in the setup process to speed up the course and turns. They crossed various barriers and ended up changing the angle on one of the anti-tire barriers the day before the race after terrible wrecks for Bubba Wallace and Erik Jones.
The drivers expected a survival race, and there were only a few incidents up to the last 43 laps. But fans will remember a wild end and this one had it all on the front and the drivers were trying to gain enough points to progress in the playoffs.
Although Johnson 's action has not been the smartest to try to play in the playoffs, fans will likely cheer him on. He was the crazy guy to win instead of playing safety.
"You make decisions every second behind the race car, and sometimes very difficult decisions, and sometimes the will to win is too strong to stay there and run second," Blaney said of Johnson's move .
And then, Blaney added, "I could not really give you a good idea about it just because I'm not Jimmie Johnson."
The truth is that Johnson thought that he was safe. And he thought he was doing something safe. And maybe the biggest driver of stock-car made a mistake.
While Johnson admitted that he was "shocked" after failing to advance and by his mistake, Kyle Larson seemed just as shocked that he blew a tire two laps from the end, dropping a damaged car until the end and leaving just enough cars to qualify for the playoffs.
"I knew I was in bad shape, so I can say, I guess, [I was] to abandon. But I could not even drive my car, it was so destroyed, "said Larson. But then, they said that they were all crushed and that they were heading towards the checkerboard. … I blew up a center right front of [turns] 3 and 4 and after plowing the wall, I said to myself: "Shit, I do not know if I'll be able to go down to do the chicane."
"But luckily, banking failed and I could turn right OK."
He was one of the few drivers to feel as lucky as the fans. Keselowski certainly did not know it, even though he knew that his fall had been committed six laps from the end.
"You like the ones you win, you hate the ones you do not like, so I guess that answers on its own," he said to the question of whether he liked the track. "As a driver, I am selfish."
So are the fans. They want action, which often means wrecks if drivers push the boundaries. They saw this Sunday. They felt that their drivers had made a difference, which they still do not feel when they watch an oval race and it is rather a mechanical exercise.
"It was crazy," Truex said. "We at one point spun by the 2 [of Keselowski] in the same corner and had to go to the back – I thought we were done. We restarted on the 27th and got out of there.
"You never knew what was going to happen today, when they came back, the two men immediately fell into the wall, we just tried to survive and we were in the right place. and we got spun twice, to make about guys crush you. "
Frustrated drivers included those who took risks, those who were innocent victims, and those whose championship hopes were gone.
While Keselowski, Busch and Blaney won playoff spots, the final mark-up margins looked like this: Truex scored 74 points, Kevin Harvick is 44, followed by Kurt Busch (23), Joey Logano (18), Chase Elliott (11), Bowyer (7), Bowman (2), and Larson. Aric Almirola won the tie-break (best result of the round) on Johnson for the last place.
"All that mattered to me, was to leave here one more, and it turns out that plus-zero is enough," Almirola said.
It's a solid race to elimination there. That's what this eliminated series system was all about. So why not add another curve – or several curves of a road course – to add to the drama?
"He has not slept much the last two nights," said Bowyer after his third place allowed him to qualify for the seven-seat playoffs.
"The kid woke up at 5 am and once you got up, you start thinking about that gremlin waiting for you today and he was not sleeping anymore … he is now time to think of a cold beer because, my god, I want one.
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