Drivers upset at NASCAR

[KC]

After the last lap crash at Talledega, many of the drivers, team oners and crew chiefs have been uncharacteristically very vocal about not racing there again until changes are made.

Tony Stewart:
"When you come off Turn 2 after the checkered flag and see your teammate's car upside-down, it scares you to death," spat Tony Stewart, who finised second. "There's no reason why we, as drivers, should be put in that position."

Sterling Marlin:
"It ain't the drivers, it's NASCAR," walking toward the NASCAR office. "You run it all day, you're going to wreck. Every driver has been telling them in the NASCAR trailer that it's going to happen. They wanted it to happen."

"They've got to fix it. They had it fixed if they had done the rules they tried down here in the test. Eighty percent of us wanted it and 20pct didn't, so they went with the 20pct. I guess they wanted to see us wreck."

Bill Elliot:
"[NASCAR] got what they wanted. That's all I've got to say."

Robert Yates:
"Dadgum we had good races before. You used good common sense and work hard, you got rewarded for it. Now, you might as well bring as crappy-ass a car as you ever had here and just drive right through everybody.

"Let the IROC have this [track] and the people who want to run it. Let us out of here."

Andy Graves, team manager for Ganassi:
"I don't know what NASCAR needs to do, but we sure don't need to go back to Daytona next year with the current rules. If they want us to go back like this, I wish we'd all boycott Daytona, but that won't happen."

"It's getting to the point where our biggest race is the Brickyard 400. Daytona is a joke. So is Talladega. We're good friends with a lot of drivers in this garage area. I'm sick and tired of going up and down the starting grid and telling them all to be safe. It's no fun to me anymore."

Joe Gibbs:
"I wouldn't want to be driving, I tell you that. I know our guys are so frustrated, and I will say this: This is the third time our driver's been upside-down. That's two for Bobby and one for Tony."

I know a lot of this is hot tempers just after the race and the incident that always seems to happen on the back stretch of Talledega on the last lap. Drivers like Bill Elliot and owners like Joe Gibbs usually don't fly off the handle and I think are genuinely upset. Hopefully NASCAR will get this deal sorted out quickly.

Also, angry as competitors were with NASCAR, they were even more angry at the fans. They blame NASCAR for making up a package which appeals to the lowest common denominator among the fans, those who are there to see the spectacular wrecks.

Many drivers and crew looked up in the grandstands and saw the grandstands full of fans cheering the popular victory by Dale Earnhardt Jr. and assumed they were happy about the backstretch catastrophe.

"It's barbaric, man," shouted Mike McSwain, crew chief for Ricky Rudd. "You see these people sitting up there cheering to see my goddamn friends flipping on their damn roofs on the backstretch."

I doubt that anyone here watches NASCAR just to see them crash because we all love motorsports. Crashing is an unfortunate byproduct of racing, but every form of racing has a group of fans who love to see crashes and mayhem.

[Joe Fan]

Drivers will always be upset with restrictor-plate racing immediately after they have been in "the big one" and their car has been tore up. This will never change. I would like to see the plates come off too but increased speeds mean: 1) that G forces in a crash will be increased-not something you want with all the deaths the sport has seen recently, and 2) the possibility of cars getting airborne and flying over or through the fense also increases.

The cars are just too aerodynamic and the teams just too crafty to run without restrictor plates IMO. The trucks race without restrictor plates but those beasts are as aerodynamic as bricks--not something that auto manufacturers want to design for their road cars in the 21st century. Also compounding the problem is the need for an engine that can be fast enough on a 1/2 mile oval without being too fast for a 2.66-mile one. It isn't an easy task of finding an appropriate solution.

[Joe Fan]

The drivers may hate plate racing but....http://www.speedvision.com/pub/artic...s/011022a.html

[winstonhenry]

Nascar's little problem...
Restricted races are dull and dangerous, but take the plates off and you're going 220mph+ and Earnhardt was killed far below that.

[Emfa]

There is no doubt that Nascar have a difficult task in figuring out what to do with the restrictor plate races. It seems now though that drivers and teams and fans are all looking for changes. Now would be a good time for Nascar to give this some serious thought and commit to making some effective changes. I don't envy their position!

Welcome to 10/10's winstonhenry. Winston? Henry?

[winstonhenry]

Winston Henry, a character in the Grand Theft Auto: London PC Game.
Presumably inspired by Lenny Henry's Winston and Delbert Wilkins characters. (British development team of course)