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Daytona Lite Great American Race was anything but this yearPosted: Tuesday February 18, 2003 12:30 PM
Could NASCAR have screwed up the Daytona 500 any worse? Beginning Friday, when it was announced that an illegal carburetor part was found on Rusty Wallace's car, through the cluster that was the Great American Race, the Winston Cup season got off to a resounding start. NASCAR explained the carb part in question was within the guts and would have been tough to find during inspection before Thursday's Twin 125s. It wouldn't have been fair, NASCAR said, to have an engine thoroughly inspected and then rebuilt before qualifying. Isn't that when the engine should get its most thorough inspection -- before qualifying, when a team would have time to make amends for running afoul of the rules? Wouldn't that alleviate teams' anxiety for failing a post-qualifying inspection and risking a starting position, points and a monetary fine? Wouldn't it be much easier to defend if teams faced rigid pre-qualifying and post-race inspections? Then, if any hanky panky were uncovered, the teams would have no wiggle room; a change was obviously made between inspections in an attempt to deceive. Instead, Wallace, who finished fourth in his qualifying race and was to start eighth in the Daytona 500, was dropped to 38th in the lineup and crew chief Billy Wilburn was fined $10,000. The team wasn't penalized points; since it was the season opener, there weren't any points to dock. The specifications for restrictor-plate races are different than any other tracks on the circuit, and Winston Cup director John Darby said the carburetor that Wallace used would be legal -- at North Carolina Speedway, or Bristol, or Michigan, or any other track not named Daytona and Talladega. And then there was Sunday's soggy farce:
As irate e-mailer Pete Tenney vented: "Baseball's All-Star Game ends in a tie ... and now they call the Daytona 500, stock car racing's Super Bowl, right after halftime. The track has LIGHTS, damn it, and even if it didn't, this race MUST be run in its entirety!" No argument there, Pete, but NA$CAR had the fan's money by that time. Of course, there also was the concern for the teams traveling back up the East Coast and into the teeth of the approaching snowstorm. Never mind that many teams had already made arrangements not to head home Sunday night, hunkering down in anticipation of a) the race finishing under the lights or b) the race being finished Monday. It was a spectacle to behold, even for those watching FOX's slow-as-molasses broadcast. It also should have been postponed. Monday was a holiday, and many of the race fans who had spent money to partake in Speed Weeks would have remained another day to watch the race -- the 200-lap, 500-mile version fitting for the pomp and circumstance of stock car racing's crown jewel. Of course, had the race been moved to Monday, FOX would have been faced with airing the race and pre-empting Divorce Court, Texas Justice, Judge Hatchett, Judge Joe Browne, Judge Judy and Cops. With all that legal power at one's fingertips, who'd want to be FOX Sports' Ed Goren, weighing the decision to try to influence NASCAR's decision between green-lighting the red flag or postponing the race? "We knew it wasn't a matter of if it was going to rain, but when," Goren said. "So we did everything we could to get this race in." And the fans knew it was going to rain, too, so why gyp the paying public for the Daytona 272 1/2? NASCAR is wont for one of these snafus every year. But know that 2003's hiccup start was a speed bump on the way to a great championship race. After all, it can't get any worse, can it? B. Duane Cross is a senior producer for SI.com.
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