Brickyard 400 crowns deserving winner amid chaos and collisions
Perhaps it was just a cosmic harbinger of what restrictor-plate racing could resemble in the Brickyard 400 next season.
Perhaps it was just the result of multitudes of outside forces crushing down together under extraordinary circumstances in the waning laps: stage racing, best car already wrecked, brick fever.
Whatever the 24th installment of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race was at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, it left many wondering what exactly had happened.
Certainly, Kasey Kahne, after a dose of fluids reinvigorated a body depleted after nearly six hours of racing, waiting out red flags, rain delays and endless late-race crashes, was thrilled to have ended a 102-race winless streak and qualify for the playoffs.
But in the grand scheme — and visits to America’s most storied and important racing venue always seem to be considered that way — his 18th win at NASCAR’s highest level took on a final fling sort of vibe. Kahne was hopeful but uncertain of his future after a spate of unfulfilled seasons, and team owner Rick Hendrick noncommittal on whether he would be retained for the final season of his current contract.
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Kahne did what he needed when he needed, but there was no doubt the best car had been consumed in the first flares of the coming conflagration when Kyle Busch — attempting to win a record third straight Brickyard — was wrecked by Martin Truex Jr. after leading 87 of the 110 laps he lasted.
Restrictor-plates like those used successfully in the Xfinity Series race Saturday might have prevented another run-off winner had they been on the Cup cars. But the five ensuing cautions worked in the same way, preventing any one car from establishing a big lead. Monotonous history-making soon gave way to spectacle.
Numerous delays and a mid-afternoon start time pressed the race toward dusk, the gloom providing easy metaphors for the observant and the snarky. Was the sun finally going down on the Brickyard 400 for good?
After nearly 10 years of decline in the racing product and local interest as the Indianapolis 500 has found its footing again, an intimate gathering of the faithful sprinkled itself around hulking and vacant grandstands that belied this as a major race. With three years left in the current contract to stage Cup races at Indianapolis, this installment proved the point made by five-time Brickyard-winner and Indiana product Jeff Gordon, when he expressed sadness on a SiriusXM interview that the race had lost luster and “turned into another event.”
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Maybe restrictor plates could compensate for the flat banks that have so often belabored stock cars at Indianapolis. Or maybe events could concoct a scenario like Sunday’s, in which a driver with a smoking engine — Jimmie Johnson — is battling three-wide for the lead in the final laps. But NASCAR can’t count on those scenarios every time.
Maybe moving the event to September next season as the regular season finale will make it memorable again. Maybe fans will rush back.
The finish on Sunday was memorable, though not necessarily in a desirable way.
Series officials’ seeming count of “onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnne, In-di-a-nap-o-lis” before issuing a caution for the wreck that occurred behind Kahne on the second overtime restart — with him well short of the overtime line — will be rightly questioned. It felt, in the dark moment, as if NASCAR had had enough of this already, too, with prospects for a resumption bleak and IMS without a lighting system.
NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer Steve O’Donnell said on Sirius XM’s "Morning Drive" on Monday that officials waited to assess whether spinning cars would clog the track before making a decision on the caution. He said officials were “up against it,” regarding sundown at 9:07 p.m. because oil on the track would have forced another red-flag period.
“We have always said we're going to make every attempt to finish the race under green,” he said. “To do that, you have to see what happened with an incident. In this case, we did that.
“Once we decided to dispatch emergency equipment and knew there was oil on the racetrack, we threw out the caution. And, ultimately, that's the end of the race.”
The end of this one. Considering that phrase in the grand scheme will have to wait a while longer.
Follow James on Twitter @brantjames
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