In sunday’s Hellmanns 500 three of the four Joe Gibbs Racing cars plus Tony Stewart stayed in the back all day. They never tried to improve their final position and only wanted to avoid getting in trouble. The JGR boys just needed to finish to make sure they moved through to the next round. NASCAR has or at least should have a 100 percent rule though, that was not followed on this occasion.
Before sunday’s race Matt Kenseth, Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards were respectively 29, 27 and 24 points above the cut line. They moved to the back of the field before the race even started. Stewart did the same. We all expected them to get back in contention in the final laps but that never happened.
The three JGR drivers crossed the line in 28th, 29th and 30th, with the driver of the #14 in 32nd. Many fans were very disappointed by this, and rightfully so. They wanted to watch 40 drivers give their best, but these four did a 188-lap ride around instead. NASCAR has not made any comments about that way of racing though, even if they maybe should have.
They had indeed created a 100 percent rule after the Clint Bowyer controversy at Richmond in 2013. On that occasion Bowyer appeared to have spun out on purpose to bring out a caution that would eventually help his teammate Martin Truex Jr make it in the Chase. The rule could have been applied in sunday’s situation too since its first paragraph states that
NASCAR requires its Competitor(s) to race at 100% of their ability with the goal of achieving their best possible finishing poisition in the Event.
Which was clearly not done by some in sunday’s race. Obviously the rule was mainly created to put an end to situations different from this specific one: the drivers MUST NOT try to help teammates in illegal ways, that’s what NASCAR wanted to put a stress on. But what happened at Talladega went with no doubt against the rule anyway. They were giving their 100% yes, but to get closer to Homestead, not to win the single event.
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From the team’s perspective the choice of playing it safe and thinking big picture was the perfect choice: it ended up increasing their title hopes with less risks. But that’s exactly why NASCAR should not even let them decide whether to give their best or not: the fans want to have a good time and a great show to watch. Most of them don’t care about Kenseth doing whatever he can to survive Talladega, they want a fun race. In this case NASCAR should have applied the rule literally to force them to move to the front. After all, the fans filled up the grandstands to watch a unique form of racing not a ridiculous parade.
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