Matt Weaver of Autoweek.com once told me that superspeedway racing is just a high-speed game of Russian roulette.
Sunday’s farce of a Busch Clash at Daytona International Speedway reinforced that notion, with some “dumb, dumb racing.”
Until the final 10 laps at Daytona, the Busch Clash was a fuel mileage race. The Chevrolet cars, plus Joey Logano, opted not to pit when the Toyota and Ford cars did; they banked on saving fuel to out-smart the competition.
Rounding Turn 4 with 10 to go, however, the Clash turned into a wreck fest. Kyle Busch went low to pass Logano, made contact with him and triggered a three-car wreck.
JOEY LOGANO AND KYLE BUSCH TRIGGER A BIG CRASH IN DAYTONA 😳 pic.twitter.com/0UzYn9dP8O
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) February 9, 2020
The White Zone: That was some ‘dumb, dumb racing’
Busch said that Logano blocked him multiple times, until he went low before their contact.
“When I did, I touched him just a little bit, which then turned his car and then we were just sandwiched and the wreck was on,” Busch said. “I don’t know. Either you can race or you can wreck. The reason why we ride in single file is because we don’t know how to race. Just a product of a few bad decisions there and we’re all crashed.”
Brad Keselowski, who was caught up in the wreck, said it was just “dumb racing” and “dumb moves being made.”
“Guys that don’t know what they are doing so they throw crazy blocks,” he said. “It is just ridiculous. We shouldn’t be wrecking all these cars. I am not Tony Stewart, I am not as smart as he is and he can say it a lot better than I could but this is just dumb.”
On the ensuing restart with three laps to go, William Byron and Ryan Newman spun their tires and the field accordion’d together at the start/finish line.
Before the field can go back green in the #BuschClash, chaos ensues on the restart.
📺: @FS1 pic.twitter.com/xyebeqBQK3
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) February 9, 2020
It was just weird; you would never spin the tires that bad on a speedway car,” Byron said. “Obviously, it went hard to kind of get accelerated. But I don’t know, I just have to look at it.”
Newman said there might’ve been some oil on the track, but that he and everyone else looked stupid by wrecking.
“I guess that happens,” Newman said. “It wasn’t the peak of stupidity today though, that is for sure.”
After cleaning up, the field was re-stacked and sent back racing, again, in overtime.
Heading down the backstretch, Denny Hamlin made contact with someone, because his left-rear tire gave way and he spun out, taking multiple cars with him.
What. A. Pileup. Wow. pic.twitter.com/j1mp4OS9RQ
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) February 9, 2020
It was followed up with two more wrecks in Turns 3 and 4.
Even for a NASCAR race, it was some of the dumbest I’ve ever seen in my 20 years of watching it.
If not THE dumbest race overall, it definitely qualifies as the dumbest superspeedway race I’ve seen.
