The Danica 500: I Felt Like a Hostage

There I was for four hours with only non-stop commercials to save me from non-stop Danica coverage. I don’t know which was worse. Well, at least she got to mark a couple more checkboxes off her professional racing resume. I’m sure Ricky Stenhouse Jr. knows all about Danica’s checkbox. In fact, the only thing that could have saved NASCAR from mine and every other fan’s critique of this “race,” would have been Ricky and Danica wrecking each other on track and having a public break up in front of the grandstands. (And then TMZ broadcasting footage of Ricky sneaking out Danica’s mobile home after a post-break up booty call.)

What is so sad is that this was NASCAR’s big moment to regain of their popularity. There was so much attention brought to this race because of Danica’s capture of the pole. Even sports talk radio interrupted their very important breakdowns of the NFL Combine and the ever so important NBA regular season to talk about Danica. And what did they those curious new viewers see? A bunch of cars driving in single file. . . for hours. . . including the finish. I never thought I’d find myself wishing for the good old days of NASCAR criticism: They just drive around in circles.

So we’ve gone from pack racing to tandem racing to single file racing, which I think technically would no longer be considered racing, but rather traffic. Next year we’ll go back to the future in super speedway racing, running caution laps on the apron. There was so little passing, I briefly thought I was watching an F1 race. You’ll know that’s happened when you hear Darrell Waltrip start calling it “overtaking.” There was even a Peter Windsor-like walkthrough of field right before the race. Speaking of that, I thought Erin Andrews was about to whip out a stun gun as 50 Cent started getting too friendly with her.

Now I finally understand the value of constant commercial interruptions during the race. They were more entertaining. The Daytona 500 comparisons to the Superbowl are now complete. I thought the Oz movie had a great trailer. (It’ll suck in the theaters.) The GI Joe movie looked fun. (It’ll be stupid). The other movie where the White House gets taken over by radical. . . what? Tea-partiers? I’m not sure if there’s any politically correct enemies left. Anyway, that looked action-packed. (Like a toilet bowl after a batch of spoiled chili.) Yeah, after four commercial breaks every half-hour, obviously NASCAR would rather I talk about them than the race.

Fine I’ll say something nice. I liked the gyro-cam and the fly-away cam views. Pity there wasn’t a race going on for them to show. I’ll even offer some advice.

Get. Rid. Of. The. Restrictor. Plates.

Oh, but what about fan safety? What about it? The restrictor plates didn’t help out the crowd on Saturday during the big wreck, and Nationwide cars are already slower than Cup cars. Put some penalty weight on the cars to slow them down a bit, like in some sports car series, and just let them go. The drivers will be happier and safer if the better cars can outrun the slower cars. Look, Daytona and Tallegdega are one grisly fan death or another popular driver dying there from either getting shutdown or radically reconfigured anyway. And if Danica hadn’t been racing this weekend or if the wreck had happened during the Cup race instead, we’d already be having this conservation.

At least the Gen 6 cars look good. Maybe the racing will be better at any other track. I’ll keep watching, until baseball season, but I doubt NASCAR made any new fans today or recovered any lapsed ones. (How disheartening it must have been for all those Dale Jr. fans to hear the crowd roar for Danica leading like they once did for him.) This may have been NASCAR’s last chance to save the sport from acquiring the dreaded, “regionally popular sport” tag. I’d love to put a bow on this gift, but you can’t make sh** shine.