Commentary by: Corey Latham ~ [email protected]
Now that the dust has settled on Martinsville, we have so much to talk about. There were so many story lines on the day such as McCall having engine trouble killing the rivalry with Pulliam, Morris getting his third clock, Bassett getting parked by NASCAR to Thomas Scott with his underfunded team becoming the feel good story of the day. But first let’s talk about the race itself and the “carnage” everyone thought the new format was going to bring, and bring up just how wrong everyone was.
When they announced the new rule changes for the race everyone, including myself, thought it was a bad idea. The old saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” kept playing in my head, I mean the race was already spectacular, why do anything different? They did though, in a move that they thought would lower the costs for the racers and bring in more cars. After the different schedule, the crazy qualifying and the reality of every car there running in a heat race we came to this conclusion, it was no different than before.
The weekend started off with everyone getting tires on Friday and nothing else. Now, my opinion is to do some tech on Friday. The track was worried about new cars coming in but only five showed on Saturday so it would have taken about 30 minutes to do those five, but it is what it is. We finally get going and get to the “practice” qualifying, which was pretty much a cluster. Instead of putting the cars in groups by their speeds we had cars staying in the assigned groups, so cars that had been running 20.26’s in practice were out there with cars running 21.4’s. Needless to say the leaders caught the end of the pack and a few cars got screwed. Trust me when I say this, it will be fixed for next year, I was assured of that.
On to the races themselves, everyone (including a lot of drivers) was crying about cars getting torn up since everyone was in a heat race instead of the top 22 fastest sitting out watching like usual. Well I told everyone after I thought about it when it was first announced; it was going to be just like before except the top cars that would be in the race anyway would just be running 25 laps before they took their regular spots. And that’s what they did; the fastest cars of Pulliam, McCall, Morris and Campbell made the race just like we thought they would. Nothing was different and to be honest there was LESS crashing than in previous years. I liked Frank Deiny, Jr.’s idea the best, before the races he said, “I honestly think we all should have drawn a number walking through the gate, I don’t care if I drew 18th, if I can’t make it to eighth to advance I need to quit anyway. How exciting would it be for the fans to see me or Le or Philip start in the back of a heat race and have to get to the front just to be in the show?”
I agree 100% there Frank.
Even the last chance race threw us for a loop; I called it all right on the money except this one. With 36 cars going for ten spots I figured we would have had 11 green flag laps since caution laps counted, I thought they would kill each other. But I was wayyyyy off on that one. The entire field did a heck of a job. Of course we had some destruction at the end but hey, at that point that’s it, that’s your last chance, you either make it or go home. The only thing out of the ordinary was Rusty Skewes making a dive bomb on Derrick Lancaster when they were both already in the transfer spots with three to go causing a huge wreck but oh well, I guess sixth looked better than seventh, I have no idea. It did work out good for Thomas Scott as he was in the very back the entire race but took the cone on the last restart and finished sixth moving him to the main event. It was the fairy tale story of the day, and a good one at that.
Then the race looked just like always as it always is a great show. When it was said and done Morris was getting another clock while a lot of drivers got their feelings hurt. But you know what? Those drivers that wrecked didn’t do so because of any format change, they did because it’s Martinsville and crap happens there, it does every year. While it didn’t accomplish the main goal it set out to as they had less cars than ever before, it was the same ole Martinsville race, just laid out a little different but the meat and potatoes of it was exactly the same. The change didn’t affect what we already had; it was still the best race you could ever see.
