Timing wasn't the best for Nascar

There’s a term for what happened at California (oops, Auto Club) Speedway. It might make a better new name for the track.

Rally Killer.

NASCAR left the Daytona 500 ahead in all the exit polls. “Back to Basics” had become the racing equivalent of the comtemporary mantra of politics: “Time for a Change.” Ryan Newman won a popular victory in the sport’s biggest racing, putting an unexpected but exhilarating cap on Speed Weeks. Television ratings soared. For a few moments, NASCAR looked like the feel-good story of the year again.

How silly could we possibly be? The next race was in Southern California. Swimming pools. Movie stars. Apparently most of the fans were in the pool, and most of the stars were at the Oscars. Tom Cruise mingled a bit at the speedway, probably because he wasn’t nominated, but probably become bored at the absence of Beautiful People.

It’s sort of natural, at this point, to conclude that someone in Darlington, S.C., knows how to stick pins in voodoo dolls. NASCAR took Labor Day out of Darlington, which was a little like taking the temple out of Jerusalem, and ever since, Auto Club Speedway of Southern California (quaint new name, huh?) has been visited by one plague of locusts after another.

On Sept. 2, 2007, when the Fontana track held its most recent Labor Day Weekend extravaganza, the temperatures settled in the 110 F. range. The last Californian who could withstand temperatures like that was a gold miner. That unfortunate fellow eventually crawled out of the Mojave croaking, “Water! Water! Please! Water!”

Had enough fire? Let’s try rain.

This time it didn’t just rain. It also seeped. Water, that is. Through cracks in the banking of the turns. That sort of begs a horror movie in itself.

I Know Where Your Car Hit the Wall Last Summer.

NASCAR’s own officials might as well have had a hockey mask and a swingblade. They insisting on making people who had arrived at the track for a 1:15 p.m. (PST) race remain, soggy, cold and ticked off, until after 11 p.m. Back east, that was 2 a.m. Monday. Hence the hysterical response.

Potential new T-shirt: I WENT TO THE NASCAR RACE IN FONTANA AND ALL I GOT WAS 87 STINKING LAPS.

Not even a stirring Monday victory by Carl Edwards, who could play Dudley Do-Right on Broadway, could put a happy face on this debacle.

Now it’s on to Las Vegas, having rebounded from a happy-face Daytona and returned instantaneously to The Great NASCAR Slump. Fans have short memories. Judging from the e-mails and message boards, the Daytona 500 never happened.

NASCAR shot itself in the foot with a silver bullet.

What the hell happened, Kemo Sabe?

You can reach Monte Dutton at mdutton@gastongazette.com.