Early on, no bump drafting meant no racing

            TALLADEGA, Ala. – The 43 drivers who roared off at the start of the Amp Energy 500 apparently wanted to send a little message to their autocratic rulers.

            After NASCAR officials told them in the drivers’ meeting that no bump-drafting would be allowed in the Talladega Superspeedway turns. Drivers find this odd since the generic cars seem designed to facilitate such bump drafting.

            During the race’s early laps, the racing at Talladega looked a lot like Michigan or Chicagoland. It’s odd to see everyone at Talladega in a single line.

            The most exciting occurrences early were watching everyone peel off into the pits – A.J. Allmendinger spun at the head of pit road – or a couple of relatively minor incidents, the former on lap five involving Paul Menard and Joe Nemechek and the latter occurring on lap 50 when Kurt Busch’s Dodge skidded through the front-straight trioval.

            Beyond belief – Of course, racing being contested among racers, the action did heat up at the end. And, predictably, a frightening crash was a result. In fact two near-conflagrations were separated by almost nothing except a red flag.

            On the back straight of lap 185, contact from behind by Marcos Ambrose’s Toyota sent Ryan Newman’s Chevy lurching radically left, and the result was a three-way bounce-off involving the cars of Ambrose, Newman and Kevin Harvick. Newman wound up upside down, pinned in his car by the roll cage and, while only shaken up, thoroughly miffed.

            “This is just a byproduct of Talladega racing,” said Newman. “It was a boring race, ridiculous racing, 43 cars running single-file. … That’s not what any fan should have to pay to see.”

            Lost in the end – Jamie McMurray didn’t have to win, at least not when he did. When the gigantic final-lap crash occurred, it wasn’t necessarily the final lap. In a green-white-checkered finish, the field is frozen if a crash occurs on the final lap.

            This one occurred before the leader, McMurray, took the white flag. As such, the determination that McMurray was the winner was a judgment call, as could be heard from a number of crew chiefs who were obviously mystified, over radios, by what happened.

            Technically, McMurray didn’t win when he took the white flag. Officially, the wreck happened before the last lap, but the yellow didn’t come out until the last lap. McMurray had to come around, weave through the wreckage and take the checkered flag under caution.

            Thirteen drivers, by the way, were reluctant participants in the final debacle.

You may contact Monte Dutton at mdutton@gastongazette.com.