Full Throttle

Talladega Superspeedway celebrated its 40th anniversary this weekend and the old girl proved to be as cantankerous as ever as Jamie McMurray snapped an 86-race winless streak with a victory that was by all accounts improbable.

McMurray grabbed his first victory and fifth top-10 finish in 2009 but it was far from easy as he and the field had to survive the typical carnage that is part and parcel of “‘Dega racing.”

Chastised by a prerace admonition to cease and desist bump drafting and blocking much of the race was contested in a single file Conga Line of 43 impatient drivers.

Given the prerace hand slap the event still produced 26 different leaders, tied for second-most all-time in Sprint Cup and 60 lead changes ranking it as the ninth-most all-time.

But we all know Conga Lines don’t last forever and this one broke into two and three abreast racing for most of the last fifty laps.

Then all hell broke lose.

Ryan Newman was in the middle of a pack hurtling down the backstretch when he bumped into teammate Tony Stewart.

Newman was then tapped by Marcos Ambrose, and Newman veered inside before flipping into the air and landing on the hood of Kevin Harvick’s car. Newman rolled over before coming to a rest upside down on the grass.

The wreck caused a 13 minute red flag as Ryan was first flipped back onto all fours and then cut from the car. (See video above.)

The sequel to Ryan’s crash saw Mark Martin’s car sliding upside down on the track one lap away from the checkered flag. Along with Martin 12 others were wadded up forcing the race to finish under the yellow flag. (See video below.)

On the Newman crash: The booth bobbleheads spent a fair amount of time praising the safety crew and to some extent they deserve it, but why the hell did it take so long to flip over Ryan’s car?

Granted there was some concern about his medical condition, rightfully so.

It took several minutes before they aired an incar radio conversation that confirmed his health but, the safety crew on scene must have known that far in advance of those at home and dependent on the Idiot Box.

Yet it took them several minutes to right the 39 machine and get to the business of cutting Newman out of the car.

Far from acceptable in my book but what the hell, who am I, just a blogger watching the race in his Jammies.

On the fans: Naturally NASCAR took the brunt of the criticism, by people named “48hater,” JRForever” and “NASCARSUX” that was mostly directed at the new smaller plate for this race and the warning all received about blocking and bump drafting.

The warning, I would grant, caused long sections of the race to be run single file. That is a problem, but I would ask the Whiners what would they have done in the same position? I suspect those with a modicum of common sense would agree they’d have raced the same way.

My largest disagreement with some fans is some were quick to blame the smaller restrictor plates issued for this event as the cause of the late race accidents.

It makes you wonder where they were in the spring when Carl Edwards flew into the fence with a slightly larger plate.

Where were they when Ken Schrader, Sterling Marlin, Elliott Sadler and a host of others have all turned turtle at Talladega? Hell, Tim Horton not only flipped, but flew out the the place between turns one and two a few years ago.

As an overall effect plates do bunch up the field and that does lead to crashes, but to say the difference between the plate used in the spring and the one used Sunday made a difference is silly.

At best, at worst it’s flat out loony.

The long and short of it is until NASCAR tosses the 20 year old restrictor plate experiment aside in favor of smaller fuel injected engines that have much less HP but enough torque (something plates suck out of the current engines) for drivers to use flips will continue to happen at Talladega and Daytona,