Aug 11, 2008

More Than an Apology Required

To all those who saw the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard -- and, of course, I was among them -- NASCAR has issued an official apology. They say they are sorry that the race was a complete an utter debacle, akin to allowing some kind of malfunction in a baseball park to limiting a World Series game to two innings. Trying to put the grim day behind them, NASCAR and Goodyear have announced plans to conduct a test session at Indianapolis Motor Speedway this fall to help solve the tire problems that turned the race from one of the highlights of the NASCAR season to a pathetic shell of itself. But we say that’s just not enough. Some 250,000 racing fans paid a lot of money to see a real NASCAR race, and what they saw was less compelling than a preseason football game. For most of the “race” and the telecast, the drivers were just marking time, knowing full well that it would be the last dozen or so laps that would tell the tale, and finally it came down to the last pit stop to settle the matter.

So, sure, NASCAR has apologized, but talk is cheap. The racing fans who attended the event didn’t get anything near their money’s worth, and rather than just giving them the “okee doke” and pretending all is right with the world, NASCAR should be looking to give them some kind of relief in the form of a cash refund or a discount off next year’s race tickets. Ryan Newman, who won the Daytona 500 this year and finished 13^th in the Brickyard race, said it best: “NASCAR has the ultimate responsibility,” he told the Associated Press. “They are the Barnum and Bailey. They know what's going on in the center ring. And if they put a tiger out there that's going to bite somebody, then that's their responsibility.”

When Newman was asked if the apology from NASCAR was enough, he was remarkably forthright for a driver in the series. “No,” he said, “because you've got 250,000 people that spent time there, their money and took their families to see a great race. And all they saw was a 12-lap window max, I think, of racing. And that's not the way racing in NASCAR is supposed to be.”

Of course, Newman didn’t call for some kind of monetary compensation for the racing fans -- he’s too politically savvy to do that -- but the fact is the NASCAR fans got cheated at Indianapolis, and they deserve more than NASCAR has offered them; namely, kind words backed up by no action. As my mother always told me, it’s easy to say you’re sorry; what’s important is that you mean it.