NASCAR’s first road course action of the 2023 season saw an overall exciting race at Austin’s Circuit of the Americas, with Tyler Reddick taking home a dominant (though not uncontested) win.
However, the race’s finish was marred by multiple late caution flags, as it required three periods of “overtime” in order to complete under green flag conditions.
NASCAR’s overtime system is controversial with purist fans who don’t agree with artificially adding laps to the scheduled distance. But the bigger problem is simple: there is a lack of respect among competitors in NASCAR today.
In the week leading up to Sunday’s race, former champions Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski both expressed this sentiment, and sure enough, the late restarts vindicated them.
Here, for example, you had drivers going five and six wide into the track’s first turn, which clearly wasn’t going to work. The same thing happened on the restart linked above, in which you had several drivers trying to pass multiple rows of cars at once.
To be fair, Turn 1 at Circuit of the Americas is a tough one, a slow braking zone at the end of a long straightaway that causes cars to spread out to avoid hitting each other. Then the track “funnels” into a much narrower section, and everyone has to find a place in line. That’s much easier said than done.
However, restarts earlier in the race didn’t have this problem to nearly the same degree. It is understandable that everyone races harder in the final laps, but they can do this without completely throwing respect out the window. It makes the racing look unprofessional and embarrassing.
Then to make matters worse, after the race Daniel Suarez intentionally drove into Alex Bowman to express displeasure over an earlier incident. Just two weeks after Denny Hamlin was penalized for a similar offense, this was a bad look.
All in all, NASCAR’s trip to Circuit of the Americas was a success, but you can’t be blamed if you were disappointed with the ending.
