The Wide World of Dirt

On the weekend after 4/20, Kyle “Kush” Busch flew high above the chaos and inhaled the sweet scent of victory at Talladega this weekend.

Though not in the Weed Wagon this week, Busch’s McLaren Custom Grills Camaro kept his car pointed straight and had just enough gas to get to the checkers after a caution on the last lap that unfolded right in front of him.

Bubba Wallace and Ryan Blaney flexed their muscles throughout the day, leading 82 of the race’s 196 laps.

Yep, that’s right. For the fifth time this season, we went to NASCAR Overtime, and we had multiple attempts for the third time.

That’s still five times and three times too many, respectively.

With the dangerous nature of superspeedway racing, it is unnecessary for the drivers and teams to risk their bodies and equipment past the scheduled distance.

We do not need Busch v Craven every week.

We do not need Chastain ripping the wall down every week.

Just let these races end. We are all tired of watching cars get senselessly torn up all for the sake of entertainment.

I am so sick of worrying if a driver is going to walk out of their vehicle on a lap that was not even scheduled to be ran when the green flag dropped.

That brings me to my next point: Kyle Larson’s car.

In the first attempt of NASCAR overtime, Ross Chastain slid across the bumper of leading car Noah Gragson in turn 1 to send the rookie driver up the track.

What was clearly an attempt to get underneath the Legacy Motor Club driver, Chastain wedged his car into a gap that didn’t really exist, causing Gragson’s #42 careening into the inside wall.

This set off a chain reaction that saw Larson lose control, hit the apron, and slide back into oncoming traffic where he was met violently by Ryan Preece’s #41 Ford.

The crash put both drivers out of the race, and while I hate to beat this drum again and again, that wreck added nothing substantive to the event.

Considering how folded up Larson’s car was, it might be beneficial for the future health and safety of the drivers that this flaw was exposed.

We still ended up crashing again with the leaders on the final restart (thankfully just two attempts this time.) Wallace got the jump on the restart and took the lead.

Blaney was all over Bubba’s rear bumper on the frontstretch, and the Penske driver made his move to the inside going into turn 1 with Wallace defending.

The defense was weak, sending Bubba from the second lane to the apron. Despite this, he kept the wheel straight and blocked Blaney in the middle groove in turn 1 before Blaney made another move to the top in the center of the corner.

Bubba tried another block, which was what broke the camel’s back.

The contact unsettled the #23 Columbia Camry, sending him flying down to the inside again toward 3rd-place Kyle Busch before shooting back up the track off of the #6 and collecting others before hitting the wall.

To the surprise of no one, the race ended under caution, handing Busch his first superspeedway win since 2008.

The field went approximately 492 miles at Talladega with one relatively minor incident to show for it, only two cars sitting in the garage out of the race.

After Corey Lajoie thought he would rip a page from the Brad K playbook and try bump drafting on corner exit on lap 185, six more cars dropped out of the race due to damage. Many of the finishers had extensive damage as well.

There is no cogent argument to protect the Overtime rule at superspeedways and probably most other tracks.

I have no faith that this will change because NASCAR has always been about the almighty dollar and not car racing, and if they seem to think Overtime brings them more viewers and TV revenue, sadly, they’re going to continue pulling that lever.

The racing overall proved to be rather stale as a third line couldn’t reasonably develop without the bottom two lanes riding slower to conserve fuel.

Drivers complained on radio all day that it was difficult to get a run and make a pass. From my vantage point at home, that appeared to be the case.

The race featured just 57 lead changes (same as last fall’s race) with only seven drivers that I can recall seeing up front for any considerable stretch of time.

That’s just not going to cut it, especially if we’re just going to end these races in a shower of sparks and sheet metal.

I will not get into the Bubba and Blaney incident further as they both seem to agree that Bubba needed to throw those blocks, but Blaney also needed a win and should’ve tried to pass his friend.

Just a really sad result for them, but I’m sure they’ll get past it with ease.

Moving onto the Xfinity Series, the most recent NASCAR innovations into hood and roof flaps simply isn’t getting the job done anymore.

Thankfully, we haven’t seen a car go wheels up in Atlanta, but both races on superspeedways this year have seen at least one car roll over.

I understand that it is the secondary series to Cup. Bearing that in mind, we need to make sure we’re not sending someone out of the track in an ambulance every time we visit Florida and Alabama.

Roger Penske’s team created the roof flaps around 30 years ago. Now is the perfect time to see if there’s an innovation past that.

Many, many congrats go out to Jeb Burton and car owner Jordan Anderson. Burton finally gets the win and finish he deserved in 2021, and Anderson finds redemption at the track that damn near took his life last season.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about calculator.net’s F̶r̶i̶d̶a̶y̶ ̶5̶ Saturday 6 from this weekend:

AJ Allmendinger – 29th

A great day for Dinger got wiped away and wiped out by the final crash as former Xfinity Series rival Austin Cindric collided with the #16 to send them both to the wall.

Before that, he was running in the top-10 with a chance at a great finish while not being a factor up front for most of the day.

Harrison Burton – 36th

Pain.

Leading the race with less than 50 to go, Harrison Burton looked to bring a new trophy back to the Wood Brothers. Contact with Noah Gragson on lap 143 sent Burton’s #21 Mustang onto the apron where the second-year driver held on to it.

Try as he might, Harrison was unable to regain his track position and got caught up in the Lajoie-Logano mess with four laps left, ending his day.

Kevin Harvick – 21st

Again. Pain.

Another fast car squandered. Harvick sustained damage during the Gragson-Chastain scramble, but he likely had to pit anyway for fuel.

Got put back in the pack with two laps to go and couldn’t recover. Ugh.

Tyler Reddick – 16th

Reddick probably had the most interesting day out of anyone in the field on Sunday. He wrecked himself coming onto pit road during the first green flag stop, badly damaging his car on the right side and right front fender.

Not discouraged, Tyler’s MoneyLion Camry got back on the lead lap at the end of Stage 1, and he roared back into contention for the remainder of the race but couldn’t escape the pack later in the going.

Ross Chastain – 23rd

I have faith that, one of these days, Ross will figure out that he’s the common denominator in most of his failures.

I wish Justin Marks would stop encouraging him to make some of the dumbest moves I’ve ever seen on a race track. My hopes for that are very low. Marks and Chastain are turning the sport more into entertainment every week.

I am tired of it.

Ryan Blaney – 2nd

Of course the one car I actually picked for this week ran super well and almost got the win.

For the final time this week, say it with me y’all: