NASCAR's Indy Road Course Debut Becomes Massive Shitshow

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by Julian Spivey
In 20 years watching the sport of NASCAR I had never seen a bigger shitshow than the end of this past weekend’s inaugural Cup Series race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.
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It went from infuriating to borderline hilarious quickly but was a blackeye upon the sport.

Most of the race was fine, nothing too special, especially with Kyle Larson stinking up the show in the third and final stage of the race with his dominance, but then with about five laps to go all hell broke loose.

Shortly after a restart on lap 77 the No.19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota driven by Martin Truex Jr. ran over a curb in Turn 6 of the racetrack sending debris, likely from his car but also from the curb, flying across the track. NASCAR officials failed to throw a caution for the debris and on the next lap the hell broke loose when the fourth place car, the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet of William Byron drove over the same curb, now damaged, and spun through the grass and into a tire barrier. The fifth place No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota driven by Kyle Busch did the same. Behind them the No. 22 Penske Racing Ford of Joey Logano piled into the tire barrier the hardest of all the cars. The No. 99 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet of Daniel Suarez, the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota of Christopher Bell and the No. 37 JTG Daugherty Racing Chevrolet of Ryan Preece would all do the same. All in all, about 10 cars wrecked or suffered damage doing the exact same thing – driving over the damaged curb.

The curb had been run over plenty of times over much of the race and was even repaired at least once before during the race, but I can’t help but feeling most of the problem is the drivers hitting the curb more so than the curb being there. The curb is there to dictate the driving line through the turn, so the drivers don’t cut the turn short and use it basically as a straightaway. It’s not intended to be hit, but drivers have figured out that they can run a bit faster through the area of the track by essentially putting a wheel over it and cutting it a bit.

So, I’m mostly blaming the drivers here for hitting an object meant to be a barrier and not the racing surface, but also must acknowledge – once again – NASCAR’s failure to throw the caution when Truex’s car initially damaged the curb and threw debris upon the track. It’s one of several inconsistent and head-scratching officiating moments from the sport this season.

After the 10-car incident NASCAR removed the damaged curb, which effectively changed the course from the 90 or more percent of the event that had already been run, but honestly what else could or should they have done as they were merely preparing for a two-lap shootout finish. While NASCAR removed the damaged curb, they left another long horizontal curb that was to the side of it on the track. I knew it would be the single dumbest thing I’d seen in the sport in a long time if a driver were to hit that piece, which was truly a decent distance away from the intended racing surface, but I also told my wife Aprille, who was watching the race with me, “somebody is going to hit that, you just wait and see, the idiots [I think it was a more colorful name] can’t help themselves.”  

Sure, enough the green flag is thrown, the field comes around to Turn 6 again and Michael McDowell in his No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford is the idiot who basically uses this piece of curbing as a ramp to wreck himself and a few others behind him.

What is NASCAR supposed to do at this point with the Indy road course track?

Are they supposed to just remove any curbing anywhere near the racing surface so that drivers don’t hit it? If the sport does this, it changes the way the track is driven and makes it easier. Other series, including IndyCar the day before, have competed in races at the track without similar issues. It just seems the drivers in NASCAR are the idiotic ones who can’t figure it out.

Anyway, I’ll be shocked if the race has curbing at Turn 6 next year after what we saw on Sunday (August 15), but I don’t believe the sport should make changes – make the drivers learn the track the way it’s supposed to be driven. They need to treat this curb as if it were a wall and you may well end your day in the garage if you hit it.

Following these two incredibly dumb cautions that took more than an hour to clean up, more dumbassery would continue as the No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford of Chase Briscoe was forced off the track on the final restart and drove through the grass and ended up back on the track in first place. He was penalized by NASCAR for cutting the course – something I don’t really think he should’ve been penalized for because he was forced off track and didn’t do it intentionally to gain an advantage. Either way it would’ve been a controversial call for NASCAR. Then after NASCAR penalized Briscoe he spun out the race leader Denny Hamlin, in the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, in a move that seemed intentional to me, but he would deny any intention in post-race comments to Hamlin and the media. After this melee A.J. Allmendinger, who’s not a full-time driver in the Cup Series, would take the lead in his No. 16 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet and go on to win his second career Cup Series race and his first since a win at Watkins Glen International in 2014.

This race was simply not a good look for NASCAR, though I was absolutely shocked to see that 60 percent of fans in a weekly poll held by The Athletic’s Jeff Gluck on Twitter said the road course event at Indy was a “good race.” Maybe they let most of the event overtake what happened at the end or maybe they were just entertained by total chaos. 

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