Yes, there was a race on Sunday in Loudon, New Hampshire, and a very important one at that. The second race in the first round of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series playoffs took off just after 2PM on Sunday, with Kyle Busch starting on pole. It was a very interesting race at that. It started with Kyle Busch leading the first fifty or so laps, until Martin Truex Jr once again took the lead from his Toyota teammate, going on to win the eighty lap first stage. Once again Martin Truex Jr was checked out from the field on the stage two restart, while Kyle Busch and new player Matt Kenseth joined the fray in the top three. On the final lap of the stage, Austin Dillon got into the back of Kevin Harvick, turning him around off of turn two in front of the pack. The result was a six car pileup on the backstretch caused by Harvick sitting on the racetrack sideways. His teammate, Kurt Busch, blinded by the smoke, was the first on the scene, plowing into the side of his Stewart Haas teammate. Jeffery Earnhardt then proceeded to slam into the back of Busch’s no. 41 Ford, destroying both of their cars. In the smoke as well, Dale Earnhardt Jr and then leader Martin Truex Jr, on his way to stage win no. 20 on the year, spun around and hit each other in the wreck. It was a true “Days of Thunder” moment, with Kyle Busch and Matt Kenseth squeezing between the crashed Harvick car and the wall to finish first and second in the stage. The lead that Kyle Busch took after that wreck, he would never surrender, as he drove hard and won the ISM Connect 300 in Loudon.
While the race was a good one, the conversation was pivoted in an unnecessary way in the national media from the racing on track to comments that Richard Petty and Richard Childress made on Sunday prerace in response to President Trump’s comments on NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem. They were comments that NASCAR could not get in front of in time, whether they agreed with the car owner’s point of view or not. The comments, saying that if a driver or team member would take a knee during the national anthem, they would be terminated from the company they were employed by, put the sport in hot water all day on Sunday. News outlets like The Hill, and many sports and political analysts condemned the statements, bringing up untrue, offensive stereotypes of our sport that frankly were unfair. While the views of Petty and Childress may not be fair according to my values, it is completely legal to terminate an employee due to this type of issue, according to a story written by NBC Sports yesterday. The ideas that this sport is “racist” and “lacks diversity” is just flat out untrue. As a minority myself, I have been blessed with continued opportunities in the sport of NASCAR. NASCAR even has had a Drive for Diversity program since 2004 that allows drivers of different races as well as women to get opportunities in the lower series to sprout a career in NASCAR racing. It is a program that gave us Xfinity champion and Cup Rookie of the Year candidate Daniel Suarez, current cup playoff contender Kyle Larson, who has four wins on the season, as well as Darrell Wallace Jr, who is a multiple time race winner in the truck series, and is rumored to be in talks to drive the no. 43 Ford for Richard Petty next season. My point, NASCAR has diversity, the media just chooses not to see it, choosing to spit on the sport instead.
While NASCAR did release a statement, perhaps it did not do enough to curb the anger that was spawned by the comments by Childress and Petty on Sunday. On top of that, they waited until Monday afternoon to make the statement, also perhaps too late to have any major impact. NASCAR will always stand for the anthem, we always have and I’d like to say they always will. However, because we stand for the anthem does not mean we do not believe in equality for all, and equal treatment for all Americans. I genuinely believe that NASCAR will put this behind them, and we will persevere as we always do. We race in Dover this week, and I believe the focus will be on the action on the Monster Mile, as it should be. There is an elimination race this weekend, that deserves all of our attention certainly this week. Let’s get back to racing, shall we?
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