The great NASCAR Daytona 500 pothole conspiracy

Appalled. Outrageous. Scandalous.

Those were just some of the comments that flew across the news wire after Sunday’s marathon season opening race otherwise known as the 52nd annual Daytona 500.

After the race as I made my way down from the press box at Daytona International Speedway to the infield media center, knowing that thanks to the all day affair ending late my certain someone would be denied a Valentines Day outing thanks to racing, again, I could see the lights in the area between turns 1 and 2. Already vehicles were there, yellow lights flashing. Closer to me was Victory Lane and a jubilant and deserving, Jamie McMurray shouting for joy. I was close enough as I walked by that I could smell the champagne.

Of course it took me forever to get to the media center. It as just me luck to get stuck behind Dale Earnhardt Junior who happened to be heading to the same place. Anyone who’s ever seen Dale Junior at a track knows he usually has more people surrounding him then the President of the United States. I could see Earnhardt smiling, and I again heard McMurray and his crew shouting behind me.

What a great race I thought. Easily one of the best Daytona 500’s I had ever seen in the 20 years I been going. Sure there were two red flags and two stoppages for over two hours, but hey that didn’t take away from a great race.

It would become apparent later that not everyone agreed.

The way the media center is arranged, reporters face each other with a divider containing all the necessary hookups between them. I was facing two reporters from the local paper, both well-respected above average, scribes, who were already busily typing away given to the late hour and their fast approaching deadline. For those who’ve never been in working media center after a race, the only sounds you normally hear are low mumbles and thousands of tapping sounds as people pound away writing stories.

Shortly after I sat down, the tapping and mumbling stopped as Ramsey Posten NASCAR’s managing director for corporate communications and Robin Braig, president of Daytona International Speedway walked in the room and headed for a small stage on one side.

Fantastic, I thought. I always respect people who aren’t afraid to face the world when something goes wrong. And no matter what, the fact that a pothole large enough to stop the sport’s biggest race opened up is in the ‘something went wrong’ class.

“As we do for every event, we inspected this track this morning and there were no concerns.” Braig said. “We are always prepared for these types of issues. We had the proper materials and worked diligently to repair it. The delay in the repairs was caused by the unusually cold ambient temperature. After this event, we will evaluate these effects from the weather and will make the necessary adjustments.

“From NASCAR's point of view,” said Posten. “I want to thank the track for everything they did to repair the track and make it raceable. At the end of the day, we had more than the advertised distance, we had more than 200 laps for our fans. Obviously red flags were unfortunate.”

At the end of the day, we had some great racing out there. I spent a lot of the red flags talking to probably a couple dozen drivers, a number of crew chiefs. I think most of them said to me that if you're in racing long enough, this kind of thing is going to happen from time to time.

But I just want to congratulate the track services out there for everything they did so we could have a great finish and a great race.”

Works for me, I thought. In my mind, the pavement could very well have developed problems given the heavy rains the week before and the unusually frigid weather, record breaking by the way. The track had been walked prior to the race, two other series had raced on the same track only hours before with no problems and there appeared to be no problems. No way they could have known before hand. To me the issue was over. Time to move on. That was until the press started asking questions.

There were some that were mild, like should the track be repaved after the incident.

“You know, we've got to look and see whether it was the gouge from the cars in that dip there and we'll evaluate that,” Braig said. “Y'all have already mentioned that 2012 or 2013 or 2014, was when we were thinking of repaving. It may not need repaving. We've been told by the drivers, crew chiefs, NASCAR, Goodyear, that the uniqueness of this track is special. We saw the many lead changes. How many lead changes? One of the most.

We don't want to repave -- paint the whole house when all we have to do is a little touch-up.”

To the downright confrontational. Such as comparing Sunday’s incident to the Formula One debacle of a few years ago at Indy, when a majority of the drivers refused to race due to questions about tires, thus tainting the reputation of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (for the record, there is no comparison, drivers at Daytona raced, wanted to race and did so). So did Braig think the pothole hurt Daytona’s reputation? I swear I thought Braig had to physically strain not to roll his eyes when he the F1 comparison was made and he was asked. I tried not to laugh out loud. Braig regained his composure and answered lit the true pro he is.

“Well, sure. We're the World Center of Racing. This is the Daytona 500. This is not supposed to happen,” he said. “And I take full responsibility. I represent 300 full-time staff members. I represent a hundred operation people. I don't represent the NASCAR safety workers and the input that NASCAR helps us when that track rolls up. We take full responsibility.”

It was then that I knew the sharks were trying to smell blood in the water, when there really was none.

Indeed, the local reporters began to ask the questions that seemed an attempt to invite a confrontation; all of which were handled by Braig and Posten just fine.

Later Daytona 500 second place finisher Earnhardt Junior sat beside third place Greg Biffle on the small stage and after the prerequisite ‘how was your race’ questions, the floor was open to the media. All at once the questions began. It didn’t take long before the sharks began to circle again.

There were questions such as did the hole affect the outcome of the race.

“I don't think so,” Biffle said. “I mean, I know when I was hitting it, I hit that thing three laps in a row, then the caution came out. I was like, Damn, I got to quit hitting that thing. But I don't think it changed the outcome at all.”

“Yeah, I don't think it changed the outcome at all,” Earnhardt Junior added. “A couple guys got some holes in the front of their car. 17 had a big old hole in the front of his car. Changed the outcome of his day. As far as the finish, didn't have nothing to do with it.”

Of course the next day the reports started to come out about the ‘Daytona Debacle’, or the large headline in the local paper ‘Has Daytona 500 gone to pothole?’ One longtime NASCAR beat writer sued the words ‘appalling’ and ‘shameful’.

The ‘controversy’ continued Tuesday when the lead story in the local paper was ‘Daytona International Speedway begins investigation of pothole’. Kind of gives the impression the US Congress is going to be forming a blue ribbon panel and call hearings.

There were fans that left during the red flag periods Sunday. But it certainly wasn’t the huge throngs some reporters made them out to be. I know because I stood on the roof of the Sprint tower and watched as those who decided to leave did so, there were some, but the majority stayed. For its part, Braig did say that the Speedway would reach out to those fans that left and try to make amends.

The funny part about all this is that for the last two days I’ve cruised the Internet looking for fans reaction to Sunday’s happenings. Based on some reporter’s confrontational attempts at sensationalizing, or turning the incident into some kind of scandal, I had expected to find some fans that were all over it.

Surely I could find one or two angry fans that were accusing NASCAR of conspiring to cause the pothole in order to give Earnhardt a chance to win. Something, anything. To date I’m still looking. Most of the talk I did find was about NASCAR’s first successful use of the green-white-checkered flag on more then one attempt and an actual race that turned out to be a show for the ages with a winner who is well liked by everyone.

Where there disgruntled fans that left early Sunday? No doubt. But if I paid to go see my beloved Red Sox play and there was rain delay or a delay due to a problem with the field, I’d stay. And if I decided to leave, well it’s my money and I can choose to leave, or stay and wait it out.

As for the TV delays, the only comment I could find was from a fan who said they left during the first delay to go work on their car and were very happy to have fixed their car and come back in time to see the ending.

What fans got Sunday was a hell of race with a great finish and a worthy winner. And Daytona did have some problems, ones that could not have been foreseen, but ones that will be dealt with no doubt.

It’s just a shame that some reporters who make their living off creating controversy real or imagined, tired to blow the pothole incident out of proportion.

One things for sure; for the first time in years, I’m looking forward to California so we will finally have something else to talk about.