Some Talladega options apparently aren't open

Why is the idea of changing the track at Talladega Superspeedway so absurd?

All day on Monday, a lot of the same people who said they would look at all options to make things as safe as they can be at Talladega were also saying that altering the configuration of the race track isn’t an option.

“It goes without mention that the most exciting races we have today are both at Daytona and Talladega,” Sprint Cup Series director John Darby in a NASCAR teleconference about Sunday’s last-lap wreck in the Aaron’s 499. “That’s a big part of our sport, and those two tracks have been a big part of our sport for many, many years. There’s more value in continuing our safety efforts at those tracks than turning those two very historical, very exciting race tracks into parking lots.”

“For some reason, there is always a temptation to sensationalize the wrecks at Daytona and Talladega way beyond what happens at Lowe’s Motor Speedway or Atlanta Motor Speedway or any of the other tracks that we race on,” Darby said.

Let me ask you something. How is it possible to “sensationalize” what happened Sunday?

A 3,400-pound car driven by Carl Edwards came frighteningly close to flying into an area where hundreds of people could have been killed.

Is that in any way an exaggeration of what happened? I don’t think so. Is it possible to overstate the potential harm something like that could do? I don’t know how you could.

Then Darby, a man I respect and like very much, turned into a good little NASCAR/International Speedway Corporation soldier. ISC owns Talladega. The Charlotte and Atlanta tracks are owned by Speedway Motorsports. His implication is that the media give Bruton Smith’s company a pass while picking on poor ol’ ISC and its two biggest tracks.

Well, while we’re on that subject, let me ask a question.

Why did nobody at NASCAR ever say reconfiguring Texas Motor Speedway wasn’t an option when the drivers were complaining about it in 1998? What actually happened was NASCAR chairman Bill France Jr. came to Texas on the morning of the track’s second race and took up a spot in the garage area so reporters could come find him. He told them SMI had better fix the track or lose the one Cup date it had, let alone asking for a second.

Let me flatly say two things.

First, if SMI owned Talladega then NASCAR would have forced that company to plow it up and rebuild no later than 1987, when Bobby Allison crashed in almost exactly the same way Edwards did Sunday. There’s no chance NASCAR would have tried as many things to change the cars and the rules to continue racing at Talladega if its sister company didn’t own the joint.

Second, there’s no way anybody – ISC or SMI or anybody – builds a track today and makes it a 2.66-mile trioval with high-banked turns. The track is an anachronism.