INDIANAPOLIS – The Brickyard buzzed on Sunday afternoon.
A thick current of 240,000 fans created a swamp of controlled chaos. A human traffic jam.
Multi-colored T-shirts, hats, coolers, backpacks, flags and memorabilia blended into a slow blur of mass movement. And as the fans swirled and talked, hollered and waited, the allure and magnet-like pull of Indianapolis Motor Speedway was tangible.
Historic Indy. Revered Indy. Indy, the living, breathing legend.
By Sunday evening, Indy’s history was meaningless.
The Brickyard’s buzz was gone. Dead.
And NASCAR’s love-at-first-sight, 15-year romance with Indianapolis Motor Speedway had hit the wall.
A year-long tire war’s first real casualty: The 2008 Allstate 400 at the Brickyard.
“I’ve never seen nothing like it,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. said.
“I can’t remember where we’ve ever had one quite like this,” Jeff Gordon said.
“It was a ridiculous race,” Ryan Newman said. “There was no racing involved … .”
Winner Jimmie Johnson said the same. As did second-place finisher Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle, who ended the day in eighth.
Eleven caution flags – including six NASCAR-mandated competition yellows – killed 52 of the 160 laps run on Sunday at the Brickyard.
And the once-romantic lure of watching stock cars bang and zoom around the hallowed track at Indy-land was dead and gone.
“I really hate that it happened at the Brickyard,” Gordon said. “It’s such a big race. I think all of us are disappointed with what happened here today. … It’s embarrassing and it’s disappointing. I don’t know where to start, really.”
Neither did NASCAR.
Robbie Pemberton, NASCAR vice president of competition, was pounded with questions following the conclusion of Sunday’s race.
Meanwhile, the drivers and crew members who rely on the Car of Tomorrow – which ran over the bricks for the first time in an official competition on Sunday at Indy – were constantly asked to explain the unexplainable.
“It was the most boring race I have ever called,” said Steve LeTarte, crew chief for Gordon’s No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet Impala. “… It [was] just a waste of time.”
btsmith@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2569
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