SONOMA, Calif. – Despite three cars getting airborne in the most recent restrictor-plate race at Talladega Superspeedway, NASCAR isn’t making any changes to the cars before next week’s race at Daytona International Speedway.
And Kyle Busch, for one, isn’t happy about it.
“I was certainly hoping we would see something coming off the race that we saw at Talladega,” Busch said Friday. “… No rule changes is not a welcoming sight for me, but it is what it is. We’ll go and crash some more.”
Busch noted the racing at Talladega “wasn’t very exciting” and was “pretty dangerous for all us drivers.”
In addition to the three airborne cars, Busch noted Danica Patrick’s hard hit on an inside wall that was “real reminiscent of my hit at Daytona” -- the one which left Busch with a broken right leg and left foot last year.
Other drivers, though, seemed content with NASCAR holding off on making any changes. Jimmie Johnson said he understood NASCAR's desire to not overreact.
“I feel comfortable with it,” Johnson said. “We’ll see how Daytona races and take it from there.”
In the wake of the Talladega race – as well as last July’s Daytona race, which ended with Austin Dillon’s terrifying crash into the catchfence that left five fans injured -- there was talk about slowing the cars down.
But that idea seems to have cooled in the weeks since Talladega.
“I don’t know what the right thing to do is,” Denny Hamlin said Thursday. “You could slow us down, but it’s just going to make us run tighter. The whole reason we’re wrecking in the first place is we’re giving each other no room for error.”
NASCAR executive vice president Steve O’Donnell told reporters earlier Friday the sanctioning body was not making any changes in part because Daytona and Talladega race differently.
“Based on what we saw for the initial Daytona race, we’re satisfied going in with the race package we have,” O’Donnell said.
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