"Actions Detrimental"

Sports writers who cover what passes for stock car racing these days, that is to say NASCAR, which calls itself stock car racing but is not racing and does not involve stock cars… Well, I digressed a little far there. Let’s start over.

Certain sports writers have long been critical of NASCAR for its inconsistent enforcement of rules, given that it actually is rules which are being enforced since the rule book is secret and no one other than drivers, owners and NASCAR officials have ever claimed to have seen one. There is one school of thought that insists that there actually is no rule book and that NASCAR makes the rules up as they go along.

One of the most common rules broken, or at least cited in giving punishment, is “actions detrimental to the sport,” which in the past has included punching another driver in the face after a race. I’ve never figured out quite how this is detrimental to the sport, but NASCAR has issued large fines and put drivers on probation for doing it, and sports writers have pretty much universally applauded that action.

Then last week there was a collision between Joey Logano and Kyle Busch at the end of the race. After his car stopped, Busch got out, made a high speed walk to where Logano was and without exchanging a single word threw a haymaker which landed on Logano’s jaw. It was not his brightest move, because his crew was not around and Logano’s crew was, and Logano’s crew proceed to pounce on and beat the shit out of him while Logano stood back and egged them on.

The same sports writers I spoke of earlier are now saying that this fight is the best thing to happen to NASCAR in several years, in that it will help regain some of the popularity that NASCAR has been steadily losing, and they are applauding NASCAR for not issuing any penalties to either driver for the fight. Seems that inconsistency no longer bothers them, now that they are engaging in it along with NASCAR.

The new generation stock car racing fan comes to the speedway, it seems, to see crashes and fist fights, which explains why punching another driver in the face after a race is no longer deemed to be an “action detrimental to the sport” of stock car racing.