NASCAR News: Officials accused of trying to manipulate playoffs

The YellaWood 500 NASCAR race at Talladega has some interesting moments.  That included a point in the race where all the cars were racing four-wide. That however was completely overshadowed with less than 10 laps to go, when a new-record was set in a massive wreck.

–by Kaleb Kraus, Last Word on Sports—

In total 28 cars were involved in the “Big One”.  That wasn’t the biggest story out of said wreck. As the safety crews were attending to the vast number of cars left in the grass following the wreck, controversy appeared. Superspeedway racing has already been rough since going to the next-gen car, but what happened Sunday has certainly made it clear that NASCAR seems to be hypocritical.

After seeing the backlash from Berry and crew chief Rodney Childers last week, NASCAR probably just made things worse this week, as they decided to change course on their rules, as they hooked up and pulled several cars back to their pit stalls with far more damage. It certainly was a choice by NASCAR to just up and change course, in the middle of the race. To make matters worse they did so without letting everyone in the garage know. That is not good for the sport when it has many other issues.

Is NASCAR trying to manipulate the playoffs, when they are already a mess anyway? I do not see drivers like Chase Elliott as a golden boy like many in the vast NASCAR fanbase see him, but he certainly didn’t have a car that only had flat tires. He even admitted he was shocked by what NASCAR did on Sunday. Elliott can be heard via his in-car radio talking about the mess on the backstretch.

” This is honestly comical that we’ve created this right here,” Elliott said, before answering his spotter Trey Poole’s question about all the other cars being stuck. “Everybody’s just spinning their wheels, turning in circles, can’t go anywhere. Stuck in the grass. Stuck on the asphalt.”

The mess didn’t end there as one of the tow trucks eventually started pushing Elliott’s No. 9 car, but then suddenly stopped. He was eventually towed back to his pit box, as was Chase Briscoe. Other cars were stuck that didn’t get the benefit of a tow-back to the pits.

Drivers Sound-Off On Talladega Mess

Elliott wasn’t the only driver ticked off by what went down on Sunday, as plenty of others sounded off. The common theme amongst all the drivers was that what NASCAR decided to call on Sunday, was a disaster. According to Nick DeGroot from motorsport.com, Joey Logano cited it as a complete disaster.

” Everyone is just sitting on flat tires. They want to roll, but they can’t because they’re on flat tires,” Logano said. ” We got this machine that’s going to jack up the back of the car but you’re flat on the fronts, you still can’t steer.”