While he was watching tonight’s Daytona 500, one of the announcers mentioned that 6 years ago to the day, Dale Earnhardt Sr. won the race for the first time. After hearing that, I made a bet with my uncle that Dale Jr. would win the race. He took the bet and I won.
He then asked me how I knew what was going to happen. I gave him the history of NASCAR (racing started by moonshiners, the suspect history of Richard Petty career, etc.) and then said “It makes for a better story.”
I’m sure that my Uncle wasn’t too happy with the notion that his favorite “sport” might be rigged, but what do the Dopers think about Auto Racing, if at all?
Ever since the race where he got killed on the last lap, Dale Earnhardt’s team has dominated the restrictor plate race tracks, so Jr.'s win was no surprise, even if he hadn’t ever won the 500 before. It has been whispered that NASCAR looks the other way at whatever makes the DEI cars nearly unpassable at the plate tracks once they get in the lead. NASCAR has rarely let rules get in the way of a good story or marketing opportunity… (e.g., Jr’s below the yellow line pass for the lead at one of the Talledega races, IIRC…)
Little E’s win, like fiddlesticks said, was no big surprise given the team performance at Daytona the last couple of years, including the past two weeks. That is a far way from saying it was in any way inevitable. Given their team’s and his dad’s history at the track, there are a lot of anniversaries that they would be hitting this time of year–you could probably come up with one almost every year, and you always have the “it was at this track his dad died” thing. They are already doing that with where he made his pass this year.
Reasons against a fix:
–too many people would have to know, including sponsors
–then why would a company sponsor a team that does much worse than expected?
–crashes–people die in these, you know, so the idea that they do them just for show is a bit out there
The only reason for it is that some things look like a pattern. However, there will always be patterns if you are looking back at something. And even if you picked this year’s winner on pure sentimentality (or sentimental cynicism), you did pick the favorite who has had a very strong car all week, and the fact that he won did not surprise even those who think the sport is clean.
As for unequal inspections, yes, there are those whispers. No proof, of course. I doubt it is purely unequal–but I wouldn’t be surprised if there is just a bit more tolerance for some teams than others, like an umpire with a well-known pitcher. The race itself has enough variance to keep me thinking it would be difficult to fix anything at the inspection alone, anyway.