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Ten years ago, Brad Keselowski’s three-wide move for the lead of a NASCAR playoff race at Texas Motor Speedway was so controversial, it caused a massive pit road brawl.
At the time, Keselowski was seen by many as an overly aggressive racer who pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable. He clashed with veterans like Carl Edwards, Jeff Gordon and Kevin Harvick — the driver who pushed Keselowski toward Gordon on pit road at Texas to ignite the infamous fight.
But anyone accustomed to today’s NASCAR racing might be surprised to see a replay of that 2014 move by Keselowski. It was an overtime restart for a Round 3 playoff race with a berth in the inaugural Championship 4 on the line; Keselowski saw Gordon leave an opening and went for the win.
“Shoot, the whole Texas thing … today, that’s like every week,” Keselowski said. “There’s a gap, you fill it. Every restart. Where back then it’s like … geez. You even tried to make a move like that and everybody lost their marbles.”
Gordon agreed in an interview with SiriusXM last year, saying the incident was “on me” because he left too much space.
“(Keselowski) did exactly what he should have done: He filled the gap,” Gordon said. “It’s not like he just slammed me.”
“All I wanted to do was talk.” @JeffGordonWeb and @Keselowski relive their 2014 fight at Texas Motor Speedway. #RaceHub pic.twitter.com/L51qYJBNPg
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) October 31, 2018
The way that Texas incident is viewed now is symbolic of how much NASCAR’s driving standards have changed in the last decade. As Alex Bowman put it: “Everybody races like an a–hole now,” which is widely accepted as standard practice in the field.
Joey Logano once thought he was the most aggressive driver on the racetrack (and drew plenty of backlash for it), but he no longer believes that to be the case because that mentality is shared by almost every competitor. But that’s a “180” and “completely different” from when Logano joined Team Penske in 2013, he said.
“Remember if someone went three-wide on a restart and it was like, ‘Oh wow! He went three-wide?’” Logano said. “Now we go four-wide, five-wide. Like three-wide? Eh, big deal. It’s not a thing anymore. That’s what it’s gotten to.”
So what happened? Was it simply the departure of respected veteran racers — such as Mark Martin, Tony Stewart, Matt Kenseth, etc. — who lived by a different code? Perhaps that’s part of it, but today’s drivers insist it’s more of a byproduct of the Next Gen car.
The Next Gen car promotes parity, which makes track position supremely important when the cars are all running roughly the same speed. It comes down to strategy and pit stops, and drivers can’t afford to give anyone an inch.
“Every position is harder to gain than it used to be, so everybody fights to hold that,” Martin Truex Jr. said. “If there’s a hole or an opening to get one or two spots on a restart, you’ve got to go for it because you might never get those two spots if you run 30, 40, 50 laps. Everybody’s mindset has changed.”
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Under the Mark Martin Code, it was smarter to let a faster car go by than to engage in a side-by-side battle. Martin felt that had two benefits: First, it expedited the process of passing (which could slow both cars down); second, the other driver may return the favor later in the race (or in a future event) when Martin’s car was fast enough to take the position.
Sure, there was hard racing at times — but during the course of a long event, it was important to have give-and-take.
Of course, there were no stages back then. The tires wore out more than they do these days. And as previously mentioned, the Next Gen has brought about an unprecedented era of parity since teams no longer build the cars. Plus, the Next Gen has a composite body instead of a steel one — which means it’s capable of making contact without ruining a driver’s day.
“The cars are so much tougher these days that it makes you more willing to do it,” Kyle Larson said, “because your car can take it.”
So even Truex — the series’ most senior driver, also known as the cleanest racer of this generation — said he’s had to change with the times. He made a mistake in last month’s regular-season finale at Darlington Raceway, where he had a run on William Byron at the end of the front straightaway — but Byron raced him hard for the position and Truex ran out of room, crashing on Lap 3 of a 500-mile race.
Though Truex took complete blame for the incident, he later observed it was a product of today’s racing.
“Five years ago, (Byron) lets me go into Turn 1,” Truex said. “In the old days, that’s my spot. I can use the racetrack up (to clear). It’s just not the way it’s done now.”
“Every position is harder to gain than it used to be, so everybody fights to hold that,” Martin Truex Jr. says of the new era of more aggressive driving. (Sean Gardner / Getty Images)
And as much as the focus gets placed on battles at the front of the field — that’s what the TV cameras are showing, after all — the mid-pack fights for position are said to be even crazier. Larson experienced it last month after getting an early flat tire at Kansas Speedway and then being mired in traffic for much of the race.
“Dude, I haven’t ran around 25th all day in a long time, so Kansas was wild from my seat,” Larson said. “That was eye-opening for me and it makes me very thankful our car is not typically back there, because it was crazy.”
Like Larson, driver-turned-TV-analyst Dale Earnhardt Jr. said he’s noticed the racing from 20th-30th often doesn’t make it onto the broadcast, but called it “nasty back there.” He said the responsibility for the uptick in aggression is due to a variety of factors, from drivers to how the sanctioning body officiates to the durability of the cars.
“There are some moments when it’s too much,” he said. “We definitely want cars to be leaning on each other and beating on each other. But it does get pretty careless.”
That said, aggression isn’t a bad thing for fans. The urgency to maintain positions has led to constant battles throughout the race instead of periods of “riding” that used to occur over long 500-mile events.
Logano said there are still some moments that can reward the smart racers over aggressive ones as well, but it’s up to the drivers to make that calculation.
“The cars are just tougher, and it promotes more and more aggressive racing,” he said, “which I think is good.”
(Top photo of action from the Cup Series race at Michigan in August: Jonathan Bachman / Getty Images)
