The 2013 Sprint Unlimited - An Observation On The Push Draft or Lack Thereof?

The 2013 Sprint Unlimited has come and gone.  After three segments, Kevin Harvick managed a rather sedate looking race win.  But was sedate a one-time thing, a good thing or a bad thing?

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NASCAR has been working on appeasing fans ire about drafting at restrictor plate racing.  The modifications they've tried came down to tandem drafting practices over the last few seasons.  Fans were split over this.  Some hated it and some liked it.  Then they restricted radio chatter between drivers.  (Which I hate and think makes it a safety hazard.)

At first I wasn't a fan of the tandem draft and all the rules that NASCAR was laying down to manage the deed.  But over the last few seasons of racing, I started finding the excitement of six to eight cars, lined up in three or four rows, busting it out to cross the finish line first.  And underneath it all, I had recognized that in these mulit-column mad dashes, the driver that was pushing the guy in front of him was willingly sacrificing his potential win to get that other guy his win.

And despite the the tandems, we've had some intensely close finishes in the restrictor plate races.

Now the new Gen-6 car is also supposed to address some restrictor plate issues and I believe one of the issues was to break up the tandem drafting after having "fixed" the pack drafts.   One of the deals I noticed was that during SpeedWeeks practice, cars had issues pushing other cars.  The bumpers no longer matched up between brands.  Ask Dale Earnhardt Jr. when he wrecked another car trying to push draft!  So once a few folks realized this, everyone is pretty hesitant/respectful of pushing.

As the teams learned that the noses of cars don't match up to back bumpers of some of the cars, this became a totally different game.  And in the Sprint Unlimited, I believe we saw the result of the Gen-6 car and the design efforts to modify the draft.

Normally, my blood pressure cranks up in the last few laps of any restrictor plate race as cars start to jockey for that best spot to be in for that final turn towards the finish line.  In Saturday night's race, there were a few attempts at jockeying for that spot, but nothing too major.  Then the pack came around the corner and it looked like the drivers were very respectful of the hazards of the push and jockeying and there wasn't much competition for Kevin Harvick's lead.

In fact, unlike most restrictor plate race finishes, they were spaced out crossing the line.  It was a seriously sedate run for the checkered flag.

Now whether this was a result of Harvick having a strong hold on the lead, or that the other cars were worried about what would come of any attempts at pushing past Harvick, I don't know yet.  We'll see what comes of the Duel qualifier races later this week.  I'm quietly worried this is what we'll see in the Duels and the 500.  But by the end of next Sunday, we'll know for sure what's up.

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Gotta love the quotes between Kevin Harvick and Richard Childress after he won the race but was stuck on the front stretch after taking the checkered flag:

Kevin:  "I broke it!"

Childress:  "I know, I don't care."

That was great to hear.  (In what would seem to be Fox's "eaves dropping" in-car microphones!)