New rules from NASCAR prohibiting aggressive driving resulted in a race with little excitement at Talladega. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

NASCAR, with its new car, tells drivers what to drive. At Talladega and Daytona it restricts how fast they drive and when and where they’re allowed to pass. Now it’s telling them how carefully to drive.

It’s about to regulate the life out of the sport.

I realize that NASCAR is concerned about safety. But driving race cars is not safe. It never has been and it never will be, not entirely. Especially on monster tracks like Talladega.

Look what happened last Sunday: even with NASCAR’s no-bumping edict, Ryan Newman still took one of the wildest tumbles in history, followed by a predictable pileup near the end.

The no-bump rule didn’t make the racing any safer. It just made it more boring.

NASCAR is searching for a creature that doesn’t exist: a Completely Safe Race.

It’s made great strides by cushioning the walls, mandating better cockpit restraints and making the cars virtually invincible – witness Carl Edwards' Talladega tumble in the spring and Newman’s cartwheels last Sunday, both escaping without a scratch.

At Talladega NASCAR has further slowed the cars and raised the catch-fence. That’s about all it can do. It’s about all it SHOULD do. It’s time to stop the tampering.

Drop the starting flag and get the heck out of the way.

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or Speed Channel

Larry Woody is a veteran, award-winning sports journalist. Woody began working at the Nashville Tennessean in the 1960s and took over the auto racing beat full time in the early 1970s.


Larry can be reached at lwoody@racintoday.com