Brian France doesn’t back down from ‘quintessential NASCAR’ assessment
NASCAR Chairman Brian France stood by his comments regarding Joey Logano and Matt Kenseth’s incident at Kansas and the way the sanctioning body handled Kenseth’s retribution to Logano two weeks later.
After Kenseth went spinning from the lead off Logano’s bumper, France called the racing between the two “quintessential NASCAR,” a line that became a bit contentious in the events that followed. He used the q-word four times during the course of his media availability on Friday.
“I even go back to just last year in Texas, we had a perfectly, what I always call quintessential moments in NASCAR, where Jeff Gordon is, needs to win and in Texas at the time and Brad Keselowski makes an aggressive move,” France said. “A lot of people thought he shouldn’t have done it. He came splitting down the middle, lots of contact, Jeff Gordon gets the short end of that particular exchange, probably cost him a shot at the championship last year, that’s part of NASCAR.
Were we going to react to that? Of course not. We’re not going to react to anything that’s part of the traditional part of hard, aggressive racing. This is, there is going to be contact. I always expect that. I don’t expect people to turn people around. That’s not what we mean when we say contact. But sometimes it happens. … Lots of things can happen when there’s really hard racing and contact going on and NASCAR will officiate the way we have always done that. That’s why there’s been zero, I want to say that, zero drivers walk in and say, can you ask, can we talk about where the line is. They know exactly where the line is.”
Kenseth, who used “quintessential” as a hashtag on Twitter two weeks ago regarding the battle for the lead at Texas with Keselowski and Jimmie Johnson, met with France on Monday. Kenseth returned to the track Friday at Homestead.
France said he was “thrilled” with the Chase format, which is currently in its second year. Though it’s hard not to see his support for the Chase as a tacit admission that NASCAR executives were dissatisfied with the racing in the Cup Series before it was implemented in 2014.
“I was talking to Mike Helton the other day, I said this might be the best thing we could have ever done for the quality of racing that we have ever done,” France said. “And he said, I think you’re right. And we both kidded ourselves, because he and I both were the ones that were, believe it or not, against going forward with this format for a number of years. Advancing it to an elimination and winner take all scenario. But we got exactly what we want, which is great racing, obviously when you get great racing, you’re going to get great moments, we love great moments as anybody in sports does. But more importantly, the thrill of watching the teams elevate to do things, achieve things, and I see on pit road, it’s not just what the driver does, it’s they’re taking chances, their strategies, their preparation, and obviously the drivers are doing things.”
And while the Chase may not be changing in 2016, the rules for the Sprint Cup cars are. NASCAR is reducing downforce for all Cup cars in the hope of creating better racing.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
