Cool-Down Lap: Fewer wrecks, but don't knock the racing

Why is this year unlike any other year in NASCAR Sprint Cup racing? Statistically, it's an astounding anomaly. With rare exceptions, Cup drivers have simply stopped wrecking. In successive races at Texas, Kansas and Richmond, Cup drivers logged 1,001 consecutive laps without a caution for a racing accident. How is that possible? After races at Talladega and Darlington, where accidents are all but inevitable -- but where both races also produced extended green-flag runs -- the trend continued in Sunday night's Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. There were no cautions for multi-car collisions. Of the five cautions called during the race, four were for debris on the racetrack. Only one, for Travis Kvapil's contact with the Turn 4 wall on Lap 170, was labeled an accident. The race concluded in a record three hours, 51 minutes, 14 seconds at a race-record average speed of 155.687 mph. Inevitably, the question came up again after the race, the same question that has be...