Drivers Should Unite Again On Talladega

I don’t know how many people noticed it, but I did. It took longer to find out whether Ryan Newman was still alive after his nightmarish crash than it did for ABC to run a graphic that tickets were still available for remaining races once the red flag was finally lifted. Did no one in the production booth question the timing of that? Or even worse, did someone think that right after millions of viewers and spectators finally exhaled seeing a driver walk away from a hideous wreck, that it was an opportune time to try to sell tickets? During the pre-race show, ABC showed Carl Edwards’s car going into the catch fence and injuring seven fans approximately a dozen times, in real time and in slow motion. We finally have a wreck more frightening than Elliott Sadler’s in 2003 for the highlight reel. You can probably bank on this, too: now that Newman is okay, his airborne crash will be shown in the promo for the next Talladega race. But of course they don’t want it to happen.