Jason Smith / Getty Images for NASCAR

After taking the lead in Lap 432, Kyle Busch held off Mark Martin on a series of restarts to win the Sharpie 500.

OPINION

By Jim Pedley

updated 12:49 p.m. ET Aug. 24, 2009

Saturday night’s Sharpie 500 was less than 10 laps from the finish when Mark Martin clicked the talk button on his radio and asked the very same question I find myself asking way too often during the late going of races at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Martin’s question, asked with complete exasperation evident in his 50-year-old voice, was, “Why do they have to crash?”

Indeed.

The restart after the crash which prompted the question made for a very exciting finish as second-place Martin dogged winner Kyle Busch to the checkered flag over the final four laps.

But still, the finish was less than satisfying. Kind of a letdown. It seemed so artificial and bereft of true drama. It was like somebody blurted out the ending to a good book you had been reading all day just as you were turning to the final page.

The crash with nine laps to go turned the Sharpie 500 into the Sharpie 4, a sprint car race — not that I don’t like sprint car races because I do (there is a lot to say about the action of quick-hit heat races leading up to an all-deciding mad dash). But even the best of O. Henry’s short stories can’t match the long-term satisfaction of going cover to cover with Fitzgerald.

Bristol was Readers Digest. CliffsNotes.

Me? I would rather have a great race than a great finish.

Martin’s question, of course, was more rhetorical than one of bewilderment.

The answer? He knew, you know.

The answer, my friends, is not blowing in the wind. It is rooted in the nature of putting 43 stock-car drivers on a .533-mile high-banked oval at a time of the year when morsels of bread become nuggets of gold.

With three races to go before the start of the Chase and 13 races before the end of the season, every driver on the track has something which is personally important to them at stake. Something that could hinge on being one place better in the final box score.

Those things on Saturday ranged from berths in the Chase to a new contract for next year to hopes of retaining a sponsor the year after.

Mix in things like ... the race-car-driving mindset of bringing home the trophy or the steering wheel, knowledge that they will not have to foot the bill for a destroyed race car, the fact that new race cars are stocked to the ceiling back at the shop, that serious injury has been all but eliminated in the sport, the fact that drivers have great insurance benefits and you get what you had at Bristol Saturday night.

You get good finishes but mediocre races.

Which, I suppose, is better than mediocre finishes and mediocre races. And definitely better than watching grown men in shorts kick a ball around a pasture all afternoon.

Jim Pedley is managing editor of Racin’ Today. Read more NASCAR news at racintoday.com.

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