Clint Bowyer spun out on “accident” last Saturday night at Richmond during the final regular season race on NASCAR’s calendar, and that “accident” is at the center of controversy heading into this weekend’s GEICO 400 at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Ill. Because Clint Bowyer spun out, the accident triggered a chain of events that resulted in his teammate at Michael Waltrip Racing, Martin Truex Jr., earning one of two wild card spots in NASCAR’s Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship.
Please don’t ask me to recount what happened after Clint Bowyer’s alleged spin out. I tried reading up on it, but I’m more confused now than I was before. Suffice it to say, Clint Bowyer may be in a whole heap of trouble for what he did.
And that begs the questions:
Will Clint Bowyer be penalized for what some television pundits think was no accident? Will Michael Waltrip Racing be penalized as well? And will NASCAR’s brass revoke Martin Truex Jr.’s ticket to the Chase, which begins Sunday with the first race of NASCAR’s playoff system, the GEICO 400 at Chicagoland Speedway in some far away Chicago suburb?
I don’t know.
But NASCAR wants people across the country and in the Chicago area to care about this race. So much so, that I guess one year the Bears-Packers game was moved from a Sunday to a Thursday to accommodate more fans at the track on race day.
But Speedway scheduling and the hopes of auto racing brass may not be so lucky this time around.
A quick check of the Chicago sports calendar for this coming weekend, Friday through Sunday, shows that many people in the Chicago area have way more options than watching Dale Earnhardt Jr., Joey Logano, Jimmie Johnson or the aforementioned Clint Bowyer driving around in circles.
So I took the liberty of making a list of what is going on this weekend. Call it your Yom Kippur Weekend Primer, because this weekend is also a high holy day for those of us who attempt to reaffirm our Jewish faith on a regular basis:
* Friday, Saturday and Sunday there are races at the Chicagoland Speedway. The Camping World Truck Series is Friday, Nationwide is Saturday and the Cup race is Sunday.
* But there’s also the BMW golf tournament in the northern Chicago suburbs those same three days.
* The White Sox are hosting Cleveland — also Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
* Saturday, while the Dollar General 300 is going on at the Chicagoland Speedway, Illinois is hosting Washington at Soldier Field at 5 p.m. And the BMW golf tournament will still be going on, and then Northwestern hosts Western Michigan at 8 p.m.
But wait…there’s more!
On Sunday, the same day as NASCAR’s premier event in the Chicago area, the event that the Chicagoland Speedway has been promoting the hell out of for over a year…the Chicago Bears are playing my Minnesota Vikings…at noon…AT SOLDIER FIELD.
The GEICO 400 starts at 1.
I think if I lived in Chicago I know where I’d rather be and what I’d rather be watching.
As I read somewhere on the Internet, “The NFL slaughters everything.”