NASCAR hits a pothole

They held the Daytona 500 yesterday, and rush hour on the Schuylkill Expressway broke out.

The “grandaddy of them all” when it comes to racin’ was plagued by something drivers in the Delaware Valley can certainly relate to – potholes.

The NASCAR set had to halt the premier race two different times to fix a pothole that popped up between turns 1 and 2.

It’s one thing to swerve around the mix of potholes that we deal with every day on our commute. It’s something else altogether to try it while tooling around a track at 137 mph. Maybe they should have had all the drivers talking on hand-held cell phones. Now there’s a challenge we could all related to.

The race had to be halted twice as officials tried to patch the pesky pothole. They fixed it once only to find out something drivers around here know all too well – potholes have a mind of their own. The crater re-erupted and the race had to be halted again. All told the race was delayed 2 hours, 24 minutes. Probably not exactly what the folks at Fox had in mind for the big TV kickoff to the NASCAR season.

There’s nothing quite as riveting on TV as a pothole delay. It’s right up there with a malfunction in the torch-lighting celebration at the opening of the Olympics.

Look, I’m not a NASCAR fan. But I admit that I tune in to check out parts of the Daytona 500. It’s the Super Bowl of racing. The final two laps where Jamie McMurray outdueled Dale Earnhardt Jr. for the win were actually very entertaining.

But I’m guessing that’s not what people are talking about today in racing circles. They’re talking about the black eye they suffered on what is supposed to be one of the premier days on their calendar.

Kind of like playing a deciding World Series game in a driving rain storm. Oh, they’ve done that? Maybe NASCAR is more like most other sports than we realized.

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