Fontana race recalls an earlier watershed event

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Did Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race remind you of something? Something that happened 34 years ago perhaps?

Two cars battling each other down the backstretch, racing side by side, banging doors over and over again and ultimately wrecking each other in Turn 3.

A third-place car flying past the wreck to steal the victory… A fight after the race…

That’s what happened in Sunday’s Auto Club 400 at Auto Club Speedway. Chafing from a bumping incident a week earlier at Bristol, Joey Logano was determined not to let Denny Hamlin win. Hamlin was equally determined to take the checkered flag.

They wrecked, making an unlikely winner of Kyle Busch. After the race, Tony Stewart tried to jump Logano for blocking on the final restart. Crew members separated the drivers.

Overnight TV ratings showed a 32-percent increase over last year’s rain-shortened race.

Sound familiar? Though Sunday’s race at Fontana wasn’t comparable in magnitude to the 1979 Daytona 500, the parallels are unmistakable.

In the first NASCAR 500-mile race televised live flag-to-flag, Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough battled side by side down the backstretch at Daytona, ultimately knocking each off the race track. Richard Petty, running a distant third as Yarborough and Allison went at it, celebrated a gift victory.

After the race, Bobby Allison came to the aid of his brother and brawled with Yarborough on the infield grass. The coverage brought NASCAR to a national audience and put the sport on the map.

Again, Sunday’s race at Fontana won’t have the same degree of impact that the 1979 Daytona 500 generated, but it does increase the likelihood of strong viewership two weeks hence, when the Cup series visits Martinsville, one of NASCAR racing’s top action tracks.

 

NASCAR Wire Service
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