Jamie Mcmurray managed to win a Daytona 500 permanently scared by what will go down as The Pothole Problem. The Daytona 500 was stopped for 2 hours and 23 minutes so that track workers could conduct the mundane and (one would think) already accomplished work of covering potholes.
If one stops to consider how important it is to have a safe track, then the only explanation for why a race like the Daytona 500 was allowed to go on, even with such a problem, has to be budget cuts running up against sponsor expectations. In other words, "We paid for this TV time, so you'd better start this race, period." So they did.
But the pothole problem was too great to ignore and the race was stopped while it was addressed. While observers felt the pothole "wasn't a big issue" at the end of the race, that it happened is a problem. Dale Earnhardt told the USA Today he's called for a resurfacing in the past. But to date, nothing has happened.
With a year to prepare the Daytona 500 track, this is an awful development. But even worse is that no one can explain how conditions were allowed to deteriorate to this level.
Stay tuned.
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