“The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading…” and I need to unload my pick for the most disappointing race.
Welcome back to this special edition of The White Zone. Today, I conclude my countdown of the most disappointing races of the 2015 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season.
As a reminder, this was not a collaborative effort among the Speedway Media staff. This is entirely my opinion. Also, this is not – I repeat, not – a list of the worst races of the season. This is a list of the most disappointing. The definition of which is “failing to meet expectations.” In other words, there may or may not have been a race or two on this list that I considered good, but they left a bad taste in my mouth when it ended.
Monday, I gave the number five spot to the Pure Michigan 400 at Michigan International Speedway. Tuesday, I gave the number four spot to the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Wednesday, I gave the number three spot to the Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond International Raceway. Yesterday, I gave the number two spot to the Bank of America 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Without further ado, let’s restart this race with two laps to go.
Dishonorable mentions
Before I reveal the biggest letdown of the 2015 season, there are a few races that deserve a dishonorable mention:
- CampingWorld.com 500 at Talladega at Talladega Superspeedway (that’s not redundant):
- I’ll bet some of you wanted to see this race at number one. While it did leave a bad taste in my mouth, I wasn’t surprised by the ending after NASCAR decided to change from three attempts to a single green-white-checker attempt. If this were a top-10 list, this probably would have made the cut.
- Federated Auto Parts 400 at Richmond International Raceway:
- It was a lousy race, but I didn’t expect to see a good race at Richmond this time around.
- Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway:
- Compared to past races at the Brickyard, this year’s race was okay. It wasn’t great, just okay.
- And despite my expectations for Texas being zero for a number of years now, the Duck Commander 500 and the AAA Texas 500.
#1 GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway
Taking the checkered flag in this countdown is the GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway.
You want to talk about a letdown, the ending of this race just left the absolute most bitter taste in my mouth. For those last 30 laps, the field just rode the high line in a single-file train with little to no swapping of position. In a race that had so much three, four and even five-wide racing for over 75 percent of the 188 laps, it left me just aghast that the tempo went from go for the win to hold your position.
I commend Tony Stewart for trying to get a line of cars on the bottom so that they could work their way to the front, but it died out when he made it near the top-10 and he had to jump back to the top.
It wasn’t until the field was in Turn 3 coming to the white flag when Denny Hamlin finally broke out of line and made a charge toward Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Unfortunately, they waited too long and couldn’t drive by the driver of the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet.
I’m not saying it was a bad race. That’s far, far from the truth. I thought, overall, it was one of the best races of the season. I even included it at 10th-place on my countdown of the top-10 best races of the 2015 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season. It was a great race and had the potential of being race of the year, but the fact that everybody went from side-by-side-by-side racing to a single-file line train destroyed any hope of it being one of the great Talladega races.
So while it was a great race in the context of the 2015 season, the GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway is without a doubt the biggest disappointment of the 2015 season.
That’s all for this countdown. What’s your take on my list? Leave your thoughts below.
