Best ‘Boring’ Race You’ll Ever See

What if they had a race and nobody could win it because everybody was winning it?

A race in which there were a record 73 lead changes that had the fans on their feet, screaming.

A race that was led, for at least a lap, by 19 of the 26 racers who drove it.

A race in which there was a lead change every lap during a 13-lap span at midrace.

A race in which cars racing three and four abreast, at more than 200 mph, was commonplace.

A race that finally was won--by a driver who didn’t know he’d won it--by 7/1000ths of a second.

How would such a race be described?

By those who saw it? Fantastic!

By those who drove it?

Well, proving once again that things are not always what they seem, two drivers--the winner and the third-place guy--said they found Sunday’s Marlboro 500 at California Speedway kind of, ahem, boring .

Actually, as it turned out, the race was the Marlboro 440, thanks to early-morning rain and approaching late-afternoon darkness that made for a tardy start and a premature finish.

And actually as well, the drivers in question, Brazilian Cristiano da Matta, the winner, and Canadian Alex Tagliani, the third finisher, weren’t so much bored by the race as with the way they had to conduct it.

In any 500-mile race on a superspeedway, fuel economy goes down as speeds go up. And drivers leading the race are using more fuel, breaking the air barrier, than those behind, getting a free tow in the leader’s slipstream.

So, at the behest of their nervous pit crews, drivers have to drive in a manner that goes against their nature, in the interest of stretching fuel.

Explained Da Matta after he had pocketed the $1-million winner’s prize, “My team was screaming at me [over the two-way radio], ‘Drop back! Drop back! Save fuel!’ so much that I finally had to tell them to shut up. I knew I was getting the same mileage as [the others in the lead pack].

“You know you’ve got a good car and you know you can run 220 mph and you know you can lead but your crew is screaming at you and you have to drop back to what everybody’s running so you can draft and save fuel. That’s pretty boring, when you could be leading the race.”

Right, said Tagliani, who managed to be bored in an attentive sort of way.

“When you’re running two or three wide, you need to be confident in everyone that’s around you. You also hope that nobody is going to lose an engine in front of you or that nobody is going to pick up a big understeer and touch wheels with you.

“But it’s a long race and just boring sometimes. I just kept lifting [off the throttle] and lifting and was only in fifth gear on the straightaway. So it was a question of saving fuel.... “

If Da Matta and Tagliani--and perhaps other drivers as well--suffered through moments of boredom, they also joined the fans in moments of high excitement.

Said Tagliani, “I was watching the guys ahead of me and thinking, ‘They’re all [messed] up in the head.’ They’re running three wide and, if I wanted to, I couldn’t get my hand between their tires. And the corners get pretty tight when you’re going through three wide.

“You’ve got six guys in front of you who are totally crazy--but you’re crazy too.”

And Da Matta: “We were racing all together all the time. I’ve been all over the world and I think that’s the kind of racing that the fans like to see.”

It is indeed, and even though it ended, with the yellow flag flying, four laps earlier than even the darkness-induced bobtailed finish that had been announced only a few laps earlier, anyone who hadn’t seen enough by then must be a glutton for excitement.

Even as Da Matta pushed the nose of his car scant inches ahead of the nose of second-place Max Papis’ car, just as that final yellow flag was being unfurled for a crash by Scott Dixon, everybody once again was up and screaming.

It was just that, at the time, as Papis said, “Nobody knew it was the last lap.”