Freddie Kraft, the host of the Door Bumper Clear podcast and Bubba Wallace’s, spotter shared why he disagreed with newly appointed NASCAR CEO Steve O’Donnell declaring that the last two stages at Talladega during the Cup Series race on Sunday are “exactly what you would want in terms of superspeedway racing.”

During the latest episode of The Teardown, Steve O’Donnell said, “I think what we had the last two stages is exactly what you want in terms of superspeedway racing.”

During the Door Bumper Clear’s “Spot On. Spot Off.” segment, Kraft made it very clear he did not agree with O’Donnell saying he was, “Spot off.” He was then asked by Noah Gragson, “What is good super speedway racing? Like what is it?” Chase Briscoe answered, “Where you can go from 20th to the lead in 5-10 laps.”

Kraft then chimed in, “What super speedway [racing] hung its hat on was unpredictability. You were kind of in this position yesterday. If you’re rolling around with a clean race car at the end of a super speedway race before this car, you had a shot. You still felt like you had a shot. You restart wherever you were, probably 15th or so, I don’t think there’s any way in your mind like, ‘I’m getting ready to drive to the front here.’ You know that you’re kind of boxed in.”

Gragson added, “We knew that before the race started.”

Kraft continued, “You look at the way that last stage started. The top six guys all finished in the top six except for [Erik] Jones. Erik got knocked out of the way. He got turned down there. But other than that the top six was not going to change for the last 40 laps. The unpredictability was what made it. I could have told you the guys, the three or four guys were going to race for the win with 40 to go. That wasn’t going to change.”

When asked by Gragson if it was intense watching the race, Kraft replied, “I don’t know about the fans. I know. You guys know. Nothing’s going to happen.”

Later in the segment, he added, “I couldn’t disagree more with [O’Donnell] because I thought that was exactly what you don’t want to see in speedway racing is just two lanes. The thing I will say that I’m not sure about is if we had the full field out there maybe the third lane’s a little bit better, but I think it’s still very circumstantial about how much the guys at the front race other to whether or not that lane gets going. … I feel like we took a step back. At least at the end of those races there’s some strategy in the third stage, you got to fuel save to the stop. Yesterday it just looked like I could have told who was going to contend for the win with 40 to go. And I don’t think that’s what we want.”

As for what the solution is, he shared, “I think the fix has to be with the car more than the format. I don’t know what the answer is for that. Maybe we’ll ask Tommy [Baldwin] next time he shows up.”

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