Talladega Superspeedway hosted the seventh race in the Chase for the Sprint Cup on Sunday, but NASCAR officials through the drivers for a loop on Sunday morning at the drivers meeting.

NASCAR said they were not going to allow bump drafting through the corners and if they saw a driver that does it hey would make the car take a pass through penalty. Talladega racing has always consisted of bump drafting, especially on the straightaway. But NASCAR considered that the aggressive driving through the corners was making the restrictor plate racing too dangerous and creating too many wrecks.

Here is what NASCAR president Mike Helton told the drivers.

“We want to see sunshine between the cars; you will not be allowed to do that [bump draft] in the turns. That's from the green flag all the way through to the checkered flag. So even on the last lap, coming through 3 and 4, you're not going to be able to push a guy hooked up in a two-car tandem like we've seen progress through practice.”

What did this sudden change in the way drivers would have to drive at Talladega do for the racing?

Well, quite frankly it made the race boring for at least half of the race. Sure the drivers would race two and three wide like we are used to seeing at Talladega. The difference is that after a handful of laps the drivers would get content and drop into single file, too scared to push someone by other cars.

Even when cars were battling two and three wide no one wanted to lay a bumper on the car in front of them in the corners for fear of being penalized.

The worst part is that NASCAR never did hand out a bump drafting penalty all day long. I saw several instances of bump drafting in the corners, especially towards the end of the race.

To ruin a race by putting the thought in driver’s heads that they cannot bump draft in the corners and then never make the actual calls when it occurred was a joke.

What NASCAR was trying to avoid ended up happening twice in the closing laps of the race anyways. Two huge wrecks, one that sent Ryan Newman flipping and eventually stopping on his roof and another on the second to last lap where Mark Martin ended up flipping as well.

It wasn’t bump drafting in the corners that caused these wrecks, even though there was plenty of that happening in the closing laps. Drivers pushing too hard on the straightaway after sitting bored in their cars all day is what happened.

“I'm just really disappointed,” Newman said. “We had a race back here in the spring and complained about cars getting airborne and now, ironically, I'm the guy who gets upside-down, have the roll bars down on top of my helmet and stuck upside down. I wish NASCAR would do something.”

What NASCAR did was try to eliminate bump drafting in the corners to help create fewer wrecks. Newman was critical of this decision however.

“It's not even a good race for the fans -- that's the bottom line -- that's who we're trying to service is the fans,” Newman said. “They can stand up and cheer when there's three [laps] to go with a green-white-checkered [finish], but that's not racing. You're supposed to be racing all day long. And I think we've lost a little bit of that luster.”

“It's just a product of this racing and what NASCAR's put us in, in this box with these types of cars, with the yellow line, with no bump-drafting, no passing,” Newman added.

Brian Vickers might have summed it up best by saying, “If the intent was to prevent a crash, obviously it's not going to do that. We crash as much in the straightaway here as we do in the corner.”

Here is my quick take on this and what NASCAR should do. Maybe it is time to take the restrictor plates off. Let the cars go 220 mph and get spread out. The thing causing all these nasty crashes is the fact that they are inches apart at 190 mph.

Let them go 30 mph more and actually be able to pull away from cars like we would see on any other track, whether it be Pocono or Bristol.

The high speeds don’t seem to be what the issue is anymore with the improved safety of the cars, so it might be time to let the drivers have more control at Talladega and Daytona.

On a side note, congratulations to Jamie McMurray. He won the race on Sunday and I hope for his sake people remember that and not just the bad racing and nasty crashes at the end.

McMurray will be out at Roush-Fenway Racing at the end of 2009 and is still looking for a ride in 2010. This win should help him get one, as long as people remember it.