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Not every race can be a classic. If they all were classics, then there would be no need for the word. Fans would jump out of their seats when the winner crossed the finish line and say, "That race was another one!"

Woo. Hoo.

Besides, there's a lot more to this racing gig than just close finishes, lead swaps and crashes. In NASCAR, fans have all sorts of stuff to follow. The Chase. Debris. Free passes. Wave-arounds. The pulse-pounding pathos of pit road.

Don't just go by what I write. Listen to the announcers. They put lots of effort into coming up with ways each race is exciting. They don't exaggerate. They use the fully accredited, universally accepted broadcasters' definition of a car length.

It is the length of a railroad car.

My father was prone to hyperbole. At least five times every day, Jimmy Dutton would call something "the funniest thing they ever was." He's been gone a long time now. He had a country way of talking that had been honed and polished from decades holding an auctioneer's microphone or convincing peach farmers to buy fertilizer. He traded horses, too, back when horses were traded. Once he sold an old gelding he bought from Eddie Blakely back to him. I held the reins while Daddy painted spots on his rump so he could convince Eddie it was now an Appaloosa.

I think we brought a pony and an ice chest full of Falstaff back home.

At the end of Sunday's Bank of America 500, I can imagine my father saying, "If that ain't the sorriest excuse for a race ever I seen, I'll pay for it."

The Colonel's words were not legally binding. I'm satisfied he'd have had no intention of paying for a NASCAR race, and when he paid his way into one, he preferred the cheap seats. I remember when he thought $25 for the back straight at Darlington was "highway robbery," which was something he purported to know all about. It was apparently quite common in these parts back before they got done with "the super highway."

Just imagine if there was no Chase. I've never liked it, not even back before it was a Mark Goodson-Bill Todman production. (See shows, game.)

I cannot comprehensively explain why races at Charlotte Motor Speedway went from being spectacles anticipated for months in advance to being the topics of debate and tests of long-term memory over when in hell was the last one that was any count.

I still like them. I play a game called "Who Could Lead?" A driver repeatedly solidifies his position at the front of the pack and then pulls away from all the others scuffling in his wake. I'm sure his car is fast, but is it fast for the obvious reason, or is it fast because it's in front?

Who could lead? Danica Patrick, for instance. She's presently 17th. If she somehow got "track position," would she pull away? Greg Biffle on two tires? John Wes Townley, if he had a Cup ride? Harry Gant, at age 75? Kimi Raikkonen?

Sam Hornish, out of sequence and looking for a caution, stayed out there for 22 laps Sunday.

I also try to rename the race. For instance, at Charlotte, I settled on the Stank of Hysteria 500. I didn't have time to ponder other options because I had to write something with quotes and stuff.

Some races are great. Darlington was great. Talladega and Martinsville are probably going to be great. Next year Charlotte might be great again. I hope NASCAR implements its low-downforce package at intermediate tracks that used to be great.

This morning a fellow wrote that, if they’d had low downforce at Charlotte, the race would have been a lot better.

But they didn’t, and it wasn’t.

Don't even bother to write, "Oh, yeah, well, did you like it better when one guy lapped the field?"

Yes. I did. You put these rules, these free passes and wave-arounds, these "everybody has to pit at the same time, when pit road is open" bells and whistles, and these "guess what would happen if the race ended now?" charts and graphs, in place in 1977, and no one would lap the field then, either.

With the rules of that era still in place, one guy would lap the field now.

That one guy would have been Joey Logano at Charlotte and Kevin Harvick at Dover.

Why can't we have two?