David Green: Only 'chokes' in racing are within the carburetors

EDITOR'S NOTE: There's apparently been a little confusion, which we hope to alleviate here and end when David Green's blog gets officially and actually up and running. This David Green, like the former Busch Series champion and current competitor, has raced some and hails from Kentucky. But this one is a schoolteacher. Both are wonderfully articulate gentlemen and both appear, for all practical purposes, to be absolutlely crazy about this sport you and I love, too.

Here's hoping you enjoy this take from the English teacher as much as we do offering it.

Only 'chokes' in racing are within the carburetors

By DAVID GREEN

A friend and colleague offered the thought the other day that the notion of "choking," long part of the culture in traditional sports, does not exist in auto racing.

Whether you buy into the notion or not, whether you pay anything more than scant attention to baseball, football, basketball or golf, surely you are aware of the derisive accusation of "choking" - a player misses a short putt, blows a wide-open layup, kicks a chip-shot field goal wide right, muffs a soft pop fly or lets a routine ground ball roll between his legs. Sometimes the label is hung on a team, not just an individual, and in a larger context than the single-play bobble (think Atlanta Braves in several World Series appearances in the 1990s).

My friend, I believe, has a point - the concept is all but nonexistent in racing.

Oh, the same things happen. Everybody makes mistakes. The consequences of errors by doctors, airline pilots, soldiers and others involved in life-and-death situations are profound, and sometimes it's a driver's error that may lead to his death or serious injury. Perhaps the elevated level of risk tends to insulate people who take those risks from being susceptible to charges of "choking."

The main factor that separates racing drivers from most other professional athletes is the continuity of most forms of motorsport. The action goes on, uninterrupted except by caution flags. There's never any other suspension of the normal flow of the "game" for the sort of isolated event or individual execution of a specific task that is usually associated with the notion of "choking." Therefore, there's almost never a situation in which a driver could "choke" in the classic sense.

Drag racing, thanks to its format, may offer the best chance for comparison to other sports in this discussion. If a driver with consistently good reaction times somehow fouls or loses because of an uncharacteristically slow start, he or she may be accused of "choking." In other forms of motorized competition, such all-important individual moments just don't occur with the same kind of visibility.

More often than not, an overtaking move in racing is not so much a spontaneous act as it is the culmination of a process the overtaking driver began as much as a full lap earlier, or even before that. I suspect many fans may not realize that. Sometimes, even a seasoned observer or somebody who has done (or tried to do) that sort of thing is surprised. Carl Edwards' race-winning pass of Jimmie Johnson at

Atlanta

earlier this year certainly caught me unawares. A few laps before the final one, Edwards was in about 15 degrees of yaw, seriously sideways, literally dirt-tracking at 190 mph. I thought he was done at that point, with no chance to make up the lost ground - especially with tires that surely were, just had to be, abused and overheated. But make up the ground he did, and when he did, he had the right momentum at just the right time and place to carry him past Johnson by a nose.

Did Johnson, then, "choke"? I don't think so. About the only thing he could've done would be to squeeze Edwards high until the challenger backed off or went in the wall. Refraining from doing that is hardly a "choke" in my opinion, although somebody with a more ruthless mindset might disagree.

Probably the closest thing to the classic sports "choke" in racing would be when a guy is pressing too hard to stay in the lead or to catch an opponent, overdrives the car and spins or puts it in the wall. Also, you might compare the idea of a missed shift on a restart or in a race on a road course, but sometimes that's a mechanical issue, not driver execution error.

In most other instances where a driver's misstep, indecision or hesitation might be comparable to another athlete's "choke," nobody but the driver himself realizes what has happened.