There were nights this season when IndyCar veteran Ed Carpenter would hop in his trailer following another ho-hum race, flip on the replay and fight to stay awake.
"It was hard for me to watch," Carpenter said. "There were races where we just didn't put on a good show. It's hard for them to even make it entertaining."
Taking a second look at Saturday night's Kentucky 300 could be just as difficult for Carpenter to sit through, but for an entirely different reason.
Ryan Briscoe nipped Carpenter by 0.162 seconds at the finish line to dash Carpenter's hopes of picking up his first career victory in a race IndyCar officials hope will quiet critics who complain the open-wheel series has gotten too boring.
For a night anyway, the series delivered the kind of thrills that have been lacking this year.
The closest finish in the 10-year history of the race offered proof that the handful of changes IndyCar implemented last week to create a more competitive environment worked.
Briscoe and Carpenter spent the last 10 laps running side-by-side, and the top nine cars were separated by less than two seconds in a race that featured 20 lead changes and produced the second-fastest race in series history.
"The old IRL is back," said Tony Kanaan, who finished third a week after suffering burns to his face in a cockpit fire at Edmonton.
The drivers gave much of the credit to IndyCar president of competition and operations Brian Barnhart, who approved a series of aerodynamic and engine modifications last week that allowed teams a little more wiggle room with how they set their cars up.
"It was kind of what we expected and hoped for," Barnhart said. "Certainly what we saw tonight was very good."
The most noticeable change came in the form of the "Push to Pass" button, a feature that allowed drivers to get a series of 12-second horsepower boosts throughout the race. Briscoe and Carpenter saved some of their 20-boost allotment for the final miles, with Briscoe hitting the button halfway through the last lap, a move that seemed to give him just enough momentum to slip by Carpenter.
"I was just hitting that button," Briscoe said. "I knew I could keep using it every lap until the finish. So I knew it was going to be closer."
Carpenter, looking for his first win in 94 career starts, kept mashing the button like an enthusiastic video game player. He didn't even bother waiting through the 10-second blackout following each boost, instead hitting the button constantly while trying to keep Briscoe at bay.
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