Month: October 2008

Chase This – NASCAR couldn’t have done a better job of keeping Kyle Busch from winning the championship if they’d tried. A driver who would still be in the hunt under the old system is now pretty much out of the race. The new system came about because people complained that the driver with the most wins wasn’t winning championships. Guess that’s gonna happen again this year. Will those same people complain now? I doubt it. This chase format has so many problems it’s not funny.

TV Coverage – ESPN shows how much respect it has for the Nationwide Series by broadcasting it on ESPN Classic, a network that maybe three people in the country get. I understand that it’s going to be simulcast on the Speed channel; yeah, that’ll help. NASCAR should specify in the TV contracts what networks the races should be shown on.

Qualifying Rain-outs – There have been more qualifying sessions rained out this year than in any other year going back to the last 50’s. Why is it that NASCAR couldn’t postpone qualifying a day? Or even have same day qualifying? Go to a one-day show format. The teams that aren’t in the top 35 deserve a shot at the race. And don’t get me started about having 35 provisional starting spots… seems like a few years ago, everyone complained about seven provisionals.

Time’s Up – Somewhere around here, I still have a hat I got from the Dodge announcement at Talladega in 2000 that they were coming back into the Cup Series. The front of the hat said “It’s Time”. Now that it looks like GM is going to gobble up Dodge, it’s unclear what will happen to those consumer brands. As to what GM will do with the Dodge brand on the race track? I think we can look at GM’s past to figure that out. How long has it been since you saw a Pontiac, Oldsmobile, or Buick on the race track? GM still sells those brands (at least I think they do), but they pretty much made everyone not in a Chevy have to make the choice of going to a new body style. It’s not good to give folks those kinds of choices; sometimes they go with a competitor.

Petty Politics – What’s the deal over at the Petty’s? Kyle doesn’t seem to know, and isn’t he the president or something? Maybe that was before they got those other investors, since he doesn’t seem to know from week to week if he’ll be driving the car. Face it: the Petty operation hasn’t been up to competitive levels in decades. That includes the cars and  Kyle. Bobby Hamilton was a breath of fresh air for that organization, and they managed to get a couple of wins with him as the driver. I think they’ve had one or two wins since him, but they’ve pretty much been a back marker for a long time. And now there’s talk about a Petty merger with DEI. This definitely ain’t your father’s NASCAR.

Was that race at Talladega something else or what?

I’ve always maintained that the restrictor plate races are some of the best races around, and today’s race was no exception.

Generally the talk of “the big one” is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Carl Edwards’ bonehead move tore up a lot of cars; he was right to be sorry during his interview. They talk about the “big one” as if it’s a foregone conclusion, and therefore they drive that way. Edwards had been a back marker all day, and when he did decide to get up front, his mind wasn’t right.

While NASCAR’s yellow-line rule may or may not be a good idea, at least they enforced it (finally) today. Tony Stewart was passed on the last lap by Regan Smith when Smith went below the yellow line. NASCAR gave Smith a post-race penalty of going to the tail end of the lead lap. One has to wonder if NASCAR would have done the same if the roles had been reversed, with Stewart making the last lap pass under the yellow line…

What seems odd to me though is that NASCAR seemingly violated its policy of “whoever crosses the finish line first is the winner”. Had Smith been on the outside of Stewart and won, but then had been found to have an illegal part, he’d still be listed as the “winner” but have points taken away. Smith got a 76 point penalty for his illegal pass, and probably lost close to $100,000. So now NASCAR has established a precedent for changing the winner of the race because the apparent winner violated a rule. Whether they’ll continue to do that remains to be seen (somehow I doubt it).

One thing that NASCAR needs to change is this stupid “chase” system. No other professional sport that I know of allows the championship to be affected by teams that aren’t in the playoffs. I think it’s a crime that Kyle Busch is 11th in the points now. At least under the old system he’d be in 3rd, only 82 points out. Under this chase format, he’s in 11th, 331 points out, and pretty much out of contention to win the championship. I thought the reason behind the chase format was to reward the drivers who won races during the season. The driver with the most races won is now the one getting the shaft.

At the very least, NASCAR should award points separately for the chase drivers. That is, award 1-12th place points for those in the chase, and don’t include non-chase drivers. While that’s not a perfect solution, it would at least mitigate the effect of the non-chase drivers.

You can bet your sweet bippy that if Dale Earnhardt, Sr. were still alive, and went from 1st place in the championship one week to 12th place the next week, NASCAR would have made some changes; the fan outcry would have been huge. Actually, I think that if this had been any other driver than Kyle Busch, there might have been a fan outcry (say if it was Junior or Gordon).

The chase concept is interesting, but there are still too many problems with it that NASCAR needs to address.