NASCAR held two town meetings last week, the day after the Charlotte race. Actually they could have more easily done that right at the track during all those rain delays. These meetings had the immediate effect of addressing NASCAR’s number one problem. It was decided that Tony Eury Jr. had to go as Junior’s crew chief. Until “The Legacy” starts winning again, the sport is in deadly peril, and I’m glad that the governing body took this extraordinary step in the right direction. Said Mike Helton, “Yeah, we saw what Obama did in firing GM’s CEO, and we thought we’d seize the initiative as well and make some changes on Junior’s team.”
Other less important issues were discussed. Double file restarts with lap-down cars to the back might be worthwhile. But really, inside of a lap or two, it’s going to be right back to business as usual with the leader sprinting away. All this may do is change who the leader is going to be.
Of more lasting use, NASCAR said they’d look at finding ways to modify the COT to give it better handling. Wow, it only took three years for NASCAR to hear what all the drivers were saying about the car (even Kyle Busch, whose driving style is well suited to the COT).
I’ve maintained steadfastly that the COT has been hurting competition. Good, contested races are the exception rather than the norm far too often. On some level, the networks may like boring racing. It allows them to go to commercial more often. Exciting races are harder to cut away from.
I understand NASCAR’s original thinking. They wanted to put the car’s handling more in the driver’s hands. With everyone essentially driving the same car (at least aero-wise), driver skill would be the differentiating factor. Great in theory.
In practice, putting all the drivers in nervous handling cars meant that they couldn’t push the envelope in performance without seriously risking a wreck. Thus, spread-out, single-file racing with plenty of wide berths for passing. Only the race leader would feel somewhat safe in opening up the throttle. Fiddling with the car’s ability to stick to the track, but leaving the engine the same, could only result in the drivers slowing down and concentrating on driving and not racing.
This issue isn’t unique to NASCAR. The IRL lessened the downforce on their cars for safety and competition reasons. Again, it was supposed to put driver skill, rather than aero technology, at a premium. The results have been the same. You can read about it here:
http://www.mynameisirl.com/2009/05/overtaking-talk-is-taking-over.html
Racing was once something of a test bed for automotive innovation. Now, it’s just marketing and ever more stringent governing rules to keep the competition between the top teams close. This is especially true in NASCAR, where their vehicles may actually have less relation to road cars than even open-wheel race cars do.
It’s a balancing act between safety vs. spectacle, technology vs. human skill, technology vs. cost, competition vs. the rules, and so on. Go too far in any direction and you’ll lose your audience. For example, fans like wrecks, but don’t want to watch a bloodsport, so there has to be plenty of safety precautions. NASCAR has made its choices, but the tweaking will forever continue.
There was an issue that wasn’t mentioned at the meetings, but I’ll go ahead and make a prediction about it. Given the dramatic fall in ratings and attendance for the first third of the season, look for things to get worse during the Chase. That’s not my prediction, because that’s going to happen (unless Junior goes on an unprecedented winning streak). Next year, look for a new Chase format. There will be big changes in the points structure and/or the Chase qualifications. Whatever. NASCAR’s contract with ABC/ESPN mandates some sort of “playoff,” but the network will agree to anything to help ratings.
I hate to bother making suggestions on this, because it’s pointless, but here goes. I’d like to see at least a much bigger point spread between first and second and between tenth and eleventh. Better still, only award championship points to the top ten finishers of each race. The networks mostly only cover the top ten cars during a race anyway (except for Junior). They may as well make it official that everyone else is irreverent. Yeah, I know that they say that the fans want NASCAR to stop screwing with championship rules. Wrong. The fans want them fixed.
The original points system rewarded consistency, which encouraged “points” racing and not necessarily winning racing. The original Chase rewarded the top ten most consistent racers during the season, and then whoever was most consistent during the Chase. Then it was the top 12. Then the regular season race winners got bonus points for the Chase. Most consistent and most victorious are titles that may not apply to same driver at the end of the season. Right now, Tony Stewart is in first place from running a heck of a consistent season, but all the drivers with wins are below him in the standings. NASCAR needs to make up its mind what they want drivers to focus on.
In my opinion, if a driver wins by consistency over drivers with more wins, people always bring that up. If it were the driver with the most wins who won the championship, nobody would care who scored the most top 10’s during the season.
I honestly expect NASCAR will start making some changes for the better. Next season’s action should be improved over what has occurred so far this year. If not, NASCAR will flounder and eventually fall out the hands of the France family. Even then, I am confident that the series will eventually come under the stewardship of someone who will make the necessary changes.
J.
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