the over hyping of nascar

Comment

Comment by B-Dawg on July 8, 2008 at 7:52pm

Richard Petty said one time years ago that probably the ideal length for a NASCAR race would be 250-300 miles, or that number of laps on a short track like Martinsville or Bristol. That would keep races exciting instead of having time for a two-hour nap till it's time for the durn thing to end. IndyCar races are the right length for the most part.
As for the points system NASCAR came up with it to encourage teams to run the full schedule. Back then a lot of teams would just run the superspeedways and skip the short tracks which made up more than half of the schedule. In '72 they cut out most of the short track races, went from a 48-race schedule to roughly 30 and it took a few years to get a points system that would work. I don't see much wrong with the one they have now, I'd just give the winner more points (at least 200 instead of 190) and get rid of the Chase. If somebody wins the championship by 400 points, dadgummit they earned it.
Nuff about that, let's move on...

Comment by joey kowailw on July 7, 2008 at 12:38pm

i think thats the thing. you look at the biggest sport in america. the nfl there are 16 games that mean something, then 4 games that will decide whether your gonna be champion or not. were as in nascar with the points system does it really matter who won the lastest 500 miles boreathon at dover. indycar has something the races last 2 hours (with some exceptions). i geniuely given 7-10 years nascar will be looking at indy car with envy. long races don't need to be every week do they? even jr said that could cut at least 200 miles off most races and would that affect nascar? the chase well that's just a result of a shit points system.

Comment by B-Dawg on July 7, 2008 at 11:10am

To me, NASCAR has gone as far as it can go. They got on top in the past decade and to keep things interesting (or MAKE things interesting) they've come up with gimmicks like the "Chase", "lucky dog" free pass and other stuff to add "drama" late in a race or late in the season. In the old days you had a few premiere NASCAR races -- the Daytona 500, World 600, Firecracker 400 and Southern 500. Now the treat EVERY race like it's the biggest thing that ever happened. And the Busch series (Nationwide, whatever) is basically a clone of the Cup series, with the same drivers winning in both series. So they have completely saturated the market with over 70 races a year (between the two divisions), and I think people are beginning to get bored with it. Nothing on the track even remotely looks "stock" and if all the cars were in primer without car numbers on 'em you'd have a hard time telling a Chevrolet from a Ford, Dodge or Toyota.
The only way they have to go is down, and I think they've started heading that way...