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Let’s have some fun. Let’s say that somehow you are placed in charge of NASCAR. What are the first 5 things you would change to try to improve the sport? You can combine a couple of changes that are similar, if that helps.
1. Revamp the schedule
2. Revamp the points system.
With the Playoffs going away, I’d return NASCAR to a season-long championship format. Currently you need to be more of a rocket scientist than you did under the old Latford scoring system to understand the points with the stage racing. I’d go to a modified and expanded version of what series like CART and Formula 1 have used where only the top 20 finishers would score points. I’d also award 2 points to the driver leading the most laps (but no points for leading a lap) and 1 point to the driver who qualifies on the pole (if time trials are held, otherwise no points if they line up based on points). By not awarding points to those who finish outside of the top 20 (other than the bonus points they may have earned) it would discourage cars that are many laps down and unlikely to finish in the top 20 from coming back out of the garage area and potentially causing additional cautions. The points system I would implement would be as follows:
50-45-40-36-32
28-26-24-22-20
18-16-14-12-10
8-6-4-2-1
2 bonus points for leading the most laps, 1 bonus point for the pole (if time trials are held)
I did run 4 representative seasons to test out the general sorts of seasons you’ll be most likely to see under this format. I’ll put the summary findings in another post below.
3. Undo most of the entertainment gimmicks
Not every race is going to be memorable. The sooner the sport accepts that, the better off it will be. It heightens the fans’ appreciation of the dramatic finishes when they occur naturally instead of through officials artificially trying to create those moments every race. As such, stage racing, the Lucky Dog, and the wave around would all be gone.
4. Lower division identities
5. Technical innovations—new car design
I know that NASCAR is supposedly working on a new generation of car, so this is partially what I’d like to see with the next design. The first thing I would do is to hire a team of people who technically are more knowledgeable about the sport than I am and give them guidelines of what I’d like to see them incorporate into the design. The primary guidelines would be to make the cars look more stock than they do currently and to leave a fractional bit of room for air to go underneath the cars even while it’s on the track at speed, allowing a trailing car some air to use to suck up on the lead car and create more opportunities for passing. Obviously there will be a fine line to be walked on the air under the car, as we wouldn’t want the cars to be getting airborne if we could help it.
Once I’d hired the team to design the new car, I’d have a press conference to be open with the fans that we are working on designing a new car and explaining what the goals for the design would be and who will be heading up the team designing that car. There would also be a request to the fans for patience, explaining that we want to take the time to make sure the car is right instead of rushing it on to the track.
Allowing teams to be technically innovative is also something that would require a balancing act. Teams with more financing would obviously have more ability to innovate to try to get an edge on the competition. I wouldn’t want to stifle that, while also wanting to try to keep the playing field remotely fair for the smaller budget teams. I think what I would do (though I’d be open to suggestions on this point) would be to create a technical panel that teams could under the promise of anonymity (to a practical extent) from the other teams bring new things to us for approval before they’d use it on the car. The panel would be instructed to approve what they could, though maybe putting limits on how far a team could go with their innovation. The example that comes to mind is several years back when teams were shifting their rear ends over to try to get more air to the spoiler and NASCAR eventually put out a limit on how far teams could shift it over.
1. Revamp the schedule
- Get rid of the Playoffs. NASCAR is not a stick-and-ball sport, so trying to create those “Game 7” moments every season is foolish. Not even stick-and-ball sports have Game 7’s every season.
- Shorten and condense the schedule. NASCAR simply cannot compete with football in the fall, so it’s best not to try. Consequentially, the schedule needs to be both moved back forward and condensed so that it ends no later than Labor Day weekend. I’ll create a separate thread where you can play with schedules for the top 3 series to keep this thread to rule changes. One example I’ll give is getting rid of the Clash and moving the All-Star race to Speedweeks. The sample schedule I came up with has 30 races, but I’d be looking for ways to condense it down to about 28 races in the future so teams wouldn’t burn out.
2. Revamp the points system.
With the Playoffs going away, I’d return NASCAR to a season-long championship format. Currently you need to be more of a rocket scientist than you did under the old Latford scoring system to understand the points with the stage racing. I’d go to a modified and expanded version of what series like CART and Formula 1 have used where only the top 20 finishers would score points. I’d also award 2 points to the driver leading the most laps (but no points for leading a lap) and 1 point to the driver who qualifies on the pole (if time trials are held, otherwise no points if they line up based on points). By not awarding points to those who finish outside of the top 20 (other than the bonus points they may have earned) it would discourage cars that are many laps down and unlikely to finish in the top 20 from coming back out of the garage area and potentially causing additional cautions. The points system I would implement would be as follows:
50-45-40-36-32
28-26-24-22-20
18-16-14-12-10
8-6-4-2-1
2 bonus points for leading the most laps, 1 bonus point for the pole (if time trials are held)
I did run 4 representative seasons to test out the general sorts of seasons you’ll be most likely to see under this format. I’ll put the summary findings in another post below.
3. Undo most of the entertainment gimmicks
Not every race is going to be memorable. The sooner the sport accepts that, the better off it will be. It heightens the fans’ appreciation of the dramatic finishes when they occur naturally instead of through officials artificially trying to create those moments every race. As such, stage racing, the Lucky Dog, and the wave around would all be gone.
4. Lower division identities
- The Busch and Truck series both need to re-establish more of their own identities. Currently most weekends they’re a support race to the Cup race. While I understand the desire to get drivers who will be in Cup someday track time at tracks they’ll be running in the future, the Busch and Truck series both need to re-establish their own unique identities. Maybe try reaching out to the IRL and see if we can find an agreement to have the Trucks be a support race for an IRL race or two. Just having those series have more stand alone races would be good for their long-term future.
- Until Kevin Harvick ran an unplanned full-time double in 2001 following the death of Dale Earnhardt at the Daytona 500, most Cup drivers that dipped down into the Busch series would only run about a handful of races each season. The main exception was Mark Martin, who would still only run about half the races. While young drivers benefit from running against Cup drivers on an occasional basis, they would gain more benefit from simply getting seat time. It’s hard to develop if you’re not in the car. As such, I’d limit Cup drivers to no more than 5 combined starts in the Busch and Truck series. If those series reduced their schedules to closer to 20 or 22 races, I might consider limiting that further to 3 races.
5. Technical innovations—new car design
I know that NASCAR is supposedly working on a new generation of car, so this is partially what I’d like to see with the next design. The first thing I would do is to hire a team of people who technically are more knowledgeable about the sport than I am and give them guidelines of what I’d like to see them incorporate into the design. The primary guidelines would be to make the cars look more stock than they do currently and to leave a fractional bit of room for air to go underneath the cars even while it’s on the track at speed, allowing a trailing car some air to use to suck up on the lead car and create more opportunities for passing. Obviously there will be a fine line to be walked on the air under the car, as we wouldn’t want the cars to be getting airborne if we could help it.
Once I’d hired the team to design the new car, I’d have a press conference to be open with the fans that we are working on designing a new car and explaining what the goals for the design would be and who will be heading up the team designing that car. There would also be a request to the fans for patience, explaining that we want to take the time to make sure the car is right instead of rushing it on to the track.
Allowing teams to be technically innovative is also something that would require a balancing act. Teams with more financing would obviously have more ability to innovate to try to get an edge on the competition. I wouldn’t want to stifle that, while also wanting to try to keep the playing field remotely fair for the smaller budget teams. I think what I would do (though I’d be open to suggestions on this point) would be to create a technical panel that teams could under the promise of anonymity (to a practical extent) from the other teams bring new things to us for approval before they’d use it on the car. The panel would be instructed to approve what they could, though maybe putting limits on how far a team could go with their innovation. The example that comes to mind is several years back when teams were shifting their rear ends over to try to get more air to the spoiler and NASCAR eventually put out a limit on how far teams could shift it over.
