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Mrs.Nascar20
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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- NASCAR vice president Jim Hunter on Wednesday forecast a change coming soon to NASCAR that will rewrite one aspect of the sport's future.
Hunter said the primary method used to determine Jeff Gordon as the victor of Sunday's Aaron's 499, and the order for restarts throughout the race, was the electronic "scoring loops" placed at eighth-mile intervals around the 2.66-mile Talladega Superspeedway trioval.
The loops are placed at intervals around every track used for NASCAR's national touring events.
Hunter said the impact on the sport's future, which will also change the view of its past, will come when NASCAR makes lead changes that occur around the racetrack in the course of a lap, officially recognized.
Throughout NASCAR's 55-year history, only lead changes at the start/finish line have registered. Drivers are currently awarded five bonus points for leading a lap, and five more points for leading the most laps.
Hunter said the loop system showed there were 126 lead changes in Sunday's Aaron's 499, more than twice as many as the 54 changes recorded at the start/finish line by 23 different drivers.
"Eventually those are going to be official lead changes instead of having to come back around (to the finish line)," Hunter said. "Because everyone is saying 'nobody ever passes anyone' and whatever.
"We're going to be able to score the race and to be able to say, 'we had four lead changes on that lap.' At the end of the race, as was the case Sunday, we'll be able to say there were 126 lead changes on green flag laps."
Hunter, previously the PR director at Talladega, which holds the current NASCAR record for lead changes in a race via the 75 recorded at the 1984 Winston 500, said he once had assistants record the lead changes all the way around the track in a race of that era and came up with more than 140.
Hunter said that even though registering lead changes at one point versus doing it at four or more around a track is akin to comparing apples and oranges, that was not a concern or a reason to put an asterisk on any records.
"No. I think we're going to go straight to it," Hunter said. "Because it is what it is. We've just not had the technology to document it (and now we do)."
Hunter said the biggest issue with that change might be differentiating "lead changes" from "laps led," and thus what to do with the bonus point program.
"We haven't much touted the loop system because we've got enough other stuff on our plates," Hunter said. "We had someone use the loop data (after the Aaron's 499) and go back and reconstruct the race, but eventually we would have that available instantaneously."
He said NASCAR was committed to making the loop system work, rather than reverting back to the last scored lap at the start/finish line, which is a system almost universally employed in short track racing.
Tony Stewart, Johnny Sauter, Ricky Rudd, and Casey Mears go four-wide at Talladega. Credit: Autostock
The loop system is placed every eighth of a mile at the largest tracks, Talladega and Daytona International Speedway, and every quarter-mile everywhere else, Hunter said.
"We've considered that," Hunter said of reverting back. "And we just don't think that that's the right thing to do. As we get more experience with the scoring loops we're going to get better and better at it so that eventually it'll be black-and-white.
"We'll get there."
Hunter said the primary method used to determine Jeff Gordon as the victor of Sunday's Aaron's 499, and the order for restarts throughout the race, was the electronic "scoring loops" placed at eighth-mile intervals around the 2.66-mile Talladega Superspeedway trioval.
The loops are placed at intervals around every track used for NASCAR's national touring events.
Hunter said the impact on the sport's future, which will also change the view of its past, will come when NASCAR makes lead changes that occur around the racetrack in the course of a lap, officially recognized.
Throughout NASCAR's 55-year history, only lead changes at the start/finish line have registered. Drivers are currently awarded five bonus points for leading a lap, and five more points for leading the most laps.
Hunter said the loop system showed there were 126 lead changes in Sunday's Aaron's 499, more than twice as many as the 54 changes recorded at the start/finish line by 23 different drivers.
"Eventually those are going to be official lead changes instead of having to come back around (to the finish line)," Hunter said. "Because everyone is saying 'nobody ever passes anyone' and whatever.
"We're going to be able to score the race and to be able to say, 'we had four lead changes on that lap.' At the end of the race, as was the case Sunday, we'll be able to say there were 126 lead changes on green flag laps."
Hunter, previously the PR director at Talladega, which holds the current NASCAR record for lead changes in a race via the 75 recorded at the 1984 Winston 500, said he once had assistants record the lead changes all the way around the track in a race of that era and came up with more than 140.
Hunter said that even though registering lead changes at one point versus doing it at four or more around a track is akin to comparing apples and oranges, that was not a concern or a reason to put an asterisk on any records.
"No. I think we're going to go straight to it," Hunter said. "Because it is what it is. We've just not had the technology to document it (and now we do)."
Hunter said the biggest issue with that change might be differentiating "lead changes" from "laps led," and thus what to do with the bonus point program.
"We haven't much touted the loop system because we've got enough other stuff on our plates," Hunter said. "We had someone use the loop data (after the Aaron's 499) and go back and reconstruct the race, but eventually we would have that available instantaneously."
He said NASCAR was committed to making the loop system work, rather than reverting back to the last scored lap at the start/finish line, which is a system almost universally employed in short track racing.
Tony Stewart, Johnny Sauter, Ricky Rudd, and Casey Mears go four-wide at Talladega. Credit: Autostock
The loop system is placed every eighth of a mile at the largest tracks, Talladega and Daytona International Speedway, and every quarter-mile everywhere else, Hunter said.
"We've considered that," Hunter said of reverting back. "And we just don't think that that's the right thing to do. As we get more experience with the scoring loops we're going to get better and better at it so that eventually it'll be black-and-white.
"We'll get there."
