Parity in the Cup Series.....

2 Sweet

2 Sweet

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This isn't an argument about the racing of today vs yesterday, or anything like that. Lord knows it's been discussed here at length, numerous times. This also isn't about one or two (or three) guys winning all the races. Hear me out.....

The sport has evolved, and some things just can't be undone. Of course the best teams (usually the deepest pockets) with the best people and best equipment consistently run the best, as they should. I like to see the best drivers and teams being rewarded with victories. But over the years, the gap between the front and back of the field has reached a new extreme. In the 90's and 00's, you could hit on a setup and have a good run no matter what team you drove for. That was great! There were a lot of surprises, and who doesn't love rooting for the underdog every now and then?

You used to frequently see a midpack team bring a good car to the track and compete for a win. There was actually hope for the bottom feeders. Even in the years when Gordon or whoever was winning 30% of the races, you had your Bobby Hamiltons and John Andrettis of the field that could still manage an occasional win. The final results from race to race would vary quite a bit. There was a different guy every weekend 19th or 25th or 32nd in the points that could manage a top 5 or 10 run.

In 1995 for example, the driver who finished 30th in points (Kyle Petty) had a win and 5 top 10's. Ward Burton won a race in the Bill Davis 22 car a few months after he got fired from Al Dillard's 31 team. This was the same 22 car that had failed to qualify for a couple races earlier in the year with Randy Lajoie behind the wheel. You'll never see anything like that nowadays. Just looking at the first five races that year and you had guys like Steve Grissom, Derrike Cope, Dick Trickle, Lake Speed, or Todd Bodine finishing in the top 10.
Nowadays, there are rarely any surprises in the top 10 and it's always the same guys bringing up the rear of the field. The "have nots" are now completely incapable of being competitive whatsoever; they can rarely even sniff a top 20 unless it's at a plate track. Jeffrey Earnhardt, Derrike Cope, Reed Sorensen, Timmy Hill, Josh Wise, etc. are all guaranteed to finish at the end of the field almost every week.

There used to be much more parity in qualifying too. Almost anyone in the field was capable of qualifying up front on any given Sunday. Click on any year you want before the COT era and look at the various pole winners. Hell, just look at the starting lineup from any race back then and look at how much it varied from race to race. In 1995, guys like Ted Musgrave, John Andretti, Hut Stricklin, and Rick Mast sat on the pole. That's parity we don't see today. Look at some of the pole winners in 2001 for example.....Jimmy Spencer, Casey Atwood, Jason Leffler, Kenny Wallace, Ricky Craven, Jeff Green, hell even Stacy freakin Compton had two poles.

Here's a good example of parity, look at Loudon, 1999.....

http://racing-reference.info/race/1999_Dura_Lube_Kmart_300/W

Joe Nemechek won the race (30th in points) in the Sabco 42 car, Rick Mast finished 9th (32nd in points) in the Yarborough 98 car, and Hut Stricklin (43rd in points) finished 16th in the 58 car owned by Scott Barbour. That is the modern day equivalent of David Ragan winning, Matt Dibenedetto finishing 9th, and Cody Ware finishing 16th.....all in the same race.

And that kind of stuff happened pretty frequently; it wasn't just this one race. Gordon and Martin and Wallace and Dale and those guys won a lot because they were the best drivers in the best cars, and that's how it should be. But there was so much more parity across the board and so much more opportunity for the "have nots" to compete. If you don't believe me, look it up, pick any random race from 1994ish to 2003ish and see for yourself. The results from first to last were wayyyy more of a mixed bag week in and week out, which I believe was healthy for the sport.

Is this a problem? Depends on who you ask. If there's a "fix" for it, I'm certainly not smart enough to even know where to start. Hell, this may not even matter to most of you; a lot of you might only care about the stars of the sport running up front, and that's fine. I just figured it would be an interesting topic for discussion and hopefully I'll never bring it up again, LOL.
 
TexasRaceLady said:
See these threads ----
https://racing-forums.com/threads/tired-of-seeing-the-same-3-cars-capable-of-winning-on-speed.64515/

https://racing-forums.com/threads/is-hendrick-motorsports-no-longer-a-super-team.64511/page-4

Lots of discussion about parity in both.
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Oh, I have seen them. This isn't about Hendrick Motorsports or the "Big 3" winning all the races. I would like to have this discussion in it's own thread so we don't get too far off topic in the others, and this will hopefully help counter that in the future too.
 
@2 Sweet, I don't dispute your premise, as I haven't done the math... But I think it is a mistake to focus on the bottom of the barrel. Yesterday, we had somebody on here claiming to "prove" Nascar is in the dumpster because Ray Black drove the Rick Ware #51 in the Firecracker 400. WTF does Rick Ware have to do with whether Nascar is in a dumpster? Nothing, IMO. BTW, Black ran 16th at Daytona, and I'll bet he was happy with that.

I think it would be more interesting and more meaningful to compare the top five in the standings versus those who are 6th to 10th versus those who are 11th to 15th. Maybe 16th to 20th, but no further, IMO. Those top 20 is where parity or absence of parity has some meaning.

As for why...it seems obvious to me that Nascar Cup racing has become more sophisticated as the decades have rolled by. There is more science and more engineering now, and that costs a lot but you gotta have it to run up front. There are enough teams that have it to cap the potential of the teams that don't have it. Just my opinion.
 
Costs have continued to escalate while sponsor dollars have only declined. Guys who finished in the 30s in points used to be sponsored by Sprint, Cingular, Georgia-Pacific. Even the elite teams today would dream of having full-time sponsors like that, yet they continue to spend out the wazoo. Now the guys towards the bottom have obscure sponsors probably giving what amounts to pocket change to the elite, you can imagine what the spending gap is like. Software, hardware, knowledge in general has gotten better at such an exponential rate that it will be difficult to truly tackle the cost crisis this sport still has yet to really acknowledge, but it needs to be done at some point. The factories (not so much in Chevy's case) now are also so involved again yet behind such a select few cars, which also only exacerbates the issue. Maybe the best thing that can happen is for things to get bad enough in a financial sense that the big teams feel the crunch for real and we can get some actual change, because this sport does not get near enough exposure to warrant the arms race it has on its hands now.

Plate lotteries aside, Cup has as many different winners (four) as F1 has this season - in almost twice as many races. That is a very tough sell in a country where sports fans are used to leagues that are much more socialist in nature.

I am not at all in favor of more race-altering yellows, restrictor plates everywhere, strapping a coffee table on the back to generate a bunch of drag, but we are certainly at a point where the results are more predictable than they've been in quite some time.
 
FLRacingFan said:
Plate lotteries aside, Cup has as many different winners (four) as F1 has this season - in almost twice as many races. That is a very tough sell in a country where sports fans are used to leagues that are much more socialist in nature.
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I understand the point conceptually. Generally speaking, the deeper the field is, the better. I don't think it has been established on a convincing empirical level that this is a primary cause driving viewership declines. Those numbers have been trending steadily downward for many, many years in ways that don't track with decreasing parity. Nearly all races this year and last were declining at similar rates before this "Big 3" trend established itself in the public consciousness.

My belief is that domination by a few star performers isn't inherently bad for a sport, racing or otherwise. There are many more examples where dominant athletes and teams create more interest and attention, not less. Unfortunately, one problem may be that the three or four drivers currently dominating the series lack 'star power'. I don't know why Truex and what FRR has done as a smaller team aren't more appreciated, but they're not, and the wider world doesn't care about his ADVERSITY. It is rather obvious why Busch and Harvick are polarizing figures with as many detractors as supporters, and I don't mean in a love to hate him sort of way. If Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, and one of the recently departed established popular veterans were winning all of the races instead, it might be a different story.
 
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gnomesayin said:
I understand the point conceptually. Generally speaking, the deeper the field is, the better. I don't think it has been established on a convincing empirical level that this is a primary cause driving viewership declines. Those numbers have been trending steadily downward for many, many years in ways that don't track with decreasing parity. Nearly all races this year and last were declining at similar rates before this "Big 3" trend established itself in the public consciousness.

My belief is that domination by a few star performers isn't inherently bad for a sport, racing or otherwise. There are many more examples where dominant athletes and teams create more interest and attention, not less. Unfortunately, one problem may be that the three or four drivers currently dominating the series lack 'star power'. I don't know why Truex and what FRR has done as a smaller team aren't more appreciated, but they're not, and the wider world doesn't care about his ADVERSITY. It is rather obvious why Busch and Harvick are polarizing figures with as many detractors as supporters. If Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, and one of the recently departed established popular veterans were winning all of the races instead, it might be a different story.
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This parity stuff probably sounds ridiculous coming from me, since I'm a lifelong Gordon/HMS fan, but I thought it was really cool to see my driver win, but also see a midpack driver have a good run in the same race. For example, it was awesome watching Hut Stricklin nearly beat Gordon in the Southern 500. Even though the stars were dominating as a whole, you never really knew what to expect. If an average driver/team can occasionally come out of nowhere to compete with the big timers, it's really cool to see. "Any Given Sunday".
 
gnomesayin said:
I'm not into unpredictability just for the sake of it though.
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Yeah, Hut Stricklin winning the Southern 500 sounds like a wasted Southern 500 to me. If someone like that is gonna snag a fluke win, I'd prefer that it not be at that race.

Last year, the Cup series had 15 different winners, and 26 drivers scored top-5's, with 33 getting top-10's. And 25 drivers scored top-10's at least four times.

This year the (lack of) dispersion of race wins is atypical, but in the first half of the season... 7 different winners, 23 have scored top-5's, and 30 have top-10's. Those who claim to know the results before the race even starts are being a bit loose with the facts at hand.

2 Sweet said:
Here's a good example of parity, look at Loudon, 1999.....
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I'm not sure how you chose that particular race to represent the "greater parity era," but from the link you posted, that 300 mile race had 11 crashes involving 29 cars. Yikes.
 
2 Sweet said:
There used to be much more parity in qualifying too. Almost anyone in the field was capable of qualifying up front on any given Sunday.
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I'm going to tackle just this one point. The new qualifying format is more forgiving of errors and more rewarding of consistency than the old format.

With the old format of two laps and done (effectively one lap and done at some larger tracks), a single slip by a top-tier driver penalized him. On the other side, if a lesser driver could bust off one lap from nowhere, that lap would result in a top 10 start.

With the new format, the top-tier driver's mistake doesn't penalize him as much in the first couple of rounds. If a lousy lap has him down in the 30s, he can go out again and try to not make the same mistake. If a mediocre lap has him in the upper teens, he can stand on it and try to improve in the next round.

A lower-tier driver may crank out a lap that has him in the top 10 at the end of the first round. If that lap was due to driving over his head, multiple attempts that wore the tires out, or just plain luck, the second round will likely result in him starting in the 20s. If the team really hit the set-up that week or the driver is very comfortable at that track, he'll carry on through the second and third rounds to a starting position better than they're used to.

The new format also takes out some of the randomness of the weather conditions, particularly cloud cover. Under the old format, drivers were stuck with the conditions in effect at the time of their randomly selected spot in the order. Now crew chiefs have some flexibility to choose their run times, and drivers are more likely to make their runs under similar conditions.

LewTheShoe said:
I'm not sure how you chose that particular race to represent the "greater parity era," but from the link you posted, that 300 mile race had 11 crashes involving 29 cars. Yikes.
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One big difference between then and the last two years is the 'Crash Clock'. 'Back in the day' teams could repair their cars, limp out at minimum speed, and hope to improve their position when other cars had problems. The clock reduces a team's opportunity to get back out there.

It also reduces rolling chicanes and debris cautions but I'm not looking at the pros and cons of it in this post, just its effect on finishing positions relative to the old unrestricted repair rules.
 
The reason there's no parity in qualify anymore is because NASCAR couldn't leave something be and had to turn it into a circus. Everybody draw and make one qualifying lap and call it a day? And the fastest lap gets the pole?! Hogwash!! Let's have three rounds where we can't change tires so the different guys that have good laps in rounds 1 or 2 get blown away by Truex Harvick or Busch in the final round! Oh yeah, and a guy can set a track record and qualify 8th overall, cuz that makes sense.
 
gnomesayin said:
I understand the point conceptually. Generally speaking, the deeper the field is, the better. I don't think it has been established on a convincing empirical level that this is a primary cause driving viewership declines. Those numbers have been trending steadily downward for many, many years in ways that don't track with decreasing parity. Nearly all races this year and last were declining at similar rates before this "Big 3" trend established itself in the public consciousness.

My belief is that domination by a few star performers isn't inherently bad for a sport, racing or otherwise. There are many more examples where dominant athletes and teams create more interest and attention, not less. Unfortunately, one problem may be that the three or four drivers currently dominating the series lack 'star power'. I don't know why Truex and what FRR has done as a smaller team aren't more appreciated, but they're not, and the wider world doesn't care about his ADVERSITY. It is rather obvious why Busch and Harvick are polarizing figures with as many detractors as supporters, and I don't mean in a love to hate him sort of way. If Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, and one of the recently departed established popular veterans were winning all of the races instead, it might be a different story.
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I'm not sure it can work for NASCAR going forward that it can for other sports. I think with Gordon, Earnhardt, Stewart, and Johnson retiring or soon to retire, the days of the mainstream NASCAR superstar is gone. No disrespect to them, but I think it's a fairy tale to believe an Elliott or Blaney can build a brand big enough to draw that level of attention once they're winning. And the franchises and markets that are doing well in other sports do just as much, if not more, to drive interest than individual players in many respects. In a lot of ways, the market is what makes the superstar as well. That doesn't apply to NASCAR. The Spurs were one of the more dominant teams the NBA had seen for a while, but they usually flopped in ratings when they made their runs. The same roster playing under the name of the Kansas City Chiefs won't play as well in the media as if they were the Dallas Cowboys. Trying to turn an Elliott into a Gordon will be as successful as chasing ghosts, and I think it's unfair that ISC lays the blame at the feet of winless young drivers.

It is also interesting to note that after five straight years of declining ratings from 2006-2010, that the one overall season increase in ratings NASCAR has seen in 13 years was 2011 - immediately after Jimmie won his last title for a few years and a year in which there was more unpredictability and more new winners than we've seen in a long time.
 
Revman said:
Well, the stupid tool designed to maintain parity has been foiled apparently.

http://www.espn.com/jayski/cup/2018...trying-confuse-nascar-laser-inspection-system
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This article is proof that the cars are so aero-dependant that fractions of an inch matter and create an advantage. The more aero-dependant a car is the less mechanical grip it has. Lower funded teams don't spend money on aero, they buy old cars from the big teams in hopes that they can get as much mechanical grip out of the car as possible.

This is why there is such disparity between the teams these days. To combat this aero advantage back in the day, teams would trade bumpers and rough the car up. Similar to roughing up a stick and ball player that is having a great game, just to get him out of a rhythm.

There is less parity in the rules today (stages and high downforce cars) so we should expect less parity in the results and standings.
 
So, IMHO times have changed and engineering is such a mainstake in NASCAR now its not even funny. To the naked eye of a casual fan that doesn't watch NASCAR much, a stock car may not seem advanced, but its quite the engineering feat. The use of fluid dynamics, thermodynamics and such is probably something unheard of in the 80s', 90s, and many be even into the early 00s'. Listening to Chad Kanus, Greg Ives, and other engineers turned crew chiefs is quite the listen. Very intelligent individuals, but could you imagine such technology used some years ago? I mean, I'm not the smartest or have the slightest ideas when wind tunnels became more prevalent

Also, as mentioned costs are astronomical these days and teams are spending more money, but sponsors are so much harder to find these days, too. Its rare to see sponsors back a team for an entire season considering some sponsors were spending of to damn near 30+ million a year. That's a nice chunk of money, especially considering g the fact of the bigger names in the sport of the Harvick's, Johnson, Ku. and Ky. Busch, Keselowski, etc. Remember, Velvetta was shelling out $150k per race for Newman a couple of years back and Hulu for Jeffery Earnhardt was shelling out about $20 to 30k per race for TMG. That's a huge difference and to think this is the difference between a car that's in the top 10 a lot compared to a backmarker.

Back then, you could do more with a whole lot less. Now in days, if you fall behind and cannot spend the money... You'll just be another backmarker team. Even in a case of Red Bull that won races, but due to impatience with the money found out NASCAR isn't just some plug, spend, and win deal.

NASCAR is one hard ****** sport to thrive in.
 
LewTheShoe said:
This year the (lack of) dispersion of race wins is atypical...Those who claim to know the results before the race even starts are being a bit loose with the facts at hand.
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I think this is what most people mean when they say they can pretty reliably predict how the race will go each weekend. The concentration of wins and Top 5s among the "Big 3" is almost unprecedented. Harvick already has as many Top 5s as he did last year and in his title year. Kyle Busch has one less Top 5 than his entire 2017 total. Over his stretch of five straight titles, Jimmie averaged 16.2 Top 5s/year. The Big 3 already have 14, 13, and 13.

How deep the field is compared to ten, fifteen, twenty years ago is more along the lines of what @2 Sweet started the thread on but probably not what the first thing people mean when they refer to predictability right now.
 
The size of the team is another factor. The size of NASCAR teams have evolved from a small group of people to a very large group of people. I think a significant change occurred when multi-car teams started. The cost of running a second car was reduced when the shop could support more than one car. Teams scaled their operations to support more cars and sell parts to competitors. Multi car teams helped drive parity by making the cars the same. (I am concerned how team tactics on the track can affect a race).

One interesting thing about NASCAR and parity it the open garage. It is hard to hide some developments. If a team shows up with something new, teams notice. Plus there is probably a transfer of tech when team members move between teams (something that didn’t happen as much when small teams were the norm).

Big teams don’t stay on top forever as proved by Petty, Hendricks and other teams.
 
DaBiff1618 said:
The reason there's no parity in qualify anymore is because NASCAR couldn't leave something be and had to turn it into a circus. Everybody draw and make one qualifying lap and call it a day? And the fastest lap gets the pole?! Hogwash!! Let's have three rounds where we can't change tires so the different guys that have good laps in rounds 1 or 2 get blown away by Truex Harvick or Busch in the final round! Oh yeah, and a guy can set a track record and qualify 8th overall, cuz that makes sense.
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Is parity in qualifying desirable? If it is, a random draw would be most effective.

The goal of both Q formats isn't parity, it's rewarding performance. They choose different ways to measure it, but parity was never the goal.
 
FLRacingFan said:
I think with Gordon, Earnhardt, Stewart, and Johnson retiring or soon to retire, the days of the mainstream NASCAR superstar is gone. No disrespect to them, but I think it's a fairy tale to believe an Elliott or Blaney can build a brand big enough to draw that level of attention once they're winning.
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Those superstars all built their brands and name recognition with the general public back before the bubble burst. Elliott, Blaney, et. al, won't achieve those levels of popularity outside the sport simply because there are fewer people and media outlets paying attention.
 
It's because the young drivers were placed into NASCAR too quickly. These drivers are not ready to compete yet. We know why they are there
let's not kid ourselves.
 
So far all is printed is what they don't want.
Kiante said:
So, IMHO times have changed and engineering is such a mainstake in NASCAR now its not even funny. To the naked eye of a casual fan that doesn't watch NASCAR much, a stock car may not seem advanced, but its quite the engineering feat. The use of fluid dynamics, thermodynamics and such is probably something unheard of in the 80s', 90s, and many be even into the early 00s'.
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I mentioned fluid dynamics years ago when I was new here and you would have thought I was an alien just released for area 51 from the replies I got. They really had a problem when I said air is a fluid. Plenty of knowledge and much truth about the state of the state of Nascar in these posts. To Nascar's credit they have been aware of the problems for a long time and probably many more than we know of when it comes to team relations and outside pressure from the big money players in the sport. Fans want close racing. On the other hand, manufacturers and sponsors want their car to win by at least a half a lap or more. What has been forgotten and the reason it is all here is because of the fans. That has been lost and pushed aside because of the big money influences. They have put the cart before the horse and although they say they listen to the fans, they continue to cram down the fan's throats as many commercials as a person can stand, a terribly flawed playoff system that has proven to be a bomb, and listen to the owners instead of the fans about what kind of racing they want to see on the track.
 
Money buys speed and there is not much NASCAR can do about that. Applying parity through rules to keep the playing field level is important to me.
 
StandOnIt said:
although they say they listen to the fans, they continue to cram down the fan's throats as many commercials as a person can stand,
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I'll quibble with this one point. It's the networks cramming the commercials, not NASCAR itself.

Yes, NASCAR could have accepted less, or the networks could have bid less. Either would have resulted in the networks having to sell fewer ads to pay NASCAR. I suspect the networks have analysts to figure out the sweet spot between how much it costs to get rights, how much ad revenue the programming will generate, and how many ads the viewers will tolerate. Everybody complains about the ads but they'll remain until the viewers start turning out in droves.

Oh, wait. You can certainly blame NASCAR for the ads for NASCAR itself. They have an ad in every other 5-ad block, if not every block. Dropping those would certainly result in more race time.
 
Charlie Spencer said:
I'll quibble with this one point. It's the networks cramming the commercials, not NASCAR itself.

Yes, NASCAR could have accepted less, or the networks could have bid less. Either would have resulted in the networks having to sell fewer ads to pay NASCAR. I suspect the networks have analysts to figure out the sweet spot between how much it costs to get rights, how much ad revenue the programming will generate, and how many ads the viewers will tolerate. Everybody complains about the ads but they'll remain until the viewers start turning out in droves.

Oh, wait. You can certainly blame NASCAR for the ads for NASCAR itself. They have an ad in every other 5-ad block, if not every block. Dropping those would certainly result in more race time.
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Why would you quibble, you don't think the Networks who provide most of the income to Nascar have no say about the racing? While we miss time after time passes for the lead, cautions when they happen because a third of the race is commercials? You think the fans want that? you don't think the stage breaks instead of the cautions or for the heck of it?
 
StandOnIt said:
Why would you quibble, you don't think the Networks who provide most of the income to Nascar have no say about the racing? While we miss time after time passes for the lead, cautions when they happen because a third of the race is commercials?
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I'm sure the networks have some say in the racing.

Even if you cut the commercials in half, some passes and accidents will still happen while ads are running. Truck and IMSA race broadcasts have fewer commercials and yet somehow good stuff still happens while they're at breaks. Short of going to pay-per-view or scripting the races, you tell me how to schedule commercials so every pass for the lead and caution-causing incident is shown live. Better yet, tell the networks; your method will have applications for plenty of other broadcasts.
 
Charlie Spencer said:
I'm sure the networks have some say in the racing.

Even if you cut the commercials in half, some passes and accidents will still happen while ads are running. Short of going to pay-per-view or scripting the races, you tell me how to schedule commercials so every pass for the lead and caution-causing incident is shown live.
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all your doing is splitting hairs. The main topic I posted is that Nascar has been putting business and money first and the fans needs and want's a distant second. IMO the fans were there first and then money fell out of the sky. Nascar sold themselves to the manufacturers, sponsors, and lost all control of the media.
 
What is ironic is that the only commercials I see for NASCAR is covering up the races during the races. I haven't seen anything even during the numerous cars shows I watch. Street outlaws, or Fired up Garage, or Gas Monkey shows.
 
To be honest I've only watched like 2 or 3 NASCAR races this year. Can't stand the amount of commercials they show. Even with a DVR it's a chore having to constantly skip the commercials. I'm hooked on Formula 1 and their commercial-free broadcasts. Feels like heaven.
 
Marcingak said:
To be honest I've only watched like 2 or 3 NASCAR races this year. Can't stand the amount of commercials they show. Even with a DVR it's a chore having to constantly skip the commercials. I'm hooked on Formula 1 and their commercial-free broadcasts. Feels like heaven.
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I wish F1 had more commercials. Then maybe somebody would pass for the lead. :p
 
Charlie Spencer said:
I'm going to tackle just this one point. The new qualifying format is more forgiving of errors and more rewarding of consistency than the old format.

With the old format of two laps and done (effectively one lap and done at some larger tracks), a single slip by a top-tier driver penalized him. On the other side, if a lesser driver could bust off one lap from nowhere, that lap would result in a top 10 start.

With the new format, the top-tier driver's mistake doesn't penalize him as much in the first couple of rounds. If a lousy lap has him down in the 30s, he can go out again and try to not make the same mistake. If a mediocre lap has him in the upper teens, he can stand on it and try to improve in the next round.

A lower-tier driver may crank out a lap that has him in the top 10 at the end of the first round. If that lap was due to driving over his head, multiple attempts that wore the tires out, or just plain luck, the second round will likely result in him starting in the 20s. If the team really hit the set-up that week or the driver is very comfortable at that track, he'll carry on through the second and third rounds to a starting position better than they're used to.

The new format also takes out some of the randomness of the weather conditions, particularly cloud cover. Under the old format, drivers were stuck with the conditions in effect at the time of their randomly selected spot in the order. Now crew chiefs have some flexibility to choose their run times, and drivers are more likely to make their runs under similar conditions.


One big difference between then and the last two years is the 'Crash Clock'. 'Back in the day' teams could repair their cars, limp out at minimum speed, and hope to improve their position when other cars had problems. The clock reduces a team's opportunity to get back out there.

It also reduces rolling chicanes and debris cautions but I'm not looking at the pros and cons of it in this post, just its effect on finishing positions relative to the old unrestricted repair rules.
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I used to look forward to qualifying. I’d get a beverage and my headset and get in my seat early in the morning. Now I don’t care if I’m in my seat be the time they throw the green flag.
I do like the flyover, though.
 
Charlie Spencer said:
I'm sure the networks have some say in the racing.

Even if you cut the commercials in half, some passes and accidents will still happen while ads are running. Truck and IMSA race broadcasts have fewer commerials and yet somehow good stuff still happens while they're at breaks. Short of going to pay-per-view or scripting the races, you tell me how to schedule commercials so every pass for the lead and caution-causing incident is shown live. Better yet, tell the networks; your method will have applications for plenty of other broadcasts.
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All other sports have scheduled time outs for commerccials. If you ever go to a live hockey
game and have the game on your phone you will see it. Also in most sports, if you check the time left, after the commercial the time is the same. In Nascar, they go to commercial and there can be 3-5 laps missing.
For this reason, I think after each stage , there should be a 3-5 minute red flag. :biggrin::biggrin:
 
NASCAR Apologist said:
There's a ton of parody in NASCAR. Almost too much to keep track of.
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Ain't that a fact!
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