The changes have arrived.

NASCAR's doing something to encourage the drivers to race in that event. Last year's Duels were boring as sh!t.
Yeah so let's take risks and tear up our best equipment, a car we worked on all off-season, 4 days before the biggest race of the year.

I'll be shocked if it makes any difference.
 
What about earning points in the duels? How is that justifiable?

Why NOT raise the stakes? Higher stakes means more on the line. More on the line means more risks will be taken to try to succeed. That translates directly into better racing for us to watch.
 
In truth Nascar hasn't been a sport for years. I am glad I have hockey, football.
They're all entertainment.

What many seem to be overlooking is that NASCAR and its affiliated tracks and teams are in the entertainment business. Their goal is to make money. Right now they think they'll make more money by making these changes than by operating under any previous models. If they thought they could make more money by broadcasting the same drivers playing video racing, they'd change the rules again quicker than the Wood Brothers can change 4 Goodyears and pack 'er full of Unocal racing fuel.

It's entertainment. If it stops entertaining you, switch to something else. In the last ten years, many have. I'll bet most people here have adopted new forms of amusement and abandoned others over the course of their lives. Just remember all of them, new and old, beloved or forgotten, are first and foremost about making money. This includes the drivers; if that wasn't their goal, they'd still be running safer, less demanding races around the local 1/4 mile only when they felt like it. That's why Gordon, Stewart, and Edwards are able to retire much younger than previous generations of drivers, who had to drive much longer to afford to retire or become owners. Everything else is secondary. Unless you're a stockholder, none of them owe anything to any of us here, in the stands, or in front of the tube.
 
Yeah so let's take risks and tear up our best equipment, a car we worked on all off-season, 4 days before the biggest race of the year.
You could make the same point regarding the current duels, at least as far as the front row goes. They have absolutely NOTHING to gain by competing, and yet every year they're out there pointlessly risking their cars and drivers.

Heck, you might as well ask why the Duels are run in the first place. The D500 is the only race that uses this qualifying format, forcing teams to risk their stuff in a way they don't have to for any other weekend.

Teams are going to tear up cars in the Duels whether they pay points or not. That's the nature of plate racing. If a team is really worried about it, they can still ride in the back and save their stuff for the main event.
 
NASCAR's doing something to encourage the drivers to race in that event. Last year's Duels were boring as sh!t.
Pretty much this

I am now looking forward to the duels this year, I think it just became "Must See Tv" , whoops, wrong network :laugh:
 
Show me how the changes have increased viewership and attendance.
I can't, anymore than you can show me HOW the changes have decreased them, or how you can show me not making them would have maintained the old numbers. There's no way to prove any position. No control group. No dual series, one with changes and one without. No statistical models. No way to isolate the affects of the rules changes from other factors. Trends, but no proof.
 
Exactly. That reason alone is why changing the points will not change the ontrack product.

Change the cars & we'll see some real sh!t.

I'm guilty of forgetting this in all the excitement of the day too, but let's not forget the lower downforce package is coming too. Lower downforce AND these segments increasing urgency on track is gonna be awesome.
 
I'm guilty of forgetting this in all the excitement of the day too, but let's not forget the lower downforce package is coming too. Lower downforce AND these segments increasing urgency on track is gonna be awesome.
:laugh::laugh::laugh: your welcome :cheers:
 
I think the changes are reasonable and makes the series more interesting. For one thing a driver can earn more points than the winner simple by racing up front all day. Should a late caution cause him to lose the race (as it usually does) he can still be a points winner by coming home 3rd. Also if you have a real bad race, you can earn extra points to get back to the top standings.
The next thing I like about this is that cars can't replace panels so they will be more careful about banging others about and it gets rid of the garbage that so drivers won't be dropping panels on the track and causing more cautions.

The number of laps of each of the first two segments will be the same in a race (and won't change if the caution comes out), and the end of the second stage will be approximately at the halfway point of the race. A race would be official after the second stage if it rains.
So it will be 1/4 of the race for each of the first two segments then the last segment will be 1/2 the race length. I also like that a driver can accumulate points and not get knocked out of the chase by just one bad race.

I think these changes will be great for the sport.:partytime
 
I think there is some good and some bad with the changes announced tonight. The good is that there is finally a reward for the regular season points leader, the bonus points now carry through the first three rounds of the cha...um....playoffs, and there's more incentive to run harder earlier in the race. The bad is that every race is now going to feel like the All-Star Race, an event I've never been fond of, and also, the points structure is incredibly confusing. I'm also not crazy about the fact that the race winner can come away with fewer points than drivers that finish behind them.
 
So after taking the night to think about this:
Likes:
  • Regular season points leader rewarded
  • Wins in the chase grant bonus points
  • Points carry over for most of the chase
  • If we have to have segments, rewarding the winners
  • More graduated points scale for the race result
Dislike:
  • Repair restrictions meaning going to garage ends the day (I thought we wanted drivers to be more aggressive not less)
  • Segments and lying about why they are necessary (it's about ads you idiots not "moments")
  • Points carryover awkwardly stops when we get to homestead (Seems like Brian France just couldn't give up his game 7 moment)
  • TV networks are just going to cram more ads down our throats even during the segments, meaning more ad time not less
  • The amount of bonus points being awarded is insanely high

BOLD Prediction: The regular season will feature better racing and drivers going for wins more, but during the playoffs "points racing" will become even more blatant than last year. Like I said before, it's nice to reward the regular season champ, but I feel like the amount of points reward is so high as to essentially give them byes all the way to homestead. Last year for instance, Harvick had a 42 point cushion over Brad K going into the chase. Had these new rules been implemented, he would have had roughly 37 bonus points for the entire chase, while brad would have had 36 and Kyle 33. That's an almost unassailable lead. I think Gluck said it best in this video . The teams without regular season wins (or even multiple wins) are gonna be forced to win or else get eliminated. There is simply no way to points race your way through (ala Ryan Newman 2014) now going up against that many bonus points. So the result will be those top 4 drivers on bonus points riding around staying out of trouble because they can and everyone else needing wins in the chase to advance.
 
Oh and I'll just put this on record now; I'm pretty pissed off that my favorite driver is a leading role in advancing and selling some of this BS. Maybe this really is for the better, but If this turns out to be a disaster that continues to sink the sport I will take my allegiance elsewhere, dare I say it, to Kyle Busch

Kyle Busch: Another rules change isn't what NASCAR needs

For now though you're still an a$s.
 
Oh and I'll just put this on record now; I'm pretty pissed off that my favorite driver is a leading role in advancing and selling some of this BS. Maybe this really is for the better, but If this turns out to be a disaster that continues to sink the sport I will take my allegiance elsewhere, dare I say it, to Kyle Busch

Kyle Busch: Another rules change isn't what NASCAR needs

For now though you're still an a$s.
There are a few good aspects in this latest round of changes, but the constant changes do get a little tiresome. This will be the 6th points/championship format in 15 seasons for Cup. I think NASCAR is sending the message that they don't really believe in their own product since they feel the need to constantly change it.
 
I'm guilty of forgetting this in all the excitement of the day too, but let's not forget the lower downforce package is coming too. Lower downforce AND these segments increasing urgency on track is gonna be awesome.
Maybe you missed last season. Lower downforce package with a tire thats hard as a rock doesnt mean fodder.

Give it ~10 races & it'll be gen 6 snooze city all over again.
 
Not sure what to think, to be fair I'm having trouble paying attention to the middle of races now so this change will bring my interest for awhile. However I think the santioning body really needs to find it's identity and calm on the changes every year, besides downforce/rules package tweaking from year to year maybe.
 
I like the format changes, I think we can say "all set" on that. Maybe some tweaks to the amount of bonus points, but that's really it. Now the powers that be need to focus on what will make the cars less aero dependent so they can race hard and stay consistently competivie in traffic. Perhaps now that they're done noodling all of the calculus that went into this poinrs system they can take a look at that.
 
Maybe you missed last season. Lower downforce package with a tire thats hard as a rock doesnt mean fodder.

Give it ~10 races & it'll be gen 6 snooze city all over again.

I agree. It won't change until they build a new car at this point. I don't care how small the spoiler is. They can keep putting lipstick on the pig all they want. The Gen 6 ****brick sucks.

NASCAR needs to start from scratch. Build something less that's less of a NASA space project and more of an actual freaking race car that the driver can get up on the wheel and race with.
 
I like it, going to take time and a calculator to figure out points, but I'll get used to it
Or you can do it the easy way like I have done it for years...Just click on to Nascar.com after the race and let them calculate the points for you.:)
 
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