The New Season

The new season is suddenly upon us. I hold out a small amount of hope that the series will be improved over recent years. But, it certainly has a long way to go.

Improvements:

1 – The attempt to standardize race start times to be, mostly, 1 PM in the east. West coast races and night races will, obviously, be different as will the 600 mile race in Charlotte. Texas has already been granted a move to 3 PM in the east. Even so, this is a good change as long as 1 PM doesn’t become 1:40 PM as the networks are prone to do.

2 – The wing will be replaced by a spoiler early in the year. The wing is ugly. It makes the cars look anything but “stock”. The drivers seem to feel that the cars will race better with a spoiler rather than the wing. Now, let’s hope they do something about the splitter.

3 – The restrictions on bump drafting at Daytona and Talladega have been lifted. This will make for better racing, but also for more accidents. Call this an improvement, but those tracks will continue to be overly dangerous until they modify the tracks so they can race without the restrictor plates.

4 – Some tracks, notably Richmond, are reducing their number of seats by making the existing seats wider. This is long overdue and needs to be considered by most other tracks. It’s hard to enjoy a race when packed in like sardines.

NASCAR is saying “see, we listen to the fans”. To some extent that is true. But, they take too long to make a change and need to address more of the fans complaints:

1 – Most fans want to scrap the Chase. The championship is a season long process. The ratings show no bump during the 10 race Chase. Scrap it.

2 – There are too many races. Fans cannot maintain interest at the required level for 36 races. This is probably the thing that NASCAR has done the most wrong, yet has the least chance of being corrected. It’s much like “killing the goose that laid the golden egg”. Any good entertainment leaves the fans wanting more, but not in this case.

3 – Much like there are too many races, there is over-saturation by the networks. Too many on-air personalities are spending too much time filling up pre-race shows with nothing but blather. Even during the race it is sometimes more fun to turn the sound off.

4 – Fans began to realize last year just how unfair the “lucky dog” and “wave around” rules are. Fans are becoming less inclined to have real competition replaced by artificial attempts to keep all the cars on the lead lap. If you lose a lap apparently you aren’t that good today.

2010 will be a year of better racing and more fan interest. The little things they’ve done are steps in the right direction. Increased fan interest will lead NASCAR to, once again, think everything is fine. But, there are still many more improvements to be made before the series will get back to where it was ten years ago.