NASCAR Cup Series

2-OH BOY-10

Published Jan. 10, 2010 12:00 a.m. ET

Darrell Waltrip

Remember how I have been telling you how disappointed I was that following our meetings with NASCAR in Las Vegas back in early December, nothing much has changed? They had told us back then they had been listening to what the owners, drivers, teams, fans and even us in the media had been saying and were going to take a hard look at making some serious changes.

Here we are heading to the middle of January and we have yet to see any movement. But now it looks like business might be starting to pick up. I thought maybe they were saving it for next week’s Media Tour in Charlotte. Now I am hearing a lot of things are being discussed.

The first is that silly wing. I truly don’t like to keep beating up the car. It is a very safe car as we have seen, but golly it is ugly. It’s U-G-L-Y and really doesn’t have any alibi. It’s just plain ol' ugly. What adds insult to injury is that rear wing. It just doesn’t look like something that belongs on a stock car.

I tried to accept the wing. I first thought it was helping to keep the cars from spinning out, but then I realized it was big ol' flat side of the race car doing that and not the wing. When the cars started lifting off the ground at Talladega, that is when I realized the wing had to go. We don’t need a repeat of that in February during the Daytona 500.

We need to get a spoiler back on these cars and get away from a wing. I know you are sick of hearing it from me, but the new Nationwide car has all the fixes that are needed on the current Cup car. That new car doesn’t have a wing on it either. It has a spoiler. It might even make for a better situation for everyone because with a rear spoiler, you can balance the car better. It will help to get rid of some of that rear downforce and make the nose stick better. Just being able to work with the rear spoiler will make it possible to give these drivers a better driving race car.

My hope is that NASCAR doesn’t say they are going to do this in March or do this in June. They need to do this now. They need to get that wing off there now and let they guys get ready for Daytona. Those wings are also expensive and spoilers aren’t. So there would be another positive of making the switch: it will save the teams some money.

Make it simple

Now the other thing that needs to change pretty soon is the yellow line rule. When it was first implemented it was a great idea. The guys would be going down the backstretch at Daytona or Talladega and were letting themselves get three and four wide. By the time you got to the third turn, something had to give. So a guy on the very bottom would go in on the apron and then come up and body slam people out of the way. So as you can imagine, it was just too reckless.

So when we had the yellow line rule entering the first and third turns, that’s what it was intended to prevent. Then it grew from there. It expanded to no passing and bumping zones. Once again it was a case of taking something really simple and making it really complicated. Get rid of the yellow line except getting into the first and third turns. Paint a big yellow square at the end of the front and back straightaway where they get into the corners. When you get to that square, you have to be in line. Naturally you would have to back it up enough where guys have time to get in line.

Why does NASCAR want to dictate to the drivers how to drive? They are the sanctioning body. They aren’t drivers. They make and enforce the rules. Unfortunately, they got involved in this driver etiquette thing of how the drivers are supposed to act, when they are allowed to bump draft, when they can’t pass, when they can pass, when they can get mad at each other and on and on.

That’s when NASCAR went in the wrong direction and went into areas they had no business being. It’s disrupted the flow of the sport. Go back and make simple rules. What made this sport great was the old KISS theory — keep it simple, stupid. Keep it simple so that I can understand it. If I understand, then I can explain it to you folks at home.

But right now we have all these stupid rules that nobody understands that are enforced some of the times, but not enforced at other times. Let's get back to the basics. Let the drivers be drivers. They will take care of business and more importantly, they will take care of themselves. In the same breath, I fully agree that NASCAR has to keep control. You can’t let the lunatics run the asylum. You obviously can’t let it go from one extreme to the other.

The other thing that fans have said loud and clear is they don’t like the restrictor plate. Guess what? The Nationwide and Truck series don’t have restrictor plates. They have a tapered spacer. So why don’t we get rid of the restrictor plate in the Cup cars? I am sick and tired of hearing about it. It sure would seem in today’s technology that a tapered spacer would make more sense.

I am excited about the new things that are on the horizon. I surely don’t want to wait until after the season starts or later on this year to see them implemented. I want them to take place right now. We are on the verge of starting the 2010 season and I am thrilled that NASCAR is finally hearing what we all have been saying and going to do something about it. For the first time in a long time, that makes me very happy.