One of the biggest complaints I hear from fans is that the races are too long. They also tell me that the beginning and end of the races are exciting, but the middles are boring. Now, that last statement rubs me the wrong way, because if you have ever driven a race car, you’d know there’s a lot going on all race long. Those guys are still doing their job and there’s a lot of action mere inches from them.
Let’s take a look at the NFL. The ratings are high and the interest is really high. Why would you sit and watch a game for three hours and not a race for the same amount of time? In a football game, the team with the ball is always trying to push forward. They are heading for another first down, or a field goal or the ultimate — a touchdown. Conversely, the defense is always trying to push back.
It dawned on me that while there is still plenty of action in the middle part of the race, maybe it’s not translating to the fans. So what could we do to beef up that action? NASCAR added double-file restarts and everybody raves about that. It’s one of the most exciting parts of the race.
Maybe we establish points throughout the race where the drivers and teams win money or bonus points or, heck, even both? Maybe at the 100-mile mark, the leader gets a points bonus. Back in my era, we also had halfway money. It was $10,000 to the leader of the race at halfway. Granted, nowadays that isn’t a lot, but back then it was and we’d plan our race strategy to go up there and get it.
It was a great example of a race within a race. I think that’s what we, as a sport, need to try to recapture. So let’s say you broke down a 400-mile race and gave either points, money or both at each 100-mile mark. I just think we should do whatever it would take to make you, as a driver, push hard to be the leader at that point in the race. I really would like to see NASCAR talk about, consider and implement things to create a race within a race.
I did want to take a minute and defend my era. It seems that everyone wants to tout how competitive the races are these days. One of the main things they hang their hat on is how many cars are on the lead lap at the end of the race. Well, let’s face facts: With the wave-around rule and the Lucky Dog rule, where you can get your laps back, the scenario exists where we could have every car on the lead lap at the end of one of today’s races.
We simply didn’t have any of those back in the day. Back then, if you wanted your lap back, you had to go up there and take it from the leader. You couldn’t wait on a caution to be the first car one lap down so you could have the Lucky Dog rule. You simply had to race to the front and pass that leader.
One of the other things I realize that is not popular to talk about is racing back to the yellow. The first thing people say about that is it’s unsafe and dangerous. I am hard-pressed to remember many instances where someone got hurt racing back to the yellow. All I know is that it made for excitement when you knew you had to be ahead of the leader when a caution came out to get your lap back.
A true quality pass happened at the flagstand. That start/finish line was God. It didn’t matter if you passed or were passed going down the backstretch, what mattered was who was the leader at the start/finish line. Again, if you wanted a lap back, you had to man up and go take it.
It created a race within the race. The freezing of the field and going to the scoring loops has eliminated that. It has taken away the excitement at that point of a race. Look at the race at Talladega Superspeedway a number of weeks ago. The wreck was behind them, but the field was automatically frozen and NASCAR had to go to the scoring loops to determine the winner.
But my point is, if they had to race back to the yellow, they wouldn’t have to worry about scoring loops and video tape. If you want another example, go back to the Daytona 500 a few years ago. If they had frozen the field, Mark Martin would be a Daytona 500 champion, but they let them race back to the caution and Kevin Harvick was your winner.
Again, it was a race within a race, and I truly think we need to bring that type of excitement back to our sport. It will keep the excitement up, which will keep the middle parts of the race more interesting. It’ll give these drivers something more to fight for. Again, it’s like my NFL example — pushing for that first down, that field goal or that touchdown. These are things I think we need to look at adding back into our races next year.
I am for anything that will get the fans and the drivers more jacked up in the middle part of the race. While excitement at the beginning and end of the race is great, we now need to focus on making the middle part of the event better. There are things NASCAR officials can do to address that and I sure hope they do.
