NASCAR Cup Series

NASCAR changes not perfect, but a good start

Published Jan. 27, 2011 12:00 a.m. ET

Darrell Waltrip

Well the long-anticipated press conference by NASCAR is over. The long-rumored changes in the sport are now fact.

There weren't really any surprises in the announcement the other night.

Starting this year, all three of NASCAR's major touring series will feature a new points system. The winner of the race will receive 43 points, second place gets 42 and so on down to the last-place finisher, who gets 1 point. I really like the fact they are doing that.

The old system has been in place since 1975, so it was clearly time for a change. This new system is easier to understand and, quite honestly, easier to explain to the fans. You no longer need a calculator to figure out the points. You can do it in your head. The bonus points for winning, leading the most laps and leading a lap are still there. The only difference now is they are smaller.

Folks already have used the 2010 season and applied the new 2011 points system. Jimmie Johnson still would have been the champ. Kevin Harvick would have finished second overall for the year but would have lost to Jimmie by one point. Harvick was third in 2010. Second-place finisher Denny Hamlin would have been third, and he would have lost the championship by only two points.

That makes the Chase and the championship even tighter. There's not a thing wrong with that. I like it. Now, more then ever, if a driver has a bad day or gets wrecked out early, it's not as disastrous as before. It keeps things tighter and keeps guys still in it longer. That's going to create more excitement among the teams, as well as the fans.

I was disappointed with some of the things I wished they had done. You get only three bonus points for a win. I still maintain the focus should be on winning and the winner should get a bigger bonus.

The point fund is another area I felt should have been realigned. The point fund is huge. I maintain they should take money out of the point fund and put it back in the purse. They need to spread some of that money back over the purses for all 43 competitors. I think they need to put some big-purse numbers up there for these guys to race for. Like we see in the All-Star race at Charlotte Motor Speedway every May, you put a million dollars to win, well you are guaranteed to see some action.

We've blown the championship up to where it overshadows everything we do. Drivers worry more about being consistent than going for the wins. They did a little something new to push for wins. This year, two teams that are in the 11th-place to 20th-place range that have wins will be the wild-card selections to be in the Chase.

For example, Jamie McMurray had two huge wins – the Daytona 500 and the Brickyard 400. He also won at Charlotte. However, he had some bad races along the way and Jamie failed to make the 2010 Chase. Now, still using Jamie as our example, he would be in the Chase under these new rules. I really like the “win and you are in” mentality, so now we have a modified version of that.

Even though NASCAR didn’t address it, I still continue to beat the drum that officials need to do something for the regular-season champion. Other sports do it, so why can’t we? A guy races his butt off for 26 weeks to be in first place, but then with the start of the Chase, his lead is wiped out and points re-set. He might not even start the Chase in first place.

Just ask Harvick or Jeff Gordon. It has happened to them. That's just not right. The guy deserves some kind of recognition. They need to at least give him a big trophy recognizing that driver as the regular-season champ.

I like the new qualifying procedure that was announced. Boris Said was sitting on pit road a couple years ago at Daytona and had the fastest car in practice. He had a legitimate shot at making the Daytona 500, only to have his qualifying run rained out. He had to load up and go home. Now, under these new rules, Boris would have made the race. If rain cancels any or part of qualifying, they revert to the last full practice speeds to set the field. I like that.

I am always a believer in starting the fastest 43 cars. Well, OK, you start the fastest 42 and save that last spot for one provisional in case it was needed.

The rules they have made for 2011 I like because they are common-sense things. They put some excitement back into qualifying. Now the qualifying order will be set based upon slowest-to-fastest practice speeds. We’ve seen it in the Truck series.

Theoretically, if practice speeds were to hold up, you could have a new pole sitter every time a car goes out to qualify. So that’s kind of fun and exciting.

I do worry that teams will learn to manipulate where they want to be in the qualifying session based on time of day of qualifying or impending weather. If circumstances warrant needing to go out early, then what’s going to keep a team from tanking practice speeds to get that early slot?

That’s what always worries me about new rules – the unintended consequences. We simply don’t know what they are right now because the new rules haven’t been tried and proven.

Trust me when I tell you that all the teams immediately started looking at ways to make these new rules work for them. That’s what you do. NASCAR hands down a rule, so you try to find ways to use it to your advantage over the other guy. That's just what smart teams do.

There has been quite a bit of conversation, especially this past week during the Charlotte Motor Speedway media tour, about shorter races and even a shorter season. The thing to remember, it’s not about how many miles the race is. It’s more about how much time it takes to run it. It’s not distance; it’s time. So NASCAR and its TV partners are looking at it.

The question of a shorter season continues to float around. I still maintain we need to start sooner in the year, eliminate the off weeks and finish by, say, the end of September. That way we aren’t competing with the NFL. Look at the 2011 schedule. We go from Daytona to Phoenix to Las Vegas and then take a week off. Why do we need a week off?

If we start the season sooner, visiting the West Coast tracks until the weather improves in the East, we could end our season sooner. Not only would it eliminate the competition for viewership with football, but it would also give our sport a true offseason, like the other major sports have.

I am still a big believer that less would be more when it comes to NASCAR. There’s nothing wrong with leaving fans craving more races. It builds excitement and anticipation for the coming season. Our season right now is so long, and we try to do too much.

Why not have a real offseason? You could come back strong the first of each year. I’ve said it before: We should have a New Year's Eve race at Fontana to kick the year and the NASCAR season off right.

So there are a lot of changes now for 2011. I like what NASCAR did in a lot of areas. Yes, there are still some areas where I wish it had done more. We are now down to a couple weeks to when we all will be arriving in Daytona for the start of Speed Weeks. We’ll have a new points and qualifying system now to go with the new nose, new gas can and the new surface at Daytona International Speedway.

I am excited to get this season started, and I hope you are, too.