NASCAR Cup Series

Thrilling year has us excited for more

Published Dec. 1, 2011 12:00 a.m. ET

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Larry McReynolds

Back nine months ago, when we were heading to Daytona, we all wrote and spoke about the good feeling we had going into our 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup season. I think we all believed the things NASCAR did over the offseason were going to make a positive difference. I don’t think any of us really knew how much of a difference though.

They changed the look of the nose of the car, which when combined with eliminating the hideous wing and going back to the spoiler on the rear of the car made it look like a stock car again. Overall, those were minor changes, but it made it look like we had built a whole new race car.

Then they revised the Chase format and added those two wild-card spots. I think it is safe to say no one, not even NASCAR, envisioned the level of excitement, tension and drama qualifying for those two final spots. You know normally in the late-summer months as we finish up the regular season there always had been somewhat of a lull as most spots for the Chase are already secured. This year, however, it kept the excitement going all the way up through Richmond in September -- which is the last race before the Chase began.

The other major change which I believe had a huge impact was the revision of the points system. No one had any experience with it. We had no model to work from. The biggest thing I liked was the new points system was easy to understand and easy to explain to the race fans. During that last race at Homestead, we knew exactly what the deal was. We could look where Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards were running and easily calculate the point outcome.

Mother Nature worked with us for the most part. In addition to that we had great racing. We had five first-time NASCAR Sprint Cup winners this year and 18 different winners in 36 races. Up until we got into the Chase -- where Tony Stewart won five of 10 races -- we never really had a dominant team. Someone would get hot for a race or two and then cool off. Don’t get me wrong, that is good because you don’t want one organization dominating all the time.

How about the amazing finishes this year? It all started at Daytona in February. You have rookie Trevor Bayne winning the biggest race of the year while driving for one of the most storied families and organizations in all of auto racing – the Wood Brothers. That just got us off on the right foot. It created a lot of excitement within our sport and well-deserved attention outside our sport.

How about the close finish at Talladega in the spring? Eight cars came across the finish line at the same time with Jimmie Johnson winning literally by a nose. You had that young man, Regan Smith, winning at Darlington. What is so remarkable about that? Well first, how about the fact he was driving for a team based out of Denver, Colo.? How about the fact this kid had never even had a top-five finish in his NASCAR Sprint Cup career?

Look at Paul Menard and his family history at Indianapolis. He went there this year and won the Brickyard 400. You had the very popular Australian Marcos Ambrose earn his first win this year. You had David Ragan, who but for a mistake on his part in February might have been our Daytona 500 winner, finally score his first win after a number of years in our sport.

We went into our final race of the year with the championship points so incredibly tight. I loved it because it was simple – win the race and win the championship. It was none of this “if he only finishes 22nd or better, then he is the champ” stuff we have had in the past. Nobody knew that better than Carl Edwards and Tony Stewart.

It was just an incredible 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup season. It sure is going to be hard to top what we saw this year. It definitely gives us some lofty goals for 2012. This year will be a tough act to follow but we have to keep moving this deal forward.

Even though I am tired and worn down some, heck, if they said we have to go to Daytona next week, well I am ready. That’s how pumped up I still am after what I witnessed in 2011.

When we head to Daytona in two months, there will be some really great storylines to follow. Will Jimmie Johnson and that group be able to rebound from easily the worst season they have had in 10 years?  Dale Earnhardt Jr. came close to visiting Victory Lane at times this year and made the Chase plus was much more competitive. I want to see how much his team can improve on that next year.

Tony Stewart has a new crew chief in Steve Addington. Will he be able to continue the momentum we saw in the last 10 races and carry it over into 2012? You also have Danica Patrick, who in 2012 will be a full-time NASCAR competitor. She is going to run the entire Nationwide Series plus 10 NASCAR Sprint Cup races beginning with the Daytona 500. That’s going to be a huge storyline for our sport.

If you look at the Daytona 500, we have had a lot of different winners since our NASCAR on FOX team took over in 2001. For the most part we probably hadn’t talked much about who eventually would be the winner through Speedweeks. Taking that a step further, I think if you went back, you would find we didn’t talk much about them until well into the actual Daytona 500.

Just go back four years. How much did we talk about Trevor Bayne, Jamie McMurray, Matt Kenseth or even Ryan Newman being the favorites to win our sport's biggest race? I think you will find the answer to be "not much."

So the unknowns are again the thing we can look forward to. It will not surprise me in the least if we have yet another different Daytona 500 winner this coming February.
 

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