The first NASCAR-sanctioned road races were held this weekend, with the Sprint Cup Series stationed in Sonoma, Calif., and the Nationwide Series having camped in Elkhart Lake, Wisc., for a couple days. Both series get back on the road at Watkins Glen the second weekend of August, and the Nationwide Series travels to Montreal at August’s end.
That’s five road races on a combined schedule of 71 events. These days, that’s not enough.
The unfortunate irony is some of the top talents in racing have flocked to NASCAR during the turn-of-the-century gold rush as the sanctioning body filled the schedules with uninteresting, cloned ovals. Race fans want to see the best drivers challenged, not the mastery of engineers and crew chiefs on display. Sadly, the majority of the races are decided by engine builders and numbers crunchers.
While that’s true of any auto race, it’s become the norm in NASCAR – save for those nice respites in Martinsville, Va., Darlington, S.C., Bristol, Tenn., Phoenix, Ariz., and the road courses. A few times a year, the races take on added interest because driving becomes the primary focus.
We need more of those.
The Sprint Cup schedule has what I deem 19 uninteresting events – those 1.5- to 2.5-mile ovals, many of which appear twice. A couple high-banked quad-ovals or one trip to Auto Club Speedway per year is almost required, but four races on two nearly identical tracks in Fontana, Calif., and Brooklyn, Mich., is overkill. Two races at Pocono Raceway is one too many. Four races with insane “pack racing” is two too many. And the most egregious are the seven events on 1.5-mile quad ovals, all-star race included.
NASCAR needs to diversify.
Short ovals are disappearing because many can’t support the throngs of people who follow the circus, and non-sanctioned ovals are bland copies of other tracks. So the best way to diversify is to schedule more road races. Don’t even start in with the “straying from the sport’s roots” argument; that horse left the barn a long time ago. This is a new era with new talents, new fans and a society that bores easily.
If NASCAR insists on a 36-race schedule today, it has to diverge from the old format it clings to – two races at the same place, or in the case of Charlotte Motor Speedway, three times annually. People wonder why attendance has shrunk at places like Michigan, Atlanta and Dover. Well, there have been two races there every year for decades. A lot of this was brought about because of this “big markets” line of thinking that turned the beast into a glutton, but many of the big markets aren’t generating the biggest crowds anymore.
