CALABASAS, Calif. — It’s Thursday morning, I’m sitting on the sand of a coastal California beach after a long run, the wind is hitting my face, the sun is rising and no, NASCAR fans, the sky has not fallen.
Ever since the announcement was made early Monday evening about NASCAR’s new segmented race system being implemented for all three series, there has been many a reaction about this being a horrible move for the sport and how this is a departure from what made NASCAR so popular in the not-so-distant past.
I am here to tell you all: it will be okay.
While change might be a scary thing, change can help a sport grow. The way things were going, NASCAR was trying their best to make the racing product as good as possible. But there was this feeling of it all being a one-man show and the feeling of some races becoming more mundane than others.
The excitement of the racing season only was there for the last 10 races, not the other 26 beforehand. We would know who would be competing for a spot in the playoffs come September weeks before we ever got there.
Something needed to change.
TV ratings and track attendance numbers weren’t great and some races felt like they went on for what seemed like an eternity. All of the changes that are coming were made for the race fans.
With the new format changes, the races will be cut into three segments. The first two segments will be like a heat race, with the top 10 finishers getting points. In the final segment it is an all-out shootout for the race win of the actual event, with points being distributed to everyone and the winner collecting much-needed bonus points for the playoffs come the fall.
It sounds complicated and confusing, but trust me, it all makes sense.
The segments are designed for four critical reasons. One, to make the drivers get up on the wheel and drive their hearts out, where every lap is critical in order to to be part of the top 10 by segment’s end. Two, to shorten the length of the event in an effort to make the race fans more interested over the course of the event. Three, to generate more excitement and give more meaning to the regular season. Four, for the TV viewer to be able to watch more of the race instead of having to sit through commercials during green flag racing.
Lets delve into these reasons a bit more.
How many races might have you watched where you find your favorite driver marred back in 10th or worse and he is just content to ride until the next caution? This new rule gives the drivers more incentive to race harder against one another.
Say we head to a track like Texas, where in the past it was 334 laps of follow the leader and drivers lay down a little. Now lets say its only 100 laps of hard racing per segment and only the top 10 score points. There is much more risk being left out on the track than reward. It forces the drivers to compete at their hardest every single lap in order to score critical points. This isn’t “artificial excitement” like I have heard in the past, this is white-knuckle racing where the laps mean more and every position lost or gained is more crucial than ever before.
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