Daytona Motor Mouths: NASCAR to rotate championship race host websites
The blokes speak about NASCAR altering its championship race location, Joey Logano’s win at slippery Texas, the upcoming weekend at Kansas and extra.
NASCAR will rotate its season-ending championship race amongst a handful of tracks.The playoff format, particularly the winner-take-all system, can be below evaluate.
It’s uncommon for NASCAR to make a significant announcement that receives near-universal approval from the formally licensed plenty.
However this one — rotating the season-ending championship race amongst a handful of tracks — was principally met with only one gentle critique: Why weren’t we doing this all alongside through the playoff period?
Can’t repair that, however can discover methods to take full benefit of a rotation that can start subsequent yr with Homestead-Miami. And earlier than transferring on to the apparent looming query of how that rotation may look, let’s tamp down any destructive vibes relating to which tracks gained’t be a part of the plan.
First: Daytona. It’s quieted down in recent times, however there have all the time been followers who want NASCAR would bookend the season with two Daytona visits. As soon as NASCAR moved Daytona’s summertime race from July to late August to finish the 26-race common season, such discuss largely died as a result of the brand new setup looks like an ideal match.
Perhaps most significantly, as you seemingly seen, fairly a little bit of hype surrounds the Daytona 500. It’s a year-long cycle of promotion, ticket gross sales, sponsor gross sales, and many others., that begins a critical ramping-up from season’s finish into February.
A championship race could be a lot of the identical. You don’t put two main occasions at a venue inside a number of months of one another.
And at last, Daytona is what we as soon as referred to as a “plate-racing” observe, and nonetheless is although with totally different expertise than restrictor plates. Now we are able to name such issues “pack-racing,” or “drafting tracks,” because the trade labels them.
That sort of racing is nice for underdogs who relish the uncommon alternative to contend, however not precisely nice for figuring out a deserving champion.
Subsequent on the no-fly listing: Talladega and Atlanta, for the above motive. Geographically, each would supply good possibilities of respectable November climate (and perhaps respectable possibilities of good climate!) however they’re off the grid.
Charlotte? It’s an enormous and rising market and the climate ought to work, however they’d must ditch the Roval as a result of NASCAR signifies it’s not prepared to think about a highway course for championship prospects.
Bristol and Darlington? Enjoyable to think about each venues with a championship at stake, however the markets don’t scream Massive Occasion. Indianapolis? Attractive, however the climate is just too dicey. Identical with St. Louis and Richmond, a minimum of for my thinning blood.
The NASCAR championship rotation may appear like this
So how will that rotation look? Except a brand new observe sprouts in Southern California, the place nothing sprouts with out operating an entrenched gauntlet of roadblocks, it would seemingly embody all, or a minimum of 4, of the next.
Homestead-Miami.
Phoenix.
Las Vegas.
Nashville.
Fort Value.
Massive markets throughout and stable speedways, all between a mile and mile-and-a-half.
These 5 additionally supply a mixture of tracks owned by the 2 largest gamers: Daytona Seaside-based NASCAR (Homestead and Phoenix) and Charlotte-based Speedway Motorsports (the opposite three).
If the rotation will probably be 4 and never 5, the very best guess is among the three Speedway Motorsports tracks will probably be excluded. And since they rattling certain gained’t exclude Vegas, that might imply both Nashville or Fort Value is bumped.
However what about …
Using shotgun with this dialogue is how future Cup Collection champs will probably be topped at no matter rotation of locales is chosen.
On and off this season, a brand new playoff committee is kicking round concepts for revamping a playoff system that is been revamped and virtually overhauled because it got here to life in 2004. Notably, many are wanting one thing aside from a winner-take-all within the last amongst 4 surviving contenders.
No offense, however that is how Joey Logano turned champ final yr — kinda-sorta snuck into the ultimate foursome and soared at Phoenix. A system that requires a couple of nice run on the very finish is a greater solution to decide a worthy champ.
However they will not return to something that brings the potential of a scorching racer virtually clinching the championship earlier than the season’s last inexperienced flag waves.
That may principally defeat the aim of all that dialogue up above.
(This story was up to date so as to add a video.)
