Anyone else laughing at the Nascar announcement?

Stages? What is this the All-Star race? Will the crowd vote to invert the field before the start of the last stage?

Back in the olden days all they had to do was put cars on a track and wave the green flag. Problem on the track, yellow. After a while, a checkered. People showed up to watch and tuned in on TV. We'll never get those days back again.

I'd really like to see a race on the street and beach at Daytona again... half sand and half asphalt.

Yeah... saw that earlier today. Just made me sigh and shake my head. I was kinda looking forward to watching some racing next month. Nice way to kill a Sunday afternoon when it's too crappy for me to go ride. My guess is after half a season of fans going "WTF is this E36 M3?" they change it back to proper racing.

In reply to Ian F:

I was half wondering if Bernie handing over F1 created enough of a stir that we hardly enough noticed him taking over Nascar from the Frances.

So instead of the Daytona 500 we now have the Daytona tri-166.66.

When is NASCAR going to understand that ever since they started tinkering with the format viewership and spectators have gone down and with each successive change it continues to go down.

They have successfully taken a sport I really enjoyed and continually made it worse.

All this new format is going to do is add two more times during the race where drivers are going to do dumb things and cause crashes.

I've never understood why the road courses weren't more popular.

It sounds like an April Fools joke. But it's not.

The term "desperate flailing" comes to mind.

I imagine Carl Edwards sure as E36 M3 is.

NASCAR had a great fan base. But then they got greedy and said lets make changes and attract new fans. The may have attracted some new fans but they have pissed off many many more and sent them packing than they attracted.

Part of me is glad hoping that this fails and instead of them telling the fans what we want they get a bit of a beat down and a bunch of those sponsor dollers go away. Inject a bunch of humble pie in to the sport.

I think they look at F1 and drool at the money. They want champaign crowd but they forget that there roots are the beer and chips crowd.

It's really hard to make that E36 M3show interesting to a fan base who can't drive.

I mean... We couldn't get tv coverage for real road racing, wrc, ama, motogp, f1... really anything... in this country until cable had extra channels they couldn't give away.

Yet... Those people sold the most boring form of racing this side of a drag strip to the tune of billions.

And you are going to start questioning them now?

What a joke. The more they screw with it, the worse it gets. Time to hit the reset button.

Huckleberry wrote: It's really hard to make that E36 M3show interesting to a fan base who can't drive. I mean... We couldn't get tv coverage for real road racing, wrc, ama, motogp, f1... really anything... in this country until cable had extra channels they couldn't give away. Yet... Those people sold the most boring form of racing this side of a drag strip to the tune of billions. And you are going to start question them now?

Actually, I would much rather watch drag racing.

^ yep.

Since they're screwing around with things to drive off the remaining fans I have a couple more improvements to thrown in.

1- Redraw the top ten positions, and do it for each segment. Some short tracks do this and it can be fun to watch. A cooler has 10 beer cans numbered 1-10 and the top ten drivers pull a can and that's their starting position. Make them get out of the cars and do this after segments one and two as well. This will fill some tv time while the crews are changing shocks and springs and re-scaling the cars to get ready for idea number two.

2: Run segment two clockwise. Everyone here likes to complain that they'd watch if it wasn't all left turns. Make a third of the race all right turns and you guys will run to you're tvs to see it.

3: Use the road course if possible for segment three but not every lap. On tracks like Daytona, Charlotte and the other 1.5 mile cookie cutters that put fans to sleep use the road course every other lap for segment three. Watch the excitement as drivers fall behind and the leaders have to dodge slower traffic that are setting up to run different lines through different tracks.

4: Give an extra 100 points to any driver starting the race with a number 88 on his car. Junior can finally have a championship and retire before his mind turns to mush.

I'd like to see attendance and TV ratings graphed alongside milestones such as "the Chase".

I'm pretty sure the correlation will be clear.

The adjustments, which include breaking each race into three segments separated by a caution flag, was hailed as a "better racing format for our fans, PERIOD" according to NASCAR vice president Steve O'Donnell, and "the best racing you've ever seen,PERIOD" per Brad Keselowski.

dean1484 wrote: So instead of the Daytona 500 we now have the Daytona tri-166.66. All this new format is going to do is add two more times during the race where drivers are going to do dumb things and cause crashes.

Don't you mean 3 three lap sprint races preceeded by a large crash and about 150 miles of qualifying ?

It seems they (the organizers) like the any one can win format, and don't like the hard work some drivers put in to come from behind, or build a lead.

Bunch them up and crash them, 3X's more. Woo hoo.

I it's a 500 mile race, do it as so, and if it appears you purposly wreck some one, you should loose a lap, and no more counting yellow flag laps.

I forgot to add the fifth and possibly best change. Each car will have a nitrous oxide system controlled by a random fan. Everyone likes more power, and everyone loves surprises. Why not combine them.

In reply to NOHOME:

I'm sure Brad Kesslowski can't say anything otherwise. Everyone I follow online has said almost the exact same thing. Usually whenever everyone agrees on something it's because of contractual obligations.

dean1484 wrote: When is NASCAR going to understand that ever since they started tinkering with the format viewership and spectators have gone down and with each successive change it continues to go down.

Guess I'll piss into the wind and be the voice of disagreement in this thread. Actually, viewership started going down BEFORE they made changes. NASCAR became a "trendy" sport in the 90's. Races sold out, viewership was at an all time high. Then the casual trendy fan moved on and viewership/attendance started to go down. Out of those things, "The Chase" was born and other changes.

I'm not saying I love all the changes. Some I'm still trying to fully grasp (the point system) and some I'm quite skeptical about. I'm skeptical about 3 segments with a caution in between. I'd be OK with 3 segments, but why the caution? But that's just my gut reaction, guess I'll have to see it in practice to pass final judgment. In theory, it's not a lot different than heat racing, and I don't hear a lot of dirt fans complain about heat racing.

I'll give them credit for trying something. "Fans" of the sport complain NASCAR is boring, because often one car (i.e. Kyle Busch in the Xfinity series) leads from green to checker, there is little passing, and it's just going around in circles. OK, they're trying to address those issues and now people complain that they're making changes to a format that they were previously complaining about. Seems like a no win situation to me.

So many people say "Go back to the "good ol' days". What, the days when 1/2 the field would be a lap down by lap 30, 8 cars were in the garage with blown engines and most of the tracks were single groove race tracks so the only way to pass was to bump (which people complained about)?

As I said, I'm quite skeptical of the segment caution flags, so I'm not fully defending every change. But as a racing fan, I'm going to wait to see how it plays out, and certainly won't bash them for trying to make changes. Just don't understand people who claim to be "fans". They bash NASCAR for the way things are, but then when they make changes, they bash the changes. If it's so horrible, then why are you watching or even paying attention to the changes they make? I hate F1, I could level a ton of criticism about it, but I don't bother because I don't watch it anyway, so what do I care what changes they make?

Honestly, with this new format, I'd rather watch AER or even Chumpcar races if televised.

captdownshift wrote: Honestly, with this new format, I'd rather watch AER or even Chumpcar races if televised.

Chump teams are starting to use racecast. You cant watch our car because all we have is a cheapo dash cam but Im sure you can watch from the leaders car as they lap us.

http://www.sportscarillustrated.com/News_2017/A/news17A_0073_ChumpCar_Live_Feed.html

I'll dissent and not agree with the changes, but see why they are implemented. No one is willing to wait for anything anymore and they need to break the monotony of the middle of a long green flag run up to keep fans engaged. Everyone wants to see the crashes and I imagine a lot of people just watch highlights the day after so they don't spend their Sunday watching cars go in circles.

If they want to "make the whole race matter" I don't understand why they won't just award points based on leading a lap. If I remember correctly, they used to do that. That will incentivize running up front without artificial cautions eroding strategy and bunching up the field.

I'll be the "get off my lawn" guy and suggest that NASCAR return to a true "stock car" format and require cars to built on production vehicle unit bodies. Maybe that'd bring the manufacturers back into the game and maybe even bring back some interesting RWD platforms...