Poco-Snooze!

Those who accuse NASCAR of merely being one thousand left turns were handed some powerful ammunition Sunday as the Nextel Cup put several million men asleep as surely as an overdose of Lunesta. I was trying to watch- really trying- wondering if anyone else thought this “show” was horrid.

I need not have worried- as NASCAR is getting whacked everywhere today. I am abridging the witty David Poole:

• Well, it was a pretty fast race.
• Southern California sports fans are famous for arriving late and leaving early. Apparently, large numbers of fans passed each other in the parking lots as they did both Sunday. Lord knows there weren't very many of them actually using their seats in the grandstands.
• You know, after the first 400 miles of this race you couldn't help but wonder whether the right question was not why more fans don't show up here, but why anybody shows up at all.

And he’s right. NASCAR has got a problem. You take the current aero-package, couple it with all these unbanked cookie-cutter racetracks, and you have all the excitement of three hours of follow the leader coupled with the tension of fuel mileage runs. The cars now are so even, the tires feature so little let up, that no one can make up or lose significant track position. So we parade rather than race. Seriously, I don’t think Jeff Gordon passed anyone all day- and he ended up fifth or something. People just blew up or ran out of gas or changed tires in the pits faster- and suddenly there he was.

And the empty seats were not a surprise either. Only a fool would sit through that. NASCAR now finds itself with like ten-twelve race dates that simply aren’t entertaining in their current format: Poco-doze, New Hampshire, Michigan, Phoenix and yes- Indianapolis.

Some of this is their own fault. For example, they simply have to cut all races on unbanked tracks to 400 miles. Five hundered miles at Pocono, Michigan and California is inhuman. They did it at Delaware- and miracle of miracles- people had to race rather than simply “make laps” in the first half and then just drive around with a heart full of hope waiting for other guys to blow up. And while I don’t for a minute believe NASCAR is throwing debris cautions for any reason other than participant safety- the fact remains that participant safety cautions are getting totally out of hand. There was one yesterday for a “glove”. Next week it’ll be because Jimmie Johnson has something in his eye.

It all goes back to being no longer able to race back to the caution. Sorting out these scoring loops and rousting some lucky fool around back to the lead lap requires NASCAR to basically be trapped forever with this mandatory three lap caution nonsense. At the big tracks, it takes forever for these guys to crawl 6-8 miles. Put two, of heaven forbid, three in a row and you can almost hear an audible click as America changes the channel. Save the blinking yellow lights for real emergencies and feel free to freeze the field then- but for more “routine cautions” let them race back to the flag- and turn these debris cautions and such into a quick, closed pit, one-lap tidying exercise. It also would increase green flag stops- which again are more interesting.

With the exception of the green-white-checker rule, NASCAR has spent the past few years taking steps that inadvertently increased caution laps. Now they need to look at rules increasing racing.