Yesterday was NASCAR’s biggest race. The Daytona 500, the Super Bowl of motor racing events. During the off-season, NASCAR chairman Brian France announced a new point system that would award the top 10 drivers by 3 stages.
Drivers who finish in positions 1 through 10 get stage points. The drivers who finish 1st get a playoff point that carries into the postseason. This process carries over into stage 2 and stage 3. I was skeptical at first about the new points system but would give it a try when the season started.
With Daytona in the books for all 3 of the NASCAR series, I think this system isn’t going to work in the long term for NASCAR. From the drop of the green flag for the Camping World Truck Series, Xfinity Series, and Monster Energy Cup Series. The races were already aggressive from the drop of the green flag to not even 10 laps into the race before the first caution after resuming the race for another 2 to 5 laps another caution comes out.
This happened in both the Trucks and Xfinity but the Monster Energy Series went on longer than 10 laps before they had their first caution flag of the race. Drivers were bumping and pushing one another to try and get into the top 10 only to be involved in a big wreck. By the time the races were over, there were hardly any cars or trucks left in the race. This is going to continue for the rest of the season and it will only get worse.
Speaking of cautions, drivers who are involved in a wreck have a 5-minute time limit to fix their cars, or otherwise, they are automatically out of the race. They can’t put new parts on the cars just what they have. This is gonna cost NASCAR and its teams in the long run as far as sponsorship goes. If a driver is involved in a wreck whether it’s their fault or not and can’t get back into the race because of the 5-minute time limit.
Not only would they be out of the race but they could also lose their sponsor as well. Companies like Bud Light, Monster Energy, FedEx, M&M’s, and NAPA don’t like seeing their cars in the garage. And if these teams were to be involved every week in a wreck.
It would only be a matter of time before that sponsor pulls out of NASCAR altogether. With the teams only allowed to have five minutes to repair their cars, there is no possible way that a team can fix the car in time so therefore they are out of the race. Which is unfair to the teams, drivers, and fans. NASCAR should get rid of this 5-minute time limit right now.
NASCAR continues to lose its fan base and this latest change to the point system won’t help bring fans back or gain new ones. All 3 of the NASCAR racing series at Daytona went on longer than expected and it shouldn’t take over 3 hours to finish a race.
To me, NASCAR should scrap the entire point system structure and go back to what made NASCAR such an enjoyable racing sport to watch. All this is doing is turning the fans off. There are other sporting events to watch on a weekend other than NASCAR.
What did you think of this weekend’s NASCAR races? Leave a comment below.
