@nun ya wrote:
They need to go back to old school racing. I prefer "run what you brung" from the old days. No breaks, no cookie cutter cars, no chase. Let the driver who the most points at the end of the season be the champ. It was an easy concept that they should have never messed with.
Their constant changes have made me lose interest.
The rules have become bizarre. I think it was this last race where they showed several cars get penalized for speeding even though they weren't speeding as they drove across a narrower pie shaped section of the timing zone instead of the longer section and even though they were obeying the pit road speed limit, since they covered the shorter distance in less time, they got a penalty for speeding. Seriously? You're going the speed limit, but you can still get a penalty for speeding because of how the track is laid out?
Nascar needs to throw away about ninety percent of the rule book and go back to racing. The ticky-tack penalties like for speeding when you're not, touching the corner of one too many pit stalls on your way out of the pit, hitting the gas a split second before you're in the start zone, etc. are just killing the sport.
"But fans want it to be fair!" Yeah. Not so much. We want it to be fun. Nascar used to have something of a pro wrestling vibe to it. It was entertainment as much as a sport. It was fun. It's not fun these days. It's become a scientific experiment to find out which driver, driving this specific car with no variation allowed, on this specific track, on this specific day, is the best. There's a reason they don't broadcast live scientific experiments conducted in a lab. It's because they're boring to pretty much everyone but the scientist doing them. Nascar has become boring.
Nascar has a good group of drivers. There are heroes to root for, villains to root against, and interesting tracks. But the rules these days are suffocating all of that. Joey Logano won at Richmond. Except he didn't as he broke this oh so important rule: "The Truck trailing arm spacer/pinion angle shim mating surfaces must be planar and must be in complete contact with corresponding mating surfaces at all points and at all times." The fool thinking he could get away with breaking such an important rule! (Is there a Nascar rules to English translator around? I have no idea what the heck they're talking about him doing wrong.)
When you're taking away a victory because "the Truck trailing arm spacer/pinion angle shim mating surfaces must be planar and must be in complete contact with corresponding mating surfaces at all times" it's entirely likely you've taken all of the fun out of the sport.
Heck, I remember way back when a team figured out they could use the rollcage as an extra fuel tank by drilling a hole in the roll cage and then welding the fuel line to it on either side so it looked like the fuel line ran through the cage, but in reality it didn't but their alteration let the team fill the whole roll cage with fuel to squeeze out a few extra laps per tank. Now that was cheating, but it was fun cheating. When you're talking about Tracker arm spacer/piinion angle shim mating surfaces, it's not fun cheating. It's more like, "What the heck are they talking about?" cheating.
It wasn't that many years ago when tracks were expanding and had long waiting lists for tickets. Nascar was fun. It was entertaining. We looked forward to the races. Now they've got Monster Energy drinks as a sponsor and you need an energy drink or two to sit through the races. Nascar shouldn't be a scientific experiment to find the best driver. It should be a "do whatever it takes to win and hope you don't get caught" race. Throw out ninety percent of the rules and get Nascar back to being fun. It's not really all that hard to do.
Give teams back control of the cars. Let them decide how big of a spoiler they use and the angle of the spoiler. Some drivers like a car that's solidly under them that they can drive into the corner hard. Some drivers prefer a looser car that's faster on the straights, but wicked in the corners. These cookie cutter cars that must all be set up exactly the same penalize drivers who don't like their cars set up that way.
We're at Talladega this week and with every car set up exactly the same way, we'll have that big old pack of cars where no matter how good of a driver you are, you're likely to get caught up in a wreck not of your making and there's nothing you can do about it. GIve each team control of their cars and you'll spread the field out. There will be drivers who go for the smallest spoliers possible at the lowest angle possible to get the most speed. There will be other drivers who want a bigger spoiler and more of an angle for more control. They're willing to give up a bit of speed to ensure they're more likely to survive the five hundred miles. This spreads the field out a bit more and can make for some interesting racing. The drivers who go for pure speed will find their cars hard to handle in the corners. Chances are a few of them will end up wrecking out because of it.
Fixing what's wrong with Nacar isn't hard. It's easy. Just throw away most of the rule book and make Nascar fun again.
Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!
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