It's time to put a road course in the Chase
With drivers improving on the track, the schedule needs another road race
 David Boe / ASSOCIATED PRESS As drivers have become more adept at winding their ways through the twisted track, talk has grown about putting a road race into the Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship. |
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It’s time. The drivers have gotten better and the show has gotten better. It’s time to add another road race to the Sprint Cup schedule.
And yes, that road race belongs in the Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship.
Not that long ago, racing 3,400-pound stock cars on road courses made for better comedy than drama. It was worth watching the way “America’s Funniest Home Videos” was worth watching.
It was somewhere between people in weddings fainting and falling down, and errant whacks at a pinata -- if you know what I mean.
Drivers would blast through sand traps, pound away on rumble strips, steer into corners with 60-degree radius at 50 degrees.
The cars would bob and bounce through the turns making them look like apples in a jacuzzi when viewed through long lenses. Trips down the straightaways were viewed as intermissions.
Allowing a road course race to become one of the 10 in the Chase playoff system just has not seemed like a wise idea.
Until now, perhaps.
The cars and drivers of Sprint Cup are still not quite ballet-like on road courses but they are no longer drunken elephants.
Most of those who take to the twisting road courses have become quite proficient. Some have become very good at it.
They have acquired the physical driving skills and perhaps more importantly, the proper mental attitudes which are demanded by road racing.
Not that long ago, there were large contingents of drivers who would break out a copy of the Cup schedule in early February, give it a look and when their eyes settled on the two road races, would reach for an analgesic. On race weekends, they take a deep breath and when they’d let it out, it would be accompanied by a whine.
The mental attitude on race day was: Let’s get through this and get back to real racing.
No longer.
Virtually all drivers prep for road races. They and their teams head to places like Virginia International Raceway to practice their road skills. They hook up with driving instructors. They search out road scholars like Boris Said and pick away like crows on a carcass.
Young drivers hit the X-Box. They load up Infineon or Watkins Glen and run up the electric bill.
The result is less fear of the road races, less hatred of them.
If you look really, really close, you will find, among the mass of decals on their cars today, small bumper sticker stickers which say “I heart road racing”. Not really, but you get the point.
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And I think fans have become more accepting of road races. Those who follow NASCAR are considerably more sophisticated than given credit for. They like good racing, and road course now can produce darn good racing.
As long as we’re talking crazy here, how about a street race? You know, Long Beach style. Open-wheel races in places like that and St. Petersburg attract hundreds out thousands of people. They come for the event, stay for the racing.
Different types of people, too, and not just the guy living out of the shopping cart. And it would bring different kids of people to the cities. Racing people.
Hey, better that than another day of 1.5-mile droning.
Jim Pedley is managing editor of Racin’ Today. Read more NASCAR news at racintoday.com.
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