“Hey DJ, let me borrow that Party Mix cd!”
Children of the 80’s and early 90’s will understand what the quote is
talking about. I remember burning a ton of cd-r’s and running out of things to
call them, so many of them were different volumes of Party Mix one, two and so
on... NASCAR needs some help with their party mix of tracks, and scheduling
mainly on the top-tier series of Sprint Cup. I think about the new IPhone 5
commercial when the guy is sitting there talking to someone on the phone, and
asks if they had Déjà vu, over and over again because it never changes. The
term insanity stands for doing the same thing over and over again and expecting
the different results. NASCAR expects that their attendance numbers will
suddenly change by putting the same product out there for us to watch, I highly
doubt that France Family. 
Danica Patrick and Brad Keselowski suffering through a
night at Bristol Motor Speedway. Picture from Zimbio.com.
The
first point we need to breakdown before we go any further, is who owns these
tracks? International Speedway Corporation owns twelve of the tracks used in
Sprint Cup, and other feeder series of NASCAR. ISC owns Chicago, Darlington,
Daytona, Fontana, Homestead, Kansas, Phoenix, Talladega, Martinsville,
Michigan, Phoenix, Richmond, Talladega, and Watkins Glen. The other group is
Speedway Motorsports Inc. which owns a total of eight tracks that are used in
Sprint Cup, as well as the other feeder series of NASCAR. SMI owns Atlanta, Bristol, Charlotte,
Kentucky, Las Vegas, New Hampshire, Sonoma, and Texas. If you are doing the
math that leaves three tracks that are independently owned that can still draw
the Sprint Cup series. These tracks are Dover, Indianapolis, and Pocono.
If we
break down the weekends, and how the races are divided up, ISC receives
nineteen dates, SMI receives twelve, and the self-owned tracks receive five.
The big gripe that I for one, along with a lot of others in the media, and fans
alike have is the redundancy of the so called cookie cutter tracks. All of
these 1.5 mile tracks lend themselves to a lot of boring racing, which will not
lend itself to growing the sport at all. A second issue I have with the
schedule is this, road courses. If NASCAR wants to compare the quality of their
drivers to other auto sports, then they need to showcase their abilities
turning left, and right. These boys put on a good show at Sonoma, Watkins Glen,
and even the Nationwide series at Road America, Watkins Glen, and Circuit
Gilles Villeneuve. Grand-Am which is owned by NASCAR, and the American Lemans
Series announced their merger, which got me excited because NASCAR gained the
rights to Road Atlanta in the deal. I am hoping we can see some stock cars on
that circuit in the near future.
Road Course ringer Jacques Villeneuve in the #22 Penske
Dodge at Road America. Photo from Sbnation.com
That is a lot of information already, so I am going to split this up in
a couple different posts. I am trying to keep you interested, and secondly from
having information overload. In our next installment, we will cover some more
topics, like fixing the constant feeling of every track being 1.5 miles, while
constantly missing the big stock cars on winding road courses. We will also
talk about aligning the sport with other road course series to gain some of
their fans. I'll leave you with the final lap of the 2012 Napa 200 from Montreal. Until next time.
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