Let’s Rewrite the NASCAR Schedule
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Rev’ Jim has an interesting scheduling proposal today. No track gets more than 1 race, thus we get to see cup races at places where we’ve never seen them. While I commented on his suggestion, I’ve decided to expand on it here.
Right now NASCAR’s 3 divisions, Sprint, Nationwide and Craftsman, run at 31 different tracks. If we gave each of those tracks only one race, we would see the Cup cars for the first time at:
- Autodromos Hermanos Rodriguez, Mexico (road course)
- Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, Canada (road course)
- Gateway International Raceway (1 1/4 mile) Corrected from 1 1/2 mile
- Kentucky Speedway (1 1/2 mile)
- Mansfield Motorsports Speedway (1/2 mile)
- Memphis Motorsports Park (3/4 mile)
- Milwaukee Mile (1 mile)
- Nashville Superspeedway (1 1/3 mile)
- O’Reilly Raceway Park (2/3 mile)
Let’s take racing back to North carolina Speedway (1 mile) and reward Andy Hillenberg for his foresite in purchasing it.
Then, just to make it really interesting, let’s throw in a couple of dirt tracks. My vote would go to Eldora Speedway and the DuQuoin State Fairgrounds. Eldora is a half-mile and DuQuoin is a mile so there would be a good opportunity to show who the better racers are.
Just to make it even more interesting at the dirt tracks, NASCAR could run the event the way races are normally run around the rest of the country. Qualifications, 4 or 5 heat races (depending on the number of entries) 1 or 2 B mains, and then the Feature race.
If you’ve been counting, that’s 34 races, down from the current 36. I think 36 is too many, let’s give the teams a couple more weekends off.
The one weekend they wouldn’t get off is for the All Star race. We need to keep that one on the schedule.
Thoughts?
All those tracks that you mentioned, are they capable of holding the type of crowds that come out to Nextel Cup races? A couple of weekends ago, the Busch series was at a track that was rather small and the stands looked like overgrown bleechers, maybe capable of holding 10,000 fans… That isn’t suitable for a Nextel race but it works for Busch races…
Same goes for dirt tracks, is there a dirt track capable of holding the crowds?
But in general, I like the idea of mixing up the schedule a little bit. Having a road course in the chase would be pretty cool to add extra challenge to the eventual Champion…
99.8% of the people who watch a Cup race watch it on tv. (I just made that number up by the way). Granted, there may not be as many people able to watch the race live at the track, but most people can’t do that now. The smallest track on the list, Eldora Speedway has 17,905 permanent seats but with the hillside area regularly has over 20,000 at it’s “special” races.
There is probably room to upgrade the seating capacity at all these tracks if they get the Cup money, and the communities would throw in as much as they can for upgrades, because most of them know that with the Cup comes revenue.
One correction–Gateway is 1.25 miles which makes it unique, and it is a great track for racing. Not a cookie cutter, but a hybrid.
Thanks for the mention, and, as posted in the comments at Rev’ Jim’s, if only we could get John Darby to read this.
You’re right about the seating. Most tracks could easily upgrade with the addition of Cup money.
Nice catch on the size of Gateway.