If it ain't broke, fix it anyway: NASCAR 2017 Thread

Kurt Busch ... that'll be a popular champ.

(That said, after the shit show first 190 laps, the last 10 were very good.)

 

Whenever I switched to it, the cars were parked. Much like when I switch to the Oscars, it is complete shit. But one of those events is complete shit every year.

 

So much for this race making the headlines.

 

Was interested to see how the new gimmicks might move the social media needle. The race never cracked the top 10 in Twitter topics in such racing hotbeds as Indianapolis, Detroit, Charlotte, Atlanta or Raleigh -- and just barely registered in Orlando.

And most of the headlines I saw today online? Tony Stewart finally wins Daytona 500 (as an owner). Yikes.

Penske and Gibbs can tow the company line all they want -- and good for them that Shell and Home Depot still have faith in the sport -- but having Junior, Jimmie, Danica and close to 20-plus other cars already in the garage for the final 90 minutes of the race did nothing to dispel the widespread feeling that TV viewers quickly boogity, boogity, boogitied from Fox long before Elliott and Larson ran out of gas on Lap 199.

Hard to crank it up when click it off got there first.

 

Apparently the ratings were a touch better than last year, but still pretty dismal.

As much as I dislike it, it's not like the 'segment' thing is a radical change. Kind of like the intermediate sprints in a Tour de France stage, something to perk up the earlier moments and help you forget you're two hours from the end. The bigger problem with yesterday was just general plate race tomfoolery. I'm not an engineer, but I can't figure out how they haven't been able to come up with something better over the course of 25 years, though I suppose maybe they don't want to. Plate races have their appeal, particularly for the carnage-loving segments of the population. The first of the three big wrecks was just a tire failure in the wrong spot (which has started quite a few "big ones" over the years), and the other two are mostly attributable to former Daytona 500 champion Jamie McMurray being a dumbass and running someone over at speed.

The ending was pretty good, and even though Kurt Busch is, by all accounts, an asshole, it's better than if, say, Cole Whitt had come out of nowhere (though Auston Dillon winning in the 3 would have gotten some attention). Getting people to pay attention to the Daytona 500 isn't the issue, it's the Atlantas and spring race at Bristols and the stupid 1 1/2-mile cookie cutters where they need to make hay.

 

The other thing that came to mind after the race was, I wondered if Kurt's ex-girlfriend was able to watch the finish or if she was too busy on a covert op to get to a TV.

 

Schedule changes afoot for 2018. New Hampshire is out as a Chase playoff race, and Las Vegas is getting the date.
Considering that's in late September, will they shuffle the schedule some more? Does Vegas have lights? Or does the weather cool off to tolerable enough levels by then so that people won't be spontaneously combusting?

Las Vegas adding second Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race in 2018

 

So they're taking the only road course out of the playoff and replacing it with ano there cookie-cutter oval? How exciting!