February 22, 2010
By Matthew Pizzolato
Matthew Pizzolato
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The new rule change announced just days before the start of this year's Daytona 520 salvaged what would have been a debacle otherwise, due to the "two and a half miles of hole," as Dale Earnhardt Jr. put it. NASCAR certainly got lucky on this one.
It took more than six hours for officials to bring to a conclusion NASCAR's flagship race and many viewers' switched channels, watching coverage of the Olympics or Godfather movie marathons, not that they can be blamed.
The new Green–White–Checkers rule that NASCAR instituted allows for up to three attempts to finish races under the green flag, and it has been well received by most fans, but there are some dissenters – and with good reason.
Without all the cautions that restrictor plate races normally breeds, there would have been a lot of cars running out of gas on the final laps. This year's Daytona race actually ran a distance of 520 miles instead of 500.
At the end of the each race, every second spent on pit road cost valuable positions on the track, so most crew chiefs only put enough fuel in their cars to reach the scheduled end of the race. Having multiple
green-white–checkers finishes at most tracks, especially at tracks with long green flag runs, is going to create a problem for a lot of teams. Do crew chiefs gamble and overfill the gas tank in preparation for "overtime" or roll the dice on finishing the race under the scheduled distance?
For the most part, the drivers seem satisfied with the new rule change, admitting that NASCAR should do whatever it can to put on a good show for the fans. The fans that remained after this year's Daytona race certainly deserved a good finish.
Greg Biffle became the first casualty of the rule change, as he would have won the race under the old rule. Still, he took the change in stride. Dale Earnhardt Jr., gained the most, making a hard charge from 22nd to finish second in the final laps.
"I feel like the fans deserve probably more of a show, so that's what they got. The green-white-checkers was put into play to give us an opportunity to finish the race under green. Finishing under yellow is quite a melodramatic moment," Earnhardt was quoted as saying in a Dave Rodman article for nascar.com.
Jeff Gordon, on the other hand, seemed to be the lone driver disagreeing with prevailing opinion.
"I've never been a fan of multiple green-white-checkers," Gordon said in the same article. "I believe in doing things for the fans but I also think they have their limits. It wasn't going to give us a winning day by not having multiple green-white-checkers but it would have saved us a race car."
The new green-white-checkers rule can create an exciting finish for the fans, but a lot of potential problems loom on the horizon. What happens when the car leading the race runs out of gas on the final lap and the field stacks up behind it?
So far, the new rule has worked well, but there is a possible alternative to it and it is something that NASCAR already uses in its All-Star race.
As suggested by a reader of Insider Racing News, instead of using multiple green–white–checkers to end races, once ten laps are left in a race, only green flag laps would be counted.
This option would guarantee that the race finishes under green, something that the new rule still does not do; it merely increases the probability of that happening. Another benefit of this option is that the cars would not consume as much fuel while they are running around the track under caution and the race distances would not increase as much. In other words, the Daytona 500 would not become the Daytona 520.
The motivation behind this new rule is correct, but not the practical application. NASCAR got lucky at Daytona. How long can they ride the lucky streak?
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