November 24, 2008
By Matthew Pizzolato
Matthew Pizzolato
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When the Jimmie Johnson Invitational Series, also known as the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, opens next season, will there be changes to the schedule or points format?
According to Dale Earnhardt Jr., the current season is too long and even the length of the races seem to drag out, and he has been saying it for quite some time. Earnhardt believes that NASCAR has saturated the market with too many races.
"The NFL, they do such a great job. They give you just enough to keep you wanting more. The season ends before you want it to. You get just enough to get excited and then it's all over and there's such a long wait,” Earnhardt said in an AP article by Jimmy Collins.
And for a top driver in the sport that wishes to remain competitive, there is no off-season because testing begins immediately for the upcoming year and there is only a two and a half month gap between seasons.
NASCAR has become a money making beast that must feed its ever growing need for revenue with more ticket sales at new tracks, which is why some tracks with declining ticket sales are removed from the schedule to be replaced by newer tracks. NASCAR wouldn’t be able to afford a shorter schedule, even if the executives were in favor of shortening the season.
"We're driven by the ability to go make another dollar and make more money and there's no way we would ever trim it down,” Earnhardt said.
And the Chase format currently employed by NASCAR needs to be tweaked to allow more advantage for winning races and perhaps even shortened itself. After all, what’s the point of qualifying for the Chase if you are eliminated from Championship contention after the first two or three races?
Still, Earnhardt likes the current chase format because it allows more opportunity for drivers to be in contention at the end of the season. And in retrospect, he wonders how many more championships his father would have won with the current chase format.
"He might have been a 10-time champion," Earnhardt said in a David Newton article for espn.com.
The current length of the schedule drives most fans to complacency. There is no urgent need to watch every race because each race is not as important as each game in an NFL season. When people have too much of something, they tend to lose interest instead of being left wanting more.
Of course, Jimmie Johnson seems to thrive in the current point format. Johnson has written his legend in NASCAR’s immortality by accomplishing something that only Cale Yarborough has done, winning three consecutive championships. A feat that is even more impressive with the current Chase format given the resetting of the points with ten races left.
The 48 team of Hendrick Motorsports has become a NASCAR dynasty and who can stop them from making it four in a row? Most likely, only the other teams at Hendrick will have a realistic chance of stopping Johnson next year.
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