How about a 70 race schedule to wet your racing appetite?

OK, I bet you are wondering "Just what does this lunatic Dave think he's talking about? 70 race season….HA HA HA. I want some of what he's smoking." Well, actually, I don't do drugs, I am complete control of my senses and I really think this could work. First, a little background on what spawned this idea of mine.

It started a couple of years ago, when at Sears Point, one of the Winston Cup regulars failed to qualify and had to go home, while the field had a number of Winston West drivers in it. I thought to myself how that must have been such a bummer for the nonqualifying team to have traveled all the way across the country and not get to race, let alone the unrecovered expense of getting there and back. At the same time, I thought what an opportunity for the Winston West drivers, getting to race against the superstars of the sport, in front of thousands, televised to millions. There must be some kind of a fair tradeoff. This year, the same thing happened to Dave Marcis. He traveled all the way to Sonoma, with no provisionals to fall back on, and missed the field. Now, I am not a rocket scientist, but I would have to think that Dave had to have know going out there that there was an excellent chance that he would not make the race and this was just a waste of his money. I'm sure that money could have been better spent elsewhere. So why did he go? The answer is simple…the current points system is such that if you miss a race, it kills you in the standings, which in turn kills you at the end of year payout. Dave couldn't afford NOT to make the expensive trip out there and attempt to make the field. At the same time, I look at the Gary Bradburry's and Rick Wilson's and Loy Allen's of the world. Good enough race car drivers, but for one reason or another can not attempt to make all the races in WC. The biggest reason that I can think of is money. They simply cannot secure enough sponsorship bucks to compete week in and week out. To me, this is bad. When something is bad, it is sometimes referred to as a problem. To fix a problem, you need to find a solution. I racked my brain, and came up with what to me would be a simple solution. It is so simple, it seems complicated. An alternate race to compete in is the solution. My alternate race system would basically result in an approximate 70-race schedule. Would the teams have to compete in all 70? Absolutely not. Could they compete in all 70 if they wanted? Absolutely. How would this work? Read on.

Normally, 3-6 drivers each week attempt to qualify for an event and fail. In a case like Sonoma, the odds are a little worse for some of the borderline qualifying regulars because of the Winston West drivers. What if we eliminated provisional starts and instead offered an alternate race to compete in for points? Let's see what might happen. What if on Wednesday of the week of Sears Point, a Winston Cup event was held at North Wilksboro? Say the points paid the same, but the purse was smaller. Would a Dave Marcis or a Gary Bradbury load up their cars and trek all the way across the nation and take a chance on taking a financial beating, or would they stay closer to home and go to North Wilksboro knowing they had a better chance of making the field and finishing well. I bet they would chose option 2. How about Richmond? What if the week of Richmond, a Winston Cup event was held at Langley Speedway? Would Marcis or DW spend more time practicing setups at Langley or Richmond? I bet they would concentrate on Langley, knowing most of the big budget, multi-car teams have an enormous advantage sharing information amongst themselves that they could have an advantage at Langley. There are several tracks that could be used. They could add Hickory, South Boston, and IRP. There are some excellent tracks in the Northeast. They could go to Gateway and Denver. How would all this shake out? Here is what I see would happen. All the bigger budget teams are going to race the current bigger purse 34 scheduled races. They would also probably add about a dozen smaller purse events to their schedule bringing their total to about 46 events raced in. The smaller, less financed teams are probably going to miss about a dozen big purse races because without the provisionals, they won't have the speed to get into the races. Being able to pick and choose the racetracks they know they are going to be weak in, they are probably going to visit a couple dozen of the lower paying races. Their total???? How about 46 events. (34-12 missed on current schedule + 24 of the alternate races) That would give the smaller budgeted teams a better chance of cashing in on the end of year award money, yet the big names are still going to make out on the big purses during the season., all while competing in about the same amount of events.

OF course, this plan has as many holes in it as a sponge, but like a sponge, it can soak up a lot of factors to even things out. Like I said, I have been bouncing this idea around for a couple of years, and have heard a lot of good arguments as to why it won't work. I think with a little tweaking, it will work. I will address a couple of concerns now and give my answer.

Yes they would IF they treated all 70 races the same. In this system, you would have to prioritize your races. Just like the teams concentrate much more on the Daytona 500 or the Brickyard 400 than they do the Bud at the Glen, they could chose to concentrate time, money and effort on Richmond over Langley. One might argue (and believe me, some have) that the resource rich teams like Hendricks Motorsports would be able to concentrate on both, but I can't see the reality in that. There are only 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year. Nobody has yet perfected the art of being in two places at one time, and trust me, I have tried.

Actually, the way I see it, it would cost LESS. If a team chose too, they could travel less, test less and spend less on R&D. Of course the haves will continue to spend as much as they can while the have nots will continue to make do with what they have.

This is a good one. The thing to remember, the alternate race would not be affecting the weekend dates. If a weekend race was rained out, they still have Monday and Tuesday to make it up. Making up the Wednesday race is a little trickier. You couldn't move it to Thursday because of qualifying for the weekend race. I guess that you could try to postpone it to an open week later in the season, or cancel it completely.

Thanks for staying with this for this long. I realize that not everybody is going to agree with it. I also realize that some tweaking would have to be done to make it work. I do think it is very workable though.