Trouble in Turn2

For this week’s column I was going to include a photo of the view from my couch, but due to a combination of no racing and me being overstuffed from two Thanksgiving meals, the view was of our ceiling. It was only seven days ago that Jimmie Johnson was trying to figure out how to cram a 4 foot long check into his wallet. He still might be doing that but it already feels much longer than a week since the season finale for the Nextel Cup. Go ahead, try and find a news story on your favorite website. Find anything?

The holidays are partially to blame for the lack of news as nearly everyone involved with the sport disperses around the country. The other factor is that after all the wild news stories in 2007, what could possibly be a surprise at this point? Anything short of Jack Roush announcing that a 7 year old from Reykjavik will drive the #26 in 2008, the news well is pretty dry. While actual NASCAR news is as available as an unbeaten college football team, there are a few good opinion pieces from the past week.

• David Poole, one of the best NASCAR writers there is, wrote about how the best thing NASCAR could do between now and February is nothing.
  

  The sport needs a year to stabilize.

  Let teams run a couple of races at every track with the new car. Let the tweaks made to the Chase before 2007 run another year. Allow the major changes, like Dale Earnhardt Jr. to Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing switching from Chevrolet to Toyota, play themselves out.

  He is exactly right. There has been too much change in the last three or four seasons, it’s difficult to see what actually works because nothing is given enough time. Poole also pleads for patience on the part of fans. This is equally true. To us fans it’s always better back in the day, but how can that really be? Richard Petty used to compete against three or four other drivers for wins while the other 50 cars came simply to fill the field. And the winner back then would more often than not win by laps. It’s very easy to point to the the 1979 Daytona 500 and think every race was a nailbiter, but that’s not really true either.

• Last week in this space I asked aloud(in the electronic sense) how NASCAR could make the Cellphone Cup Series more like the Craftsman truck Series. Larry McReynolds thinks tires would help a lot.
  

  What a softer, grippier tire does is solve a couple of issues. When we go to Darlington, the track just wears the tires out, it doesn’t matter if we go with a soft tire or a hard tire. Now they’ve resurfaced it, so it’s going to be a different animal, but to me what always made Darlington and Rockingham a good race was that the surface was pretty worn out, the tires would start to wear out, the cars would start to slide around, and then the guys who had their cars handling the best would prevail. And when we had a caution, there wasn’t any of this, “staying out and keeping track position.” By gosh, caution came out and everybody came in and changed tires. To me, if they put a softer tire on it, they start driving good, and it helps the driver feel the car, but the car will give up on long runs and the guys that have their package the best will be the best.

  I agree, the tires are key. A hard tire like what we have seen at Charlotte, Daytona and Las Vegas in recent years lends itself to boring racing where no one can control their cars and everyone gets spread out. The one point I disagree with McReynolds on the piece about softer tires leading to better long green runs. While this would in theory play to the better handling cars, a softer tire usually leads to more cautions, negating the advantage it’s designed for. In 2005 NASCAR shortened the spoiler on the cars and in turn softened the tire compounds. That led to more cautions, which brings with it shorter green flag runs. McReynolds’ idea is the right one, but I’m not sure it is the perfect solution by itself.

• Scene Daily’s Jeff Gluck gives his reasons why the Truck Series is better than Cup. I would also add to the list, consistently closer points battles that produce natural drama.

• Finally, SI.com writer Tim Tuttle gives a pretty complete list of the top offseason stories to follow. In the meantime I will try and uncover some real news, even if I have to head to Iceland to do it.

Coming tomorrow: A breakdown of the Chasers.

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