I watched the last 15 laps when I got home....
not bad !
but in these times of youtube videos and TikTok I just do not see people sitting for 3 hours watching any racing !
But the road course was a plus ,
but I think they need to reverse the field for the 2nd stage
I watched the last 15 laps. I've decided that I may simply watch stage 3, that way its a short race.
Hell of an effort by Bell. Pretty cool to have two first-time winners in consecutive weeks. I don't know if Logano's tires went off at the end or he just overheated his brakes, but it was pretty amazing how quickly Bell ran him down with just a few laps left.
It' s pretty great. Now jack them up about a foot and put them on a dirt road course with jumps. 
Are they still doing full course cautions as standard on road courses?
slowbird said:It' s pretty great. Now jack them up about a foot and put them on a dirt road course with jumps.
Maybe inside a stadium, so the fans can see the whole course at once!
If i may answer a few items:
Dirt: there are dirt races for Cup, Xfinity, and Trucks this year. Bristol for all and Eldora for the trucks. Should be some good racing since there are some guys that have come up from dirt recently.
Road Courses: They have added quite a few road courses this year. COTA and Road America are added to the list of Daytona RC, Sonoma, Watkins Glen, Mid-Ohio (Xfinity cars). This past race was done on the Daytona road course due to the California (Fontana) event not being allowed for Covid concerns by the state of California. Yellows on road courses are still full track yellows. This is frustrating, the track workers know how to deal with local yellows, if they were allowed to. I looked for the corner workers that would normally be positioned for the Daytona RC race and saw none of them on the coverage. I know they are on location at some of the other tracks (Road America, Mid-Ohio).
Short tracks: There are a few more short tracks getting in line to be part of the show. The Fontana event (replaced by this week's Daytona RC) was going to be the last event run on the 2mile track. It is being converted to a 1/2mile track. I am sure there are other tracks that would love to get into the rotation, but that requires spending money to get a race.
Brakes: These cars are ~3000 pounds and the brakes are just over 12" diameter steel pieces. They are going to be a challenge for most any of the road courses they run. That means the driver has to decide how to use them so that he still has something left at the end of a race.
Stages: I hated the stage plan early on. I still do but only because they insist on throwing the yellow flag for a few laps at the end of each stage. In my mind, let the race continue green (if there are no on track issues) but still award the stage points. That would make teams consider the trade-off of points vs position for further along in the race.
Level of competition: They difference between the front and back of the Cup field is still pretty big, but with 40 cars on track, the front 30 that are fairly even still give a good show. The game will be changed somewhat with next years car debut. It is basically an GTD car without air jacks. The spec chassis/running gear will even the field early on, but the trams with the budget will still be able to find more gains quickly and rise tot he top. My solution to the competitive differences would be to leave the rules alone long enough that the small teams can make use of the information that filters down form the bigger teams. When new rules are put into play, the bigger/better funded teams have the ability to figure out how to get the most from a rule set. After a while the gains are REALLY small and the personnel movements spreads the information around.
Since I live in the world of NASCAR rules I have a particular interest in this discussion, but my ideas are not really well liked by some.
I enjoyed the race, lots of passing and offs to keep it interesting. I wish they would add more road courses, like VIR for one.
In reply to stafford1500 :
I am interested to know what will happen to all the current cars after the NextGen car gets introduced. I assume some combination of sold/scrapped/show cars/converted to Xfinity cars? Maybe enough of them will be left over to start a dedicated stock car road racing series/class. Add them to IMSA
Also this year Eldora has been replaced by Knoxville on the truck schedule. Not sure of the reason, but at least they still have their own unique dirt event.
In reply to slowbird :
Most of the noise I hear is that there is very little of the existing car that can be used going forward in the cup series AND that the parts are not going to be unloaded to the truck/Xfinity teams since they already have spares and some just don't transfer due to rules. The main items that can be transferred at this point are the seats, steering wheels, and fire bottles. Pretty much everything else is going to get moved on.
What that means is there are going to be a lot of really well designed parts/components/chassis that make it out into the wild. Previously alot of stuff was destroyed/scrapped to protect design information. Start saving now, there will be a lot of good parts hitting the market toward the end of this year as teams start to clean house fo rthe new cars.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:In reply to New York Nick :
500 mile races made sense when they were STOCK (nudge nudge wink wink) cars and it was an endurance test as much as a speed test.
Stock is Stock similar to what Production is in SCCA. Those aren't as-produced either. I wish people would get over it already. It's just a separation between full bodied cars and Modifieds and Super Modifieds, which get progressively less bodywork.
PS... Do we not like 24 hour races with cars that aren't production cars?
You all know that just because a race is on for 3-4 hours does not mean that you have to watch it all.
I haven't read a single post in this thread, but I feel the need to state, If you don't like stock car racing, please don't tell us again.
In reply to Chris_V :
Is the car on the left a Pinto??
sorry couldn't help it.
here's a pinto engine from this weekend, its in a vintage Lotus...
Chris_V said:Pete. (l33t FS) said:In reply to New York Nick :
500 mile races made sense when they were STOCK (nudge nudge wink wink) cars and it was an endurance test as much as a speed test.
Stock is Stock similar to what Production is in SCCA. Those aren't as-produced either. I wish people would get over it already. It's just a separation between full bodied cars and Modifieds and Super Modifieds, which get progressively less bodywork.
PS... Do we not like 24 hour races with cars that aren't production cars?
Nascar hasn't used production based chassis since the 60s and early 70s. In fact the cars used by nascar till the car of tomorrow were based on the Holman moody chassis design from the 60s. In fact when ford went racing the second gen thunderbird nascar allowed them to use the older frame as the 58 to 60 thunderbirds were unibody.
I don't care of they put 3/4 scale Camry bodies on ox carts if the racing is good.
As for the cars sliding around; it was really apparent on the cars missing bodywork.
It actually kind of makes sense now why Hendrick is basically selling turnkey stock cars for trackday use. They probably have a huge surplus of chassis and parts already and now they won't even be able to sell any of them to the backmarker teams for future seasons.
I don't have the link for it at hand but Fox has a condensed 12 minute highlight video on Youtube for Sunday's race.
We missed this weekend's race but saw the summer Road Course race live. It was pretty cool--totally bummed we couldn't make it.
slowbird said:It actually kind of makes sense now why Hendrick is basically selling turnkey stock cars for trackday use. They probably have a huge surplus of chassis and parts already and now they won't even be able to sell any of them to the backmarker teams for future seasons.
Vintage Cup car racing is a thing, now. Apparently you can get chassis REALLY cheap, consumables are light, and they're pretty tough.
slowbird said:In reply to stafford1500 :
I am interested to know what will happen to all the current cars after the NextGen car gets introduced. I assume some combination of sold/scrapped/show cars/converted to Xfinity cars? Maybe enough of them will be left over to start a dedicated stock car road racing series/class. Add them to IMSA
Also this year Eldora has been replaced by Knoxville on the truck schedule. Not sure of the reason, but at least they still have their own unique dirt event.
Imsa use to have a stock car series the Kelly American challenge although these were smaller short track type cars rather then the bigger cup cars. Weight was in between a cup car and a trans am car.
In reply to stafford1500 :
I agree with not throwing a caution at the end of the stage. Let them race it out. As it is now, they will never have another rare caution free race.
I would prefer to see heat races instead of cautions. But what I am really excited for is Bristol!
I haven't watched the race yet but when it clearly caught enough attention that people are talking about it at the parts store...must be doing something right.
I'm patiently waiting for the new car to come out....Hello used center lock wheels, 18" slicks (and rains), and the big brake packages that'll come with them. All at bargain prices used.
You'll need to log in to post.
