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The one logical point I can think of is this: It really sucks to decide a race dependent on exactly when the guy in the booth pushes the caution button.

This hasn't come up too many times, but think about the finish to the Nationwide Talladega race one year ago. The winner of that race was effectively decided not by who crossed the line first, but by when the caution light button was pressed.

I don't like that concept.

Another long forgotten finish was the 2010 fall race when Bowyer and Harvick were side by side in turn 1 and they put out the caution and had to review tapes to see who had their nose ahead of the other. Push the button a second later and maybe it was Harvick getting the win instead of Clint.

The white flag had been displayed. As soon as they started crashing you knew who had won the race.

This is why it was actually better when they raced back to the line rather than whatever invisible scoring loop. If a race ended under caution, at least guys still had a chance to grab a spot completing the lap. How many drivers were ever injured or killed racing back to the line after a caution was thrown?

A set finish line and a set number of laps are such simple old concepts, but fuck around with them and you start realising what you've lost.

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NASCAR had to get rid of racing back to the yellow (send your sarcastic "thank you's" to Robby Gordon for nearly piledriving Dale Jarrett through the S/F line in New Hampshire in 2003). Yes, race hard, but within reason.

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Ducks Angels Sounders Spurs

NASCAR really took off in the mid 90s with that rule package. Why don't we just go back to that? Every race doesn't need to be a blockbuster event and every race doesn't need to be controversial. I like races to end with the dominant car winning, not the car who took 4 tires. I like guy to be in 17th to be a lap down to be racing his ass off to pass the leader, not some schmuck in 29th who took a wave around. I like to see the leader be the first one to the green flag, not the asshole in 2nd. I'd like to see the fastest car sit on the pole, not the one who brokered a deal with 5 other cars before the session starts. I want to see cars blowin motors and blowin tires racing for the lead. I want to see a car get loose and spin out and be out of the race, not fucking slide sideways for 300 yards and then get four fresh tires and restart 9th. I want to see strategy be gone and I want to see 50 cars show up per race. I want a lot of things but what I don't want to see is some bullshit like we see every weekend where nothing is sacred and the race ends in some dark twisted 8 year olds fantasy. Every fucking race reminds me of playing guns with my friends, shooting someone either my fake gun, and them saying. " nah uh I got my anti gun shield up". Every race starts, runs, and ends with me saying to myself that this is fucking bullshit and this will never happen in any other professional racing series ever.

great post

But I believe in love.
I believe in babies.
I believe in Mom and Dad.
And I believe in you.

REAL RACIN'

NO HOLLYWOOD SHIT

Let's see.... Where does the list even begin... The Busch series is never coming back in the way that it was, short track racing is never coming back, no pit road speed limit is never coming back, 212.809 mph will never be broken, restrictor plates are never leaving, carburetors are never coming back, roof flaps are never leaving, racing back to the line is never coming back, pit crews without helmets is never coming back, racetracks without safer barriers are never coming back, bias ply tires are never coming back, Winston is never coming back, the inside line for lap down cars and the outside line for lead lap cars is never coming back, engine failures are never coming back, good ol boys from the south aren't coming back, non aero dependent racecars are never coming back, some joe schmo and his buddies throwing together an independent effort and making the show is never coming back, the latford points system is never coming back, the diecast craze is never coming back, and the list goes on... It's part of the evolution of racing. The parts and pieces were there in the right place at the right time. The fight in 79 was so thrilling because everybody was snowed in and didn't have much of a choice of what to watch. There wasn't an internet, cell phones, smart phones, etc to occupy everyones time. That's never coming back. It's all part of the evolution of the times, life, society, sport, everything. Evolution doesn't work in reverse. NASCAR's on track product worked for the fans of the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s. And with each successive generation was a bunch of pissed off fans saying "why did they change this?" If, as a fan, you can't appreciate what the on track product is now, then you are wasting your time watching.

Evolution of a sport is expected as all sports have experienced such events. Usually though with evolution, the sports continue to grow and grow. Strikes seem to hurt for a few years but with time the fans come back to cheer on their favorite teams and players. SAFER barriers, stronger cars, helmets on pit crew members, those were nessesary changes because they are changes in the name of safety. What isn't evolution of the sport is the almost weekly introduction of some new gimmick that makes us, the fans, look like a bunch of mongoliod assholes. The surprise penalties, the double file restarts, the competition and debris cautions every 20 laps, the promotion of ANYTHING GOES ON THE LAST LAP, the encouragement of big crashes, the repaving of every track everytime it gets any kind of bump somewhere, the aero package that changes all the time, the chase and the shootout and the all star race tinkering, GWC, giant TVs, progressive banking, the fucking qualifying at Talladega for MORE CRASHING, I can go on forever. These are all things this sport didn't need. NASCAR didn't have a strike, the drivers weren't considered greedy, yet the fans are leaving in droves because we don't know what we're even watching anymore. You can't sit there and tell me this isn't a dying sport. You can't tell me this is normal behavior from the head office of NASCAR.

It's not fun anymore. Everything is manufactured and fake feeling. There is nothing spectacular about NASCAR these days. You have a field of drivers driving with their heads up their asses because unless you're really really really unlucky, you can't get hurt anymore. The bottomless pockets it seems of Penske, SHR, Hendrick, Roush doesn't allow any expansion into this sport. NASCAR is choking itself out and it won't be long until we see the fall of this sport. NASCAR is on borrowed time. The truck series will die, the Nationwide series is next. I'm just afraid it's too late to reverse this trend. NASCAR doesn't know what it is anymore, plain and simple.

Not all events in every form of competition should feature or be expected to feature a dramatic and exciting finish. It's a simple matter of reality and all this constant whining when something isn't perfect and/or the toiling to "fix" a "problem" needs to just fucking stop. NASCAR's new points system was explicitly stated to be their efforts to produce a "game 7 moment" that (shock, surprise!) doesn't even happen all that frequently in the sports in which "Game 7" has been an element for decades. And to be honest, the most embarrassingly desperate and pathetic part of NASCAR's attempt at it is that they've engineered their system to guarantee it will happen without any legitimate thought about the implications of any of it.

Sometimes races ended under yellow. Big fucking deal. Sometimes a baseball game is decided by 10+ runs, an basketball game by 30 points, football blowouts, or 0-0 in hockey or soccer. Sometimes (glory days or now) a driver/team hit on a setup and kill the field.

But at what point did NASCAR (or these "fans" they constantly cite) decide we just couldn't handle a yellow/checker finish? That someone locking up a title before the final race was unacceptable?

This bugs me the most. In 2003, Kenseth had a very consistent season and won by a wide margin. I don't like Kenseth, I wasn't happy, but tough shit, that's how sports go. That very same season, with the same type of points system, the Busch series had 5 guys enter Homestead with a chance of winning the title. People had dominated in years past. I have no idea why they felt so obligated to make a change after 2003. The ratings were still good and there were a ton of people in the stands. I'll watch Busch races from that era and it looks like there were more people in the stands for those races than at some of the Cup races today. Crazy.

Just waiting for the day they take a page from Monster Jam's playbook and have a demo derby after the race so the fans can get their fix of crashes.

NASCAR sacrificed all that Real racin' stuff long ago in aid of a hollywood-ised manufactured product.

It's why people are (slightly OTT but you can understand why) so outraged about the finish on Sunday.

They've managed to contrive a formula that is so artificial yet somehow doesn't manage to give us a great finish like they've spent hours upon hours of work on the package to ensure.

Somehow they have managed to piss off both purists and show-ists. What's the point of an artificial overtime rule if it doesn't produce the great finish it promised when they manufactured the sport to ensure it did?

NASCAR isn't a sport any more, it's WWE on wheels (and no offence to WWE fans either)
But the difference is the WWE manages to give its fans exactly what it promises.
It doesn't promise an amazing spectacle then at the last minute say "Hey, we're gonna wrestle the final match to Olympic rules, that suit everyone?"

Pick a side NASCAR, Purism or manufactured show.
Pick a side and stick to it, hovering over the fence like this will piss off both sets of fans.

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

If you consider yourself a purist, you shouldn't be "pissed off" about the finish on Sunday. Disappointed, yes, because it's always dull to see a race end under caution. But if you're pissed off because you think there's no reason for a race to end under yellow, your preferences lean toward the artificial.

And IMO, there's no need to pick a side, as if the choice is a legitimate one. Do it right or don't expect an ounce of credibility to your (NASCAR's) name if you choose otherwise.

We never would have these arguments if drivers just stopped being ok with wrecking every 5 laps. It's almost as if the end of RP races have turned into drunk friends driving gokarts at the putt putt course.

This. We used to see huge packs of cars battling it out for the final lap. Now they just take each other out in mini wrecks that take out the field and we're left with 20 cars and a little wreck for 17th place that ends the race or sends it into GWC finishes, which puts the likelihood of it ending under yellow even higher.

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"The track's wet, that's what I think about it. Fucking shit gets wet when it rains."
-Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Can we have a post of the year thread? Because the one at the top of this page would win it easily. I agree with absolutely everything said.

Better yet: a Fatal 4-Way Elimination Chamber Hell In A Cell War Games Inferno match for the Sprint Cup Series Championship Belt.

No, wait, make the All-Star Race a "Money in The Bank" race where the winner gets a briefcase to cash in at the end of the season and challenge the champion to a match race for all the marbles.