IF I RULED NASCAR

NASCAR® for the most part works pretty well. But like every big organization, it could
use some tweaks here and there. For what it’s worth, if I were Glen France instead of Glen
Harness, and poppa Bill Jr. left it all to me, here’s what I’d change, at least from a
racing standpoint:

• The fans would be guaranteed at least a green/white/checkers finish in all NASCAR®
  touring divisions. The fans deserve to see a race won under competitive conditions, not
  caution conditions.
• I would put a limit on Winston Cup drivers racing in lower divisions. Probably something
  like the fastest five full-time (top twenty-five in points) Cup drivers would make the
  show, and all others would go to the Busch or Craftsman Truck Series drivers attempting to
  make it. A driver can’t develop if he’s not racing, and the big guns coming down and
  taking 15 or 20 spots from the development series isn’t good for the future of the sport.
• The only changes I’d make to the points system would be to award 5 points for the pole,
  and remove the bonus for leading a lap. Staying out and leading under caution or letting
  your teammate pass you for one lap defeats the purpose of paying points to lead laps..
• Memo to Bristol and Darlington: we won’t be returning to tracks that have front and back
  pits in 2001. Fix it or loose your dates.
• Memo to Bruton: we won’t be taking up a race weekend with The Winston. If you want to
  run it next year, run it in prime time on a week night.
• Memo to all promoters: We live in the United States of America. We don’t use the metric
  system. No more races in kilometers.
• Speedweeks would turn into Speedweek. We’ll move the Daytona 500 up a weekend and
  qualify on Monday and Tuesday, run the Shootout on Wednesday and the Twin 125’s on Friday.
• The night races will be moved to Sunday nights from Saturday nights. We can’t afford to
  compete with our Winston Racing Series tracks who are responsible for grooming future
  generations of NASCAR® Touring Series drivers.
• Memo to new track builders: over the next two or three years, new tracks that get
  Winston Cup races to will be tracks under one mile in length. Build a superspeedway at
  your own risk. And when we do start granting races to superspeedways, they’ll have to be
  unique. If it looks like a track we already run on, thanks, but no thanks.
• We’ll start the fastest 42 cars (or trucks) plus one past champion’s provisional.
• Call Lloyd’s of London. I’m sure they have an insurance broker (or
  two)  over there who’d be willing to insure Talladega and Daytona so that we could do
  away with those restrictor plates. I’d also reinforce the safety fences at those two
  tracks just in case.
• No more qualifying engines. You run what you qualified with.
• There would be a true two-team limit per owner that would be
  enforced.

I think with the changes I’ve outlined above, the Winston Cup Series
and the other touring series would be better than they are today.