NASCAR NEEDS A HANDICAPPING SYSTEM
There is no parity in NASCAR.
Now you might think this an inaccurate assumption. NASCAR has
obsessed itself with achieving parity, and by many standards it has never
seen greater parity than it has today. By November 1999 NASCAR had
seen eleven different winners – Jeff Gordon with seven wins, Jeff Burton
with six, Dale Jarrett and Bobby Labonte with four each, Dale Earnhardt
with three, Mark Martin with two, and Terry Labonte, Rusty Wallace, John
Andretti, Tony Stewart, and Joe Nemechek with one apiece – and the
manufacturer battle has been unusually close – Ford has thirteen wins,
Chevrolet twelve, and Pontiac six. The season has seen several races
of unusual ferocity.
Yet parity has not been achieved.
Why?
Because top-heaviness still permeates the sport. Four drivers have
21 wins. The last four seasons have seen only five first time
winners – compare that to the rash of first-timers in the Craftsman Trucks
in 1998. The 1998 and ’99 seasons have been little more than a
showdown between two teams – Hendrick Motorsports and Roush Performance
Racing. True, Robert Yates and Joe Gibbs have taken the top two
spots in 1999 points and have nine wins between them this year, but this
is the exception that proves the rule.
One need look at the manufacturer breakdown to see. Of Chevrolet’s
twelve wins, eight of them came from Hendrick Motorsports (Hendrick has 55
of the Monte Carlo’s 76 wins); of Ford’s thirteen wins, seven are from
Roush Racing (of the Taurus’ 28 wins to date, 17 are by Roush cars); five
of Pontiac’s six 1999 wins came from the Gibbs team.
True depth would have teams like Morgan-McClure, SABCO, the
Childress-Earnhardt-Petree triumverite (whose very existence serves as a
glaring example of lack of parity), Petty Enterprises, Bill Davis, Elliott
Motorsports, Butch Mock, and others accounting for more wins than
this. All of these teams have the same potential as the works teams
of NASCAR.
And true depth would see a stoppage of the madness of multicar
teams. All of this jells into a need for a handicapping system for
NASCAR.
Handicapping is to be found in other sports. In stick & ball
sports the teams with the worst records get first draft picks (and also
tend to benefit from the wheeling & dealing that permeate drafts); in
baseball the visiting team bats first; in Canadian football OTs have a
handicapping system – if a team scores, the opposing team gets one final
possession and chance to retie or win the game, a system that arguably
helped make Doug Flutie a better QB.
There are handicapping systems in the New England and Northeast regions of
the Winston Racing Series, primarily centered on inversions of heat
starting fields and inversion of top starters in features, all of which
help make better racing.
Presently no system of handicapping is to be found in NASCAR. And
there is a need for one.
The central area in need of addressing is testing. It is here that
NASCAR decisions have led to the glut of multicar teams. Until 1990
testing was not an area of official concern. But when Rusty Wallace,
Mark Martin, and others spent almost more time testing than racing, NASCAR
stepped in and implemented a cap of seven tests for the period of
mid-March until the end of the season. The idea was to curb rising
costs; it didn’t work.. The November to mid-March open season for
testing saw teams cram in every test they could before the seven-test cap,
so little changed. But for 1994 NASCAR extended the seven-test cap
to include an outright ban on testing for mid-November through December,
and applied the seven-test cap for the entire calender year until the end
of the season. This rule did nothing to curb costs, but it in effect
saved Hendrick Motorsports and Roush Racing, the two multicar teams of the
sport at the time.
The need to change this situation is clear for all to see. A
handicapping system on testing is one major way to go.
Increase the number of alloted tests from seven to at least 20, and
preferably 30. Stagger the number to include the totality of a
team’s fleet – a single car team like Morgan-McClure gets 20-30 tests, a
two-car team like Petty Enterprises and Robert Yates gets 10-15 tests per
car, a three-car team like Hendrick Motorsports gets six to ten tests per
car, and so forth.
Also, give back tests to teams not in the top ten in points at certain
periods of the season – give back ten tests to each team out of the top
ten in points entering the World 600 in May, give back ten additional
tests to each team out of the top ten in points entering September, and
let teams that finish out of the top ten in final points test without
restriction December through February – the precedent here is the
extensive testing NASCAR allowed Ford teams with the new Taurus during the
November-December test ban in 1997.
In racing preparation is everything, and testing is preparation.
"What kind of plays would Broadway put out if they didn’t have
rehersals?" Harry Hyde asked in 1991. A handicapping system on
testing will help equalize things better.
Another area in need of a handicapping system is Winston Cup participation
in Busch Grand National racing. When the Busch Series races in
companion with Winston Cup, the Cup guys participate and benefit from the
extra practices and resources at their disposal. They deny points to
BGN regulars and qualify some of them out of races. It has to
change. Do not let any Winston Cup driver be able to participate in
any Busch Series practice session sandwiched around BGN qualifying, and
ban any Cup driver running a Busch race from running Saturday morning
Winston Cup practice, the session that gives the Cup drivers the realtime
track and chassis knowledge that is their biggest individual edge over the
BGN regulars. Also schedule additional BGN practice time for the
series regulars.
The Busch Series could also use the testing system outlined above.
Other areas – change restart procedures; line lapped cars behind the
leaders and double up the leaders. Stagger pit assignments in
inverse order of the qualifying rundown (the pole sitter must pit at the
Turn Four entrance, the last place starter pits at the pit exit, etc.);
stagger pit assignments for tracks with two pit roads based on row
assignments (the inside row pits on the frontstretch, the outside row pits
on the backstretch); eliminate pit speed limits for stops under green;
increase the pit speed limit for backstretch pits under caution (such as
55 MPH for back pits and 40-45 MPH for front pits).
With handicapping, we can finally see true parity. They often say
that Winston Cup has 25 or more teams capable of winning; maybe we can
finally see a season with 25 different winners.