NASCAR questions? Answers are harder

THATSRACIN.COM OPINION

Saturday, Jan. 30, 2010

The 2010 NASCAR season closes in on a start at Daytona International Speedway with the Budweiser Shootout, with qualifying for the front row of the Daytona 500 and the Automobile Racing Club of America series opener.

Leading up to Speedweeks, economic issues have taken their toll on stock car racing, NASCAR has proclaimed its changes and new teams have announced their intentions.

As attention turns to the start of another season, we take a look at five questions:

1. Do Danica Patrick's cards trump NASCAR's?

While most of the IndyCar star's first season in stock car racing involves the NASCAR Nationwide Series, her debut is set in Saturday’s ARCA season opener.

Because of Super Bowl scheduling, NASCAR moved the ARCA race, Daytona 500 qualifying and its shootout event to Saturday.

When the change was made, NASCAR officials were ready for some football, not Patrick's schedule. And Patrick's plans have produced an awkward situation.

A lot of the media's and public's attention Saturday – during a major sports weekend, by the way – will be on the female star's stock car racing debut. But it will be in a race that doesn't have NASCAR's much-cherished branding.

Think of the opportunities and resources. Then consider the late-afternoon finishing time of that other race, the one in which former pole winners are pitted against other drivers that NASCAR has an interest in having on television that day.

Where's the most attention? Patrick couldn’t have planned it better had she set the Speedweeks schedule herself.

2. Can Jimmie Johnson win a fifth?

If he does, he’ll break a record that would be only a year old. He set the standard at four in a row in 2009.

But at this point, with no off-season testing on NASCAR tracks and few other significant changes, it’s difficult to come up with a legitimate reason for betting against him.

Denny Hamlin appeared to be the media favorite as a top challenger, but how's his knee? He suffered a ligament tear in his left knee playing pickup basketball. And it remains unclear how that will affect his season.

Hamlin has elected to postpone surgery until the end of the 2010 season.

3. Will NASCAR's changes make the racing better?

With great fanfare and rhetoric, NASCAR announced several changes during the annual Sprint Media Tour. Officials say – and hope – the they will make the racing better.

Among them:

Changing from a rear wing to a spoiler on the Cup car.

Bigger restrictor plates at Daytona and Talladega.

Letting competitors – instead of officials – be the police when a race is under way, particularly when it's at Daytona and Talladega.

It’s hard to measure how much the racing will change, if at all.

The spoiler isn't likely to show up anytime before late March or April. Even then, drivers participating in early tests say they have not noticed a lot of difference.

4. Whose fault is it?

That's easy. Reporters, commentators and "the media" at large were being blamed well before the recent media tour in Charlotte. Anything and everything wrong in stock car racing, particularly NASCAR's brand, is the fault of newspapers, TV stations, non-licensed cable networks and (gasp! – the Internet!).

Sure, say it's our fault. Particularly if it makes you feel better.

Taking shots from the NASCAR brass, team owners and drivers is fine.

All those warnings – each more dire than the last – could not be more clear: Fans must, at all costs, refrain from forming any opinions based on the musings of the motorsports media.

Here’s another thought: Let fans figure it out for themselves. Why not let them judge for themselves, based simply on what they see with their own eyes?

5. Has the economy changed, or NASCAR?

It is unlikely, even with a strong recovery, that businesses will hire back all the employees they have let go.

The cash flow seen in the period of NASCAR's tremendous growth, now sharply constricted, will probably not return.

Sponsors standing in line to spend $20 million-plus a year with a Cup team? Much fewer and farther between.

Roush Fenway Racing has for some time been working with a model that many believe could become far more common in NASCAR. It involves several "primary" sponsors. They share – and spread – the cost of a team competing in a single racing season.

In this respect, NASCAR might have changed forever.

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