Auto Racing Insider Pete Pistone Posted Saturday, April 12, 2008
Scheduling isn't NASCAR's strong suit these days.
First there's the matter of Saturday night's Phoenix race, which took the green flag at 8:53 p.m. eastern time.
That pushed the end of the race until way past midnight on the east coast with no doubt a big chunk of the audience fast asleep, Saturday night or not.
It didn't help that FOX delayed the start of the race for 15 minutes to try and show the end of a meaningless early-season baseball game between the Red Sox and Yankees that was delayed by rain.
Guess that shows you where NASCAR stands in the pecking order over at Rupert Murdoch's network.
Why on earth the race could not start at say 6 eastern time, since FOX has no prime time programming to speak of on a Saturday night that would have been pre-empted is anyone's guess.
Then there's the matter of the three precious off-weekends that are part of the Sprint Cup Series schedule.
The first came three weeks ago during the annual Easter break.
Now number two rolls around already next week.
That means from the time we go back racing at Talladega at the end of the month until the season ends at Homestead in November, we'll go almost seven months with one more break - the third weekend of July.
That is insane.
NASCAR needs to not just tweak the Sprint Cup schedule, but blow it up.
Those three weekends should be better spread out over the course of the grueling ten month grind.
And the race slate should make some sense, not criss cross across the country without any semblance of order.
I understand TV calls a lot of the shots. Sunday start times this year for the most part have been rolled back to near 1 p.m. ET, after several years with 3 p.m. or later starts.
But until someone explains to me the purpose of starting Saturday night races so late they end only a few hours before some people are getting up to go to Sunday services, I'll just shake my head at the craziness.
It was only a matter of time before Hendrick Motorsports returned to victory lane but using a fuel mileage strategy probably wasn't the way many expected the first victory of 2008 to come. But Chad Knaus proved to be the valuable asset to Jimmie Johnson's and the No. 48 team when his game of high stakes poker paid off with the win Saturday night.
Dale Earnhardt, Jr. knows exactly how Mark martin felt Saturday night when a possible victory slipped through the hands of the No. 8 DEI squad. How many times did Junior suffer that fate the last few years with his previous employer?
After starting the year with the big Daytona 500 win, Ryan Newman is starting to sink like he did the past few years. His pole-winning run at Phoenix was quickly erased by the power steering going out in the No. 12 car, which caused a mess and a red flag Sunday night. Newman finished 43rd while his teammate Kurt Busch came home 23rd, making it a tough night all around for "The Captain's" team."
The new Sprint Cup car sure is a different animal on tracks like Phoenix and the short ovals than what we see on the intermediate tracks. While I stil believe the drivers and teams should pipe down and just drive the car on the mid-sized tracks as they learn more about it during its evoluton, it's hard to argue the difference when the seires competes on those types of tracks vs. what we saw at Phoenix Saturday night.
Please keep the family and friends of NASCAR official Brienne Davis in your thoughts and prayers.
