NASCAR news/updates

[ExtraSlow]

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Fucking hilarious that the last race of the season is called the Season Finale 500. I can't think of a more amateur hour name.

It's sponsored by a mexican seasoning company. It's spelled Seasone~ Finale~ or whatever the fuck.

[SKR]

I wish that's what it was.

[SKR]

Nobody is going to read this, and even less than that are going to care about it, but I've typed it so here it is. I didn't expect it to be this wordy.

NASCAR is wrestling now. I suppose it has been for a long time, but even more now.

Way back in 2003, Matt Kenseth won the Winston Cup (or whatever it was called if it changed names by then) despite only winning 1 race. NASCAR decided that having a champion be the driver who simply accumulates the most points over a season was too boring, so it began a series of championship playoff formats starting in 2004, with each version being more convoluted than the last.

The current system is 26 "regular season" races, with 16 drivers making it into the championship rounds. A win guarantees you entry into the championship round. The leftover spots are determined by points standings. That means that a driver who consistently finishes outside of the top 30 can find himself in the final 16 by lucking into a win somewhere in the first 26 races. I don't know what happens if there are more than 16 winners in a season. I don't know if NASCAR knows either. Each of the first 3 rounds is 3 races. A driver can advance to the next round the same way he got in in the first place, by winning one of the 3 races in that round. The bottom 4 drivers in the points in that round are eliminated, so 12 drivers move on to the second round and 8 move on to the third. At the end of the third round there are 4 drivers left, and the final round is a single race after which one of the 4 drivers will be crowned champion. It's a needlessly complex system intended to guarantee "game 7 moments" (that's NASCAR's exact wording, when at the time they were competing against the NFL which famously doesn't have games 2 through 7) among drivers who aren't necessarily deserving of the title, or necessarily among fan's favorites. In reality it undoes anything that 36 of 40 drivers have done in the 35 races leading up to the final race.

In 2022, Ross Chastain found himself on the outside of the points nearing the end of the last race of the third round at Martinsville. If you're a fan of racing, you would have seen this highlight, even if you don't immediately recognize it here. He needed to pass one specific driver who was a few spots ahead of him. So on the last lap, where everyone else was braking into the last two corners, Chastain held it on the floor and put his car into the wall. NASCAR's current gen car doesn't deform from contact like older cars did, so in previous years the car would have slowed down. But Chastain's didn't, and he passed a handful of cars coming to the checkered flag, including the guy he needed to pass to get himself into the group of 4. NASCAR immediately banned the move. I don't remember the wording of the rule, but the gist of it is that you're not allowed to just floor it and ride the wall around the corners to pass people.

Last night, the final race of the 3rd round was at Martinsville again. Chevrolet's hopes of having one of their drivers in the final race was hanging on William Byron, whose car struggled on long green lap runs. Other Chevrolet drivers who were obviously faster than Byron refused to pass and take points away from him, as well as block other drivers from passing him, on direct orders from Chevrolet. It's worth noting here that there are no "official" manufacturer teams like there are in F1. Nobody drives for Chevrolet. Chevrolet provides support for all Chevrolet teams. So there aren't really "team" orders, but there are apparently manufacturer orders.

Byron's competition was a Toyota driven by Christopher Bell. Late in the race, fellow Toyota driver Bubba Wallace radioed his team saying he suspected he had a tire going flat, which was less obvious but still was almost certainly an order from Toyota, and began to slow. Bell caught and passed Wallace, but got into the wall doing so. Similar to Chastain, Bell stayed in the throttle, held his position ahead of Wallace, and finished the race with enough points to get himself into the final four and push Byron out.

NASCAR immediately decided that Bell broke the rules by wall riding, and demoted him 4 positions, which was enough for Byron to advance. The problem is in the rule, where you can't make that move an advance your position. Bell didn't. He was ahead of Wallace, and Wallace likely would have stuck his car in reverse if he needed to to keep Bell ahead of him. So Bell didn't really break a rule. Similarly, Chevrolet and its drivers didn't really break any specific rules either, except the one that more or less says you have to finish as best you can. It appears as though NASCAR wanted to keep all three manufacturers (Ford is the other) in the championship 4, and there was likely pressure from the biggest Chevrolet team, Hendrick Motorsports, to make that happen. No matter what a Chevy had to make it, and when one didn't a Toyota got bounced.

To a lot of people NASCAR is just cars driving in a circle, but when they do stuff like this it's not even that. It's manufactured drama between people that happen to be driving race cars on a race track. To be a champion isn't to have the best season anymore. William Byron has won 3 races of 35 this season, as have the other 3 drivers who will get a chance to compete for the championship next week. Kyle Larson has won 6, but had the bad fortune to not win one of the previous 3. And he has 12 stage wins, which I haven't mentioned here because it's too complex for me to even understand, let alone explain, but apparently they're important and he's got 12. Christopher Bell has 11. Byron has 2. Larson has led 1687 laps, which is only 110 fewer than the top 4 combined. The only other driver to lead over 1000 is Bell, with 1002.

It's unbelievable that the championship will be awarded to a driver next week and while don't know who it is, we know it definitely won't be the driver with the most wins, it definitely won't be the driver with the most stage wins, and it definitely won't be the driver who was the leader at the end of a lap 1090 more times than the closest of the 4 drivers. A thousand and ninety times, that guy was at the head of the field, and he won't be the champion because the system was engineered so that he couldn't. It's wrestling now where it's as much the manipulation off the track as it is the racing that happens on it that determines the successes and failures of a season. I don't know who would want to watch it, or even who would want to compete in it. I don't know how you could stand there in Phoenix next week with the fireworks and confetti and whatever else, and feel like you accomplished something.

[jonni44]

So I'm a huge F1 fan, watch every quali and every race, and have done for years. I was sad to see DR be replaced by that asshole Lawson, and yelled at the TV when Sainz took Checo out of the race in Baku (but mainly cause it meant my friend won our weekly bet in doing so).

Ive watched the Daytona 500 every year religiously as my grandparents lived 2 miles from the track, and it brings back good memories of my childhood. I knew a little bit about the sport but not enough to explain the points format to anyone (not that anyone I know cares lol)

This year I decided to get into NASCAR properly though. I watched the netflix series and decided to give it a shot. This year I watched every race. I won't lie, they are hard to get through in one sitting and I more often than not would watch the stages as an episode on TV over the course of 3 days during the week. I would watch them while at work and it became very therapeutic listening to the cars go round the track and the chatter on the radio.

I learned about all the drivers as well. Personally I'm a huge fan of Denny Hamlin and Tyler Reddick. I don't care much for Kyle Larson especially after he effectively said that he was the best driver in the world. Although I was pulling for him to race in both the Indy 500 and the Coca Cola the same day as that is a pretty impressive feat.

Having watched every race it is clear as day that the playoffs are fixed and every team is in on it. I watched the race in Martinsville and knew that Bubba slowed down on purpose to let Bell by, and I also knew that 2 chevy's were blocking other cars on purpose so that Byron would advance. I also knew the minute it happened Bell would get DQ'd for pulling a watermelon man around the final corner. I also know that Hamlin will never win a cup championship because the fans absolutely loathe him and its not good for NASCAR if he wins.

You can also see how the races are fixed by simply watching the Cup Championship. There is no way all 4 cars were able to be in the top 6 for a majority of the race without help from every other car on the track.

Whether or not I watch next season will fully come down to what happens in the court case with 23IX and NASCAR. I'm a lawyer by trade and think that NASCAR is effectively a Vince McMahon without all the actual raping. What NASCAR did to the other 32 teams at 11pm on the deadline is simply criminal even if it is billionaires arguing with millionaires. To give teams 40 minutes to decide whether or not to sign a take or leave it deal is by definition negotiating in bad faith.

If 23IX wins and NASCAR gets smacked down in the courts I'm likely to watch next season to see what happens in the next episode. If 23IX loses and especially if Reddick is forced to drive for another team, I'll likely just go back to watching the 500 in February every year.

Anyway, long story short, I read your post. I agree with it entirely. Lagono was not the cup series champion, as much as I dislike him clearly Larson was. I doubt NASCAR will change the format any time soon though.

[ThePenIsMightier]

Is it possible to write NASCAR a letter and/or send them DickPix? That might resolve this quickly.

[SKR]

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You can also see how the races are fixed by simply watching the Cup Championship. There is no way all 4 cars were able to be in the top 6 for a majority of the race without help from every other car on the track.

Here's a fun fact, in 2014 NASCAR changed the championship format to its current one, and the driver who won the championship also won the race in 10 of those 11 years. Quite a coincidence. Obviously that's how NASCAR or any racing series would like it to end, and to be fair that's how WSBK and BSB ended this year, but it's awfully fuckin convenient that a championship that's sold as "coming down to the final race", comes down to the final race almost all the time.

[jonni44]

I actually did not know that stat. That's pretty funny if you think about it, 40 drivers across 26 regular season races and 16 playoff races and you're telling me the guy that wins the final race wins the championship 10 out of 11 years? In fairness though, wrestling fans and NASCAR fans are likely the same fans so in a way that makes sense. No one wants to see guys like Daniel Suarez or Austin Dillon win the Cup Championship, hence why NASCAR took Dillon's entry into the playoffs away from him but let him keep the race win after he wrecked 2 cars to get the win. I thought that was awesome btw, zero fucks were given.

NASCAR is like a sport version of who's line is it anyway? A game where the rules are made up and the points don't matter.

[ThePenIsMightier]

How does the money flow, though? If the actual best race team gets the most money and NASCAR just makes a big show of De ChumpiOnSsHiP rAcE to satisfy their key demographic (LoL), does anyone else care?

They need to be forced to incorporate more potato-shaped rainbow weirdos into the sport.

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...
NASCAR is like a sport version of who's line is it anyway? A game where the rules are made up and the points don't matter.

LoL!!