For a sport that, for years, was accused of being stuck in a rut, let’s just take a minute and appreciate the new advances that we’ve seen unveiled in the last few weeks. Advances that could impact NASCAR for years to come.
First, at New Hampshire, we had the first race completed, on an oval, on wet weather tires. While there has been a lot of angst since then about NASCAR dictating tire use; the overall sentiment surrounding the test case (for lack of a better term), has been positive. I mean, there is no way that race would have run to the advertised distance without the wet weather tires.
Now, at Chicago, we had, not only weather tires, but also a timed race. Knowing that darkness would be an issue, NASCAR set a time deadline rather than running until it got too dark and just throwing the checkereds. And, they set the time deadline early enough that teams had time to strategize, knowing what they were facing.
And, there were different strategies and a compelling finish.
It’s not going to be a weekly occurrence, but I expect that we will see more timed race endings down the road.
Two new ways to run and manage races in three weeks. Either one of which would have been scoffed at years ago, now are part of NASCAR’s toolkit going forward.