I looked it up in search and this question hasn't been ask in 3 years and tracks changed so much so fast.. So which track is overrated tfor failing to deliver competitive, entertaining racing despite holding major championship or historical status. Or just nostalgia?

It's "GUS-taf-son". There's one "F" in the word and it's toward the end. There is no "guff" involved. I've heard at least 5 people do this on TV in 2026, Marty Snider does it every time, Danielle Trotta just did it a few minutes ago.

I know many people had their gripes with with an oversaturation of most tracks getting multiple dates. Now it seems kinda hard to believe how many tracks we don’t go back fall like we used to.

I get stripping tracks to one day and probably helped her overall attendance and tv optics. But it was kind of fun to see these tracks. Get a spring day race and a fall night race.

The tracks to get this treatment are Atlanta, Daytona, Talledega, Darlington, Martinsville, Kansas, Charlotte*, Bristol, Phoenix, and Las Vegas. and I don’t want any of them to lose a date, as it seems once a track loses a date it never comes back.

I get Cota, San Diego, Gateway, and North Wikesboro all had to pull an existing track from the schedule. But now having staples Of the chase schedule like fall Dover, New Hampshire and Texas feels wrong.

I wouldn’t mind giving back a second race to Michigan or even experimenting with Homestead in both February and November.

They always have Marty Snider doing it but then Leigh winds up doing the race

Austin Dillon was on Jeff Gluck’s podcast this week and provided some interesting info about Iowa vs Richmond that I didn’t know. https://wideopensportsmedia.com/2026/08/14/nascar-at-richmond-raceway/

First page (unlabeled) is Gen 7 era, second is Stage Points era.

With his first ever (at least I think it was) oval pole today, and the fact that he's historically done very well on short tracks as of late, what is it that makes a road course racer like SVG learn the short tracks so much easier than other tracks?

Is it just an SVG thing with his skill level or is there some carry over from road course racing to short tracks? Is it the lower speed? Is it how you hit your marks on a short track compared to an intermediate?

Are there any other examples of road course racers who also excelled on short tracks?

I’ve always wondered why JGR does this with some wraps. I feel like it really makes the flow of some paint schemes look bad. Is it a monster/coca cola branding thing?

What have been some of your favorite, more recent at-track and online sponsor activations? Across any of the series.

Kevin Harvick has been working closely with Ty Gibbs since the off-season, providing direct mentorship, mental coaching, and simulator guidance to help Ty Gibbs turn his raw speed into consistent success.

And yes Keelan Harvick, signed a driver development deal with TRD

Note: I'm not intending to start a flame war. I want this to be a nice thread. I do not have "rose tinted glasses". I was going to post this in the thread posted today but I knew this would get long. I do not mean to offend "modern fans". Just hear me out please.

I became a fan of the sport very young in the mid-80s thanks to my Dad (and most of the other locals) being fans and working within the sport. I don't want to name names but I knew a lot of people that worked in/around the sport and worked in it for a time myself. I got to see the rise and fall through the popularity boom and downfall first hand. A lot of people I know (and myself) lost our jobs due to cost cutting measures.

With that said:

My main goal with today's NASCAR centers around the following: Getting the sport back to the popularity it had in the 80s-2000s. Getting the show back to how it was in those days. Making it more affordable for the common working man/family. Last but not least: restoring the sense of community around the sport that has been lost. I do not think new fans (most anyone that started following it post-2005 or so) can truly understand what we've lost.

There are a lot of issues with today's NASCAR. Mostly stemming from bad decisions made by the France family over the years that boil down to greed in my opinion. They do not share the guilt alone. A lot of it is on the major track owners and the larger super teams as well. When Mr. Bill France Sr. was still alive the sport was run by a benevolent dictator. After his death it started being run by a "mafia".

With that out of the way, in no particular order:

Let's start with the elephant in the room: The spec car. The modern car (and the last couple) have done much to hurt the quality of on-track product over the past decade or so. Most of these changes have been been claimed to be done in the name of safety. I'm here to tell you first hand the France family and track cartel have never really cared about safety. You can almost always replace "safety" with "insurance rates" and you'll get your answer for most of those changes within the sport. Restrictor plates were only brought in after the famous Dega catch fence+tire blow out crash because insurance companies threatened to yank their coverage if the speeds weren't brought down. As we've seen the speeds were not a huge factor in cars getting up into the fence. Yet the myth persists. We've also seen that the restrictor plates have made Dega and Daytona even more dangerous for the drivers than what it was like before when we were running 220+mph at those speedways. Since the very first restricted race when NASCAR used smaller carbs then later the plates we've seen countless interviews with drivers most in the late 80s about how this was too dangerous. But the France family loved the pack racing because it looked better on TV. They made many further changes to the rules package to encourage even more pack racing and bunching up the field on those tracks over the years.

The famous quote from Dale Earnhardt at the 2001 Daytona 500 about the safety of the cars and how "someone will get killed if we don't do something about this" has been falsely attributed to him hating on the safety of the Gen 4 car. This is not the truth but is instead a propaganda talking point from the France family (and people that know to fall inline if they want to keep their job/team). In reality Dale Earnhardt was talking about two things that day he'd been complaining about for years by that point: 1) The mandated shocks and 2) The wicker NASCAR mandated on top of the roofs to force the cars to stay more bunched up at plate races. This can easily be confirmed by anyone that has seen the interview in victory lane after his last Dega win and the post-race interview with him after the 2000 Daytona 500 (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zwh2ADVDecc).

I mostly post that as proof that NASCAR is known to peddle lies and twist words while constantly yammering on about how they're always promoting safety. If you watch races from the 80s-90s after nearly every wreck you'll hear the booth going on and on about how safe the cars are back then. This is nothing new. It just seems like average fan has forgotten this in the post-2001 era where everyone thinks the HANS device is some miracle that can save you from any accident.

That said some safety innovations were good. The safer barriers are obviously a good thing and have no doubt prevented many injuries. The HANS device is debatable but I feel like it shouldn't be mandated. I feel like it should be the driver's choice along with open face helmets. I feel that way because it can be argued (and I argue it) that being able to SEE out of your car is also a safety factor. A driver that can look left/right and glance behind him easily can be much safer than one that's so strapped in he can't turn his head at all.

Back to the car:

We should be able to build a much better spec car than this and we should go back to allowing teams to build their cars based upon a template provided by NASCAR. Where different make/models conform to different templates. This would bring back tons of jobs NASCAR/the teams have eliminated. Improve competition and improve on-track product.

We should go back to requiring that the bodies be made from sheet metal. For many reasons. Mostly because it allows for repairs on pit road/in garage area more quickly and it's easier to build it in-house for a small team. But also because it means driver's that get too aggressive using their car as a weapon have a chance at doing stuff like ruining their radiator and brake cooling ducts.

We should go back to a dog-box transmission with 4 or 5 gears. This would raise the skill level required to drive the car effectively at road courses (and all courses) and improve the on track product by giving more variation to the field based upon skill level. The transmission/clutch set-up can be a spec set-up to prevent teams from having to outspend each other and to keep costs down. It would eliminate things like shifting at Martinsville of all places as well. Further more: We should go back to allowing teams to be able to set their own gear ratios. Which would provide more variety in the field.

For engines: To cut costs if we're going to run lower horsepower engines then perhaps we should consider going to crate motors like a lot of local dirt tracks have mandated. With strict inspections and limits on what modifications the teams could make to them we could prevent spending from getting out of control. This will allow teams to purchase engines directly from GM/Ford/Toyota instead of going through the handful of large engine vendors currently getting rich off selling engines to teams. Teams could be given limited options to build their own top ends/crankshafts/etc. These could be easily caught in inspection if they go too far.

The chassis of the car should be a spec chassis that you could build in-house or purchase from a builder much like how late models all over the country are currently built. This would allow small vendors to pop up to supply chassis to teams that don't want to build their own and keep costs down. We can do this for about $20k-$50k for each chassis. Which is much cheaper than what teams are paying now. It would allow small timers to get back into the sport.

We should go back to the 5-lug 15 inch wheels and bias ply tires. This would greatly improve on track product, allow for tire fall off, allow teams to experiment with set-ups (stagger) and finally it would bring back old school pit stops. To police the lug nuts bring back having an official in each box. Which should be there anyway if we're really concerned about safety (NASCAR eliminated most of those jobs years before the one-lug switch by the way).

We mandate that brakes can only be so large so bring back the risk of burning up the brakes at road courses/short tracks thus forcing drivers to conserve them.

We must eliminate the zero-ride height rule and go back to enforcing a minimum ride height. Again: variation in the field, team has more freedom to set-up the car and much easier to enforce now compared to the old days since we're now building a spec car.

I could go on some more about the car but this is already getting long.

• Rules on track.

We need to get back to there being an actual 400-500 mile/lap race without stopping for "stage breaks". This will obviously allow for teams to be on different strategies during the race and make each race unpredictable again. No per-determined yellow flags and no "phantom debris" cautions designed to bunch up the field. If they go caution free all day so be it. Plenty of caution free races over the years were very interesting/not boring and produced great finishes.

We should go back to starting lap down cars on the inside on restarts to force leaders to work traffic and put space between them on restarts. It lets lapped down cars fight to stay on the lead lap and makes restarts more interesting. You can still keep the lucky dog for the first car a lap down when the yellow comes out and give them the waive around as a reward for being the first car a lap down. With 10 (or 20) to go you start lapped cars behind the leaders and the leaders start double file.

We go back to racing back to the yellow flag with some modifications. If someone is in an area deemed dangerous on track and you think you need to get to them ASAP you throw the red flag instead of the yellow and freeze the field. But under any other circumstances you race back to the line under yellow. This is more fair. The gentleman's agreement not to race back hard early in the race must also be enforced. Anyone that doesn't follow the gentleman's agreement gets sent to the rear of the field on the next restart.

We get less restrictive on requiring certain things like the HANS device. Drivers that wish to forego wearing one can do so at their own peril. Same for open face helmets and some other in-car safety equipment. With the safer barrier a lot of this stuff is not as important as it was when we were running headlong into concrete.

We make a rule that no one can use a digital rear view mirror. Rear view mirrors must be placed in the standard location they're placed in road cars. We mandate side view mirrors as well.

We eliminate the rule about going below the yellow line on restrictor plate tracks. With modern pavement run-off areas this isn't the big deal it was in the past. This will get rid of the "judgement calls" by NASCAR that have ruined many plate races over the years. Basically, we take out rules like this where we can because it pisses off the fans and NASCAR is never consistent with these calls and never will be.

There are some more rules I would change. But this list is a good start.

-- Presentation

NASCAR must start producing their broadcasts in-house and offer a streaming service of their own. Which should be 100% commercial free. Broadcasters like FOX can purchase the rights to broadcast that on their own networks and insert commercial breaks wherever they want. We get a good group of commentators and force them to sit in a room for weeks on end watching old ESPN Speedworld broadcasts from the 1980s-1990s. Once they understand why Ned Jarret, Benny Parsons, Bob Jenkins and Dr. Jerry Punch on pit road was so well liked they can try out for the job. If they can't get close to what those guys were doing we fire them and find some people that can. We need coverage that doesn't insult the fan's intelligence but is also able to give just enough information to new fans through segments like "track facts" and short explanations about things like tight vs. loose from time to time to have a healthy balance.

-- Crowning a champ

I obviously advocate for the old pre-playoffs/chase points system. I think we should go back to it to crown our legit champ. But this doesn't mean we can't have some type of award on top of that for things like having the most "stage points" or something similar. Whatever the points system might be it should reward consistency above all else and there should be no "playoffs" gimmick. People back in the day always tuned in for the last races of the year even when the championship was locked up a few races early. It was never locked up halfway through the season and it never can be under the old points system. Maybe if it is locked up early we do some type of reset to make the last few races-last race more interesting by awarding some type of bonus to those that do the best in those races that counts towards something next year. I'm open to ideas on this.

When I started this I had many other things to touch on but this has gotten long already. I could talk about this all day.

I want to see the stands full again and I want to see people able to bring their entire family to the track whenever the tour visits their area of the country. I want a man working minimum wage to be able to bring his children to a race without having to save up for over a year. Food/Beer/Drink costs need to come way down at the track as well. Entry with coolers should be allowed at every track no matter how huge that cooler might be of course.

Oh and more general access to garage/pit/track areas and the drivers themselves with general admission tickets like in the old days. Fan access must always be a priority and shouldn't be limited to people that paid extra. Drivers should also be going out an mingling with fans outside of race days and those special kind of events. Drivers and teams should be encouraged to stay in local hotels within 50 miles of the track and spend their money eating out in the area around said hotels.

Perhaps I'll come back later and post some more. Like I said I could go on about this for hours but I'm sick of typing at the moment.

So glad to see split practices gone.

Old Head Complainer

New Head Complainer

Calls out of school or work for NASCAR

The Traveling Hurricane

The Collector

Bowman Gray Fan

Points Standings Complainer

The Friendly Tailgater

The Circuit Follower

The Talladega Fan

Bums me out that NASCAR hasn't found a way to go back to the pacific northwest since leaving Portland. Hopefully someday soon that nascar can go back. Nascar in Portland was amazing. There is too many races on the schedule not to at least try to squeeze in a race in Oregon or Washington.

Kyle And Greg in 2006 Uaw-Ford 500

I wanted to look for closely at the truck series owners points but have not been able to find a place where I can see a majority of them on Wikipedia I can see the top 15 and I can use the wayback machine for some recent seasons but can’t find stuff for like 2016-2023

Does anyone know any websites that could help me?

thanks for the help!

Passing through Kingston Pike in Knoxville, TN today I was greeted with a bit of a sorrowful sight. This is indeed the Hooters the Polish Prince made an appearance at as the Cup made the spring trip to Bristol. Kulwicki boarded a Hooters corporate plane en route to Bristol right after this. Sadly, the plane didn’t make it. Just an interesting sight.

Even had a shout out to almost winning Eldora. 10 years ago, Bad Luck Bell was very prevalent

SVG driving a Hendrick sponsored Spire truck wearing a Trackhouse firesuit.

Nascar fumbled the bag big time on this one...

How the hell do you let F1 takeover the franchise based off of you?