Five Ideas From Tim Tuttle

Everybody wants to get into the act. Tim Tuttle of SI has offered five changes he wants to see for 2007, and they're worth examining.

Abolish The Top-35 Lock-In Rule - He's wrong here. He offers arguments about how if a car not in the top-35 goes home, it cripples that car's ability to establish a foothold in the series and is not a level playing field for cars trying to break into the series.

The first problem is that it's not at all clear that the sport even should have some of these new cars or teams entering the series. Given the damage they've done to the Trucks, it is unfathomable, for instance, to see where Toyota benefits Winston Cup. And what about established teams trying to regain a competitive balance? What would benefit the sport more - Red Bull Racing's Toyotas winning in 2007, or Petty Enterprises Dodges winning in 2007?

NASCAR's current teams deserve to be protected, but that doesn't mean the top-35 rule is really adequate. What it boils down to is that it's time for larger starting fields - no more send-homes after qualifying. Inf 50 cars show up, as seems likely every week, then start 50 cars. Sending teams home after qualifying has never made any sense.


Limit Buschwacking - He's only partly right here, in that he doesn't go far enough. Buschwacking needs to be banned outright. The arguments for some form of Winston Cup participation in BGN no longer work because all Buschwacking has done is bankrupt the BGN series and has also hurt in the Trucks; the series need to establish their own identity and NASCAR needs to start spending the money it should have been spending on these series before.

Make All Restarts Single File - Again he's only partly right, for lapped cars should never be allowed up with the leaders on restarts. He apparantly proposes lining lapped cars in the middle of leaders a la in open wheel racing because he notes, "cars will be stuck behind lapped or slower cars, but they'll have plenty of room to maneuver past." He ignores that this consistently costs these cars time and track from the leader of the race. He also ignores that double-file restarts allow more passing; the sport needs to line the leaders abreast for all restarts.

Reduce The Number Of 500-mile Races - The Attention Deficit Disorder Brigade whines again. Contrary to Tuttle, Dover has seen some attendence slippage after it was all but extorted by NASCAR to cut its race distances to 400 miles, and Daytona never reaches the attendence for its 400 that it has for the 500. Tuttle and the other like-minded critics always ignore that changes in the race's outcome always happen when they are 500 miles, not 400; they also ignore that the drivers don't race harder in a 400-miler than in a 500-miler; 500 miles is always a better test of machinery and driver than 400.

Modernize Engine Technology - For what? "Control speeds through rev limiters," never mind NASCAR already has those and they don;t control the speed all that well. "Allow more advanced electronics like a pit-lane speed limit control." Just why NASCAR needs to have pit speed limits at all isn't even considered. "Increasing the technology would get rid of the restrictor plates and improve the racing, the safety, and the fairness of racing at Daytona and Talladega." Nowhere in history has increasing racing technology per se ever improved the quality of the racing, and restrictor plates do something all this technology has always failed to do - slow the speeds and keep them permanently down. As for safety, it's higher speed that is the safety danger, not restrictor plates. And fairness? Where has the restrictor plate ever been unfair?

"Doesn't NASCAR believe in Win On Sunday Sell On Monday?" It gets that with the technology it presently has; it doesn't need to increase technology; if anything it needs to take technology out of the cars.

Tim Tuttle needs to work on his ideas for racing.