NASCAR has been trying hard to get a younger generation of fans interested in stock car racing over the past two decades. A long debated point to help do this is shortening the length of races. It is not uncommon for current races to extend three or four hours long before a winner can be decided. Former crew chief Steve Letarte agrees that this ought to be changed but with a slight caveat.
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He said in an interview with Awful Announcing that he was behind the notion of shortening events. The NFL had done so, golf was trying to do so, and he doesn’t see why NASCAR should be any different. But he wants this to happen only in the scenario that some of the iconic events such as the Daytona 500 and the Coca-Cola 600 are left untouched.
NASCAR’s longest race, the Coca-Cola 600 is a beast. pic.twitter.com/BxNldMGgZb
— Stewart-Haas Racing (@StewartHaasRcng) May 25, 2023
His words went, “I think we have to have some Mount Rushmore of four-hour grinding events because that is the history of the sport… As long as we don’t forget who we are and where we came from, I applaud it.” The sanctioning body too has been thinking along the same lines, he noted. The Chicago Street Course race that was introduced last year runs a little over two hours.
While the purists might still contend that NASCAR has always been about endurance racing, viewership hangs in the balance. Increasing TV viewership and audience ratings is imperative going ahead. And one too many 400-mile races around an oval track are never going to sit well with the fans of today with considerably lower attention spans.
Will NASCAR benefit from a shorter schedule?
Reducing the number of races on the schedule has been discussed under this topic as well. Before NASCAR took sponsorship from the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., there used to be as many as 62 races in a season. Bill France played smart during this time and removed many events from the schedule to bring this number down. Between 1982 and 1993, there were 30 or fewer races.
Since 2001, the number has gone back up to 36 races a season. A few drivers have been staunch in expressing their views that the sport can be doing better with a more compact schedule. Elliott said to Sports Illustrated in 2022, “I’m a firm believer that less is more, in the sense of the timing of a schedule and when we could end our season to make the most for TV ratings and things of that nature.”
With more opinions falling on the same lines as his, NASCAR could potentially be in for a more exciting schedule with shorter races in the future. Change might not be a comfortable venture but it is the only way for the sport to move forward.
