Irony

[Jonesi]

Anyone else realize the winners of the Truck, Nationwide and Cup races have NO points in those race series?

[Alexamateo]

Yep, I hope this is a one year experiment.

[Will3]

Agreed, I'd rather see maybe a reduced engine or tapered spacer or something for the Cup guys going into Nationwide and truck. Make it harder on them. Or only allow 4-5 Cup guys to race in the Nationwide Series. Just like go or go homers. Maybe you have to have been in the top 20 in Cup points 2 years in a row to be ineligible?

[Bob Riebe]

Anyone else realize the winners of the Truck, Nationwide and Cup races have NO points in those race series?
So
It is racing they raced and won. End of story.

[Mr. Mister]

The real irony lies in the fact that rather than a Buschwhacker winning a Nationwide race, we saw a Nationwide guy come in and take on the Cup guys.

[ICWS]

So
It is racing they raced and won. End of story.

Exactly, NASCAR got what they wanted. I completely understand the desire to have the champions in all 3 divisions to be more exclusive representatives of their chosen divisions. At least the winning drivers' teams get to keep their owner's points.

In Trevor Bayne's case, he ran an unusually near-perfect Speedweeks. But when it comes to racing at the other tracks, I don't think he'll have the exact same kind of success as he did at Daytona. I think he's a serious contender for the Nationwide Series championship, but if he ran the full Cup schedule, I would be suprised if he could manage to be within the the top-20 in the points standings at season's end. Daytona, Talladega, Sonoma, and Watkins Glen are the four tracks where wild cards, like Trevor Bayne, have possible shots at winning Cup races, but all the other tracks 98% of the time lend themselves to Rick Hendrick's, Jack Roush's, Joe Gibbs's, Richard Childress's, Roger Penske's, and Chip Ganassi's drivers.

[Will3]

The ironies I see most are the truck race on the 18th... I cant even count them, even if they are more coincidences than ironies.

[Wade91]

i can understand nascar not wanting a cup driver to win the nationwide championship, but its ashame for the teams and sponsors that the cup drivers race for in the nationwide series, that they cant run for the championship

[jeffconn]

I'd prefer NASCAR to limit the number of races a driver can drive in other series. If a driver commits to the Cup championship, then limit him to 10 races in Nationwide and 10 races in trucks.

BTW, after the first five races when the 2011 points are established, what will happen if qualifying or practice are rained out? If you have 6 cuppers trying to make a Nationwide race and there is no qualifying, will they be SOL?

[Jonesi]

I'd prefer NASCAR to limit the number of races a driver can drive in other series. If a driver commits to the Cup championship, then limit him to 10 races in Nationwide and 10 races in trucks.

BTW, after the first five races when the 2011 points are established, what will happen if qualifying or practice are rained out? If you have 6 cuppers trying to make a Nationwide race and there is no qualifying, will they be SOL?

With a driver is a Cup driver running in NW, the owner still gets owner points, so there's little chance that Edwards or Busch, etc miss out because of rain.

[Mark]

How do they find the time anyway?!

[Don Capps]

i can understand nascar not wanting a cup driver to win the nationwide championship, but its ashame for the teams and sponsors that the cup drivers race for in the nationwide series, that they cant run for the championship

This is not a bit different than when the CSI made the decision to not allow "graded drivers" to compete for points or even participate in various junior formulae events.

As always as far as NASCAR is concerned, their game, their rules -- don't like it, go somewhere else has always been their thinking.

[slorydn1]

I really believe it was another unintended consequence of the new rule. Who'd have thought that a rookie making only his second cup start ever running for an underfunded team would win the Daytona 500? Judging from the pickems, none of us did! :p

I had some reservations with the new deal, but I do understand why it was in place. Everyone talks of 10 years ago because of Dale Sr's death. What if this had been in play in 2001? No Harvick, that's for certain. He either would have had to to drop is Nationwide Championship deal, or not accrue any Cup points.

Maybe there needs to be a minor modification to the rule, that would still do what Nascar wanted to do, prevent established Cup stars from going down and soaking up all the Natwide Championships:

Allow all drivers who are eligible to run for Rookie of the Year in Cup accrue points in any of the series. This would alleviate the Bayne issue, but still prevent Harv,Shrub,Cuz & Kez (et al) from running for Natwide and Truck Championships.


While we are at it, why not drop the ban from points on anyone running full time in Nationwide or Trucks who are NOT running full time in the Cup series-that would allow veterans like Hornaday, Sadler, and Bodine for example, to accrue cup points if they were thrust into the position of having to fill in long term for a Cup driver who was, God forbid, seriously injured (or worse) and couldn't finish out the season itself. But that wold be a 1 year deal.

What say you?

[Alexamateo]

Maybe it should be based on a driver's career starts. Last Year Brad Keselowski won and was full time in Cup. To me though he is still a young driver who only had 17 previous cup starts prior to 2010. I have no problems with him doing double duty, he could use the seat time. However prior to 2009, Kyle Busch had already run 4 full cup seasons and had 12 wins in the top division. He doesn't need to do that. Not sure where the line is. Prior to 2008, Clint Bowyer had 2 full cup seasons and 1 career win That's probably the edge. Prior to 2007, Carl Edwards had 85 starts and 4 wins