A view of cars racing through turn three on the new strip of asphalt during the Pocono 500 at Pocono International Raceway. (Doug Pensinger/Getty Images Photo)
NASCAR drivers tend to be an opinionated lot, not agreeing on much. But when it comes to Pocono Raceway, there’s seems to be a prevailing sentiment that 500 miles here is too much of a good thing.
In the first 20 races of the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup season, the June Pocono 500 was the second-longest race of the year, trailing only the Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. Among the 500-mile races on the schedule, Pocono took 43 minutes longer to complete than the Daytona 500, and 54-56 minutes longer than 500 milers at Atlanta, Texas, Talladega and Darlington.
And given the fact that Pocono isn’t a track that historically lends itself to a lot of passing, some of the sport’s top drivers believe Pocono should be 400 miles, not 500.
“I am always a fan of shorter races,” said Jeff Gordon, a four-time Pocono winner. “I just think they are more exciting. I think it depends on the lap times as well. This is one of the longest lap times that we have besides a road course. … To go 500 miles under this lap time is a long, long day and its gets pretty spread out. I just think we could put on a little more exciting race being a 400-mile race. I think would be a great show for the competitors and for the fans.”
“I think the race is too long here,” added Gordon’s teammate, Dale Earnhardt Jr. “Yeah. I think that’s obvious. I think NASCAR thinks it’s too long, but I think the track owners could care less how long it is But they don’t have to be out there running.”
“Now it seems like our longest race just about,” agreed Jimmie Johnson. “It can certainly be a long race here. For some reason the weather seems to be brutal. That mix between humidity and temperature. There are certain things that make particular races brutal that you wouldn’t necessarily see coming. It is a pretty long race.”
The usually opinionated Tony Stewart punted on the issue, though. “Let me ask you a question — does my opinion really matter at the end of the day?” said Stewart. “And if I had an opinion would it change anything? Probably not. We’ll let Dale (Earnhardt) Jr. do it, but I’m not sure my opinion counts.”
Tom Jensen is the Senior NASCAR Editor for SPEEDtv.com, the former Executive Editor of NASCAR Scene and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. He is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of SPEED,” and has appeared on television and radio shows to discuss NASCAR racing. Jensen is the President of the National Motorsports Press Association. Jensen is the 1997 National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year and has won numerous national and state awards for news reporting, columns and feature writing. The Answer Man is back at SPEEDtv.com. Tom Jensen answers your questions during every race week and looks forward to hearing from you - please e-mail it to
