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HEMBREE: There’s A Bonus Halfway Through This Column
Daytona’s $200,000 bonus plan ignites talk, both good and bad…
Mike Hembree  |  Posted February 03, 2012   Charlotte, NC
The 2012 Daytona 500 is scheduled for Feb. 26. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Daytona International Speedway’s plan to award the leader of the halfway lap in the Daytona 500 a $200,000 bonus has generated quite a bit of discussion inside the sport.

And that’s exactly the point. For $200,000, you couldn’t buy the amount of publicity the announcement has produced.

The idea that the track will pay out a six-figure bonus isn’t likely to sell a significant number of tickets, but the fact that the speedway and the race have been in the discussion over the past few days on motorsports websites and radio programs and in other forms of media accomplishes the goal – Keep Daytona in the conversation as the stock car portion of SpeedWeeks approaches.

That being said, there are wildly divergent opinions on the idea. Some fans are attracted to the concept because of the possibility that it will create a “race within a race,” maybe with a mad 20-car scramble to the finish line on lap 100. Others reject it as a pure gimmick and as a way to keep the attention of marginal fans whose short attention spans seemingly need fuel every few minutes.

In the final analysis, it’s some of both.

In a race purse of more than $19 million, $200,000 appears to be chump change. Consider this, however: Two events last year (at Martinsville and Bristol) paid less than $200,000 to the race winner, and a dozen other races were in that same range.

At Daytona, a team can sock away that much money in one lap (although, of course, the driver has to be in position to give it a shot).

One of the problems in this scenario is the possibility that a team might goof around with its strategy to try to win the bonus and inject a toxin into its overall plan to win the 500 (worth at least $1.4 million). That’s the dark side.

Most leading teams aren’t that zany, of course. But… it’s tempting.

It’s unfortunate that a speedway – particularly stock car racing’s most famous, and one getting ready to host the sport’s biggest event – feels the need to fiddle with its format to enhance the product.

The Daytona 500, in particular, should be compelling enough to attract throngs and impressive television ratings without including a contrivance. The Super Bowl doesn’t award a trophy for leading at halftime.

This isn’t the first time this tactic has been used, of course, and it likely won’t be the last.

We’ll see how it plays out.

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 30 years. He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED
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