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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
JENSEN: Final Thoughts On 2009
The 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season is finally truly over and done with...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted December 07, 2009   Charlotte, NC
SPEED.com's Editor-in-Chief Tom Jensen. (Image: SPEED)
The 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup season is finally truly over and done with, with Jimmie Johnson adding another trophy and a check for about $6.6 million to his already lengthy and impressive list of accomplishments.

Johnson, of course, accepted his bounty Friday night in Las Vegas, which for the first time this year hosted the annual Sprint Cup awards extravaganza. The move to Vegas was a brilliant one — imagine, a town filled with knowledgeable and passionate race fans and facilities big enough to reasonably accommodate them. That’s quite a welcome change from the annual insanity in New York, where the hotel rooms at the Waldorf were $700 a night, the locals were at best indifferent to NASCAR and the weather was frequently rotten as the dispositions of the natives.

Hats off to NASCAR for moving the banquet to Las Vegas in the first place and for the outstanding job done by Las Vegas Motor Speedway President and General Manager Chris Powell and his entire staff. The whole week was first rate and clearly the right move — or at least the right start.

The key word here is “start.”

Las Vegas is a perfect host town for the kind of parties NASCAR likes to throw, and the overwhelming sentiment I heard from a lot of industry people is that while they were pleased with the first NASCAR Vegas Vacation, there’s plenty of room to build it into something bigger, bolder and even more outrageous next year.

Allow me to proffer a suggestion, starting in the 2011 season: Let’s end the year with a NASCAR Sprint Cup/Nationwide/Camping World Truck Series tripleheader at LVMS.

Phoenix International Raceway already hosts the penultimate race weekend of the NASCAR season. Las Vegas is a mere 297 miles from Phoenix, so it would be an easy haul for all the teams to head from Phoenix to Las Vegas. Even allowing Monday as a travel day, you could three fantastic days of fan activities on the Vegas Strip Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The weekend schedule would be the same as it is now at Homestead-Miami Speedway: Trucks race Friday night, Nationwide on Saturday and Cup on Sunday. Monday night is the Truck/Nationwide banquet and the Cup boys go Tuesday. Everyone is home for Thanksgiving, and NASCAR wouldn’t have to share the headlines with the rodeo as it did this year.

Simple, right?

There would be obstacles, of course. Homestead wouldn’t want to give the date up — and I don’t blame them — but there’s nothing inherent in the system that makes ending the year at Homestead mandatory. Since 1970, the Cup season has ended at College Station, Texas; Rockingham, N.C.; Ontario, Calif.; Riverside, Calif.; Atlanta, Homestead and even once in Loudon, N.H., of all places. Nowhere is it written that Homestead has lifetime rights to being the last race.

Besides, moving the season finale to Las Vegas would allow NASCAR the opportunity to more radically rework the schedule. It’s a virtual certainty that Kansas Speedway will get a second Cup date in 2011 — my guess is that Auto Club Speedway will be the source — and if the NASCAR brass is looking to inject some new life into the Chase for the Sprint Cup, what better way than by drastically changing the mix of tracks in it?

For that matter, I’d like to see Bristol in the Chase and maybe a road course, too.

There was plenty of complaining this year — some of it justified — that NASCAR had gotten too predictable and that one more Johnson rout of the field took some of the luster off of the Chase.

The best way to spice things up for 2011 is to overhaul the schedule and end the year with the biggest and wildest party NASCAR has ever had in the world’s biggest and wildest party town. Makes sense to me.

So congratulations to Jimmie Johnson, Hendrick Motorsports and the rest of the Sprint Cup teams for what you accomplished this season.

And let’s hope that NASCAR in Las Vegas grows into something truly amazing and befitting of champions. Now that would be something to celebrate.

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or Speed Channel

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief 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 past 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



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