JENSEN: Get It Right This Time

Sprint Cup

JENSEN: Get It Right This Time

The 2011 season could be one of the most important in NASCAR’s long history...

Tom Jensen | Posted January 24, 2011 Charlotte, NC

Jimmie Johnson poses with his five championship trophies on the beach in Miami, Fla., after wrapping up championship No. 5 at nearby Homestead-Miami Speedway in 2010. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

I’m so ready for the 2011 racing season to begin, and I suspect if you’re reading this, you are, too.

We got a good taste of what’s to come late last week, when NASCAR’s best hit the new pavement at Daytona International Speedway for a track-sponsored test of the new pavement.

Maybe it was the long winter layoff, maybe the economy is getting better, or maybe there are other factors at work, but judging from the feedback we got from people who viewed our live streaming of the Daytona test, folks are ready for the racing to begin anew.

Part of it, undoubtedly, is still the many unknowns surrounding the 2011 NASCAR season:

— Will anyone knock off Jimmie Johnson?

— Can the Roush Fenway contingent start 2011 as strongly as they finished 2010?

— Will Denny Hamlin or Kevin Harvick put together a championship run?

— How will Red Bull fare with Kasey Kahne on board and Brian Vickers back?

— Can Kyle Busch win as often in a Cup car as he does in the Nationwide and Camping World Truck Series?

— Will Richard Petty Motorsports survive and recover?

— Is this the year that Jeff Gordon finally wins a fifth title?

For that matter, we don’t even know yet what the NASCAR Sprint Cup points system is going to be for this season. We’ll find that out Wednesday afternoon, when the annual Sprint Media Tour hosted by Charlotte Motor Speedway visits the NASCAR R&D Center.

Now you could make the point that if, say, it were five weeks before the start of the National Football League season and people didn’t know how many teams would make the playoffs or what the criteria was for making the playoffs, fans would be raising hell.

Fair enough.

While there has been much discussion of a points system that gives the race winner 43 points and the last-place finisher just one point, that alone doesn’t tell us a whole lot. The in-race points totals only matter in the larger equation that includes Chase bonus points for race victories, bonus points for laps led and how points get reset after the regular season. Not to mention how many cars get into the Chase and whether there will be knockout rounds.

Right now, we don’t know squat.

And as much as I want to hypothecate and pontificate about this, that and the other thing when it comes to points, without known the whole equation, there’s nothing to say. Not yet, anyway.

But I’ll say this much: It is my fervent hope that NASCAR gets it right.

NASCAR Chairman Brian France has sounded inclined to tweak the Chase format for 2011. (Photo: Getty Images)

The last couple of years have been difficult ones in this business — lots of jobs lost, soft television ratings and a general malaise. In 2010, though, the racing was good at the start of the year and got better as the year went on.

People noticed and they got excited.

This year, people are hungry for big moments: For more drama, more exciting finishes, more great racing. People don’t want this to be an average year or an OK year. They want a year that’s fantastic and amazing, one that will deliver on the promise that NASCAR racing at its best offers.

More importantly, the decisions announced Wednesday are ones NASCAR is going to have to live with for a long time. This will be the third major scoring adjustments in eight seasons, going back to the introduction of the Chase for the start of the 2004 season. NASCAR can ill-afford a misstep this time around. Let’s hope whatever ultimately is announced on Wednesday is something that helps enhance the quality of competition and not something fans will view as artificial or gimmicky.

We’ll know soon enough.

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.

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

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom Jensen

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