This past week, NASCAR announced that drivers at the top level, the Sprint Cup Series, with five or more years of experience would be on a limit for the number of races that they could run at the two lower levels directly below the Sprint Cup Series, the Xfinity Series and Camping World Truck Series. However, this is more of a public relations move than a move to even out the competition level in the lower levels. Do these top-flight drivers come down and dominate? Yes, but it isn’t like that same domination doesn’t happen at the top level. The reason that those guys come down to the lower series is because the teams are looking for sponsorship to run at those lower series.
Any driver who has 5 or more years of experience at the Sprint Cup level is now limited to running 10 races in the Xfinity Series and 7 races in the Camping World Truck Series. This ends up equating to running about a 1/3 of the races run in each of the lower series. Most of the time, drivers are use these lower series as a testing session to gain a better understanding of what track conditions would be like during a race and to help boost their performance on race day for the Sprint Cup race. Most of the time when there is a stand-alone race, when the Xfinity or Camping World Truck Series is at a separate race track from the Sprint Cup Series, most of the drivers in the Sprint Cup Series stay where they are and owners put a young talent in the car or truck. The main reason that this rule was created was to allow more of a showcase of that young talent and there are better ways of doing that.
One of the best races that NASCAR puts on each year is their MudSummer Classic. This race is a stand-alone dirt track event in Rossburg, Ohio. NASCAR runs this event in the middle of the week which allows some drivers from the Sprint Cup level to run in the race, but normally about five of them do. This race showcases many young talents that often don’t have the opportunity because dirt track racing is a special skill set that not all drivers have. NASCAR can create more opportunities for younger talents by creating more events like the MudSummer Classic where young talents can come out and show off the talent that they have.
NASCAR’s decision to create a rule to limit Sprint Cup Series drivers to a certain number of races that they can run in the lower series was more of a way to please the fans than to allow younger talent to race. There were other ways to make it so that Sprint Cup drivers don’t come down into lower series and steal wins from the drivers that regularly race in those series. Creating more stand-alone events allows this to happen more fluidly without needing to create the controversy of this new rule.
