Kevin Harvick is a proponent of many tracks having just one race
Does Kevin Harvick have a valid point about race dates in the Sprint Cup Series?
On Friday, the defending Sprint Cup Series champion said “90 percent” of tracks would be better off with one races instead of two. Auto Club Speedway, the site of Sunday’s race, used to have two races. When the track opened in 1997, it was a hot ticket. It was granted a second race in 2004 and then crowds became porous (and it was really hot for its Labor Day weekend date).
ACS lost its second race date after the 2010 season and has been the fifth race of the season ever since. And, likely not-so-coincidentally, crowds have increased as the racing at Auto Club has been some of the best in the Sprint Cup Series. The 2013 race featured a three-wide race for the win in turn four (until Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin crashed) and Kyle Busch outran Kyle Larson for the win in 2014.
Here are Harvick’s comments in full:
“I think this race track is a great example of a lot of lessons that a lot of people obviously don’t pay attention to that run race tracks,” Harvick said. “Sometimes, if you take one really great thing and you can really easily make them into two mediocres, and we do that all the time in our sport. And I don’t understand that with race tracks a lot of the time, but this one has come full circle. And I think when you look at the crowds that we’ve had over the last couple of years, they’ve been really good. The racing has been really good here as that track surface has aged; and as a driver you look forward to coming here now because it’s one of those race tracks where you can run all over the place and the cars can slide around and you’re going to have fun from the driver’s seat. So, that bleeds over into the perception that the fans get as well, because everybody is talking about enjoying racing on this particular track.
He continued.
“And I think some markets are just one-race markets. I would say ninety percent of them are one-race markets, but a lot of them still have two races and you just see those mediocre crowds and I think when people know that you’re only coming one time a year, you have to go to that one particular race. Having a race with a good date is obviously good for the weather and the people to come out and enjoy it. It’s not 115 degrees in August, which was always fun to be a part of in the race car. But I think all in all, it’s all come full circle and I think everything is going good for this particular track.”
NASCAR no longer releases official attendance figures for its races and some tracks have started to reduce capacity after overbuilding in the hopes that the sport’s popularity hadn’t (at least temporarily) crested in the early 2000s.
13 tracks on the Sprint Cup Series schedule have two dates, meaning 26 of the series’ 36 races are at those tracks. And only two of the 10 races in the Chase are at tracks that teams haven’t visited previously in the season.
We’d support a schedule that features only one race per track, with possible exceptions going to Daytona, Talladega and a short track or two. It’d allow for much more track diversity throughout the schedule (more road courses and short tracks) and could possibly make the Chase more exciting. Less in-season data could mean for more parity. Sounds like a fun experiment, right? But we’re not kidding ourselves. There’s a miniscule chance a one-race-per-track maximum would happen. At least in the foreseeable future.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
