Happy Hour: We’re going to form a council too

Throughout the week you can send us your best questions, jokes, rants and just plain miscellaneous thoughts to [email protected] or @NickBromberg. We’ll post them here and have a good time.

Pocono weekends have a lot more anticipation these days. Or is it us? Chopping 100 miles off the race has made them thoroughly competitive from the drop of the green flag. We’re not an advocate of shortening every race for the sake of our ever-dwindling attention spans, but it was needed at Pocono. And so far, it’s paid off.

This is also going to be a weird weekend if you’ve been watching NASCAR for a while. Under the last TV contract, this would be the first race of TNT’s coverage for the year. Now it’s a Fox race. Don’t instinctively turn to TNT. The network is scheduled to broadcast the movie Invincible. And yes, we looked on the guide.

Let’s talk about the driver’s council, shall we? In case you didn’t know, NASCAR met with some drivers before the race at Dover on Sunday. The group included Denny Hamlin, Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kyle Larson and Tony Stewart. That sounds like the guest list for a bunch of NASCAR fans’ ultimate last meal on earth.

NASCAR said it regularly meets with competitors, but this movement to organize as much as possible without being officially organized is a hell of an idea.

Workers organizing to have a voice is a hallmark of our country. We’ll spare you the history lesson, but NASCAR would be very well served to listen to its drivers and listen closely. The marketability of the drivers themselves is about Nos. 1-5 on the list of ways NASCAR can sell itself and they need to be heard. Granted, NASCAR can’t start taking feedback from everyone and implementing any suggestion, but the racing does need to be improved. What better way to help improve the quality of the sport than by listening to the guys in the cars?

We’re also taking applications for our From the Marbles council. We haven’t specified our entire platform just yet, but banning Michael Waltrip’s grid walk is one of our priorities.

@NickBromberg HI, NICK. BIG FAN. IS THE “DRIVER COUNCIL” A GOOD THING FOR THE SPORT?

— PEOPLE CALL ME ARF. (@annoyingracefan) June 4, 2015

@NickBromberg Driver council is (>=< ) RTA, which is (>=< ) NASCAR ? Instead of nations in the Chase this fall can we use councils instead?

— Brian Cullather (@Briancullather) June 4, 2015

The RTA has been silent lately, eh? It’s by design, according to this Sports Business Journal piece.

Maybe NASCAR is modeling itself after the United States government? We were going to use the three-branch model, but we weren’t sure that we had a good judicial example. So instead we’ll stick with NASCAR as the executive office, the RTA as the senate and the driver’s council as the house of representatives.

And yes, we totally want to see the political ads for this. Think of all the special-interest PACs that could be formed. There could be the “Drivers against aerodynamic downforce” group and they could align with the “People for a better tire tomorrow.”

We’re totally in favor of the “Newman Council” and the “Harvick Council” for the Chase this year. Though we do ask for some consistency. Let’s go with nicknames, first names or last names for our councils and use them across the board. No mixing and matching of “Logano Nation” and “Denny Nation.”

@nickbromberg can we stop calling dover the monster mile now, because yawn?

— Philip Jones (@philgoodstory) June 4, 2015

BUT MILES GOT ANGRY LATE IN THE RACE.

Or, more specifically, once incident led to another. Had Kyle Busch and Brian Scott crashed, the odds of the race finishing without a caution are pretty high.

Outside of the tumultuous final laps, the race was pretty tame. Do the cars and tires added with the concrete surface equal meh racing? Where is the sustained multi-groove racing?

We know it was a great moment that shouldn’t be accepted as the norm, but why can’t we have glimpses of racing like this at Dover?

It’d also be nice if the track didn’t fall apart either. Hopefully that can get taken care of.