Imagine you wake up one fine morning and realize Bubba Wallace is the president of NASCAR. Well, back in 2016, Wallace faced a question; if in a hypothetical world the drivers elected the NASCAR president and he ran for the NASCAR president, what changes would he promise for his campaign?
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Wallace responded, “Better scheduling on a race weekend. Just how the weekends are mapped out, there’s a lot of sit-around-and-wait time. So I’d work on that.”
Not sure if he would have won the organization’s presidential vote in that hypothetical situation. But his argument about the improvements in scheduling has been something that is being addressed to this day.
The scheduling issue Bubba Wallace had addressed
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Over the years, the principal argument surrounding NASCAR’s scheduling has been that fans find the races to become predictable and boring. Also, NASCAR’s tendency to race at the same intermediate track multiple times in a season does no further favors.
Fans argue that the racing becomes underwhelming because of repetitive venues at less-than-ideal tracks. However, with the announcement of the 2023 calendar, we have seen only a few minor changes to the overall schedule. One is the addition of two new tracks, which are the Chicago Street race and the North Wilkesboro Speedway. The minor changes may hint that the sport’s organizers have finally found a schedule that works for them. Though that may or may not be true as the viewership has also been tanking for the sport.
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Just this year, the Daytona race had yielded a significant drop from the year prior, mostly because of incorrect scheduling. Another argument being NASCAR trying to compete with America’s biggest sport, which is NFL, and pushing their races all the way into playoff season does not help them either. Over the years, NASCAR has also significantly increased the number of road courses by removing speedways or short tracks. That too has not settled well with a certain fragment of the fan base.