The sheer number of events needed makes a centralized NASCAR championship difficult to formulate. Add to it the variety of tracks NASCAR visits. What venue fulfills the requirements of short track, intermediate oval, superspeedway, road course, high-speed and low-speed, night and day races? Let's not forget teams specialize cars for certain tracks.
Sacrifice will be necessary for any centralized championship. Something is going to lose out.
Florida has raised its hand and deemed NASCAR essential but this is a thanks but no thanks situation.
Similar to IndyCar, NASCAR has a natural option in Charlotte. Ninety-nine percent of the teams are located in the area. It has a 1.5-mile oval and that doubles as the roval. It can run day and night races. Costs would be controlled. It makes sense on paper but it lacks a lot. Charlotte's oval has not been beloved for sometime and while the roval attracted praise it is still in the honeymoon phase. It is not as great as it has been made out to be and any slight alterations to the course are not going to be improvements.
There is one place currently on the NASCAR schedule offering an intermediate oval, road course, roval layouts and short track option. It requires some travel and it will require races in the heat but it could host ten different layouts and could easily give you 20 races.
How does Las Vegas sound?
Diversity of options does not spring to mind when thinking of Las Vegas Motor Speedway but the facility as a whole could give you two-and-a-half months of different racetrack configurations before you would have to repeat one.
The obvious option is the 1.5-mile oval, which hosts two Cup races but Las Vegas Motor Speedway hosted the SRO GT World Challenge America series last year on a roval course. Inside the 1.5-mile oval is a road course with two usable configurations.
Options live outside the speedway itself with an external road course, which includes a 2.4-mile layout and let's not forget the Bullring, smaller than what the Cup series is used to be good enough to be a short-track option.
While the 1.5-mile oval and Bullring are known facilities in NASCAR circles, the roval options and road courses will need a little explaining.
GT World Challenge America competed on a 2.512-mile road course layout that utilized a large section of the oval course. The problem with that layout is it included a chicane on the front straightaway with the cars turning onto the quarter-mile oval before making a right turn onto pit lane and then proceeding back to the oval. This layout would not be suitable to NASCAR because NASCAR needs that part of the pit lane but the rest of the course works.
Two roval layouts exists, a long version at 2.555 miles and a shorter 2.24-mile circuit.
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| Long Roval |
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| Short Roval |
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| Full Infield Road Course |
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| Oval-ish |
Moving outside the track, there are four options for the external road course. The first is the 2.4-mile full course.
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| Full Course |
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| "Course B" - A little off the top |
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| Course C: 1.74 miles |
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| Course D: 2.17 miles |
There are ten options, the eight above, the 1.5-mile oval and the bullring. There are already four races completed for the 2020 season. The goal should be to fill out a 24-race season and perhaps even get a playoff in.
How do you breakdown those 20 races?
External road course: One race per layout
Short infield road course: Two races
Long infield road course: Two races
Short Roval: Two races
Long Roval: Two races
Bullring: Four races
Speedway: Four races
Weather makes Las Vegas difficult. We are talking about filling June through November. It is going to be hot, days are going to get longer and the time difference makes night races impractical. It would be more likely to see morning races in Las Vegas than night races until we get closer to autumn.
What could this schedule look like?
Regular Season
June 21: Speedway (300 miles)
June 28: Short internal road course (225 laps)
July 4: Bullring (300 laps)
July 18/19: Long Roval (doubleheader; first race: 78 laps, second race: 88 laps)
August 2: Course B (100 laps)
August 9: Course C (115 laps)
August 15/16: Short Roval (doubleheader; first race: 89 laps; second race: 100 laps)
August 23: Course D (92 laps)
August 30: Course A (83 laps)
September 6: Long internal road course (220 miles)
September 12: Bullring (300 laps)
Round One
September 19: Speedway (350 miles)
September 27: Long internal road course (220 miles)
October 3: Bullring (350 laps)
Semifinals
October 11: Short internal road course (250 laps)
October 18: Speedway (400 miles)
October 24: Bullring (400 laps)
Championship Race
November 8: Speedway (500 miles)
How would the playoffs work? Still take the top 16 drivers but cut the field in half after round one, with the top eight advancing after the 350-lap Bullring race and after the penultimate race have the final four advance to the championship race.
Time is ticking and whatever the remainder of the 2020 NASCAR season looks like it will be different than originally planned, whether that be fewer races, shorter races or format changes to limit the number of crew members at the track. It is best to be prepared for anything.
