Longer races aren’t necessarily better races
Kenny Bruce
Kenny Bruce is a three-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association's George Cunningham Writer of the Year Award. He joined Street & Smith's Sports Group in 2001.
The fans that pony up money for tickets to this year’s Subway Fresh Fit 600 may be getting a few more laps for their hard-earned cash, but it’s yet to be determined whether that’s money well spent.
The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Phoenix International Raceway has been extended from 312 to 375 laps, making what was a 500-kilometer race now 600 kilometers. And it’s all for the sake, or so we’ve been told, of allowing the race to run into the evening hours and finish under the lights.
Which, in my mind, is a ridiculous reason to extend the length of a race. Fans and competitors alike have complained for years that certain races should be shortened. I’ve yet to hear anyone say a particular race would be better if it was longer, however.
When NASCAR officials announced uniform starting times for the Cup series last year, they noted the ruling body’s “back to basics” approach. Funny how back to basics turned out to be a very untraditional move for the folks at Phoenix. The track’s Cup races have always been 312 laps in length (exceptions being a rain-shortened event in 1998 and green-white-checkered finishes that extended races in 2004 and ’08).
Under this year’s schedule for starting times, night races begin at 7:30 p.m. EDT, which would mean the Phoenix race should start at approximately 4:30 p.m. Phoenix time. With sunset just before 7 p.m. in Phoenix, that pretty much nixed the night-race status of the annual event. Hence the reason for the additional 63 laps.
Phoenix isn’t alone in tampering with the length of its races. But that doesn’t make the move any more appealing.
