TBK-Light.com

I think 50 would be a more fair number. Assuming they run the full 36-race Cup schedule (not counting non-points events), that would give them 14 N'Wide and/or Truck races they can work with. Not too little, not too much.

Otherwise, I like your idea.

yeah, I like that. 14 races among 60 or something races, it's fair.

I like that idea as well. Agreed.

That's a better idea.

As everyone knows, most every major sport in the world has some sort of players union. Many drivers have the same concerns as we do as far as what NASCAR is doing wrong, even if they haven't gone public with those opinions, and would love more than anything to tell NASCAR to fix their shit. My question is, does anyone think a drivers or teams union could work in today's NASCAR?

Given, there are positives and negatives that can come out of it. If a majority of the drivers union disagrees with some stupid shit NASCAR does, NASCAR would have to address and rectify it sooner, satisfying its drivers and the fans. Of course, like the FIA/FOTA debacle a few years ago, if NASCAR holds out too long, it could result in the drivers creating a split series (perhaps a buyout of ARCA) or the worst-case scenario, a total lockout.

It's kind of an odd though, but I'm just curious to find out what everyone else thinks on the matter, and if it could somehow work.

Using F1 as a barometer (not perfect, I know, as labour laws and so on are different in America), a teams' alliance would end up being a bad idea. Led to a split in USOW. Nearly led to a split on two seperate occasions in F1. If NASCAR is going to be pigheaded on an issue, then the teams could run and boom, you've fucked stock car racing in north America.

A drivers' alliance would be a positive thing, so long as the right drivers were leading it. F1's GPDA is safety-centric, but has spoken out and acted on other issues and unlike the teams there would never be an overwhelming desire to split within a NASCAR drivers' union, simply because they wouldn't have the resources or the infrastructure to set up anywhere else. They could take over ARCA, but then what? What circuits are you going to run on? What cars are you going to use? There is a lot of planning and financing involved in something like that, and so would only really work as a nuclear option, when all else fails.

_________________
Dan Wheldon ¦ 1978-2011
Marco Simoncelli ¦ 1987-2011
Jules Bianchi ¦ 1989-2015
Justin Wilson ¦ 1978-2015

Yeah, I know he's mad and I don't care. I do not care. I did not care then. I do not care now. I'm here to race him.

As far as I know, there were rumours on the mid-late '90s that some big teams where planning a split series.

Can anyone confirm that?

Bruton was the main piece in that puzzle due to his tracks but even he probably realized that he would be making far less money if there was a breakaway series than he ever did while working with NASCAR.

Curtis Turner.

He tried it with Fireball Roberts, and Tim Flock. Big Bill France stamped it out, and since that day, no driver has ever really seemed to make much of an effort for a driver's union.

Brian France is definitely no Big Bill though. If the main obstacle to a drivers' union last time was that Bill wouldn't let it happen, well that shouldn't be a problem now. As long as any drivers alliance has JUNYER involved, they could hold a lot of sway.

_________________

Brian France would be a pushover.

Yeah, true.

And by the way, how many people in NASCAR today are former drivers? It's an interesting question, because a lot of NASCAR's founding members were former drivers (and some were even active drivers!)

Seeing todays events, and the problems for scheduling.... I think NASCAR is getting deeper in a box. What seems to be an epic race to the Chase has had a huge monkey wrench thrown in the middle of it. Let's see prince Brian how this goes.

_________________
Go Miami Dolphins!
Go New York Yankees!
Go New York Rangers!

You can't really blame NASCAR for this one. Moving up the start a few hours was not an option because you can't guarantee all the fans will get the memo, not to mention the TV deal wouldn't allow for it unless you showed it on tape delay. If Atlanta can end up being the season finale due to all this, it can only be a good thing.

They only need to get to lap 169 for the race to be official

You know, I hope that NASCAR starts to realize how much of a mess the Truck series is particular is starting to become.

We have KHI pulling out of Trucks, leaving Hornaday, who won 2 titles with them, without a ride. We have 2-time champ Todd Bodine's 30 truck go belly up, scrambling to alliance with Randy Moss Motorsports (sans Randy Moss) and an Indian tribe, and now telling thier two remaining drivers Papis and Gaughan to start looking elsewhere after this season. And we have a smattering of good teams who struggle to pick up sponsorship week-to-week (ex: Timothy Peters won a race this year in a truck that's almost always blank). All this in a series where the defending champion's team has gone belly up before or during the season three times in the past 5 years (Musgrave in 2006, Benson in 2009, Bodine 2011).

This is what happens when you cut purses by 20% in a lower series where the costs of even running a Truck team continue to grow. In a fucking recession.

Nothing will change while the current people in charge keep running the show.

If we're waiting on them to change, then there'll be nothing left. NASCAR has a history of sinking divisions and expecting all of the competitors to move up the ranks, and they have a history of looking stupid when the majority of teams go and do something else. They did it with the Dash series, with the Elite tours and when they bought CASCAR - And that's just within the past 10 years.

Eh, maybe there's still hope.