40 car fields in Nationwide Series starting 2013

[MattSRD28]

Well if you want to go back in a time a little ways, it wasn't until either the late 90s or early 2000s when every track even the Cup Series raced at had room for a 43 car field.

Several short tracks, even when they had front and backstretch pits, only had room for 38 pit stalls or less. I think even some of NR2003's original tracks were originally designed for < 43 cars.

 

[Fisha695]

Attachment #1 = Cup Modern Era
Attachment #2 = NNS
Attachment #3 = CWTS

Black background = 43 (36 for CWTS) Starters
White background = More or Less then 43 (36) Starters

The races are in the order of least to most starters, "Race #" is to show the number of races in a season (and to make it fairly easy to count how many races had what number of starters)

 

[celticfang]

I'm not sure, but I know that in every MRN race I've ever heard, they they will give a full starting grid at the beginning and at least one full running order update where if a car has parked, they usually mention it's in the garage or just off. I'm guess MRN does that because they don't have the benefit of the ticker like television broadcasts do.

That's yet ANOTHER thing I liked the old ESPN/CBS for, they'd go through everybody in the lineup and say something about them, even if it is just their home town or some interesting fact (like Dale's 7 titles). MRN does the full field rundowns, I appreciate that and I agree, TV don't do the rundowns at all, even SPEED's spotlights aren't very good. The coolest starting lineup rundowns though were when Ken Squier borrowed the Daytona PA to introduce the Busch Clash in the mid 90s. Yes, I'm a sucker for history, so?

 

[Relly]

I totally see where Mike is coming from with that post and I'm glad he wrote it. Overall I have no problem with S&P cars, however I do think it's a bit ridiculous with what TMG/Key is doing, but I understand because they just try to keep the light on.

I also look at it from the stand point that I have 2 friends that work for S&P/Low budget teams, one for Circle Sport LLC and one that has done some Pro-Bono and part time work for small teams like Go Green, Tri-Star, Front Row (in their early days), R3 and most recently with Smith-Humphrey (19 & 91) so I hear stories from them all the time, especially if they miss a race, if they'll still be employed week to week and how the teams struggle for cars, parts, tires etc.

I like what NASCAR is doing with the 40 car fields just from a fan's stand point because it will make things more exciting, but the more I think about it I just see it being a lot tougher on these small teams because those 3 less spots will hurt and missing of races add up.

One thing I always wanted to hear on the radio, like Dave Moody's program for example, is to have someone like Curtis Key, Rick Ware or Randy Humphrey on there to talk about what it's like in their situation, because so many people everyday call up and sound like they want these guys arrested for the operation they run.


And just to throw this out there, people talking about Tri-Star in the same light as Key/TMG and RWR, when Tri-Star only S&P's 1 car (10), and they will occasionally run it the distance if they find sponsorship or they shuffle Mike Bliss to it b/c they brought another driver in.

 

[Markfan]

Well if you want to go back in a time a little ways, it wasn't until either the late 90s or early 2000s when every track even the Cup Series raced at had room for a 43 car field.

While it's true that 43 cars has only been a "fixed" value since 1998, it really didn't have to do necessarily with pit road size. North Wilkesboro was pretty much the only cup track that couldn't properly house 43 cars during the 1990s, NASCAR's choice was the reason that 43 cars were originally the exception (i.e. only 2 races in 1993 were allowed to have 43 cars), rather than the norm. Heck, Daytona, Talladega, Pocono, Darlington and Watkins Glen didn't have 43-car fields for a while (and that's not because of lack of entries, they all had consistently sizable DNQ lists) and they have very ample pit roads. Gotta agree though about the Busch and Truck series.

Several short tracks, even when they had front and backstretch pits, only had room for 38 pit stalls or less. I think even some of NR2003's original tracks were originally designed for < 43 cars.

That was mostly laziness from the developer. Bristol, Richmond and Dover had enough room for 43 cars, they just never changed it when they ported the tracks over from the earlier NASCAR Racing games. (Another example of a porting job is Daytona. They never updated the chicane from it's older design.)