In NASCAR, always a place for the longer race

Everything about NASCAR is big. The schedule eats up almost 10 months of the year. Race tracks are mammoth facilities set on dozens of acres, and sometimes ringed by 100,000 seats or more. Events on the sport's premier circuit are day-long festivities in which people often arrive hours early and leave hours late. Cup Series races are designed to test the limits of both drivers and equipment, and even on television they come across as long, loud, larger-than-life experiences.

That is why it's a little surprising to see so many races this year become so much more manageable in terms of their length. Anyone who's been around NASCAR for any period of time fully knows that events can go on for a while, to the point where nobody blinks an eye at a race that lasts four hours or more. Fans have just become conditioned to it, just as baseball fans know that American League games can drag on forever, just as tennis fans know that a five-set men's match can take all day. Throw in a mid-afternoon start time and an extended pre-race show, and a NASCAR race can swallow an entire Sunday.

This season, though, things are different. For whatever reason, the races seem to be taking less time -- indeed, eight of the past 10 Cup Series events have lasted less than three hours, among them a brisk Bristol night race that clocked in at 2 hours and 41 minutes, and left ABC so much free time pit reporters interviewed almost everyone in a firesuit afterward. Although the television ratings this year have left something to be desired, the earlier, standardized start times for Sunday races allow fans a little time in the afternoon to do yard work, and reporters to leave the race track while it's still daylight out. Everybody wins.

It all shapes up to make the sport a little more accessible -- watching a NASCAR race these days doesn't require devoting an entire Sunday, something that you'd think would eventually help attract more casual fans. To a certain extent, tracks are playing a part; the two realigned races for next season (Atlanta to Kentucky and California to Kansas) are 500-milers that will be reborn as 400s. And Phoenix's spring race, which was extended by 100 kilometers this season for a twilight finish, will drop back to its traditional 500-kilometer distance next year when it moves to daytime and follows the Daytona 500.

There are still some races that are too long. California's lone event next year will likely continue to be 500 miles, as will both Pocono races -- which clocked in at 3:46 and 3:44 this season. But the moves by Kansas, Kentucky and Phoenix are a good start.

"I think it's the right thing," Jeff Burton said last week at Bristol. "I love the fact that our races aren't sprint races. They're endurance races. But I'm not sure that a 400-mile race is a sprint race. So it's still a plenty long race. From the perspective of the younger audience, I have a 9-year old that loves racing but struggles watching a four-hour race. Hell, I struggle doing a four-hour race. ... A lot of it is the race track. I think Kentucky is going to be right at 400, I think Phoenix is right in bringing the laps back down. All that makes sense to me. I'd like to see the California race that we're running, I'd love to see that a 400-mile race. I think the races at Michigan are 400 miles and I don't know why you would want a two-mile race track to run a 500-mile race. I love to race and I like the fact that they're long, but I think the quality of the race could be a little better if it was a little bit shorter."

Races at NASCAR's premier level are long for a reason -- equipment has to last, and drivers have to find that balance between patience and aggression. But as Burton points out, there's no question that action picks up the closer an event draws to the end.

"I don't think it's a coincidence that we have more cautions in the last part of the race than we do in the first part of the race," he said. "The quicker we can get the drivers into the position of 'Now's the time to go,' the better the racing is going to be, I think -- less opportunity for the long, long, long green-flag runs and all those kinds of things. Having said that, I like the long green-flag runs, but I do think shorter races tend to have a little more action, and I don't honestly really even know why, because it's not like we're riding around. I don't drive any different for the Coca-Cola 600 than I do the 300-miler at New Hampshire. I just think for the viewing audience, a little shorter time frame may not be a bad thing." (Continued)