Just got back home from Daytona. Some thoughts on the new rules:
I do like the new damage repair rule, especially the go to the garage and your out part. I would maybe give them a bit more time for repairs and extend it to 10 minutes, or at least start the 5:00 clock when the car enters their assigned pit stall, and not pit road.
The segment rule I'm on the fence about. Usually the Daytona 500 is 160 laps of follow the leader in a single lane, and there wasn't much of that this time which was nice.
The problem was it created 3 mini races within a race so everyone races hard as each segment, which means good racing mid-race, but as we saw it resulted in big wrecks and red/yellow flags. and that wasn't much fun to watch. Maybe it will be better at non-plate tracks.
I (and everyone around us in the stands) hated the cautions after the segments. If I wanted to watch a bunch of cars driving at highway speeds, I would stay home & save a bunch of money and grab my lawn chair and cooler and go watch the traffic on I-90. Especially after the lengthy red/yellow flags we already had.
Last thing, is NASCAR is maybe trying to appeal to the California crowd again by starting the races later. That turns an already long day into an even longer one. Both Saturday and Sunday, we didn't get back to the hotel until after 9:00pm (ET)
Otherwise, it was a fun weekend. Ate a bunch of good seafood, got free drinks at the distillery, and the closing laps of both races were among the best I've seen since we started going down there.
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