NASCAR Sets Course of a Different Color

Change is the name of the game this year in NASCAR.

Nextel has replaced Winston as title sponsor of its premier stock car racing series; Brian France, 41, has succeeded his father, Bill Jr., 70, as chief executive; a controversial new point system is in place; Toyota is beginning its move to join the series, and the drivers’ youth movement marches on.

The most conspicuous change, though, is visual.

Driving through the tunnel into Daytona International Speedway, the new look is shocking. For the last 30 years, NASCAR tracks have been awash in red and white, Winston colors.

Black and yellow -- Nextel colors -- have taken over as the wireless communication company begins a 10-year sponsorship agreement with NASCAR.

Coincidentally, black and yellow are the colors of its champion’s car, the No. 17 Ford driven by Matt Kenseth and sponsored by DeWalt Tools.

“That’s kind of neat, isn’t it, looking around and seeing DeWalt colors all over the place,” Kenseth said Friday as Nextel Cup cars began practice on the 2 1/2-mile rectangular oval where the Daytona 500 will open the season Feb. 15.

The only red now is on some of the cars -- Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s No. 8 Budweiser, Jeff Gordon’s No. 24 DuPont Finishes and Ricky Rudd’s No. 21 Motorcraft, among others.

There might be some red faces, though, among upper-level NASCAR officials for their knee-jerk reaction to Kenseth’s winning the final Winston Cup championship last year with only one race victory.

The system, dubbed “Chase for the Championship,” essentially reduces the Daytona 500 and the first 26 of the 36 Nextel Cup races to qualifying events. After the first 26, the 10 points leaders will race for the more than $5-million champion’s purse over the last 10 races.

Points from the first 26 races will not carry over. Instead, the leader will start with 5,050 points, the second-place driver with 5,045, and so on with incremental five-point drops through the contenders.

Driver reaction has been mostly negative.

“It’s worse than I thought, because I at least felt if you had a 300-point lead going into the final 10 races, that they might knock that down to 100, but five points isn’t really that big of a deal,” Kenseth said.

Technically, one driver could win all 26 races and still start the “chase” with only a five-point lead to show for it.

And what about the drivers left out of the championship chase?

“If I’m out of the top 10, my season will be over early,” Earnhardt said. “You can kind of goof around a little bit for the last 10 races, but I guess you don’t have to take it too seriously.”

Michael Waltrip, winner of two of the last three Daytona 500s, likes the change.

“I think at the end of the year, the fans are going to like it,” he said. “The media is going to love it because they’re going to have more to talk about. When the fans and the media like it, eventually all the hard-headed drivers are going to like it and start praising it.”

Greg Biffle, who won the Pepsi 400 at Daytona in July, has another perspective on the scoring system.

“It’s going to change our sport more than anybody ever thought ... because sponsor packages are going to change and driver contracts are going to change,” he said. “I will no longer have a 36-race contract. I’m going to have a 26-race contract and then a bonus 10-race contract. It may be as extreme as seeing people out of a job with 10 races to go, depending on whether or not your team makes the playoffs.”

France insists there is no playoff.

“The first 26 races are a seeding process,” France said. “What we’re not going to call this is a playoff. It’s not a single elimination. It is not a win or lose and you are out, not a best three of five. It’s better than that because [in the end], it still has 10 tracks over 2 1/2 months to compete. We think we have something that’s better than the playoffs.”

The point system may be a debatable topic, but the change to Nextel has already paid dividends, opening areas of advertising and promotion that were denied when Winston, a cigarette maker, was the title sponsor.

“Look at the Super Bowl,” said Waltrip. “Dale Jr. and I were in a commercial in the middle of the Super Bowl. That’s something that [we] haven’t been able to do in the past [because tobacco advertising is banned on TV]. I think there were 180 million people watching the Super Bowl and there Dale Jr. and I were, goofing off in the middle of it. Nextel is going to be a great partner to NASCAR racing.”

With NASCAR apparently aiming its marketing at 18- to 25-year-olds, youth is replacing NASCAR’s middle-age look.

Jeff Gordon started the youth movement when he won his first Winston Cup championship in 1995, at 24.

“When Kenny Wallace and I came into the sport back in ‘93, it opened the doors for good rides and top sponsors and teams looking at young guys,” the four-time champion said. “Guys like Tony Stewart and Dale Jr. and Ryan Newman and Jimmie Johnson have been able to come in with really good rides. It proved that a young guy could come in and be successful right away if he has the right equipment.”

Newman, 26, won eight races last year and was voted American driver of the year. Johnson, 28, was runner-up to Kenseth. Each was in only his second full Cup season.

Brian Vickers, one of six newcomers vying for rookie of the year, is only 20. He won the Busch series title last year, the youngest champion ever in NASCAR’s No. 2 series. This year he will drive for Rick Hendrick, whose team also includes Gordon and Johnson.

Other rookie contenders include Brendan Gaughan, 28, driving for Roger Penske; Kasey Kahne, 23, replacing legendary Bill Elliott in Ray Evernham’s Dodge lineup; Scott Wimmer, 27, succeeding 2002 Daytona 500 winner Ward Burton with Bill Davis Racing; Johnny Sauter, 25, with Richard Childress Racing, and Scott Riggs, 33, the old-timer of the group.

“I guess when you look at some of the other rookies, I’m not really a young gun,” said Riggs, who takes over Johnny Benson’s seat in the No. 10 Valvoline Chevrolet. “I guess I’m more of a middle-aged gun.”

Toyota does not have an entry in Nextel Cup, but the Japanese manufacturer is in NASCAR with seven drivers in the Craftsman Truck series. Like Dodge a few years ago, Toyota is getting its start in trucks, but even though Toyota spokesmen claim trucks are their sole interest, few doubt that in the next three or four years there will be Toyotas in the Daytona 500.

Despite all the changes, two things remain constant around Daytona International Speedway: the sound of full-throated 800-horsepower cast-iron engines revved to the limit -- and the threat of rain.

The Nextel Cup season will get underway tonight with the Budweiser Shootout, a non-point preview.

Like the season, the race is split in two parts. The first segment is 20 laps, followed by a 10-minute intermission. The second segment is 50 laps.

The 19 competing drivers are either pole winners from last season or previous winners of the race. The most intriguing is Boris Said, a road-racing specialist who won the pole at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif., and has never raced on a high-speed oval.

“I can’t wait for it to start,” said the bushy-haired veteran who will be in the No. 01 U.S. Army Chevrolet. “I’ve been waiting for this since about five minutes after winning the pole at Infineon, knowing that I was going to be able to drive a Nextel Cup car at Daytona.”