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They may advertise as rough and tumble racing, but the promotional clips they use certainly don't favor the short tracks. Also, that Talladega preview was nothing but crash footage, and they say the people don't watch for the wrecks.
You can get rough and tumble racing perfectly easily on the bigger tracks if the guys are feeling aggressive; they're not exactly being relaxed when they go 5-6 abreast at Pocono, Michigan, or California, now are they. Conversely, we've seen quite sedate races recently at Martinsville, Bristol, and Richmond.
NASCAR has itself locked into a large schedule; it's always had a large schedule from the start. The trouble with keeping a large schedule with fewer races on other types of ovals is, there are a rather limited number of short tracks that could justify the "upgrades" required for one of the top-tier NASCAR series. It's expensive as all get-out to do the additions, and when you're done, it's NOT going to be a small town short track anymore. So, there's a price to be paid for doing that in more than one sense.
I wouldn't mind proper silhouette cars, that actually appear to resemble a road-going model, and I think it should be built as a facsimile of a road car that actually has a V8 under the hood. It's not feasible to do a true stock car anymore. You practically have to rebuild the things to begin with to incorporate the mandated crash cell. In addition, many road cars would be unreasonably, aerodynamically unstable at race speeds.
Unfortunately, it would quickly go from 43 Thunderbirds to no cars at all. It wouldn't be much of a marketing exercise against the other manufacturers once there are no other manufacturers left. Also, it would cost the surviving manufacturer more to support the entire field than just 25-33% of it, and without the other brands fighting them, there would be fewer sponsors and fans tuning in. You end up spending more on a smaller possible return. If the lone manufacturer tries to spread its existing resources, the quality of the field, racing, and series would suffer quite noticeably.
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