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Originally Posted by The Original Instag8or
Bruton evidently has the money to butcher Sears Point and neuter Bristol, twice... he can afford to "fix" a couple of his 1.5-2 mile snoozers as well.
By "fix", I mean reconfigure it into "New Bristol" since he is trying to recreate "Old Bristol".
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It's difficult to change a 1.5-mile oval into a half-mile oval. You've trashed all your grandstands, the banking is messed up, complete redo of the infield...
They tried to "fix" a 1.5-mile oval once. They "levigated" Charlotte and I remember Humpy Wheeler discussing this in promos before the Coke 600 one year. They proceeded to have one of the worst races ever as there was a caution seemingly every 10 laps.
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In an effort to make the racing better and remove some of the bumps, track president Humpy Wheeler had the 1.5-mile surface ground down, or levigated, between the 2004 and 2005 seasons. Instead, it produced a record 22 cautions in the 600-miler, so Wheeler repeated the process before NASCAR's premier series returned in October.
But tire testing prior to the fall race -- producing record speeds and multiple crashes -- hinted at the disturbing possibility of an event that would be unusual in its scope. There was just no time available for Goodyear's engineers to come up with a tire compound that would hold up to the new surface.
It become evident early on that tires were going to be an issue. No fewer than 16 incidents, including blown tires by points leader Tony Stewart, Elliott Sadler, Kasey Kahne -- all while leading -- forced NASCAR officials to take the unusual step of throwing a mid-race competition caution and mandating maximum tire air pressures, with the threat of points reduction to any team that failed to follow the rules.
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The latest craze that's been done that appears to have worked is progressive banking.
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And upon a second read of your post, it seems that with two entities owning so much of the schedule, it seems that monopolies are no longer frowned upon?
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Well it's not a monopoly if there's two, it's an oligarchy.
Since the late '80s at least, the dates have always been controlled by track owner, they've never taken away a date from a track owner. (If they did, they'd take a date from Pocono, a track owned by the Mattioli family, which won't sell to either Bruton Smith or ISC.) A track owner like Bruton Smith and the ISC have though taken dates away from tracks they own and given it to other tracks they own. But read up on the Ferko lawsuit in your own time.