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Happy Hour: Your reactions to NASCAR's new points format

Nick Bromberg
·College football and motorsports writer
The season finale at Homestead will still be winner-take-all among four drivers. (Getty)
The season finale at Homestead will still be winner-take-all among four drivers. (Getty)

Welcome to a special edition of Happy Hour. After we’ve had the chance to opine about NASCAR’s new and complex points system here, it’s your turn. Do you like the changes NASCAR made? Do you think the cons outweigh the pros? Here is a sampling of what readers think about what NASCAR announced on Monday.

If you need a primer before you move forward, here’s our explainer.

The Coca-Cola 600 will still be 600 miles. No race distances will be affected. Instead, the first segment will roughly be 150 miles, the second will roughly be 150 miles and the third will be approximately 300 miles.

Those percentages are estimates, because NASCAR isn’t too keen on turning segments into fuel mileage races given the fanbase’s lack of love of teams stretching their fuel.

The pits will be closed 5 laps before the end of every segment, but don’t be surprised if you see teams near the back of the field at the end of the first segment pit right before the pits close to start up front at the beginning of the second segment.

That’s a strong statement. Maybe we refrain from calling it dumb until it backfires spectacularly? Patience, everyone. Patience.

We’re optimistic as well, especially because of the added bonuses throughout the first three rounds of the Chase. Quite frankly, the randomness has been the biggest flaw of the elimination Chase — err, playoffs — and giving the most successful drivers in the regular season a boost in the playoffs.

The final years of the Car of Tomorrow chassis produced better racing than what we’ve seen with the current car. Right?

Rules regarding springs and gears have also come at a time where splitters and spoilers became big topics too. It’s likely a combination of all factors, and NASCAR needs to keep looking at mechanical and technical changes to the cars to help improve the racing in the future. The steps its made in chopping off downforce the past two years are simply that. Steps. Redoing the points and race formats shouldn’t mean tweaks to the cars stop.

The breaks are basically an “enhanced” version of the caution clock that was in the Truck Series in 2016. So for everyone who figured the caution clock was going to lead to something else, congratulations. You win a brief round of applause.

The three-races-within-a-race aspect is going to feel very unnatural at first. But if it’s appealing, it’ll soon feel fine.

Sadly, NBC doesn’t have the beginning of the season. Fox does. So instead of Jeff Burton and Steve Letarte cogently explaining the format, we get Darrell and Michael Waltrip while Jeff Gordon tries to remain sane.

Hey, NASCAR is the sport of change. Shout out to Athlon’s Matt Taliaferro, who, before the 2014 changes, noted NASCAR’s propensity for changing things every three years. 2020’s changes should be a doozy.

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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!