Another year - and another season - is now upon us. Formula 1 testing is already almost halfway done, and things are well underway at Daytona Beach.

Year 2 of Grand Prix Focus will be more, well, focused. The Bluesky account will continue to live post all F1 qualifyings and races.

New for this season is the launch of our sister site, Stock Car Focus. This will allow for things to become a little more specialized so that there’s maybe a little less NASCAR being posted on here. Much like this site, SCF has a subscription feature that you can sign up for and have everything I write there sent to you.

The first column there is a little season preview predicting the top 36 in Cup Series points for 2026. Do check it out if you are so inclined.

SCF is also hosted on Wordpress instead of Substack. This is a trial to see if it would be better or worse to migrate GPF over to WP as well. I am very familar with the WP mechanics and editor, while also being very leery of the more objectable side of Substack’s management. Because this is such a small website, I also don’t have to worry too much about bleeding my audience by doing so.

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I have rejoined Frontstretch.com for the 2026 season, primarily as a NASCAR writer. I’ll be producing a column every other week on FS, running on Tuesday mornings. On weeks I am not writing for FS, I plan on writing at least something for either SCF or GPF.

I’ve also updated both the website and the logo, if you haven’t noticed. I’ve taken on the classic Jordan yellow as the official site color. I liked how it looked on a black background back in April when I first changed the colors to pay tribute to Eddie Jordan after his death, and have kept it ever since. Yellow isn’t being used by any F1 team right now so it can be used easily.

So that’s it. Check back here in a couple of weeks when I write an F1 season preview after testing is completed. Until then, hang on and enjoy the ride.

These awards are not subjective. Instead, they are superlative awards that use accomplishments and teammate head-to-heads throughout the season.

Juan Manuel Fangio Driver of the Year

Every race, Formula 1 conducts an online “Driver of the Day” poll that ends on the final lap. At that point, they release the top 5 in votes along with the percentage of votes they won.

This award uses those polls to judge the winner. For every percentage point a driver earns in a poll, they recieve the closest number rounded to their percentage in points, but they must finish top 5 in the poll to be counted. This sounds confusing, but is relatively simple in practice.

The top 5 in DotD for Abu Dhabi, as an example:

Max Verstappen - 19%

Lando Norris - 16.3%

Lewis Hamilon - 13.4%

Charles Leclerc - 12.2%

Yuki Tsunoda - 11.3%

How that translates to points:

Max Verstappen - 19

Lando Norris - 16

Lewis Hamilon - 13

Charles Leclerc - 12

Yuki Tsunoda - 11

With that being explained, here is the 2025 field using DotD standings:

1. Max Verstappen - 369

2. Lando Norris - 217

3. Charles Leclerc - 191

4. Lewis Hamilton - 172

5. Oscar Piastri - 149

6. Kimi Antonelli - 111

7. Nico Hulkenberg - 77

8. Carlos Sainz - 65

9. Isack Hadjar - 63

10. Oliver Bearman - 60

11. Alex Albon - 57

12. Gabriel Bortoleto - 49

13. Fernando Alonso - 41

14. Yuki Tsunoda - 41

15. George Russell - 36

16. Liam Lawson - 14

17. Pierre Gasly - 7

18. Lance Stroll - 6

19. Esteban Ocon, Franco Colapinto, Jack Doohan - 0

It’s pretty crazy looking at this and seeing just how far off Russell is, but it also kind of makes sense considering the Verstappen fans don’t like him and the Hamilton fans, who boasted their guy up to fourth, also don’t like him. It’s also a bit wrong for Ocon never to finish in the top 5 this season.

Obviously, Max Verstappen dominates this category and wins the award.

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Alain Prost Most Valuable Driver Award

This award is for the driver in the top half of the constructor standings that contributed the most points for their team on a percentage basis.

1. Max Verstappen - 93.3%

2. George Russell - 68%

3. Charles Leclerc - 60.8%

4. Alexander Albon - 53.3%

5. Lando Norris - 50.8%

The winner this season was Max Verstappen. Verstappen came just two points from winning his fifth straight championship, and a record third with a constructor not winning the constructor championship.

Verstappen scored 421 of Red Bull Racing’s 451, or 93.3% of the total for the team. Without Verstappen, Red Bull would fall from third to ninth. Without a doubt, the Dutchman is MVD for the season.

Most Underrated Driver Award

Much the same as the MVD, except this award is for the bottom five teams, and with the added clause that eligible drivers must have scored below 80% of the points for their team, unless the team would move down in the constructors table after taking their points out. This locks out situations such as this year with Pierre Gasly, whom scored all 22 of Alpine’s points but it didn’t matter because they finished last in the standings regardless.

1. Nico Hulkenberg - 72.9%

2. Fernando Alonso - 62.9%

3. Isack Hadjar - 55.4%

4. Oliver Bearman - 51.9%

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Michael Schumacher Most Outstanding Driver

This is award is for the driver who won the most races. Any tie is broken by most second places, then most third places, and on down.

Max Verstappen won eight races and the award, as Oscar Piastri and champion Lando Norris only managed seven race victories each.

Sebastian Vettel Qualifying Championship

This award treats qualifying as its own championship. A pole earns a driver 25 points, second place 18 points, and so on and so forth. Peter Brook on Twitter has been keeping track of this:

Lando Norris won the award, after both he and Piastri made it to Q3 in every single round this season.

Max Verstappen A and B Sprint Championships

These awards treat the Sprints as their own championship, much the same as qualifying.

The A Sprint Championship is by scoring the Sprints by what their real championship points distribution was, which for 2025 was a one-to-eight scale for the top 8 finishers. Here are the standings for that:

1. Max Verstappen - 32

2. George Russell - 30

3. Lando Norris - 29

4. Oscar Piastri - 29

5. Lewis Hamilton - 21

6. Charles Leclerc - 17

7. Kimi Antonelli - 15

8. Yuki Tsunoda - 12

9. Carlos Sainz - 10

10. Fernando Alonso - 5

11. Lance Stroll - 4

12. Esteban Ocon - 4

13. Alexander Albon - 3

14. Oliver Bearman - 2

15. Pierre Gasly - 2

16. Isack Hadjar - 1

The Sprint B Championship is by scoring the Sprints by the Grand Prix points distribution, the traditional 25 for a win, 18 for second place, etc.

1. Lando Norris - 84

2. Max Verstappen - 79

3. Oscar Piastri - 79

4. George Russell - 75

5. Lewis Hamilton - 58

6. Kimi Antonelli - 42

7. Charles Leclerc - 42

8. Yuki Tsunoda - 32

9. Carlos Sainz - 27

10. Fernando Alonso - 24

11. Lance Stroll - 14

12. Esteban Ocon - 10

13. Alexander Albon - 9

14. Pierre Gasly - 9

15. Isack Hadjar - 8

16. Oliver Bearman - 6

17. Liam Lawson - 3

18. Nico Hulkenberg - 2

19. Gabriel Bortoleto - 2

Lewis Hamilton Rookie of the Year Award

This is such a goofy idea, but stick with me.

We’re going to use the old NASCAR Rookie of the Year system. No, not the current one that is simply the most points wins RotY. The old, confusing one.

Rookies earn one point for entering a race prior to the entry deadline. How I define this is, if a rookie is added to the car on Saturday after a Friday of practice, that does not count for rookie points.

The highest finishing rookie earns 10 points, second highest earns 9 points, and so on and so forth.

If a rookie finishes in the top 10 of a race, they score bonus points based on where they finished. A win earns 10 bonus points, second 9 bonus points, and so on and so forth.

If this doesn’t sound convoluted enough, don’t worry, we’re not done yet. The season is divided into three seperate 8 race segments. The rookie with the most championship points, not rookie points, in each individual segment gets 10 bonus points. Second gets 9, and so on and so tired.

The rookie driver highest in championship points at season’s end scores 10 bonus points, with no bonus for second place.

Just to make things even worse, only a rookie’s best 12 races count in a season as far as rookie points are concerned.

There were four qualified rookies on the year: Kimi Antonelli, Isack Hadjar, Gabriel Bortoleto and Jack Doohan. Oliver Bearman was not technically a rookie to begin the year, as he had made three F1 starts prior to it. Liam Lawson and Franco Colapinto are also eliminated due to their number of starts prior.

After too much work, here is the rookie of the year standings:

1st. Kimi Antonelli - 247

2nd. Isack Hadjar - 184

3rd. Gabriel Bortoleto - 141

4th. Jack Doohan - 60

And so, the Rookie of the Year wa-

Wait a minute, there’s one more layer here. A five member panel then intervenes, one of whom is the previous season’s driver’s champion, and meets during the final week of the season. To quote the most trustworthy source on this directly (Wikipedia):

“They evaluate that year’s candidates on the following criteria:

• Conduct with officials

• Conduct and awareness on the racetrack

• Personal appearance and conduct with the media

The panel may penalize rookies for any conduct that may be detrimental to NASCAR.

Anyone involved with a rookie candidate (such as a teammate or car owner) may NOT serve on that year’s panel and will be replaced by another persin in that category. In case of the Series Champion, it is the preceding year’s Series Champion. In 2002, Bobby Labonte served a second consecutive term on the Cup rookie panel as NASCAR disqualified Jeff Gordon from the position because of his equity ownership in Jimmie Johnson’s #48 car. Labonte had served on the 2001 season panel because of his 2000 championship.”

So, I guess Lewis Hamilton (ironically) would be meeting and deciding the rookie of the year but not really in a way, because Verstappen would be disqualified as Hadjar is part of the Red Bull family and…

Okay, forget all of this. Kimi Antonelli wins Rookie of the Year. Nobody had any conduct detrimental to NASCAR, in part because they don’t drive in NASCAR.

Historical Championship

Finally, there is this award, which recalculates the season using the 90’s 10-6-4-3-2-1 system, with any Sprints using the original 3-2-1 point distribution.

This is because that system is very adaptable and can be used to calculate every F1 season, as every driver has always wanted to finish in the top 6 at least in every race, and it allows for one more point to the winner while not adding too many points to second and third like the 2002-2009 system did.

The historical standings:

1. Lando Norris - 144

2. Max Verstappen - 141

3. Oscar Piastri - 137

4. George Russell - 82

5. Charles Leclerc - 55

6. Kimi Antonelli - 31

7. Lewis Hamilton - 23

8. Carlos Sainz - 11

9. Alexander Albon - 9

10. Nico Hulkenberg - 6

11. Isack Hadjar - 6

12. Oliver Bearman - 5

13. Fernando Alonso - 3

14. Esteban Ocon - 2

15. Liam Lawson - 2

16. Lance Stroll - 1

17. Yuki Tsunoda - 1

18. Gabriel Bortoleto - 1

19. Pierre Gasly - 0

20. Franco Colapinto - 0

21. Jack Doohan - 0

And just for fun, here’s the constructor standings:

1. McLaren - 281

2. Red Bull Racing - 142

3. Mercedes - 113

4. Ferrari - 88

5. Williams - 20

6. Racing Bulls - 8

7. Kick Sauber - 7

8. Haas - 5

9. Aston Martin Aramco - 4

10. Alpine - 0

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The upcoming 2026 NASCAR season, set to begin in 52 days, will mark the start of a New Era.

In recent years, there have been many new and radical changes to NASCAR. Stages, playoffs, the intial charter system. Following the settlement of the lawsuit between 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports versus NASCAR, the biggest of them all has come.

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Bill France was supposedly the lone founder of NASCAR as a result of the Streamline Hotel meetings that precipitated the birth of it. He wasn’t the only one, at least with what he led many of the meeting participants to believe. But following the inaugural Southern 500 in 1950, NASCAR became by far the leading stock car racing sanctioning body in the country, with France cast as the one great man at the start.

Ever since, the France family has held an iron grip on big league stock car racing in this country. Series came and went, with the most prominent, ARCA, being subservient to NASCAR to the day that it was directly sold to NASCAR.

In 1970, Junior Johnson closed his highly successful race team just a few weeks into the season. A phone call from the company R.J. Reynolds led to a sponsorship offer too good for Johnson to take. Johnson routed the company to the France family for NASCAR sponsorship, immortalizing Johnson forever for having changed the tides of NASCAR in addition to his success as a driver and team owner. His induction into the inaugural class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame, one of just five members, is proof in the pudding.

Much like the Streamline Hotel meetings and the R.J. Reynolds phone call, the formation of this new era of stock car racing will be remembered by one man’s actions. Michael Jordan is one of the greatest athletes in history and parlayed that fame and wealth into NASCAR team ownership.

Although he was joined by others, namely his ownership partner Denny Hamlin and Front Row Motorsport’s Bob Jenkins, it was Jordan’s drive and determination to stand up that led to these changes. His experience as a longtime fan of NASCAR but as a relative outsider to the inner workings of it drove him to push far enough to clinch this change. It’s unlikely Jenkins alone would have been able to get this case settled.

Although details are scant as to the exact terms of the settlement at the time of publication, we know that “evergreen” charters are part of it. These charters cannot be taken away by NASCAR, unlike the current ones. This will fundamentally change how NASCAR will operate for the foreseeable future.

Never before have the Frances had a third party at the table. With the consolidation of track ownership in the 90’s, the only player on the landscape with any real power was Speedway Motorsports Inc., with the cantankerous Bruton Smith and later his son Marcus at the helm. But SMI served similar interests to NASCAR, and once Bruton retired from his affairs, there really wasn’t any potential pushback to whatever NASCAR wanted to do. Until today.

This era begins with NASCAR at the lowest point the company has been in decades, outside of situations involving death. Ratings have fallen dramatically, with many young fans choosing the European-based Formula 1 over the domestic NASCAR offering. Backlash over a lame duck playoff system led to one of the most unsatisfying championship battles in the history of NASCAR.

Team and NASCAR relationship might be at an all-time low, with an ugly court case leading to many private communications becoming public. It got bad enough that Johnny Morris, the founder and CEO of Bass Pro Shops, sent a nasty letter to several publications blasting the Commissioner and his leadership team for their actions. Many of the previously unknown elements of NASCAR’s inner workings, such as how the board of directors operates and how NASCAR spends and earns its money, have become known.

The court case itself was an eight-day circus that is better left unsaid at this rate, with most reports indicating a tired judge and an even more worn-out jury.

But in the darkness, there is a light. After years of fighting it, NASCAR has finally realized that they cannot do it alone anymore. The now infamous “gold codes” would have failed. It’s like trying to mix a beer into a cocktail.

So instead, both NASCAR and the teams have chosen to cooperate. This trial has brought much damage to everybody so far. But the doomsday scenarios did not come to pass.

And now NASCAR and the teams, just three days before the 78th anniversary of those Streamline meetings that would end up consolidating power to one family, will now have to work together to build stock car racing’s future. Time will tell if the only path forwards is up.

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It has been a few days since the most numbing season finale to a year of NASCAR racing that I have ever seen or heard of. Plenty of people at this point have compared it to the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. They wouldn’t be entirely wrong, either; while the circumstances are different, the fallout feels very similar.

While the Phoenix result’s biggest culprit is the NASCAR overtime rules, the reason it got there in the first place was because of the playoffs. All three races this past weekend exposed the worst aspects of this format.

I don’t want to dwell on a lot of this, because there’s been plenty of great writing and podcasts on this topic. What I want to do instead is focus on the future and provide a proposal on what the next NASCAR championship system should look like.

NASCAR has had some form of playoff format for 22 years now. What do they have to show for it? The 2004 and 2005 seasons had an increase in TV ratings year-over-year. But the bottom has fallen out in a dramatic way over the past two decades.

Keep in mind that NASCAR’s rise in the public consciousness came in the years prior to 2004. Kyle Busch is arguably the only real household name that began in the Chase/playoff era, and that’s because he won over 200 races across the three national series.

Mention Mark Martin at a grocery store, and there might be a person or two who knows the name. Mention Ryan Blaney, and nobody knows who that is.

We all want a more simple system that rewards both winning and consistency, while creating stars and interest. And it’s obvious where to start.

First and foremost, my proposal calls for a full 36-race points season. No more playoffs.

Any points reset makes the system too confusing; it takes the focus away from the top drivers by instead focusing on the cutoff line drivers, and it has not led to any fan increase.

NASCAR viewership has been cut in half; the 2014 season finale had 5.33m viewers on cable. The 2025 finale had 2.77m viewers on broadcast. Let’s not even compare the 2004 finale to the 2025 finale.

With that, it’s time to talk points. A lot of people really like the 1-point-per-position system. I don’t, because it disincentivizes drivers from racing for position in the top 10 and potentially wrecking out. Finished second really should not have a 35x multiplier on last place in a mathematical equation.

But again, people like the current point distribution. And this proposal is ultimately a compromise. So, I’m going to keep the current 40th to 2nd distribution model.

The difference from second to first cannot stay the same, however. There’s only a five point difference between second and first in the current distribution. This meager difference is because, in the current playoff system, winning means getting into the playoffs or advancing to the next round within them.

So there will just need to be more of a difference between first and the 35 points for finishing second. The current five point difference is less than that in the F1 system, and that’s one working with much fewer points overall.

But there’s a very simple solution to this: instead of 40 points for winning, why not 50?

This means second place gets 70% of the points that the race winner receives. F1 has a difference of 72%, so winning would mean more than in that seroes. At the same time, how many total points are in the NASCAR system means that consistency still matters a significant amount.

Finally, there’s one more problem to answer: what to do about stages? Personally, I think stages cause too many problems for the benefits they provide.

However, we’re asking a lot out of NASCAR and their TV partners to just crtl-alt-delete the playoffs. Stages are also a little more of a divided topic among the fan base.

This has to be a realistic proposal. So, stages will stay in some form.

But there won’t be extra stages at the 600. And there are going to be some other changes to stages in general.

Some like the idea of having no stage cautions. I don’t care either way. But the thing I do care about is more consistency in stage lengths.

NASCAR’s original goal with stages was to have the races broken down into 25%-25%-50%. Let’s go back to that. They strayed away from it due to teams trying to make it through one or both of the first two stages without pitting.

With Goodyear bringing higher wear tires, this is no longer an issue. And if it becomes one, who cares? There might be some strategy differences?! Oh my!

The top 10 in a stage do not need points. Too many people getting points mid-race is hard to keep track of. Instead, let’s make it that only the top three drivers in the stage get points, on a 5-2-1 scale.

F1 Sprints have a reduced number of points positions, and because of that, the back half of the field race at 80% as it doesn’t really matter to them.

How do we prevent that from happening? F1 pays teams at the end of the season. NASCAR pays teams every race for where they finish. At least $2,596,000 per points race last year, to be exact.

So, let’s take advantage of that and pay the entire field 25% of the race purse at the end of stage 1 and another 25% at the end of stage 2.

This way, teams have a reason to fight for every position, even if, on the surface, only the top 3 are actually getting points from it. The final results would have their payout cut in half, but that’s fine, as that’s when the vast majority of points are awarded on the day.

Will this proposed system save NASCAR? I don’t know, and it might not even be possible to “save” NASCAR at this point. But I do think nobody currently watching NASCAR would stop watching because NASCAR implemented this.

Does it reward winning a bit much? Yes, but we have to keep in mind that if it didn’t, the feedback loop would continue. The Bob Latford system faced a lot of criticism in the 1990’s because it did not promote winning enough, and honestly, it did not. We can’t get to a point where every decade, NASCAR completely changes itself in response to what it did before.

This system rewards winning enough to safeguard it from those criticisms in the future. It rewards drivers running up front in a better way than either Latford or the current system. It’s also remarkably simple to understand and is not a dramatic change from what NASCAR is currently using.

The NASCAR Cup championship has become devalued after years of abuse. Kyle Larson entered an exclusive club of multi-time champions, and instead that’s essentially become a footnote. Larson had a great, championship-caliber season, mind. But how he won it, through no fault of his own, defines this current playoff format.

It’s interesting that there is nostalgia for 1990s and 2000s NASCAR, but there is none for 2010s NASCAR. Part of that reason is time, of course, but part of it as well is that every championship season now bleeds into each other. Everybody wins it the same way now. Nobody wants to buy a bunch of books with the exact same setup and exact same conclusion. It’s all the same.

In this time of ChatGPT and AI slop, NASCAR could stand to become a little more original. This proposal is a great first step.

Humpy Wheeler was known for his legendary tenure at Charlotte Motor Speedway as track president from 1976 to 2008. Often compared to P.T. Barnum, Wheeler would stage dozens of outlandish stunts over the years and would back it up with plenty of results.

Some of his staff, namely Ed Clark and Eddie Gossage, would later use their experience working under Wheeler to successful track presidencies of their own. Charlotte had a 54-race sellout streak under Wheeler.

Wheeler was seemingly the only person who knew how to effectively promote the All-Star Race concept, with very few post-Wheeler highlights of the race being shown whenever it gets hyped up.

Later in life, Wheeler would start his own YouTube channel. One of the topics Wheeler talked about in one of his videos was on the then newly announced NASCAR playoff system.

“I think it’s going to usher in a new type of driver,” Wheeler said. “A driver we haven’t seen since the days of Charlie Glotzbach, Buddy Baker, LeeRoy Yarbrough, those kind of guys who were wild as dickens on the racetrack.

“Because the emphasis is on winning. Win or you die! You’ve got to win. It’s no more ‘I finished fifth, I had a great points day, and now I’m up in the top 10 [in points]”

Wheeler was absolutely 100% correct on this point, and he supported this format very hard (”No one ever bought a ticket to a points race”).

Fast forward to now. NASCAR has made it clear this year that they are going to change their format once again and that anything is on the table. And it is incredible that the argument with the most momentum for it, that of a return to a full-season championship, is for a system that Wheeler hated.

In sports, there is a struggle between what is right to maintain the integrity of the game and what is right to increase the commercial success of the game. The tug-of-war between sport and business is something every sports league or organization has to try and get a balance on.

NASCAR, from day one, has struggled with it. The first Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway in 1950 was essentially fixed from the get-go. Bill France wanted to try and lure manufacturers to invest in racing, so he and his partners bought a Plymouth that was going to be easier on the special experimental Firestone tires than the much larger Grand National cars of the time. Johnny Mantz won by over nine laps just because he used significantly fewer tires than anybody else in the race.

Wheeler epitomized this commercial side more than anybody else. Again, it cannot be understated the irony that the sport side of the tug-of-war finally began to gain some ground on the commercial aspects of it almost as soon as the last great promoter passed away.

If we use Wheeler’s logic, NASCAR should be seeing full grandstands and bursting television ratings. Nobody cares about finishing fifth anymore; it’s all about the win. And that’s exactly how drivers race.

The issue is that it turns out things are a little more complicated than that.

Points racing was NASCAR’s identity for 40-some years. Hell, it’s been part of most major motorsports sports in the world for nearly 100 years. The first Daytona 500 under the Bob Latford system in 1975 had a purse of $265,700. The 2004 Daytona 500, the first under a playoff system, had a total purse of just under $14 million.

Taking that away means that you’d be taking away what made people interested in NASCAR in the first place.

NASCAR is all action now. Drivers running into each other on double-file restarts in overtime. A proper long green flag run rarely breaks out now thanks in part to stages. To steal an anaology from my Bluesky bud Zack Moses, NASCAR is all ice cream and sugar now. Not a lot of substance.

They lighted that old sense of purpose previously held up into flames. Why? To chase new viewers with this radical new system. But that would only work if those new viewers were interested.

So, what are the results of this?

New viewers instead are, if anything, watching Formula 1, judging by the 19-49 age demos from a few years ago.

And just to be clear, this is not the first time Wheeler had a crazy opinion with these same pros and cons. He wrote a book with Peter Golenboch in 2010, and it is a very unique read just to get a view of some of the ideas in his mind.

One of his ideas was to demolish Darlington. Yes, demolish Darlington. Then go to Myrtle Beach, about two hours away, and completely rebuild it there.

He rationalized this by pointing out that Myrtle Beach had a much better infrastructure than tiny Darlington, from hotels to other amenities. But that clearly would have been devastating to anybody in NASCAR’s older fanbase.

Again, nothing against Wheeler. He did a ton of good for NASCAR and its fans throughout his life, and not many seemed to dislike him. But he represents the extreme commercial end of this balance board.

His argument demeaning point racers not selling tickets is also ironic, considering Dale Earnhardt probably sold more tickets for Wheeler than anybody else. He’s still more popular than any driver on the current grid 25 years after his death, in spite of being literally the greatest point racer of all time.

But back to today. Most of those new viewers NASCAR are trying to capture with the playoff format are not interested in the product NASCAR is putting out there. Look at ratings, look at total track attendance, and look at just about any numbers there are to look at.

Counting the Chase, there’s been some form of playoff system for 21 years now. NASCAR adopted the Latford system in 1975. If NASCAR had gotten to 1996 and most business metrics besides the TV contract were lower than they used to be, would they really have said things were going a-okay?

There aren’t many new people that NASCAR can reach that haven’t already been exposed to it in the past 21 years and decided not to watch it. If they did decide to stick around, they’d need an MBA in math to understand these playoff window pictures in most of these races now.

Has nobody watched the Jeff Dunham bit with his “Bubba J” puppet? “It’s a sport that’s easy to follow when you’re hammered”? Nobody actively thought much about the points picture during the race back then outside of maybe the final few races. Now, that’s all people talk about for months.

Last week, F1 announced they have signed an exclusive deal with Apple TV for the next five years. Most watching on ESPN have been told to either cough off the money for yet another new streaming service, or stop watching.

This is the moment that NASCAR can bounce back. This is where NASCAR can put their foot on the ground and declare that they are once again hard-nosed, hard-scrabble, unapologetic stock car racing. There are no playoffs, no eliminations, no sticks or balls. Finish well, score points, win a championship at the end of the season. Sound easy? Come and do it then.

At worst, are there going to be a huge swath of fans who stop watching because there are no playoffs? F1 ratings have shot up over the last several years in spite of actively thumbing their nose at a playoff format.

This is where NASCAR can take back those viewers who aren’t going to follow F1 to that streaming service that Ted Lasso and some MLB games are on.

Or... will Charlie Brown move the football once again, and will the playoffs be here to stay? If NASCAR wants to grow the sport, they need to put the actual sport back into it. Stop feeding people nothing but ice cream and sweets. They get too fat and ugly doing that. Give them some meat and veggies to chew on instead.

In addition to the racing, for the first time, we’ll be covering Formula 1 qualifying. With Monaco’s qualifying being so important, this is the week to experiment with that.

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All times are in EST.

Friday, May 24th

7:30 AM to 8:30 AM: Formula 1 FP1 at Monaco (ESPN2, F1TV)

11:00 AM to 12:00 PM: Formula 1 FP2 (ESPNU, F1TV)

11:00 AM to 1:00 PM: IndyCar Practice 9 (FS1)

2:30 PM to 4:00 PM: IndyCar Pit Stop Challenge (FS1)

Saturday, May 25th

6:30 AM to 7:30 AM: Formula 1 FP3 (ESPN2, F1TV)

10:00 AM to 11:00 AM: Formula 1 Qualifying (ESPN, F1TV)

1:35 PM to 3:00 PM: NASCAR Cup Series Practice and Qualifying at Charlotte (Amazon Prime)

Sunday, May 26th

9:00 AM: The 82nd Monaco Grand Prix (ABC, F1TV)

12:40 PM: The 109th Indianapolis 500 (FOX)

6:00 PM: The 66th Coca-Cola 600 (Amazon Prime)

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Note: testing, practice, qualifying and warmup sessions are not covered on the Grand Prix Focus Bluesky account.

On Wednesday, I published my column looking at the Pioneer ballot. Please take a look at that by clicking here.

Landmark Award

Now, this is something fans cannot vote on; only the voters may.

The nominees for the Landmark Award are:

Alvin Hawkins (Flagman, Bowman Gray Stadium founder and operator)

Lesa France Kennedy (NASCAR EVP)

Dr. Joseph Mattioli (Pocono Raceway founder)

Les Richter (Manager of Riverside Raceway, Chairman of IROC, VP of ISC, Senior Vice President of operations for NASCAR)

Humpy Wheeler (President/General Manager/P.T. Barnum of Charlotte Motor Speedway)

I’m not even going to bother with an analysis. Richter would probably win this had Wheeler not been nominated for the award.

Humpy is very clearly above the field in this category and completely revolutionized the track promoting game, to the point to where I actually disagree of his nomination here. Rather, I’d have seen how he fared on the regular modern era ballot first. Wheeler’s influences were vast, with a lot of SMI’s older guard of track presidents having a background working for him at Charlotte first.

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The Modern Era Ballot

The nominees for the Modern Era Ballot:

Greg Biffle (Driver)

Neil Bonnett (Driver, Broadcasting)

Tim Brewer (Crew Chief, Broadcasting)

Jeff Burton (Driver, Broadcasting)

Kurt Busch (Driver)

Randy Dorton (Engine Builder)

Harry Gant (Driver)

Harry Hyde (Crew Chief, Engine Builder)

Randy LaJoie (Driver)

Jack Sprague (Driver)

I’ve decided to group these nominees into four categories: the bad, the mid, the good, and my two picks.

The Bad

I already wrote extensively about Jeff Burton in a separate piece from a couple of days ago. You can find that by clicking here.

There is a case to be made with Tim Brewer, but I don’t think it’s a particularly strong one to make. Yes, he won two championships and over 50 races. But he joined the Junior Johnson team and won the 1978 championship with Cale Yarborough after Yarborough had won the two championships prior without him.

Then in 1981, Brewer won the championship with Darrell Waltrip but was replaced by Jeff Hammond for 1982, who won that year’s championship with Waltrip. Then in 1985, Brewer returned to Johnson’s team for the second car with Neil Bonnett. Bonnett finished fourth in the standings as Waltrip won the championship again with Hammond.

Brewer won just five Cup races when he wasn’t working for Johnson, which is particularly damning. Johnson was very involved with his teams and performed a lot of the duties that modern crew chiefs do, having the final call for strategy and car adjustments.

Hammond also had a much longer and more successful media career than Brewer did. There are so many other crew chiefs that have stronger resumes but haven’t been nominated, chief among them being Jimmy Fennig, Andy Petree, Greg Zipadelli, Ernie Elliott, Jimmy Makar, and Larry McReynolds.

Randy LaJoie has an argument in that he did win two NASCAR Xfinity Series championships. But that’s really all he has.

LaJoie only won 15 races at that level, he finished less than half of his starts in that series in the top 10, and he only had three seasons in the top 5 in points in eight full-time years on the circuit.

Look at his two championship seasons. In 1996, his main competition for the championship was David Green. Todd Bodine, Jeff Green, and Chad Little. Jason Keller, Jeff Purvis, Kevin Lepage, Phil Parsons, and Mike McLaughlin made up the rest of the top 10 in points. There is a single career Cup win among the entire top 10.

The next year, 1997, the top 10 were LaJoie, Bodine, Steve Park, McLaughlin, Elliott Sadler, Parsons, Buckshot Jones, Elton Sawyer, Tim Fedewa, and Hermie Sadler. That’s two years where I don’t think anybody besides LaJoie will be nominated for the Hall among the top 10 in points.

Then in 1998, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Matt Kenseth blew past the rest of these losers. Both finished almost 400 points ahead of third in the points, McLaughlin, while LaJoie was over 900 points behind in fourth. There is nothing to this argument besides LaJoie winning two of the weakest seasons in series history and then immediately getting destroyed the second that two future Hall of Fame members joined the field full-time.

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The Mid

One of the more interesting cases is Greg Biffle. Separately, I don’t think either his NXS record, or his Truck record, or his Cup record are good arguments. Together, though, there is definitely something there.

I think sometimes people forget just how sneaky good Biffle could be. In Cup points, he finished second in 2005, third in 2008, and fifth in 2012. He was the third man at Roush, but he still beat all of his teammates more times (three) than Burton (two), and that’s before Matt Kenseth and then Carl Edwards left.

Biffle’s big issue is that I think staying at Roush really, really hurt his career, as it did for Trevor Bayne. Per Jayski’s old team charts, Biffle’s contract was up at the end of 2014. Roush extended his contract mainly because Kenseth had already left and Edwards was leaving. Biffle would have been better of not signing that.

… is what I would say if he had any other options. Once Edwards signed with JGR, Biffle was stuck with no real viable choices outside of Roush. If Michael Waltrip Racing had known in advance that Brian Vickers would be out for 2015, he could have gotten in there. But that was his only choice, and that team was on the way down after Spingate in 2013. Still, I think Biffle did about as well as he could have in his career and has a shot at this.

Neil Bonnett has been very close to induction in the past, but recently he’s been losing support. He has now fallen out of the top half of the votes, and I’d be surprised if he recovers, as one of his strongest supporters, Bobby Allison, has now passed away.

Injuries and wrecks hurt Bonnett’s career. But it’s also very hard to justify inducting a driver who only had one top 5 finish in points and had fewer full-time seasons than many drivers had top 10 point finishes.

The tragedy of this nomination is that, had Bonnett stayed off the track and focused on broadcasting, with his level of skill he’d have a very good case and a very long career doing it. But he needed to drive, and that hunger cost him both his life and potentially his place in the Hall.

The Good

If engine builders are going to go into the Hall, the late Randy Dorton will get in eventually.

I don’t think enough can be said about that Hendrick engine shop back then. They toppled Richard Childress Racing as GM’s lead NASCAR team, and Dorton played a key role in it.

Darrell Waltrip mentioned in his autobiography that the single biggest regret of his career was not taking a sweetheart engine deal that Hendrick offered him when he left them to go form his own race team. Had he taken it, he literally would have spent less money to go faster.

Harry Hyde is one of those guys who should have been in years ago but were hurt by the Hall’s driver bias.

Longevity is not a common trait in crew chiefs, as we have seen this season with Rodney Childers leaving Spire Motorsports mid-year. But Hyde was able to win a championship and dominate short tracks with Bobby Isaac before coming back in the 1980s and threatening to turn NASCAR upside down with Tim Richmond before Richmond’s sudden downturn in health.

Like Dorton, who worked under Hyde for much of his early career, Hyde was a key cornerstone in the story of Hendrick Motorsports. Without him, there’s very little chance the team becomes the dynasty it is.

As with Dorton, if Truck drivers are going into the Hall, Jack Sprague will get in eventually. A lot of Truck drivers are now staying in that series for years, but even so, Sprague is still tied for third in overall victories.

As of press time, Sprague ranks second in career top 5 finishes (Matt Crafton needs one more to tie him), third in career top 10 finishes, third in career laps led, seventh in career average finish in spite of hacing more starts than all but one other driver in the top 10, and holds the career record in second-place finishes.

A lot of the drivers ahead of him in those rankings are future Hall of Famers (Kyle Busch, Crafton) or are already in the Hall (Ron Hornaday Jr.). Sprague was also a better qualifier than most Truck drivers, ranking third in career average start in spite of all of his 297 career starts.

There are four drivers that should be in the Hall due to their Truck accomplishments. Sprague is one of the four. Hornaday, Crafton, and Mike Skinner are the other three.

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My Two Picks

Very few drivers have the roller coaster of a career that Kurt Busch has had. The last driver whom Dale Earnhardt flipped off in his career, Busch began his career as a rowdy kid, developed clear anger management issues, defied authority, was fired multiple times from multiple teams, became an outlaw, was accussed of domestic abuse (found not guilty) by a woman he accussed of being a secret agent… then he mellowed out and became a consistent winner and elder statesman for both NASCAR and his race teams in the last few years of his career.

I think one impressive season not a lot of people realize with Busch was 2019. Busch joined Chip Ganassi Racing to drive the organization’s No. 1 Chevrolet at a terrible time. The Chevrolet body was just not competitive at all. If we look at non-playoff standings, no Chevrolet finished in the top seven in points.

Kyle Larson, Busch’s teammate, finished eighth. Chase Elliott was ninth, while Busch was tenth. In a season in which Busch turned 41 years old, he was the third-best Chevrolet driver in his very first year with CGR. And the only two drivers ahead of him would be the next two Cup champions just entering the prime of their careers. This is pretty damn good.

Then there’s Handsome Harry Gant. Mr. September. The Skoal Bandit. Gant had a legendary late model career prior to joining the Cup ranks full-time at age 39 and had a very strong Cup career that matches up well with every other nominee besides Busch.

People know about that famous four-win streak at age 51 in 1991, but they don’t realize that Gant also finished fourth in points that season and then the next.

I did some research, and to my best knowledge, only Mark Martin (second in points in 2009) had a better points finish after turning 50, and not even Mark could say he had multiple top 5 finishes in points like Gant did.

Now it’s time to make your choice. The fan ballot for the Hall of Fame can be found by clicking here. The ballot will close on Sunday, so make sure to make your own picks soon.

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In addition to the voters, an additional ballot will be submitted via the results of a fan vote. The link to that can be found here.

I have kept track of the Hall of Fame voting results via a tracker on Google Spreadsheets. That can be found here.

At the last moment, I decided to split this column in two. Today is my choice for the Pioneer ballot, while tomorrow will have the Modern Era ballot. I will also be looking at the Landmark Award nominees tomorrow.

Pioneer Ballot

This ballot is the highest voted of the following nominees:

Jake Elder (Crew chief)

Ray Hendrick (Driver, Non-Cup)

Banjo Matthews (Driver, Car Owner, Chassis Builder)

Larry Phillips (Driver, Non-Cup)

Bob Welborn (Driver)

For years, I’ve been a supporter of Banjo Matthews in this category. And I probably should be looking at his resume. In 1978, every single race-winning chassis was a Banjo car. That is something we didn’t see again until NASCAR went to a spec car a few years ago.

Bob Welborn, on the surface, also makes sense. Welborn won the championship in all three seasons of the NASCAR Convertible Division and had success in his more meager Cup career.

I also appreciate that the Hall is finally crediting the Convertibles more and more in recent years. When NASCAR created it, notice that it was called a “Division,” not a “Series.” Smokey Yunick attested in his book that competitors were under the belief at the time that the Convertibles were on equal footing with Cup, with races not usually serving in support roles. Rather, they believed Convertible wins would be counted as Cup victories.

Instead, NASCAR has officially deemed the division “a regional series” on the level of the old Busch North or K&N East and West. This is nowhere near the case, and the reality is that those races should really count towards Cup win totals. But they can’t because Richard Petty won one, and they can’t just give the King another win to make his total an uneven 201. But I digress.

Anyway, Matthews and Welborn were nominees I should support. But the reality is that I cannot, as I do not think their success outweighs the reality that both were objectively racist towards Wendell Scott.

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The source for this is the late Brian Donovan’s excellent book Hard Driving, an autobiography on Scott. Now, the racism wouldn’t make them unique among past inductees. Buck Baker and, allegedly, Bruton Smith were not nice to Mr. Scott in this regard. And it was a different time in many ways; there have absolutely been more than just those two who have gotten in.

But Matthews and Welborn were pretty damn bad in their quotes in the book. Matthews is quoted as calling Scott’s car “a typical n****r rig”. Later on, when commenting on another car Scott raced, Matthews said “Typical n****r - you’d give him something, and you’d look again, and it would all be wore out”.

Welborn’s story is much more situational. Scott won one Cup pole in his career, in 1962 at Savannah, Georgia. Welborn started on the outside of Scott in second.

During the driver’s meeting, Welborn mentioned there were “Two n****rs on the pole tonight,” which prompted NASCAR officials to warn drivers that they would face repercussions if they delibrately made contact with Scott.

Scott would later confront Welborn, having not heard the comment in the moment. I’ll just excerpt this part verbatim from Donovan’s book, with the you-know-what word censored:

Welborn, journalist Hank Schoolfield recalled, was known as “a dyed-in-the-wool southern racist.”

Scott walked over to Welborn. “I said ‘Bob, you called me a n****r?’” Scott recalled.

“He said, ‘I called both of us n****rs.’

“I said, ‘I knew you were lowdown, but a n****r is a lowdown thing, and I didn’t know you were that low,’ and I put my finger in his face.

“He said, ‘Take your finger out of my face.’ And I didn’t take nothing out of his face.”

You’ll have to buy the book to read about the entire situation, but that ends Welborn’s involvement in it.

Bringing race relations and the treatment of drivers to Scott against a Hall of Fame nominee might seem questionable at first. A lot of NASCAR drivers of the day were poor southern boys without much of an education in the mid 1900’s. Plenty of them were racist just as the result of the environment they were raised in, and I don’t think all of them should be demonized for something they didn’t have a say in.

But not everybody was like that, either. The book also glowingly mentioned individuals such as Ralph Moody, Curtis Turner, Richard Petty, and especially the Wood Brothers.

A sports Hall of Fame is supposed to be a celebration of athletes and those who helped shape said sport. Matthews or Welborn being inducted would not be the worst day of all time by any means, but it would be inductions I cannot condone or celebrate.

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Keep in mind that NASCAR doesn’t have to celebrate drivers like this, the ones racist to a point that Scott can recall it specifically like with Welborn or are as dismissive as Matthews.

Jack Smith was a well-traveled veteran of the NASCAR circuit for many years, winning 21 of his 264 starts and having three top 5 finishes in points. Smith has been largely ignored by NASCAR for one crucial reason: he was abusive towards Scott.

Smith’s name is in the record books; his stats have never been erased. But he was left off both the Top 50 and Top 75 driver lists, and he hasn’t been nominated for a spot in the Hall.

Matthews and Welborn probably both deserve the same fate. The voters will be the judge, but neither really should be ahead of the other three nominees on this strong of a ballot as it is.

My pick for this instead is Ray Hendrick, who placed second in last year’s vote. My former colleague Michael Massie wrote a great piece on him last year supporting his Hall of Fame nomination, and I cosign him on that now.

Above, you can see Massie’s interview with Roy Hendrick, who has passed away in the year since.

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I was born in Maryland, but I have strong roots in Virginia. That classic flying 11 is still ubiquitous to this day on the local scene around there, even though Hendrick passed away in 1990.

Hendrick is a guy who pops up so frequently when I read old NASCAR driver autobiographies, almost always as the immovable object they would fail to beat in local, sportsman, or modified competition.

He’d race anywhere, everywhere, in anything, and usually won. He didn’t place well in most championship standings, but that’s because he didn’t commit himself to any circuit. Massie goes into more detail in his column.

The other nominees in the category are strong. Jake Elder was a cantankerous crew chief who won championships with David Pearson, was fired midway through Dale Earnhardt’s first championship season, and won races with so many different teams and drivers.

Larry Phillips is probably the greatest Weekly Series driver in history and absolutely dominated the 90s in that championship. I’d probably put him second to Hendrick on my ballot.

Again, be sure to subscribe to check out the Modern Era ballot column that is on the way tomorrow morning.

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I keep track of each class and the voting results with a tracker on Google Sheets that can be found here.

For the purposes of this column, let’s look at the modern era ballot. 10 nominees per year, the top two on the ballot are inducted. Last year, Ricky Rudd finished with a commanding 87% of the vote, while Ralph Moody joined him in the class with 60% of the vote.

Coming in third was Harry Gant, who was third for the second straight year. Gant is thus a clear favorite to finally make it in this round of voting. The great Harry Hyde came fifth.

Between them in fourth was Jeff Burton. This is confusing to me, as Burton never seemed like a Hall of Famer. He always seemed like he was in the background, a guy who could win a race or two but never seemed like a top driver.

I decided this year to take a deeper look into Burton’s candidacy, taking a clear, unbiased view of it. What I have determined is that my findings were largely correct. Burton has an argument for the Hall, but the idea of him being even the fourth-best candidate on the ballot is a bit laughable.

Let’s take a look at all the different categories you can judge a NASCAR HOF case by, at least in my eyes. With the exception of maybe one, I don’t think Burton meets any of them.

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On-Track Success

Obviously the best way to make a Hall of Fame argument for a driver is based on their results.

This is probably the strongest section for Burton. He won 21 races at the Cup level, a number on par with a number of drivers already in the Hall, like Bobby Labonte and Benny Parsons.

From 1997 to 2000, Burton won 15 races and finished in the top 5 in points every season. He was the first true success story at Roush Racing after Mark Martin.

Burton was a consistent driver. He finished top 10 in points in eight seasons in total, and his career average finish of 16.5 puts him on par with HOFers such as Rudd and Terry Labonte.

There’s no snark here. Burton on his best day in his best years was a very formidable driver, and one that the winner would often have to contend with.

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Career Context

But the reality of on-track success is that these are just numbers. It’s hard for them to have value unless there is meaning behind them.

8,763,214 is a number I just typed out. It could mean 8,763,214 Big Macs, which would be a lot of hamburgers. It could also mean 873214 milliseconds, which equals 87 seconds. Not a lot of time at all.

Yes, Burton had success in his career. But he did it while he spent the vast majority of his career with either Roush or Richard Childress Racing.

Part of what made Rudd’s argument so strong last year was how consistent he was in spite of ever-changing teams and cars. Burton stayed with Roush for eight-and-a-half seasons and then RCR for nine-and-a-half seasons. That’s 18 years at top teams.

This is more time at top teams than most individual Cup careers. Joey Logano has spent about the same amount of time in top rides and utterly smokes him resume-wise.

“But those teams ebb and flow more than teams like Penske and Hendrick” would be a solid argument, except that Burton drove for Roush as they moved into their peak from 1996 to 2004. When they were at their peak, which I would define as 2002 to 2006, Burton was so off the pace from his teammates that he got replaced by Truck Series driver Carl Edwards. Edwards jumped into his seat and almost immediatly found speed.

Yes, RCR was not at their strongest point when Burton drove for them. But remember when I mentioned Burton got beat by his teammates at Roush? It was the exact same deal at RCR, where he never once finished ahead of all of his teammates in points in a given season.

Even if you count 2004, when Burton came into RCR mid-season, Harvick still finished ahead of him. Same as 2005.

In 2006, Harvick won five races to Burton’s one and beat him in points again, fourth versus seventh.

Burton actually got the measure of Harvick in 2007, but in spite of that, second-year driver Clint Bowyer beat him by finishing third in a two-horse championship race out front.

In 2008, RCR finished fourth through sixth in the standings, with Burton bringing up the rear behind Harvick and Bowyer. RCR fell apart in 2009, but Bowyer still finished over 300 points up the road from Burton.

Harvick and Bowyer beat Burton in 2010 and 2011. Bowyer mercifully left RCR after 2011, but in 2012, Burton sunk to a new low by finishing behind both Harvick and Paul Menard. Yes, Paul Menard. As Harvick competed for a championship in 2013, Burton finished 20th in points and behind Menard again before Childress finally had enough and cut Burton loose. After a few trivia question starts for Michael Waltrip Racing in 2014, Burton bowed out.

Well, wait, Burton was out of his prime at RCR. Which is not a great argument considering he was there almost ten years. But okay, Burton was at his best at Roush.

He finished ahead of all of his teammates just twice at Roush.

Once was in 2000, where he finished third in points. The other came in 2001, where Roush fell off a cliff and Burton finished 10th in points.

Then Kurt Busch came in and exploded to third in 2002. Matt Kenseth came into his own by finishing eighth in 2002 before winning the championship in 2003. And Martin rebounded from his slump to finish second in 2002.

It’s not a coincidence that most of the names I am listing here are in the Hall or, in Busch’s or Harvick’s cases, clear future HOFers. Because that’s ultimately what Burton was.

Burton was a fantastic teammate and a great wingman for better drivers. I would not argue that is what makes a good Hall of Famer, especially when he’s also getting demolished by both somebody who probably won’t go in the Hall (Bowyer) and somebody who will never be nominated (he lost to Paul Menard! Twice!)

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Non-Cup NASCAR Success

Gant had about the same level of success at the Cup level as Burton, but a key part of his candidacy besides just being the Skoal Bandit is his massive success on the local short track level.

Gant was 39 years old during his rookie year in Cup. The reason he started so late was his dominance in local racing and success in the old Sportsman division, the precursor to today’s NASCAR Xfinity Series.

Obviously, drivers such as Jack Sprague, Ron Hornaday, and Greg Biffle all base a lot of their HOF arguments on their non-Cup success.

Burton was famous for getting his start by cutting his teeth racing late models at South Boston Speedway. But I couldn’t find where he had won a late model championship there in his youth.

While he did win late model races there, he didn’t seem to have a huge resume of late model success or any modified racing. Please correct me if you can attest to it, but what I found was more or less what most Cup drivers could claim to have prior to moving up.

He had five full-time seasons in Xfinity, winning one race in each of the last four seasons of that and having a best points finish of ninth.

Burton would later win 24 more races over the next 15 years driving part-time for Roush and Childress, but if we want to judge him on this, it still pales compared to a lot of other Cup drivers in that era who moonlit in that series.

Martin in particular had more race wins in the same equipment at the same time. When a Roush Ford rolled off the truck, people in that garage were far more worried if Martin’s name was on the doorframe than when it was Burton’s.

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Popularity

A lot of people don’t like to admit it, but popularity can play a very large part in a successful Hall of Fame argument.

And it’s not just in NASCAR either. Joe Namath has fairly middling football stats but was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame based on being by far the most popular football player in the country for years, representing his sport well, and opening doors for others to follow.

When we look at the NASCAR version of this, Dale Earnhardt Jr. brought a fine argument to the table already with his career accomplishments. But his superstardom helping to drive NASCAR to its 2007 popularity peak helped turn him into a first-ballot inductee.

Burton was fairly popular, but I’d argue a big reason for that was less for who or what he was and more because he drove in the biggest era. Burton was well liked and respected, but he was a lot of people’s second or third favorite driver.

If we look at his peers, I’d argue a great comp would be Sterling Marlin. Marlin is a driver who I would agree has less of an argument for the Hall than Burton, but he’s a much more beloved name among fans when it comes to drivers from the era.

I decided to go back and look at every single Darlington throwback lineup from 2015 to 2025 via Jayski. I only looked at Cup, mainly to keep my sanity in check.

Throughout those 11 years of throwbacks, I might have missed one or two schemes, but I could only find three times Jeff Burton was thrown back to. And two of them were from his son, Harrison Burton, so they don’t really count.

And obviously, this is not an exact science, and it doesn’t prove much. But it does say a lot about Burton’s lasting popularity that not many people seem interested in running his paint schemes at the throwback race. Which feeds into…

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Impact

Can we tell the story of NASCAR without this nominee? Did they leave a measured impact on the sport?

Burton was known through his driving career as the “Mayor” of the garage. Reporters could hit him up for a fair opinion that most in the industry agreed with, and his peers have nothing but positive things to say about him personally.

That’s all well and good, but did Burton leave that big of an impact on NASCAR? I honestly don’t think he has on the macro level.

Micro level? He served as a backbone guy for both his team and the garage. But he was never going to step up into the spotlight.

Burton fans would argue his safety record should be considered, and it absolutely should. But it’s not enough to get him over the finish line as a nominee when he falls short in as many categories as he has.

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Broadcasting

Thanks to Ken Squier’s induction, broadcasting is its own special category that really does not make a lot of sense. There are a number of great broadcasters (Chris Economaki, Barney Hall) who haven’t even been nominated, and likely never will.

Still, being a great broadcaster helped boost Parsons into the Hall, and also serves as a crucial piece of Neil Bonnett’s argument.

Bonnett was renowned throughout his too brief broadcasting career and clearly holds up well watching him in that role now.

Burton has been able to hold onto an over 10-year career in the booth with NBC, but man, has it been rough at times.

Burton was fine his first few years in the role, but was almost immediately supplanted by Dale Earnhardt Jr. the moment Earnhardt joined the booth.

Bowyer and Jeff Gordon were a really, really bad commentator pairing in part because Gordon was a really bad commentator. But at least the two had some kind of angle to calling races for Fox, where they at least pretended to disagree on things.

Burton and Earnhardt were not aided by having that same piedmont accent, but they had no real angle to them being together. This meant Burton really didn’t have a decent reason to be in the booth because Earnhardt could do anything he did.

When Earnhardt left NBC after 2023, that let Burton take more of a role in 2024. I did not watch a lot of NBC’s NASCAR Cup coverage, but he seemed very forgettable still in the Xfinity Series races I was covering at the time.

At best, Burton has been forgettable as a commentator. At worst, he’s been a meaningless one.

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Conclusion

Congratulations, you have read 2000 or so words on how bad Jeff Burton sucks and how he should not be inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame. At least, according to the Burton fans reading.

Again, I had no issue with Burton being named to the top 75 drivers list a couple of years ago. He’s basically the ultimate teammate, somebody who is beatable but was going to be pretty consistent and could win a few races.

But the Hall of Fame should have higher standards than this. Burton never felt above the field like a lot of his peers who are already in the Hall. Would you put him in the same category as Dale Jarrett, Bobby Labonte, and Martin? And those are just the second-tier guys; he was never at the level of the guys like Earnhardt or Gordon.

He doesn’t pass the eye test, and he doesn’t pass looking beyond just numbers on a web page.

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I was considering covering qualifying on our Bluesky account like I did back in the day for Frontstretch on their Twitter account.

But I just don’t have the faith in Fox’s coverage to be able to make up for if T&S has numerous problems throughout the weekend as it did last year.

This week is the final week to submit a fan ballot for the NASCAR Hall of Fame. I have two HOF columns coming this week, one hitting your mailbox tomorrow and the other on Thursday.

All times are in EST.

Tuesday, May 13th

12:15 PM to 2:15 PM: IndyCar Rookie / Refesher Test (FS2)

2:15 PM to 6:00 PM: IndyCar Practice 1 (FS2 until 4:00 PM, then FS1)

Wednesday, May 14th

12:00 PM to 6:00 PM: IndyCar Practice 2 (FS2 until 4:00 PM, then FS1)

Thursday, May 15th

12:00 PM to 6:00 PM: IndyCar Practice 3 (FS2 until 4:00 PM, then FS1)

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Friday, May 16th

7:30 AM to 8:30 AM: Formula 1 FP1 at Imola (ESPN2, F1TV)

11:00 AM to 12:00 PM: Formula 1 FP2 (ESPNU, F1TV)

12:00 PM to 6:00 PM: IndyCar Practice 4: Fast Friday (FS2 until 4:00 PM, then FS1)

Saturday, May 17th

6:30 AM to 7:30 AM: Formula 1 FP3 (ESPN2, F1TV)

8:30 AM to 9:00 AM: IndyCar Practice 5: Group 1 (FS2)

9:00 AM to 9:30 AM: IndyCar Practice 5: Group 2 (FS2)

10:00 AM to 11:00 AM: Formula 1 Qualifying (ESPN2, F1TV)

11:00 AM to 5:50 PM: IndyCar Qualifying (FS1 until 1:30 PM, FS2 until 4:00 PM, then FOX)

Sunday, May 18th

9:00 AM: The Fifth Formula 1 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix (ESPN2, F1TV)

1:00 PM to 2:00 PM: IndyCar Practice 6: Top 12 (FS2)

2:00 PM to 3:00 PM: IndyCar Practice 6: Last Chance Qualifiers (FS2)

4:05 PM to 5:05 PM: IndyCar Top 12 Qualifying (FOX)

5:15 PM to 6:15 PM: IndyCar Last Chance Qualifying (FOX)

6:25 PM to 6:55 PM: IndyCar Fast 6 Qualifying (FOX)

Monday, May 19th

11:00 AM to 3:00 PM: IndyCar Practice 7 (FS1)

Note: testing, practice, qualifying and warmup sessions are not covered on the Grand Prix Focus Bluesky account.

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Friday, May 9th

09:30 AM to 11:00 AM: IndyCar Practice 1 at Indianapolis Road Course (FS2)

1:00 PM to 2:30 PM: IndyCar Practice 2 (FS1)

4:30 PM to 6:00 PM: IndyCar Qualifying (FS1)

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Saturday, May 10th

11:30 AM to 12:00 PM: IndyCar Warmup (FS1)

4:52 PM: IndyCar Sonsio Grand Prix (FS1)

Note: testing, practice, qualifying and warmup sessions are not covered on the Grand Prix Focus Bluesky account.

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This Week’s Top 10 Ranking

Best 10 Lists So Far In GPF History

10. Excuses for being a day late
9. Letters
8. Condiments
7. NASCAR Drivers Right Now
6. F1 Rookie Seasons
5. F1 Prospects
4. Current Car Brands
3. IndyCar Drivers Right Now
2. American Race Tracks
1. F1 Drivers Right Now

If you read it, it seems like I made a relatively heartless decision almost entirely out of greed. Here’s the section:

“Something I’ve noticed is that there’s just no real attention being given to our IndyCar and NASCAR coverage. I can live without much interaction, but it’s hard to justify spending hours writing up about those races without any likes or, more importantly, Bluesky followers being added. F1 races usually fetch a lot of both, but not those two series.

“Because of this, I’ve decided to slow down both.”

I do need to stress here that while those numbers give me a reason not to cover those series, another big part of it is that I have not been having fun doing them.

For IndyCar, it’s clear that the hybrid system has really negatively effected the series on road courses. The cars weigh too much and aren’t producing enough horsepower to circumvent that extra weight. Thus we’ve had three “mid” races so far this season.

NASCAR is, well, NASCAR. It has become really frustrating to watch this season. Maybe things will be better after the Fox coverage ends in a couple of weeks, but that won’t fix the stages still being a thing.

I would argue COTA was a pretty good race a couple of months ago, but it was also essentially a 45 lap sprint with two needless heat races beforehand. And Darlington a few weeks ago would have been great if the stages didn’t take away green flag pit cycles and the acttion we saw at the end with different drivers on different strategies.

So, from my perspective, these are two series that have not been fun to cover, and I’m not getting literally any impressions or follows to help build up this blog or the main BlueSky account up. Why am I even bothering with these series then? Especially when the whole point of all of this is to be doing stuff I like to do.

Again, I decided to cut the coverage of those two series dramatically. I want to do all three of Monaco-Indianapolis-Charlotte in one day one more time, Indy road course serves as a good prologue to the 500, and the Chicago street course is still a very interesting concept for me. It helps that Chicago has been a good race both times.

I just wanted to stress it was not just a straight business decision. Anyway, on to the schedule:

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All times are in EST.

Friday, May 2nd

10:05 AM to 10:45 AM: Formula 1 Academy Free Practice 1 (YouTube, F1TV)

12:30 PM to 1:30 PM: Formula 1 Free Practice at Miami (ESPNU, F1TV)

3:20 PM to 4:00 PM: Formula 1 Acedemy Free Practice 2 (YouTube, F1TV)

4:30 PM to 5:30 PM: Formula 1 Sprint Qualifying (ESPNU, F1TV)

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Saturday, May 3rd

1:30 AM to 2:15 AM: Formula E Free Practice 1 at Monaco (Roku)

3:10 AM to 3:45 AM: Formula E Free Practice 2 (Roku)

4:40 AM to 6:03 AM: Formula E Qualifying (Roku)

9:05 AM to 10:00 AM:: Formula E Race 1 (Roku)

10:25 AM to 10:55 AM: Formula 1 Academy Qualifying (YouTube, F1TV)

12:00 PM to 1:00 PM: Formula 1 Sprint (ESPN, F1TV)

2:55 PM to 3:25 PM: Formula 1 Academy Race 1 (YouTube, F1TV)

4:00 PM to 5:00 PM: Formula 1 Qualifying (ESPN, F1TV)

Sunday, May 4th

2:30 AM to 3:25 AM: Formula E Free Practice 3 (Roku)

4:40 AM to 6:03 AM: Formula E Qualifying (Roku)

9:05 AM to 10:00 AM:: Formula E Race 2 (Roku)

1:05 PM to 1:35 PM: Formula 1 Academy Race 2 (YouTube, F1TV)

4:00 PM: The Fourth Miami Grand Prix (ABC, F1TV)

Note: testing, practice, qualifying and warmup sessions are not covered on the Grand Prix Focus Bluesky account.

This Week’s Top 10 Ranking

Best Current F1 Prospects

10. Fredrik Vesti
9. Theo Pourchaire
8. Rafael Camara
7. Jak Crawford
6. Alex Dunne
5. Josep Maria “Pepe” Marti
4. Leonardo Fornaroli
3. Colton Herta
2. Arvid Lindblad
1. Pato O’Ward

I’m sorry for not being able to live post the F1 race at Saudi Arabia this past weekend. Something came up at the last minute that required my focus, and as this is a one-person show here, I had to just not have the race covered.

Something I’ve noticed is that there’s just no real attention being given to our IndyCar and NASCAR coverage. I can live without much interaction, but it’s hard to justify spending hours writing up about those races without any likes or, more importantly, Bluesky followers being added. F1 races usually fetch a lot of both, but not those two series.

Because of this, I’ve decided to slow down both. IndyCar will have live coverage on our Bluesky account for the upcoming Indianapolis Grand Prix and the Indianapolis 500. NASCAR will have live coverage for the Coca-Cola 600 and the Chicago street race. After those races, we’ll be covering only Formula 1, Formula E, and Formula 1 Academy in the future.

That’s not going to slow anything column wise, however. I will be providing two more NASCAR columns next month surrounding the upcoming Hall of Fame voting.

I have a couple of ideas for F1 columns in the future, but my position allows me to be more selective and flexible with my columns. I don’t have to crank something out every single week anymore. That allows me to pursue big projects at my own pace, but I also have the flexibility to write something if the topic clicks and I get to writing.

This is the last weekend off for quite a while. Next weekend will be F1 and F1A at Miami and FE at Monaco, and the month of May will start with big racing events in both America and Europe.

This Week’s Top 10 Ranking

Best Condiments

10. A1 Sauce
9. Mayo
8. Burger King Ziesty Sauce
7. “Burger” sauce
6. Soy sauce
5. Dijon Mustard
4. Hot Sauce
3. Ketchup
2. Thousand Island
1. Mustard

Friday, April 18th

7:05 AM to 7:50 AM: Formula 1 Academy Practice (YouTube, F1TV)

9:30 AM to 10:30 AM: Formula 1 Free Practice 1 at Jeddah (ESPN2, ESPNU, F1TV)

1:00 PM to 2:00 PM: Formula 1 Free Practice 2 (ESPNU, F1TV)

2:30 PM to 3:00 PM: Formula 1 Academy Qualifying (YouTube, F1TV)

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Saturday, April 19th

8:20 AM to 8:50 AM: Formula 1 Academy Race 1 (YouTube, F1TV)

9:30 AM to 10:30 AM: Formula 1 Free Practice 3 (ESPN2, F1TV)

1:00 PM to 2:00 PM: Formula 1 Qualifying (ESPN2, F1TV)

Sunday, April 20th

8:05 AM to 8:35 AM: Formula 1 Academy Race 2 (YouTube, F1TV)

1:00 PM: The Fifth STC Saudi Arabian Grand Prix (ESPN2, F1TV)

Note: testing, practice, qualifying and warmup sessions are not covered on the Grand Prix Focus Bluesky account.

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This Week’s Top 10 Ranking

Best Excuses For Being A Day Late Sending Your Coverage Schedule Out

10. Shit, I forgot about it.
9. It was going to come out when it was ready.
8. Cleaning my house.
7. Cleaning my bathroom.
6. I fell asleep.
5. Too busy watching baseball.
4. Mid-triple header exhaustion.
3. Was binging the new season of the NASCAR Netflix show that premieres in April but isn’t out yet.
2. A dog ate my keyboard.
1. I couldn’t think of a good top 10 ranking.

Friday, April 11th

7:30 AM to 8:30 AM: Formula 1 Free Practice 1 at Bahrain (ESPNU, F1TV)

11:00 AM to 12:00 PM: Formula 1 Free Practice 2 (ESPNU, F1TV)

4:30 PM to 5:25 PM: Formula E Free Practice 1 at Homestead (Roku)

6:00 PM to 7:30 PM: IndyCar Practice 1 at Long Beach (FS1)

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Saturday, April 12th

7:30 AM to 8:25 AM: Formula E Free Practice 2 (Roku)

8:30 AM to 9:30 AM: Formula 1 Free Practice 3 (ESPN2, F1TV)

9:40 AM to 11:03 AM: Formula E Qualifying (Roku)

11:30 AM to 1:00 PM: IndyCar Practice 2 (FS1)

12:00 PM to 1:00 PM: Formula 1 Qualifying (ESPN2, F1TV)

2:00 PM to 3:00 PM: The Miami E-Prix (Roku)

2:30 PM to 4:00 PM: IndyCar Qualifying (FS2)

Sunday, April 13th

11:00 AM: The 21st Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix (ESPN2, F1TV)

4:30 PM: The 50th Long Beach Grand Prix (FOX)

Note: testing, practice, qualifying and warmup sessions are not covered on the Grand Prix Focus Bluesky account.

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This Week’s Top 10 Ranking

Best Alphabetical Letters

10. U
9. Q
8. T
7. K
6. G
5. S
4. M
3. W
2. Z
1. F

Thursday, April 3rd

10:30 PM to 11:30 PM: Formula 1 Free Practice 1 at Suzuka (F1TV)

Friday, April 4th

2:00 AM to 3:00 AM: Formula 1 Free Practice 2 (ESPN2, F1TV)

10:30 PM to 11:30 PM: Formula 1 Free Practice 3 (F1TV)

Saturday, April 5th

2:00 AM to 3:00 AM: Formula 1 Qualifying (ESPN2, F1TV)

12:35 PM to 2:30 PM: NASCAR Cup Series Practice and Qualifying at Darlington (Amazon Prime)

Sunday, April 6th

1:00 AM: The 50th Lenovo Japanese Grand Prix (ESPN, F1TV)

3:00 PM: The Goodyear 400 (FS1)

Note: testing, practice, qualifying and warmup sessions are not covered on the Grand Prix Focus Bluesky account.

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This Week’s Top 10 Ranking

Best Rookie Seasons in F1 History

10. Max Verstappen (2015)
9. Kimi Raikkonen (2001)
8. Jean Alesi (1990)
7. Oscar Piastri (2023)
6. Juan Manuel Fangio (1950)
5. Michael Schumacher (1991)
4. Ayrton Senna (1984)
3. Jacques Villeneuve (1996)
2. Giuseppe Farina (1950)
1. Lewis Hamilton (2007)

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Of course, that doesn’t mean there’s no racing this weekend at all. NASCAR will be busy at Martinsvile Speedway all weekend with its three national series.

I’ve covered races at Martinsville before, and even with the caveat that the Cup Series doesn’t roll in until early Saturday morning, it’s still wild to me to see so many series in one weekend at that itty bitty track.

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After this weekend, though, we have some big things happening. Albeit there’s one thing I have to rant about.

Okay, so I know why F1 wanted the Japanese Grand Prix next weekend, so that it would allign with the cherry blossums blooming. I also understand why they wanted to start the season with five races in six weeks.

They started with Australia and then China. But then, instead of going to Japan to start the season with a triple header, they instead have the weekend off between China and Japan.

Now, the triple header is Japan, Bahrain, and then Saudi Arabia. That means there’s a 16 hour flight between Japan and Bahrain in the middle of said triple header. The distance between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia is basically nothing, so that’s all well and good at least, but a 16 hour flight is going to be such a pain in the ass for the crews that are already stressed during a triple header.

Just to compare, there is a two and a half hour flight from Shanghai to Suzuka. There’s a 10-12 hour flight from Melbourne to Shanghai the teams already did, but that’s not as bad as Japan to Bahrain because there’s only a three hour time difference. And having those three as the triple header removes a lot of stress of having that 16 hour flight between races irregardless.

And it’s not like the schedule falls apart if you move everything but Japan up a week in this five race span. All that would need to be changed is moving Miami and Imola up a weekend in May. That turns Imola-Monaco-Spain into a triple header, but that’s far more managable than Japan-Bahrain-Saudi Arabia.

Anyway, next weekend is Japan and we’ll also be covering the NASCAR Cup race at Darlington. Weekend after that is Bahrain and Long Beach. And finally, Easter weekend is just Saudi Arabia before another weekend off. The final one before June. The month of May is fast approaching, already.

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This Week’s Top 10 Ranking

Best Current Car Brands

10. Hyundai
9. Porsche
8. Mazda
7. Mercedes-Benz
6. Volvo
5. Cadillac
4. Aston Martin
3. Volkswagen
2. Honda
1. Toyota

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The 2025 NASCAR Hall of Fame Inductee has only recently been making a bit of a return to the industry after his shocking exit following the 2016 season.

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In what ended up being his final professional motor race to date, Edwards passed Kyle Busch for second on the track in the 2016 Ford EcoBoost 400, and first among the championship four, with 25 laps to go. Edwards would hold off Busch for a few laps before pulling away.

Edwards seemed to be in the catbird’s seat when, with 16 laps to go, Dylan Lupton had a flat left rear tire. Lupton made a great save in turn 2 and began to limp his way back to pit road on the apron.

NASCAR called the caution regardless.

Lupton did not hit the wall, nor did he hit another car. He made it to the apron and kept on rolling. Didn’t matter though.

Edwards won the race off pit road among the championship four, staying in second overall to race leader Kyle Larson.

A mistake on Busch’s pit stop relegated him to sixth on the restart, moving Joey Logano right behind Edwards in third.

On the restart, Edwards blocked Logano all the way into the inside wall, causing a major wreck that took himself and multiple other drivers out of the race.

Edwards would get out of the car. He’d apologize, then try and pump up the No. 22 team in their ultimately unsuccessful bid for the championship.

He would get cleared from the infield care unit, give an aw shucks interview to television. He would then retire in January a couple of months later. Besides a very rare cameo here and there, he then basically disappeared for six years.

Alright, so now that we’re all caught up, let’s go to the present. Or at least, well, last week. You know what I mean.

If you haven’t listened in full to the Download, I would highly recommend you do. It’s a remarkable interview and serves as a high point in the ten years the show has been on.

“I know NASCAR was throwing those cautions to make it more exciting. That’s a fact. And I specifically talked to people about it.

“And that’s that. We’re all in this sport to entertain. And they were trying their hardest at the time.”

Okay, so just to review, here is a driver outright saying that he believes a championship was manipulated for excitement. Imagine just how massive this would be in any other sport, let alone in any other racing championship.

If you follow the NFL, people will still complain about Deflategate or the sign stealing or any number of other scandals the New England Patriots had throughout their dynasty. Enough to where the league would punish the team years after Deflategate.

Imagine if it was revealed the NFL referees manipulated the result of the 2017 Super Bowl so that the Patriots had a chance to come back against the Falcons. Roger Goodell would probably be hauled in front of Congress, there would be lawsuits to reverse the result, and everything the NFL does from this point onwards would carry more scrutiny than it already does.

In October, Felipe Massa’s lawsuit attempting to void the results of the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix will go to court. That was the race in which Nelson Piquet Jr. crashed to hand the lead and the win to his Renault teammate, Fernando Alonso.

Now, when the race fixing went public in that situation, there were major repercussions for everybody involved except for Alonso, who did not know about it. It led to Renault temporarily leaving F1 for a few years, and the major figures involved in the scandal were banned “forever”.

Edwards isn’t going to sue over the 2016 championship. He seems to have put that behind him. But still, he felt comfortable enough to say the caution was called against him just for entertainment purposes.

The incredible thing about this is that NASCAR’s credibility is so shot, so thoroughly broken, that in the moments after this revelation, even Earnhardt doesn’t dispute this or offer a counterpoint.

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And once the episode was posted, nobody seemed to mind it all that much. Not the episode itself, which was warmly received. But nobody seemed to engage with the content of what Edwards said.

Nobody asked a driver the next weekend “Hey, what do you think of Edwards’ allegation there?”. I couldn’t find any column from any of the major NASCAR websites going “Hey, doesn’t this look bad?”.

… Well, with one exception. I had written the vast majority of this column last week, then waited to see if the story had any legs. Anthony Damcott of Fronstretch, a former colleague of mine, wrote a piece last week on it, at damn near the exact same time and with a similar opening structure to this column originally.

Good on them for getting the memo and also screw them for making more work for me because then I had to change some things around there.

But outside of them? Not even Nick Bromberg, who is bemoaned by many of the diehards as “too negative” and always out to “get” NASCAR, bothered to note it on Twitter.

Nope, just me and Damcott all alone out here on an island. On legally distinct sides of the island, but still a small one with just two inhabitants.

Like, the NASCAR approval drama around Katherine Legge is a big story, and it is important. But you’d think a member of this year’s Hall of Fame class saying he was robbed of the 2016 championship by NASCAR in the exact same format they use now would get more screentime and column space than if Legge should have been approved to race or not.

And this isn’t a criticism of the media as much as it is an observation of just how low this series has gone in the last 20 years. We just accept that NASCAR calls cautions when they want to because they often do. Maybe a caution call will be bad enough to where some grumpy Monday morning pieces will come out criticizing it, but that’s mostly it.

NASCAR will have competition director Elton Sawyer on to talk about it on Sirius XM on Tuesday because they have to justify the further existence of that channel. But by the end of the week, we’re on to something else or more news.

Stepping out of that system, one that I was in for so many years, has really given me pause to see just how low things have gotten. Like, if Mark Martin had come out and called the 1990 championship rigged for entertainment back in the day, there would have been a firestorm. It would have been all over the NASCAR Scene and absolutely on the cover.

And the comedy of it all is, that only proves the meat of Edwards’ point.

“I wanted to win that championship. It’s everything I worked for.

“That’s it, that’s the prize you want more than anything in the world. And, yes, I believe, that was snatched. And I had to look and say, okay, let’s go to 2017.

“Let me be real smart, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go, and I’m going to continue to put everything in my life second, start at Daytona, and I’m going to drive the hell out of this race car like I’ve been doing for 13, 14 years.

“And I’m going to run this thing all to the end. And give everything I got, another year of my life […] then I’m going to get to Homestead at the end of 2017, I’m going to do everything just right, and they’re going to throw a caution with five [laps] to go. And we’re going to put this all on a restart?

“And I thought ‘Damn, I’m going to spend a whole year of my life, all the things you give up and possibly give up, for one restart?’ […] It was really disappointing, but it actually helped me to say hey, this is the reality and is it worth it to you?”

Is it worth it to anybody? Is it worth it to the drivers? Is it worth it to the viewers? What is the point of NASCAR having a championship that means anything if everybody just accepts that they can take it away at a moment’s notice?

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This was something that drove me to get away from full-time NASCAR coverage after 2021 and instead refocus and reinvent myself with F1. Another big part of that was the FIA’s response to the F1 championship that season.

No, I don’t think that championship was stolen from Lewis Hamilton nor that it’s an illegitimate championship for Max Verstappen. But I also disagree with the calls the race director made at the time, as did so many other people.

The FIA then, instead of just sitting around all winter and not doing anything, made sweeping changes to race directing and stewarding. There have been bad calls since and plenty of other disagreements, but I can confidently say the FIA have not put entertainment over sportsmanship nor safety in the three years since.

I don’t feel like I’ve wasted my time being actively engaged in the championship in F1 as I have for many years with NASCAR, even in spite of the Verstappen domination. I’d much rather have that than a championship that not only doesn’t matter, but one that everybody apparently agrees does not matter.

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Thursday, March 20th

9:10 PM to 9:50 PM: Formula 1 Academy Practice at Shanghai (F1TV)

11:30 PM to 12:30 AM: Formula 1 Free Practice at Shanghai (ESPN2, F1TV)

Friday, March 21st

2:05 AM to 2:35 AM: Formula 1 Academy Qualifying (F1TV)

3:30 AM to 4:10 AM: Formula 1 Sprint Qualifying (ESPN2, F1TV)

11:00 PM to 11:30 PM: Formula 1 Sprint (ESPNU, F1TV)

Saturday, March 22nd

1:50 AM to 2:20 AM: Formula 1 Academy Race 1 (F1TV)

3:00 AM to 4:00 AM: Formula 1 Qualifying (ESPN2, F1TV)

10:45 PM to 11:15 PM: Formula 1 Academy Race 2 (F1TV)

Sunday, March 23rd

3:00 AM: The 18th Heineken Chinese Grand Prix (ESPN, F1TV)

Note: testing, practice, qualifying and warmup sessions are not covered on the Grand Prix Focus Bluesky account.

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This Week’s Top 10 Ranking

Best American Racetracks

10. Willow Springs International Motorsport Park
9. Iowa Speedway
8. Pocono Raceway
7. Richmond Raceway
6. Portland International Raceway
5. Homestead Miami Speedway
4. Circuit of the Americas
3. Road America
2. Darlington Raceway
1. Watkins Glen International

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All times are in EST.

Thursday, Feburary 27th

5:50 PM to 6:35 PM: Formula 3 Practice at Melbourne (F1TV)

7:00 PM to 7:45 PM: Formula 2 Practice at Melbourne (F1TV)

9:30 PM to 10:30 PM: Formula 1 Free Practice 1 at Melbourne (ESPNEWS, F1TV)

11:00 PM to 11:30 PM: Formula 3 Qualifying (F1TV)

Friday, Feburary 28th

1:00 AM to 2:00 AM: Formula 1 Free Practice 2 (ESPN2, F1TV)

2:30 AM to 3:00 AM: Formula 2 Qualifying (F1TV)

8:15 PM to 8:55 PM: Formula 3 Sprint Race (F1TV)

9:30 PM to 10:30 PM: Formula 1 Free Practice 3 (ESPN+, F1TV)

11:15 PM to 12:00 AM: Formula 2 Sprint Race (F1TV)

Saturday, March 1st

1:00 AM to 2:00 AM: Formula 1 Qualifying (ESPNU, F1TV)

6:00 PM to 6:45 PM: Formula 3 Feature Race (F1TV)

8:30 PM to 9:30 PM: Formula 2 Feature Race (F1TV)

Sunday, March 2nd

12:00 AM: The 88th Louis Vuitton Australian Grand Prix (ESPN, F1TV)

Note: testing, practice, qualifying and warmup sessions are not covered on the Grand Prix Focus Bluesky account.

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This Week’s Top 10 Ranking

Best Current Formula 1 Drivers

10. Nico Hulkenberg
9. Pierre Gasly
8. Fernando Alonso
7. Oscar Piastri
6. Lando Norris
5. Carlos Sainz
4. Lewis Hamilton
3. George Russell
2. Charles Leclerc
1. Max Verstappen