Howdy folks, just chillin' with the crew at my girl Blossom's castle here in Dreamworld. Beautiful place, really (paid for with residuals from her old TV show. The show's apparently still huge in Yemen; poor woman can't walk down the street in al-Mukalla without getting mobbed). We love NASCAR here, and were just discussing how the sport has gotten even better since we started running things, much like our improvements to college hoops and college football (see previous posts below). Here's what we did for NASCAR....

9/23/07---Dover, DE: A Dreamworld-like day with 135,000 of my closest friends!! However, in Dreamworld, we'd have gotten a jet flyover, not freakin' helicopters....

Well, for starters, we realized that the season is insanely long. February to November? Seriously? Of course, how to shorten the season was a major concern for us. For the good of the sport, the track owners decided to let us trim some races off of the schedule (remember, this is Dreamworld after all...serious suspension of disbelief is required). We decided not to cut any road courses or short track races, or superspeedways. And any ideas on further expansion were nixed as well. And you just can't go head-to-head with the NFL either. That's why when the NFL season starts, we moved all races to Saturday night. This makes sense anyway, what normally happens when there's a rainout for a Sunday race? The race is moved to Monday when nobody can watch it. Except for those of us who are currently unemployed, but that's another story entirely.

What the....Punky Brewster just showed up at Blossom's castle; this is not good, people, not good at all. Punky and I have, well, some "history". Blossom can be a bit jealous, especially when it comes to my exes. Awkward, Awkward, Awkward! I'll be back in a little while; this situation has catfight written all over it, made worse by Mikhail and Tommy the Unicorn who are egging Punky on.....

Schedule Trimming

First, we got rid of the Bud Shootout and the Gatorade Duels. We thought, why can't we just qualify cars for the Daytona 500 like we do all the other races? These crews need all the breaks they can get, so these meaningless exhibitions were cut. Moving on....

Next, we got rid of the incredibly stupid all-star race. I mean really, the all-star race has pretty much the same drivers that race every week, right? What's the point of an all-star race, especially with no points? Another meaningless exhibition. Gone! Next!

Pocono is a very unique track, which made it tough to axe one of their races, but it's not one of the more popular tracks, so the Pocono 500 is gone. And in a somewhat controversial move, we took away one of California Speedway's races. Sorry folks, if you can't sell out a 92,000 seat stadium (actually not that big for NASCAR) in the second largest market in America, you don't deserve two races! (Bristol easily sells out 160,000 for cryin' out loud!) And TV ratings in California are plummeting at a staggering rate as well.

We also got rid of the March 22 off-week because, well, the season just started, why take a break here? I know I just got done saying the crews need all the breaks they can get, but I bet they'd rather have the season end one week sooner. And the break's between the Bristol and Martinsville races, tracks which are practically right beside each other. A break just isn't needed there!

So we knocked off nearly a month off of the season which now ends in mid-October, not mid-November. So far so good.

We like the one-engine rule as is, and left it unchanged. One more way which we've tried to give the crews a break is to reinstate the impound rule for all races. After the car is qualified, it's parked and can't be altered until the green flag drops.

Well, managed to get Punky and Blossom separated for the moment. That faint rumbling in the background is the daily Running of the Gnomes here in Dreamworld, which is super fun now that gnome hunting has been legalized. Ooh, here they come.....ready, aim....

The Cars

We introduced radical changes to the cars. First of all, if we're going to have a car called the "Car of Tomorrow" (although I guess it's now the "Car of Today"?) then we decided to update the engine technology from 1952. Pushrods, 16 valves, and carburetors? I thought one point of racing was to push technology farther.....So we made the engines normally-aspirated still, but now they incorporate fuel-injection, 32 valves, and four overhead cams. We also limit the displacement and compression ratio to limit the power of the engines. We toyed with the idea of using V6's instead of V8's to limit power, but we realized that to the true red-blooded American NASCAR fan, that would be akin to using instant grits for breakfast. And son, that just ain't right.

Yes, we understand that such a radical engine change will take a number of years to implement and the R & D costs for the teams would likely be in the astronomical range, but this sport needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern age! And by "modern age", we mean the engine technology of, say, 1992 as opposed to 1952.

To keep speeds from getting out of control as a result of better engines, we also decided on an incredibly simple, cheap solution: change the tire width from 12" to 9". We also modernized the wheel; I mean, how many high-performance cars on the road today use a 15" steel wheel? We decided on 18" alloys, though this is simply an aesthetic change...To us, the 9" tire width has the benefit of increasing the dependency on driver ability, and decreasing the dependency on car setup. Don't get us wrong, we still know setup is critical, but it shouldn't be everything! Think about it; if you put Robbie Gordon in Jeff Gordon's car from last year (and vice versa), I would bet that their positions in the standings would have been nearly reversed. That's certainly arguable, and no disrespect to JG (even though I can't stand him), but we fervently believe that the car setup these days far outweighs driver ability. Here in Dreamworld, we hopefully have changed that.

The decreased tire widths should also make handling more of a factor on the superspeedways, which will hopefully break up the huge pack of cars that frequently results in "the Big One". Some fans may like the "Big One", but not us here in Dreamworld. How much does it suck when one guy wrecks and takes out your favorite driver? Sucks large, as far as we're concerned.

Well, we bagged a little over a dozen gnomes; not that difficult when using a 12-gauge aiming at a herd of a couple hundred gnomes. Like shooting fish in a barrel, really, those little suckers are quite slow. We needed over a dozen because, surprisingly, there really isn't that much meat on a gnome. Mostly fat. We got enough for a good meal, though. They taste a bit like lobster; gnome is becoming quite the delicacy here in Dreamworld.

The Chase

The system at present makes such little sense that we changed this too. Under the current system, the 12th-place driver could theoretically start the Chase with more points than the regular-season points leader. Nonsense! In our system the 12th place driver starts with 5000 points, 11th place starts with 5010, etc. to the points leader who has 5110. The top drivers should get a healthy advantage over the lower ranked drivers, shouldn't they? We place more significance on wins throughout the entire season by making them worth an additional five points.

5/5/07---Richmond, VA: Saturday night racing with 112,000 of my other set of best friends. This is how it should be done!

Well, there you have it; NASCAR in Dreamworld is pretty sweet! Punky and Blossom accidentally bumped into each other while in line for the bathroom, and got into a nasty brawl. Hell hath no fury like a Blossom scorned, trust me on this. Everything worked out though, 'cause my boy Elliott Sadler was here, and volunteered to take Punky to the emergency room, and I think a nice little romance blossomed as a result (get it? Blossom-ed?). Anyway, calm is restored, and we're all stuffed on fricasseed gnome (cooked to perfection by Sidney, who's quite the gourmet, and also a half-mule/half-leopard, or "mullepard". We've got some interesting creatures here in Dreamworld). Then tomorrow it's to the river for some catfish-noodlin'. See ya next time!