NASCAR 2016 Season is Here

The NASCAR 2016 season is here.  The season starts tonight with the Sprint Unlimited.  Does anyone else miss the days when is used to be called the Bud Shootout? I don’t know how long it has been since the opening race of the season has been called that but it has stuck with me and in my mind that is still what it is called.  The Sprint Unlimited is really a reward for how the teams performed last season and a glorified practice for this years Daytona 500.  It is always exciting when the NASCAR season starts but with the end of the season 5 years (9 months) away it is too long to wait for a championship to be decided.

There have been several changes to the rules this years NASCAR 2016 Season.  The biggest ones are the changes to the Green, White, Checkers(GWC) finishes the 36 Charter Teams and some changes to qualifying.

The changes to the GWC look like they will be a good thing.  Rather than having the three tries for a green flag finish there will be an overtime line that the lead car will have to pass in order for the restart to be considered a valid attempt at a finish.  If the lead car makes it past the line with out the yellow flag coming out this will be the only attempt at a green flag finish.  If the yellow comes out before the lead car gets to the overtime line the attempt will not count and they will do it again.  There will be no limit to the attempts that can be made if the lead car does not make it to the overtime line.  I am OK with this however it does bring up the possibility that someone will cause a crash on purpose if a driver does not get the restart needed.  Just a thought but we have seen this kind of stuff happen before in NASCAR.

The 36 Charter teams will make the race no matter how well they qualify.  This is probably more sponsor driven.  Which is understandable.  The sponsors spend a lot of money to be on a race car and if they do not make the race this could be something that prevents them from getting a good return on their investment.  I have not fully read the rules for the Charter teams.  I would hope that NASCAR is then telling the teams that if they are one of the charter teams they can no longer start and then park.  Start and park in past seasons has been a team qualifying for a race.  Starting the race to get the prize money and then parking so they do not incur the cost of running a full race and not taking the chance of wrecking an expensive race car.  I have never been a fan of teams doing that.  If they are running on that tight of a budget then they should not be able to be included in one of the automatic qualifying cars.

The changes to qualifying are really that significant and are slight changes to the qualifying that was used in the 2015 season.  The group qualifying last year was a nice change to the old style of qualifying where there was only one car on the track at a time.  Since the races are not a one lap times lap it really did not make sense to do qualifying run like that.

Who Is Going to Win

Predicting who is going to win the championship in NASCAR has never been a high probability thing.  It seems that most of the money has been on Kevin Harvick to win.  This is understandable since last year he finished second in the championship points and he won the championship.  Like any sport winning a championship is a combination of skill and luck.  It is a long season so it is difficult to try and guess how things are going to go.

For the 2016 season once again 16 drivers will make the chase.  The rounds have been renamed removing the goofy names that were added to them.  The will now be known as the round of 16, round of 12, round of 8 and the Championship round.  The Championship round is a one race end of the season where the highest finisher of the 4 left will win the championship.

With Jeff Gordon in the booth for FOX now and Chase Elliott driving the number 24 car for the NASCAR 2016 season.  It will be a little different for long time NASCAR watchers to see the 24 with a different driver.  The time was right for the move and from what we have seen so far Jeff Gordon is going to do very well in the booth.  Chase Elliott is set up to have a very reasonable first season in the 24.

NASCAR 2016 Season Championship Picks

My picks for the drivers to be in the Championship round

Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Joey Logano
Kyle Busch
Jimmy Johnson

Not really going out on a limb on any of those picks.

Let us know in the comments who your picks are for the four drivers to make the Championship Round