NASCAR: Five Changes That Would Revive The Xfinity Series

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Amber Searls-USA TODAY Sports

The 2015 season for NASCAR’s Xfinity Series is quickly coming to a close and while the race for the championship between Chris Buescher, Ty Dillon and Chase Elliott should be exciting. Unfortunately, it’s likely that the remaining four races on the schedule will not be. Each of the final four events are scheduled on the same weekend at the same venues that the Sprint Cup Series will be racing which means that it is extremely likely that the last four races will be won by Cup drivers.

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Cup drivers winning in NASCAR’s “Triple-A” series is nothing new. In fact, the series’ first race in 1982 was won by Dale Earnhardt. In recent years however, the dominance of Cup drivers has been aided by Cup owners who field Xfinity teams for their drivers. When Earnhardt won the first NASCAR Busch Series race in 1982, he was driving a car owned by legendary chassis man, Robert Gee out of the back of a small garage. Today’s Cup drivers are racing for what are essentially Cup teams in the Xfinity Series with cars coming from the very same race shop that Sprint Cup cars come from.

Having all the various chassis information exchanged directly between a Cup and Xfinity team is huge and plays a key role regarding the success of drivers in the series. However, that’s just one aspect where those teams have an edge.

Sponsorship is another huge factor and the larger Cup teams that field Xfinity rides for their drivers have a distinct advantage. Xfinity team owner Dale Earnhardt, Jr. recently commented on the financial strain his organization is under due to the cost of running the series and the fact that sponsorship is difficult to find. In fact one of the main reasons Junior Motorsports signed Danica Patrick in 2010 was due to Patrick bringing sponsorship to the team.

Earnhardt’s comments should raise major flags for those at the helm of NASCAR. If the most popular driver in the sport cannot attract enough sponsorship to properly maintain his race team, what does that say about teams that are smaller and do not have access to the data Cup teams provide? How are these teams going to survive in the next two or three years? Will they even be able to survive?

The following are solutions that could help alleviate if not solve this problem as well as make the on track product better. Some ideas are more realistic than others but even utilizing one or two of the changes listed below would be a huge benefit for the teams that complete solely in the Xfinity Series.

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