#31- Ryan Newman, #41-Kyle Busch met with members of the media at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and discussed what changes they would make to the 2015 schedule. The transcripts in part:
NEWMAN: ‘If I was NASCAR, how would I change the schedule? My answer to that would be not giving any ‘ not being partial to any ISC or SMI tracks. I’d turn some of those tracks into Wednesday night races, and the other ones would be Saturday night or sometime Sunday afternoon when it made sense. I’d give us a little bit more off weekends. We can still run 36 or 38 races but we don’t need to be at the racetrack, especially for the Daytona and Talladega for three, sometimes four days with the inspection process. So I think just realigning it and giving us the opportunity to be on TV and be our own special event on Wednesday night, especially in football season, would be good for our sport.’
‘Wednesday night shows and how would I foresee doing that? I think it all depends what that day is like. I mean, obviously, if you go to a place like Pocono and it rains three-quarters of that day, it changes everything and you have obviously Thursday to work with. But I think situations like that, you’d have the crew guys come in on a Tuesday evening, Tuesday afternoon, let the ‘ tech the cars and whatever window it is, let the guys go back and have a decent dinner with their team, and then come and start practice the next morning, practice, qualifying and race. You’ve got people in the grandstands for an entire day of activities and they can sell hotdogs and all the other things that way. I’m no businessman, but I know from our scheduling standpoint that there’s a lot of credibility to having some weekday races, especially when you consider who we’re up against in the football season.’(Team Chevy)
BUSCH: ‘Oh, my. Could I be president for the day and then decide what we’re going to do? Wow, there’s so many opportunities. I think the first one should be the final race should be bid on like a committee such as the Super Bowl. There’s a committee that goes around and it gets filled in with who does the best job with their community to present themselves as the frontrunner to have the Super Bowl. Why not do that with our final stock car race? You know, The Chase, I think Chicago is a great place to start it off. Those Chase races are valuable. And could we mix it up and change some of the races that are in The Chase and not in The Chase? One unique thing is maybe we should take Talladega out of The Chase, put Richmond in The Chase and use Talladega as the cutoff to get into The Chase? Why not? Because we’re all driving around, they’re very tentative and trying not to get in a wreck at Talladega. But why not make it the final race to get in and throw a huge wild card in to try to make it into The Chase. Because by then you have 15 guys that are pretty much locked in. That means those top 15 guys are going to throw it on the line to try to win. They’re not going to be riding in the back to protect their points. To change the schedule, I would change Richmond and Talladega, and it works because NASCAR owns both those tracks.’(Team Chevy)
JOHNSON: ‘I’ve always felt like we could use an off weekend before The Chase starts just to leave us an opportunity to have a make-up race. I know it’s a pretty severe event if it would take place. And the last unfortunate situation that was created was 9/11, but I think that was good to give the teams a break and give everybody a break that deep in the season before The Chase starts. Ultimately, you know, I buy into the philosophy that we have a bit of oversaturation with race distances and how often we compete. I think we could trim that stuff down. I don’t know where I would go to first, but I think adopting a little bit of less is more would be beneficial.(Team Chevy)(7-26-2014)
