Click here to follow us on Twitter @circletrackplus   Click here to like us on Facebook 

In the winter, NASCAR officials turn to thoughts of change.

Change! Change! Never sit still. Fans might get used to it.

Never mind that, until NASCAR started splitting the last 10 races from the rest of the season and then split them into four segments, and designed generic cars with wings on the back, and then decided brand identity wasn’t so bad, and took the wings off and made them look more like real cars again … the sport was booming.

If NASCAR keeps changing everything, with any luck, the fans will get so used to it they’ll stop coming to the tracks altogether, and stock car racing will get rid of all the trouble of traffic jams, motel-room scalping, and the unseemly spectacle of – gasp! – beer drinking.

The drivers will all be perfect, and wholesome, and family-oriented, just like the crew chiefs, owners and all the other stakeholders and corporate partners.

Nah, nuh, NAH, nah, nah … history …. Nah, nuh, NAH, nah … biology.

This year’s grand and glorious design puts segments in the races, not just the Chase. Oh, and it’s not the Chase anymore. They’re the playoffs, even though no one plays. They’re still going to race. It’ll be complicated, but the friendly folks in the television booth will keep you informed about how brilliant and wonderful it all is.

If you don’t understand it fully, don’t worry. All the forms can be found at IRS.org or something.

Meanwhile, I have become a voice in the wilderness. It’s just become too damned complicated. I remember a day when a man (or a woman) could walk up the steps, take a seat in the grandstands, and watch sound and fury that signified something.

Oh, it could get a bit untidy. When I was four years old, my daddy went off to the Southern 500 with his drinking buddies and came home to tell my disgruntled mama that Junior Johnson had won. She picked up the morning paper and said, “Well, Jimmy, that’s funny. The Greenville News says somebody named Larry Frank did!”

“Well, uh, Betty, I could’ve sworn Junior Johnson won.”

My first race was the Volunteer 500 at Bristol three years later. The manager of the meat market, Ralph Barnes, took me up to Forest City, N.C., with his sons Steve and Marshall, and his stepson, Moony Mims, so that he could work at a local auction barn, and then we drove on up near the border between Tennessee and Virginia and slept in his 1964 Plymouth (Ralph loved Richard Petty) so that we could watch Ned Jarrett win.

I was hooked. I started going to the two 100-milers held each year at Greenville-Pickens, and, then, in 1970, when I was 12, Daddy finally took me to Darlington, where Buddy Baker drove an orange Charger Daytona to victory. I can still see that winged monstrosity, which seemed as long as an aircraft carrier, sliding through the turns while we sat on the back straight surrounded by thousands of Cub, Webelos and Boy Scouts.

I loved it then. I love it now. Inexplicably, I’ve even got a hankering to go back to the track this year a few times. I’ve watched TV and read dozens of emails informing me that this is going to be the greatest thing since overhead camshafts. It’s going to be like a short-track Saturday night, with built-in heat races, consolations and a slam-bang finale.

That might be true if dirt tracks ran 500 miles instead of 50.

The money is great for everyone except the dwindling number of fans who’ve got enough of it left.

If this great change doesn’t work, maybe next year they’ll have a segment that gives the drivers a chance to snake through the infield, the back straight will have a flaming hoop for the cars to jump through, and an alleged Russian known as Ivan Drago will get a ride in a bright-red Lada Kalina Super 1600 with a yellow hammer and sickle on the hood.

Change is inevitable, but when the proud sport of stock car racing has been gradually sinking to its knees ever since the change started, one would think someone in Daytona Beach or Charlotte would say, “Hey, what if we went back to the way it used to be?”

Maybe someone has.

“Are you crazy? We’ve got to change to meet the wants and needs of the modern generation. They all watch Celebrity Apprentice.”