May 21st, 2012 
Journo Sandbagging (verb): To hold back; what happened Saturday night at the Sprint All-Star race.
The collective oxygen this morning is being taken up with discussion about what happened Saturday night. A new format and $1 million on the line led the winner of the race to sandbag his way to the end.
NASCAR in its almost yearly revision of the All-Star race rules decided this year to give the winners of each segment of the race an upfront spot for the last 10 lap segment. This led to a great first segment, a slightly less exciting second, third and fourth segment followed by a finish that disappointed immensely.
The real story out of this was race winner Jimmie Johnson who, after winning the first segment, took to trying not to get lapped for the 70 laps that followed until the final segment.
NASCAR set up rules that not only encouraged this behavior but guaranteed it was going to occur. Why would I take a chance I’m going to wreck my equipment when I’m guaranteed a spot at the front for the last ten laps? Johnson said after the race:
“That’s going to be tough for me to knock the system after how our night went because it just worked out exactly how we’d hoped.”
And therein lies the conundrum. NASCAR changes the rules in an attempt to make things more interesting and teams immediately find ways to game the system thereby doing the exact opposite.
I think Johnson was without a doubt the best car on the track Saturday night and would have won regardless of whether he ran upfront all night or sandbagged the entire way. Still, I think the rule changes cheapened Johnson’s win and fell short of creating a more exciting event.
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While I don’t like the ever changing formats, I thought this one would be interesting especially with four heat races and a main event in the last 10 laps.
I thought that the first 80 laps were good side by side racing including a tight battle to the finish line in the third segment for the win. But the last 10 laps were a blow out with Johnson leaving the rest of the field to fight it out for second on back in a winner take all race. Not bad format and interesting seeing strategy play a big role in the outcome. NASCAR couldn’t have known that the first three segment winners would hide out in the back when they created this format.
As for a new format for 2013, we need to go back to something else, or even better, give this race a facelift including a brand new format that is simply and nothing like we have seen, a new venue, find a short track not too far from Charlotte and put $1 Million dollars to win it all. Love the all star race concept, but tired of what we have now. Hell even combine the Budweiser shootout and the All-Star race into one hell of a race.
I’d like to see them tweak it a bit. Let the four segment winners pit first (inverse the order for them though) and make everyone in the race do a four-tire stop. As it was this weekend, the 4th segment winner was extremely handicapped against the other three. I think this format has some potential, it just needs some finessing.
It was not an exciting race to watch. JJ just ran off and embarrassed everyone. It’s like the drivers are afraid to rub fenders for the win and the money…oh wait, they all make millions anyway, so who cares. Let’s just ride around and try and finish top-10. Geez…
How about making it a race with no gimmicks?
I’d make a simple adjustment: the pit order of the first three segment winners would be determined by their position in the 3rd segment. They may still hang back a bit relative to the main pack, but they’d be forced to at least race the other two segment winners… and thus wouldn’t be able to save their tires during that 3rd segment.
Interesting two races this weekend.
Johnson (in the All Star Race)and Stenhouse (in Iowa)each drove cars that had at least 2-tenths/per-lap on the other top cars in their fields. Both drivers could have led every lap of their respective races, but they tried to be careful not to stink up their shows.
I’m surprised these two winning cars haven’t been shipped to NASCAR’s Tech Center for more careful scrutiny.
Did anyone else notice that Stenhouse burned the rear wheels off his car in his post-race celebration? Normally Jack would frown on this behavior.
I’m just saying……
It really wouldn’t take a lot of tweaking to make this format work. If they had impounded the winners of each segment after the win and not allowed them to adjust on the cars until the end of the final segment, at which time the pits open for everyone to make one last adjustment and take four tires. The non-winners would be allowed to pit normally during the segments, which may actually give the advantage to the non-winners since they would be able to keep up with the changes in the track. The only advantage to winning a segment would be starting position in the main. How does that sound?
Looked up what the rules were going to be for this years All-Star race, knowing they change something every year. While reading the rules I figured the winners for the first segments would sandbag at the end of the pack saving their engine & tires, and staying out of wrecks. So it was no surprise to me how the race played out. Not sure why NASACAR couldn’t see that.
Maybe it’s just me, but it seemed like a lot less wrecks in this year’s race. Then again the past year or so seems like a lot less wrecks at the various tracks.
Just give the winners of the first two segments an extra $50,000 and then the winner 3rd segment gets $100,000. And the finishing order of the third segment is the starting order of the 4th segment.If you finish the 3rd segment first, then you start first. That way, no one will be sandbagging waiting for the 4th segment. By doing it this way, no one will be guaranteed a starting spot just because they won the first or second segment. Or something to that effect!!
Assign points in each of the three heat races. Invert the finishes of heat race 1 & 2. After the third race, line them up by points position. I would hope that would discourage sandbagging.
OK so #48 new going in that the only segments that mattered were the 1st and last. The first to get the pit entry red carpet and the last for the million. Sprint wants to give away a million bucks…right? Treat this like the “Let’s make a Deal” gameshow for those of us old enough to know about that.
Win segment and you bag a chip. Win segment two and you bag a chip (or a scecond one if you are a repeat segment winner). A chip is awarded for each of the four segment. The fans voted ahead of time what each chip was worth, in no particular order. $1 up to $749,998K. But the results are only revealed after the 4th segment. The total of the four chips is $750K. A driver holding a chip(s) can choose to trade one of their chips for a 1-4 starting position in the final 10 lap shootout that pays
the remaining $250K. The starting order for the rest of the field of non-chip holders is a blind draw.
That would get the fans into the mood!It would definitely prevent sandbagging, prevent giving up when things don’t go great in each segment and prevent building motors that blow up in segment 1.
I think they should make the top two finishers of each segment line up for the final ten laps, everyone else off the track… then we’d see some dad gum racing.
-W
and like Smoke said after Dega (tongue & cheek)…make ‘em run the final ten laps “clockwise”.
The possibilities are endless……
Once again Knaus and Johnson made everyone look like fools.NASCAR included. That team is just head and shoulders above all the other teams. And the funny thing about it is they know it.
JT: here are the facts. Johnson and Stenhouse are better and their teams are better than the competitions. Who you should be frowning at are the other 42 drivers who are afraid to do what it takes to win…or in some cases just don’t have the talent.
with A 2.9 CABLE RATING (13% less than last year) NASCAR NEEDS to find a way to draw an audience to the sport. Truck drivers listening to XM aren’t enough to save it. Continuing to show races on a premium cable channel is damaging the brand. Keep it on the networks, start doing Thursday night races, or even Monday nights or there won’t be an audience left. This year the race simply sucked. And the tinkering with the format (and the rules in general) is chasing more people away than they could ever hope would watch with these boneheaded moves.
Have them run it across the street in the dirt.
What a complete farce this years All Star race was. Again JJ found a way to make a mockery of the race. How can anyone be a fan of his style of racing? Smart, yes, but watching him race is like watching the grass grow.
Johnson can be admired for his intellectual approach to races. But it comes as a price as Johnson is the posterboy of the manufactured non-physical era of NASCAR.
I think NASCAR had the fomat pretty good until the last pit stop. It was comical watching most of the field come into their pit box just to stop and get going again. Without the variables of adding tires and fuel, the positions up front remained exactly the same. The only race was who could manipulate the timing lines better (again, intellectual is not why people pay to see sporting events in person)