Road courses becoming largely irrelevant to current Sprint Cup

Racing in the tight quarters of Watkins Glen was enough to have Juan Pablo Montoya and Kevin Harvick at each other's throats in 2007. AP

Up and down the garage, you hear it from drivers, from crew chiefs, from pit crew guys: They positively hate road course racing.

Sure, there are few drivers like Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart who relish the challenges that road courses present -- such as the art of braking into a turn, the elevation changes on the track, and the turning of the wheel both to the left and right as the driver navigates around the winding course -- but most NASCAR drivers simply don't enjoy this type of racing. And so it's not surprising that as the Sprint Cup circuit heads this weekend to Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International, a 2.45-mile road course with 11 turns, most drivers are just hoping to survive on Sunday with a top-15 finish.

"It's no secret that I really don't like road courses," says Dale Earnhardt Jr. "I grew up watching racing on ovals and not road courses ... We just want to run well, get through it and get on with oval track racing at Michigan [next week],"

The Cup series only visits two road courses each season, the Glen and Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif. Neither of these events takes place in the Chase, which begs the question: Does performing well on a road course have anything to do with winning the championship? The answer is no. Jimmie Johnson, the two-time reigning champ, has never won a road course event, and neither has Kurt Busch (the 2004 Cup winner) or Matt Kenseth (the ''03 champ).

NASCAR should do one of two things: Either move a road course race into the Chase or dump the road course events from the schedule. As it stands, these two weekends spent racing in Sonoma and the Glen really amount to nothing but wasted time. Even if Gordon or Stewart wins on Sunday and one of them snaps their ever-growing winless streaks, it would mean very little in the bigger picture of the championships. The setups on the cars at the Glen have nothing to do with setups on ovals, so it's not like there would be a carry-over effect like there typically is when a driver wins on an oval.

But if a road course race were to be added to the Chase -- the vote here would be Sonoma -- then drivers would have far more incentive to improve their road course skills and lend the events far greater weight and importance. What venue should lose a Chase race? How about one of the five 1.5-mile oval tracks in the playoff, like either Texas or Kansas City?

If NASCAR doesn't add a road course to the Chase, then the sanctioning body should eliminate this form of racing from the schedule and give these dates to other tracks. Who knows, this may happen sooner rather than later, because new tracks likely will soon be built in the New York City area, Denver and the Pacific Northwest. They all will need Cup dates, and aside from the likelihood of Martinsville (Va.) Speedway losing a race, it'll be difficult for NASCAR to find other existing tracks from which they can justify taking a race.

Still, the preference here would be to move a road course event into the Chase. Thirty-four hundred pound stock cars weren't necessarily built for these tracks -- they slide all around the place and are much more difficult to manhandle through the turns than, say, Indy-style cars, which have far greater downforce and therefore stick to the track better -- ut road courses can often produce heart-pounding, jump-out-of-your-seat racing. Remember Juan Pablo Montoya's come-from-behind victory in Mexico City last year in a Nationwide race? Or how Montoya and Kevin Harvick nearly came to blows on the track last year at the Glen after they wrecked? Those were two of the most memorable snapshots from NASCAR in '07, and they were taken on road courses.

But as it stands, road course racing is something of a charade in NASCAR. The Glen and Sonoma need to have greater championship significance, because right now, these two tracks can only offer one thing to the driver that reaches Victory Lane:

Fool's gold.