As someone who's only been following NASCAR for about 4 years, I can tell you that even in that amount of time I have seen a lot of changes that, to me, don't seam to be for the better. They're trying to hard to make a prim and propper, sponsor appealing, non threatening sport out of it in the name of money. Most drivers today are nothing but sponsor suck ups and its gotten to point that it seams more important to have the image that a sponsor wants than being able to drive (Stremme in the Coors Light car for example
). We need some drivers that go against the grain alittle (a few more hillbillies and rednecks woudn't hurt either) and have some personality (I miss Jimmie Spensor) or the sport will continue to get more and more boring until it goes the way of Indy cars. When it gets to the point that there are 43 brian vickers and jimmie johnson types (sorry luds48 but if I hear him thank the employee owners at Lowes one more time . . . ) on the track, I'm done watching. As far as restrictor plates go, why not just make less aerodynamic cars with smaller engines or heavier cars for the current plate races - the trucks don't use plates and they're races are usually good. OK, thats my rant for today.