I have a bone to pick with NASCAR’s record keeping.
No, not the financial record books it desperately doesn’t want to be aired out if the 23XI Racing/Front Row Motorsports lawsuit actually makes it to court on Dec. 1 (but that would be fun!).
I’m talking about the records of wins, top fives and DNFs. The records that get flashed on screen by FOX, Amazon, TNT and NBC every race day. The graphics that state (hypothetical driver) has three wins at EchoPark Speedway, 10 top fives and 20 top 10s.
Twenty-two years after the end of NASCAR’s Winston Cup Series era in 2003, it’s time the sanctioning body rebooted the record books for a new era.
This is a belief I’ve held for awhile. But a tweet from NASCAR’s Racing Insights X account Oct. 15 brought it to the forefront of my mind.
It was timed to this weekend’s Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway.
Since NASCAR went from a restrictor plate to a tapered spacer on engines used at Talladega, Daytona International Speedway and Atlanta, the terminology we’ve used for decades has had to change as well.
While most of us will still call them restrictor-plate tracks, they’re officially called drafting tracks now.
Which is why the stats presented in the second tweet rubbed me the wrong way.
The restrictor plate wasn’t introduced in the Cup Series until 1988. Then pack racing was unleashed on the world.
The stats as presented in the tweet just don’t make sense.
Which brings me back to EchoPark.
Aside from maybe Bristol Motor Speedway, no track has had more different identities in the last 30 years than Atlanta.
Until 1997, the track existed as a 1.5-mile track similar in the vein to how Homestead-Miami Speedway exists today. Then Bruton Smith got his hands on it and turned it into essentially a clone of Charlotte Motor Speedway and Texas Motor Speedway, which opened that year.
It was a completely different track. But you wouldn’t know it from how stats are compiled.
A driver who competed and won at Atlanta under both configurations, like Dale Earnhardt or Bobby Labonte, has those wins categorized as being the same. They shouldn’t be.
Smash cut to Atlanta in 2025. Marcus Smith got his hands on it and now EchoPark is a reconfigured drafting track.
It’s a completely different track.
Now, if one of the four remaining NASCAR Cup Series drivers who won at Atlanta under the previous configuration — Brad Keselowski, Ryan Blaney, Denny Hamlin or Kyle Busch — manage to win on Sunday, that win goes into the same column as the reconfiguration wins.
Does that make sense?
If someone new to the sport is watching an EchoPark race broadcast and Keselowski’s cumulative Atlanta stats are displayed, that tells them a different story than if only the stats since 2022 are displayed.
I could get into the weeds on how I would reframe the record book. However, for the sake of simplicity, I’ll keep it to three areas.
First, track reconfigurations like EchoPark (both), Richmond Raceway (pre- and post-1988 change), Darlington Raceway and Phoenix Raceway (swapping the front and backstretch) and Homestead (pre and post 2003 change).
Second, if a track completely changed its style of racing surface, like when Bristol and Dover Motor Speedway went from asphalt to concrete.
Finally, I would introduce a new modern era to the record book.
For now, NASCAR considers the modern era everything that’s happened since 1972, when Winston became the title sponsor and a new points format was introduced.
The seasons from 1972 to 2003 should now be designated as the Winston era.
Every season since 2004 should be redesignated either as the modern era or, depending on what season format we’re given in 2026, the playoff era.
So the next time a play-by-play announcer utters the phrase “in the modern era,” we’re not including stats from 50 years and five car generations ago.
Daniel McFadin is a 10-year veteran of the NASCAR media corp. He wrote for NBC Sports from 2015 to October 2020. He currently works full time for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and is lead reporter and an editor for Frontstretch. He is also host of the NASCAR podcast "Dropping the Hammer with Daniel McFadin" presented by Democrat-Gazette.
You can email him at danielmcfadin@gmail.com.