Newly-crowned IROC champ Tony Stewart would like to take the series to Eldora Speedway next year, and is willing to forfeit his $1 million championship prize to make it happen. (Photo: Getty Images/Jonathan Ferrey)
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"It would be an awesome thing to run the road course at Daytona, go to the dirt track at Eldora, come run Atlanta, then run the superspeedway at Daytona, for a four-race series," Stewart said. "Not counting Texas out -- make it a five-race series.
"I've got some video to show Jay [Signore, IROC director] of how we can get the track repaired to where it's not dusty and not muddy and it's not a vision issue for everybody. It's not something that's a hoax, it's something that's very much alive and serious.
"I'm not cashing the check [$1m]. I'm hoping I'm going to be able to give it back to the Signores so we can go to Eldora. It's going to sit in a very secure, undisclosed location.
"I'm very serious. I would gladly give that money back to Barb and Jay just to give dirt-track fans across the country a chance to see these stars run at Eldora one time."
The IROC event was a wild one, especially at the end, with contenders Martin Truex, Ryan Newman, Matt Kenseth and Stewart banging away at each other. The IROC cars are extremely stable and race-able, especially at the big aero tracks like Atlanta.
NASCAR might do better to can its "Car of Tomorrow" and buy up a bunch of the
IROC cars, but it's not that simple. Truex, who tested CoT at Atlanta earlier in the year, won Saturday's finale.
"I couldn't really give you a good comparison," he demurred. "I did drive a Car of Tomorrow here, but there were only about four of us on the race track at the same time. They look similar, the aero package is kind of similar. I don't know if they'll race like that."
He added that the IROC cars are equally prepared by series technicians.
"We don't have somebody else setting up our Cup cars and we just jump in and say, 'here we go,'" he said. "[In Cup,] the better teams are still going to rise to the top."
Sign of the times? Although General Motors announced only a modest loss in the quarter just past, the knife has come to marketing and NASCAR.
Chevrolet officials revealed that the company would end its direct sponsorship of teams in the Craftsman Truck Series, where it had backed two teams this year -- Morgan-Dollar's Nos. 85 and 46 and the Xpress No. 16.
Chevrolet will continue to support its Truck teams, under the Silverado name, with technical and parts support, so the brand will remain established in the series, which has become largely a works series.
