NASCAR does the right thing, moves to uniform start times

Here's another sign that NASCAR may actually be looking out for its fans and its future after all: the sport and its broadcast partners have announced that beginning in 2010, they'll return to uniform start times across the board. Seems like an idea that should have been implemented, oh, decades ago, but let's not quibble, okay?

Here's how it breaks down. The eastern daytime races -- 28 in all -- will start at just after 1:00 p.m. Eastern. (The invocation will begin at 1, followed by the famous "anonymous corporate VP/celebrity fly-by" call to start engines.) All evening races will begin at 7:30. The California races will begin at 3:00 p.m. Eastern. The only exception to this rule is the Coca-Cola 600, which will start at 5:45 on Memorial Day Sunday.

If you don't think this is something that needed changing, take a look at this year's schedule. Forty-plus races with something like 25 different starting times. Even disregarding the differences of a few minutes, you're still looking at about 10 different starting times across the season. That's a mess. So I'm very pleased with this new uniformity.

Some other notes:

• The Daytona 500 now returns to an afternoon start time. Since it'll be in that sweet spot after football ends but before baseball and the NBA/NHL playoffs begin, it's in a perfect position to capture those eyeballs accustomed to hanging around on the couch on Sunday afternoon. Good call.

• Fox Sports head honcho David Hill actually admitted culpability here, saying that his network had monkeyed with the start times to the detriment of the sport. He expects ratings to drop further, as any change brings with it the possibility of lost viewers, but that's just preliminary (and possibly unnecessary) damage control.

• Forget new night races for the Chase, at least for the short term. Both Brian France and ESPN's John Skipper said it's not under consideration.

So there you have it. A welcome change, and one that will help to reestablish some of the foundations of the sport. Not a major tectonic shift, but a welcome one nonetheless.