The 2022 season was one season that would definitely rank quite high in the list of seasons in which drivers criticized NASCAR the most. Think about it, even Chase Elliott was pretty vocal about a few things this past season.

But jokes aside, one of the issues the Hendrick Motorsports star raised was of “a more compact” schedule.

Now, while Elliott’s response came in 2022, a time in NASCAR in which the sport is exploring and taking on anything and everything it can, drivers were still complaining about this very thing more than a decade ago.

In an interview with Sports Illustrated from 2010, Denny Hamlin put his thoughts on how long a NASCAR season should be on the table.

“Definitely need a shorter season. There’s no longer a demand for race tickets. I hear people say, ‘Oh, I’ll miss this race because they’ll be back later on and I’ll catch the fall race,'” Hamlin had said. “A lot of people I talk to just don’t see a relevance to our sport for the first 26 weeks.”

“So then they tune in for the Chase, and once things get spread out, they tune back out. The season is just so long, there are so many events, so many racetracks; it’s just oversaturated.”

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What did Chase Elliott say about the NASCAR schedule?

Speaking ahead of the second Bristol race in September, Chase Elliott came clear on what he thinks NASCAR needs to do with the schedule. It’s worth noting that the 2020 Cup Series champion did take into consideration the practicalities of TV ratings and the whole system tied to it.

Yet the Dawsonville native made it clear: the schedule needs to shrink.

“I’m a firm believer that less is more, in the sense of the timing of a schedule and when we could end our season to make the most for TV ratings and things of that nature,” Elliott said according to NBC Sports.

“I think we could do better, personally.”

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