What does NASCAR need to fix dwindling attendance and ratings? Let me make it simple:

- Less 1.5 mile cookie cutter tracks.

- Less forcing the drivers to be mannequins when they should be emotional. Let them be themselves. The sport is in decline and they know it. Making them not say it isn’t going to help your cause.

- More road courses, at least 8 total on the schedule.

- More short tracks.

- Take the restrictor plates off at the superspeedways. If the cars are too fast, go to a different engine spec.

- There are four manufacturers in the cup series? Really? I couldn’t tell without looking at the front grill as the cars all look the same. It wasn’t this way in previous years, long ago.

I realize they went to the current car for safety. The current car probably saved Elliot Sadler’s life. However, can we not have safety and a difference in design?

What really strikes you is how cookie cutter the sport has become. The drivers talk the same, walk the same, the cars look the same, the tracks are starting to look the same. Kansas? No. Chicago? No. Phoenix? No. Reconfigured Atlanta? No. Watkins Glen, yes. Texas, yes. Bristol, yes. See the pattern?

I wonder what Richard Petty really thinks of the sport at present. I wonder what Bobby Allison really thinks with a beer in him. Take the cameras away and be a fly on the way. Do they think it’s as stale as most people see it as now? NASCAR has their work cut out and if they carry on this road? Forget it. Maybe Steve Jobs is available for an extreme makeover of the product…