The road course / NASCAR crossover trend

Is this a good thing for racing? I'm still trying to decide whether it's okay that road course racing genres losing their drivers to NASCAR is something I support. During NASCAR's Daytona Speedweek Juan Montoya, Dario Franchitti, Robby Gordon, AJ Allmendinger, Jacques Villeneuve, Patrick Carpentier, Boris Said, Marcos Ambrose, Andy Lally and Colin Braun all have raced in one of the three categories.

On the one hand it could be argued that this crossing of lines signifies that NASCAR is not really so different to any other form of racing, and if that's true then it may only be a matter of time before the wealth (TV time, sponsorship and media coverage) is shared more evenly with other championships.

But you could also say that it's an admission that NASCAR is really the biggest, most important form of racing on the planet.

On the flipside, it's nice to see NASCAR's top stars in the Daytona 24 Hours. It's a shame that NASCAR's schedule is so full, otherwise we might have some hope of seeing more such appearances. I'd love to see Jimmie Johnson in a Corvette at Le Mans!

Anyway, with all these interesting road-course refugees, I'm certainly paying more attention than I otherwise would. Having said that, when faced with spending the afternoon drinking beer in the sunshine with friends at San Francisco's legendary Zeitgeist or watching the Daytona 500, I'm going to skip the couch/TV option. Had Boris Said or Patrick Carpentier made the big show, the decision would have been more difficult...