Does anybody really know what time it is?

There has been a lot of talk about starting times for NASCAR races over the past few years, and in some cases things are entirely out of hand. I've said before I think the television audience is considered way too much more than the live audience sometimes, and as a general rule I still think that's true.

This weekend's races at Phoenix International Raceway, however, offer and interesting case study. Friday night's Nationwide race won't begin until sometime after 9:30 p.m. Eastern time, which is awfully late for a televised race for viewers in the East. Saturday night's Cup race starts around 8:40 p.m. Eastern. Both races will probably end within a few minutes on either side of midnight, which is a little later than some the Cup races at Richmond, Darlington and Charlotte will wind up but not all that much different.

The problem for me, as somebody who'll be watching on television this week, is that starts that late give viewers in the East a lot of reasons not to watch. You pretty much have to either plan to do something earlier and get home for the race or just wait around for what will seem like a long time before anything starts.

But, there's another side of this. If you're somebody who is actually going to the track at Phoenix to watch the race, the times make a lot of sense.

Take the Nationwide race. It starts at 6:30 p.m. Phoenix time. If you work until 4 or 5, you could still get out to the track in time to see the green flag. Saturday's race starts at 5:30, which means you get to see the race and can be back home before 2 or 3 in the morning.

NASCAR fans who live out West deserve the chance to see races, too. And those who buy tickets have a right to see the race at a reasonable time.

Yeah, an 8:40 start is hard on reporters who have Eastern time zone deadlines. That's one reason I am not going. Jim Utter is there for the Observer and if you can barely get one story in part of your Sunday morning press run there's really no reason to pay to have two people there. Jim might well be the only daily newspaper writer from the eastern two-thirds of the United States who attends the Subway Fresh Fit 500. That's not all good for NASCAR, but that's an entirely different topic.

The way the sun sets over Turn 1 at Phoenix it might even be better to start the races a little later, but NASCAR needs as much of a television audience as it can get, especially for the Cup race.

It's a delicate balance figuring out when to drop the green flag, and the balance is even harder to strike when you're racing out West.