2000 NASCAR Winston Cup Series (Simpsonverse)

The 2000 NASCAR Winston Cup Season was the 52nd season of professional stock car racing in the United States, the 29th modern-era Cup series, and the last Cup series of the 20th century. The season began on February 13 and ended on November 20. Richard Childress Racing driver Dale Earnhardt was crowned champion at season’s end, breaking Richard Petty's record with his eighth and final championship before his 2002 retirement.

This was the final season for Kyle Petty and three-time Winston Cup Champion Darrell Waltrip, and the first season with Pikes Peak International Raceway and Nazareth Speedway on the schedule, as well as the first for a new NASCAR race car known as the “Strictly Stock Car”, which incorporates many new safety features. The car had been in development since February 1994, after the deaths of Neil Bonnett and Rodney Orr during practice for that year's Daytona 500.

The 2000 season also marked the final one for various networks that carried NASCAR racing. Because of the new television deal struck on December 15, 1999, it would be the last year for a multitude of these long-time broadcasters. NASCAR on CBS broadcast the final races of its lengthy forty-one season partnership, ending with the Pepsi 400 at Daytona. NASCAR on ESPN, alongside its affiliated programming with ESPN on ABC, ended its initial run of covering NASCAR's top series (both networks returned during the 2007 season); ESPN's first run of twenty seasons concluded with the NAPA 500 at Atlanta, while ABC's then-twenty-five nonconsecutive seasons with the sport stopped with the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis.

New Car
A new car, known officially as the Strictly Stock Car (SSC), and unofficially as the Gen-5 car, was introduced in 2000, but not necessarily mandatory. The new car was the culmination of seven years of development starting in 1994, first by mandating the HANS device, then making other modifications before introducing the SSC in 2000.

The cars have modifications to the chassis, engine, and interior, but are still visually identical to their showroom counterparts. Private engine builders were banned in favor of having the manufacturers build engines, often being race-spec stock engines.

The SSC is built on a new chassis provided by the manufacturer. Engines and body panels also come from the manufacturer. One feature inherited from the older car is the use of an X-exhaust system.

The rules were also changed so that manufacturers could multiple models on the track. All manufacturers field two models. In terms of models used:


 * Chevrolet fields the Monte Carlo and Camaro
 * Ford fields the Taurus and Mustang, with Roush Racing using its own high-performance version of the Mustang
 * Pontiac fields the Grand Prix and Firebird

The SSC received universal acclaim from fans and drivers. Despite this, several small teams continued using the older car, forcing NASCAR to maintain a separate rule package for these holdouts (most part-time teams could not afford the new car, and thus had to continue using the older cars; the SSC was made much cheaper in 2001). No such cars finished in the top ten in 2000, due to a multitude of disadvantages in terms of aerodynamics, engines, and fuel capacity, as well as the older car not having any factory support due to Chevrolet, Ford, and Pontiac focusing completely on the SSC. All teams who switched to the SSC either sold their older chassis to Lend-Lease teams, or the chassis were cascaded to the Busch Series, where most only lasted a year before the SSC was introduced in the Busch Series in 2001 (like in the Cup Series, several smaller Grand National Series teams still use the older car to cut costs); most chassis were also sold to ARCA RE/MAX Series teams, where the old bodystyle would stay in use until older SSC bodies began appearing in 2004. Most such chassis are now run by regional and local stock car leagues and clubs, often with different bodies than the ones they bore in NASCAR competition. Any chassis that weren't sold or cascaded either still run in the Cup and Grand National Series, donated to museums, sold to private collectors, or were outright scrapped or recycled (for example, in 2000, the axles for the Hendrick Camaros came off of their old chassis dating back to 1995; they switched to factory-supplied axles in 2001).