Back to the snoozer?

 Michael McDowell won the Verizon 200 yesterday on the road course at Indy, continuing one of the oddest careers in the annals of NASCAR. In 16 years and 453 Cup races, he's won exactly twice, and both were iconic.

His first win was the 2021 Daytona 500.

His second was at Indianapolis yesterday.

So the man knows how to pick his spots, even if it's taken a long time for him to pick 'em. Kinda the way it took NASCAR a long time to pick its spot at Indy.

For 27 years it ran the Brickyard 400 on Indy's thick-with-ghosts-and-history oval, while interest waned and fans began to yawn and finally stopped coming. In 2021, it finally made the move to the road course, which made the race there no longer as iconic but a hell of a lot more fun.

Now?

Coupled with McDowell's win this weekend came the news of an imminent Goodyear tire test on the oval, which indicated NASCAR and the Speedway are thinking about reviving the Brickyard 400. Speculation is if the test goes well -- it involves Cup drivers Chase Briscoe, Alex Bowman and Ty Gibbs --  NASCAR could move back to the oval as early as next season.

The Blob's initial reaction to this: "NOOOOOO!"

Its upon-further-review reaction: "Weeellll ... maybe. If they don't overdue it."

By that I mean, revive the Brickyard 400, but not every year. Or, revive the Brickyard 400, but add a second race at Indy on the road course just for comparison's sake.

Maybe three years have been long enough for everyone to forget what a full-on snore the Brickyard 400 became once the novelty of stock cars at Indy wore off. The stockers and the configuration of the oval -- long, long straightaways and tight flat corners -- were  a bad fit, too often turning the Brickyard into 400 miles of nose-to-tail parading. It was like a three-hour-long, one-lane construction zone, only louder and faster.

But the old Brickyard is still the Brickyard, with all that history piled up behind it. Nowhere else on the circuit does NASCAR get to drive a 114-year-old layout that almost literally has seen the entire width and breadth of American racing. Dario Resta won there, and Dario Franchitti. Gaston Chevrolet, and Jeff Gordon in a Chevrolet.

So, I get it. Everyone wants a piece of all that.

But please, not very year. Or at least not long enough to remind the fans why they stopped coming to begin with.