Many moving parts to watch as NASCAR season nears

— -- CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Amid all the talk about the new points system as drivers met the media Tuesday and Wednesday, Joey Logano talked about something that could have just as big an impact on the championship:

"The aero changes for this year ... have been lost in the shuffle of all this," Logano said. "That will be a big deal."

For two days when drivers were supposed to talk about the upcoming season, few in the media did a lot of digging on how the reduction in downforce for 2017 could impact the racing.

That is a good thing, and there is a good reason that the talk centered on how drivers will race instead of how the cars will race. Nothing turns off a casual race fan more than trying to predict what could happen with a different-sized spoiler and splitter before seeing it on the track. And for NASCAR, it just conjures up the specter of creating hope that might or might not be achieved, as well as memories of single-file parades at too many intermediate tracks.

There's more than enough time to discuss physics. There will be some talk about that at the Phoenix test next week, anyway, and the aero package doesn't even apply to the Daytona 500. So those discussions can wait.