When was the last time you heard this one?

You win, NASCAR fans.

You were heard. Taken seriously. Given more than lip service by drivers as part of the victory-lane litany ordered by NASCAR this year.

You held sway.

Next year, races are going to start when they're supposed to: 1 p.m. ET for 28 of them, 3 p.m. ET for West Coast races, and 7:30 ET for night races.

David Hill, the colorful chairman of Fox Sports, will "hold up my hand and say, 'guilty,'" to initiating the time-tampering, he told a teleconference Wednesday. Further, he confessed, TV shouldn't have tampered with tradition in the first place.

Here's the thing about you at the tracks: You're going to show up at the crack of dawn, whether the race starts at 1 p.m., 2 p.m., 3:30 p.m., 5:30 p.m. or 8:00 p.m. It's long-cemented habit with you.

The longer you have to wait, the wearier you get. And the ornerier you'll be in the black-of-night traffic jams, trying to get out of there all at once after the race is over.

But, very sad to say, you, as a ticket-buyer, hotel-price-gouging victim and restaurant-line stalwart, might not have been heard, let alone held sway.

The late, legendary Smokey Yunick used to say of NASCAR fans, "You can treat 'em like crap, rain on 'em, sunburn 'em, starve 'em, cover 'em with dirt and tire dust, keep 'em waiting for hours in the heat or the sleet, run 'em clean out of beer, and they just won't go away."

For all that, you wouldn't have won this one.

But here's your power.

Here's the thing about you at home. You are a TV viewer, part of the mightiest public force in American society today.

If you're in the Eastern time zone, chances are you go to church, come home and have Sunday dinner, and sit down to watch NASCAR on TV at 1 p.m.

But whether you're in church or sleeping in, you're ready for action after lunch.

Emphasize action. Creature of habit that you are, you still sit down at 1 p.m. … and you wait … and wait … and wait.

The latest gossip about Dale Earnhardt Jr., or the latest video of Jeff Gordon and family, are fine, in their place, but …

Action.

Ned Jarrett, the broadcaster who was the very voice and face of NASCAR's rapid rise into the mainstream in the 1980s and '90s, told me recently that the thing television networks should remember, simply but overwhelmingly, is that "Fans just want to watch the race."

Jarrett is still concerned that you have too many people talking at you on too many topics during a race telecast. But that's an issue for another day.

You won this one. You forced it. This was not a purely charitable act by the networks nor by NASCAR, whose ratings have been sinking by and large.

They recognize that in their expeditions foraging for new audiences in the late-afternoon hours, they not only weren't making headway but had run off and left the core constituency.

You knew that, have been e-mailing me about it in droves for years, and you didn't just feel forlorn, but furious.

Now they've turned around and are coming back to meet you, and your biorhythms, in 2010.

There is little risk involved. Look at the NFL, which has remained steadfast and successful with its 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. kickoffs.

And there's a meteorological bonus built in: fewer rainouts in the summertime.

Take Watkins Glen last July. I sat there for hours watching the radar as a massive and ferocious front moved down from Canada, across Lake Ontario and into New York State, while everybody at the track dabbled and lounged around, waiting for a 2:30 p.m. start.

Just seconds before the command to start engines, the lightning started. Then the deluge. Then they came back and ran Monday. Nobody won that one -- fans, networks, teams, NASCAR itself.

If only they'd started at 1 p.m. (actually it'll be a little after, what with prerace ceremonies), they'd have had half the race in by the time the tempest hit.

Bring the same storm down from Toronto at the same time on race day next year, and they'll get it in.

Now if only NASCAR would listen to you about that confounded COT …