one of the big complaints from older NASCAR fans is races moved from the South to other areas. For example here in NC there is only 1 NASCAR track left, Charlotte, 2 others had their races taken away. Many of the new tracks with races are in the West and Midwest. Northeast only has 3 tracks - Watkins Glen, Pocono and New Hampshire .
A lot of the other posters have beat me to the punch. It’s no coincidence that NASCAR really began to hit the skids when “boy genius” became CEO. It reminds me of those comedy films where the young, inexperienced guy comes into a business with all sorts of “fantastic ideas” about improving things. Inevitably, every single one sucks. The thing that makes this inexplicable is that he was raised in the world of NASCAR and should know better. It’s no exaggeration that every innovation he has sponsored in the last 15 years has had the effect of making NASCAR worse and reducing attendance/revenue.
Now we have some idea of why that might be the case.
Heh, I can see Goodell getting pulled over in New England and frisked. He’s leaning into his car, arms and legs spread, humiliated and indignant.
“Do you know who I am?!”
“Yes sir Mr. Goodell, we know who you are. I think I just saw you go for my gun. Jim, did you see him go for my gun? Yeah, I thought so. Okay, let’s taze him.”
I know very little about NASCAR. Could you share some of them? I bet it would be amusing.
Maybe, but the guys who pull you over after you run a stop sign in the Hamptons don’t summer there.
I’ll invite some other (former) fans to comment, but here are a few reasons I don’t watch anymore.
-
Weird points awards in the Chase. I was OK with the idea of a “chase,” but now they award points for showing up on time, attending driver meetings, having a clean uniform, etc., depending on the phase of the moon and whether it’s a day that ends in “y.” (I’m just kidding, but the point system is truly bizarre. It’s like baseball stats, but makes much less sense.)
-
Every car is the same. Remember how excited everyone got when Andy Granatelli’s team picked up the turbine car years ago? In NASCAR, the equivalent would be something like the Superbird (1968) or other “exotic” body types. None of that now. The “car of tomorrow” conforms to identical templates for all teams, with nothing recognizably stock about them. Who cares about whether the teams get an advantage from one style or the other? Let them experiment.
-
Every driver is the same. With a couple exceptions, they are now all just like the “Gillette Young Guns” in the commercials from years ago. Totally interchangeable. What happened to the initiatives to get more minorities and women out on the track?
-
No badmouthing other drivers or NASCAR. A huge no-no now. No trash talk at all. Every interview with every driver, whether he won or lost, is exactly the same.
-
“Let’s put the guys running last in the front for 1/2 or 1/3 of the race. It’ll mean more passing.” I don’t even need to talk about this one. A hugely stupid idea.
-
“Let’s try to make every track a characterless tri-oval.” Race fans generally like short-track racing and tracks with character (difficult turns, unusual banking, etc.) Not NASCAR. Imagine making all baseball fields exactly the same, with identical fence locations, facing exactly the same direction, and so forth. No true baseball fan would tolerate it.
In short, NASCAR has decided that they want to give every driver an identical chance at winning races or the championship. They believe this generates more “excitement.” I understand the basic idea, but we don’t stop a football game when one team is ahead by 20 points and make them swap players with the other team. We don’t make them use only players of specified weight and height.
Racing is unusual in that there are 43 teams (NASCAR) competing at one time, and any one of them could win. Trying to make all of them as identical as possible is idiotic.
Maybe another problem is younger people are not that into watching a 500 mile left turn? (except road course races) There are many more ways people can spend time now , video games, web surfing, big screen HD movies at home ,etc.
I tried to watch Formula 1 racing, but it is good for putting you to sleep. Very few passes and most of the cars have no chance to win. Most races are not close . But somehow it’s really big in Europe. So that’s the other end of the spectrum where they don’t care to make cars the same.
What is this referring to? I’ve only ever seen inverted orders in the All Star race, and I don’t think they’ve done it in years.
Occasionally, depending on cautions and pit stop cycles, you can get faster cars further back in the field, but that’s happenstance, not design.
Yeah, it’s an All-Star race feature that has been under heavy debate for use in other races. Just the fact that it was/is under (apparently) serious consideration is bad enough. Whenever it comes up, I just do a face-palm.
I snipped the quote, because I don’t necessarily agree with the rest of it (also I’ve been really getting into F1 this year). I DO think part of the problem may be young folks aren’t interested, but the reason they aren’t is because car culture is much less of a ‘thing’ these days. Younger folks just don’t care about cars as they used to. I can see this among Church friends. I’m 38, there are people older than me that enjoy fixing up cars, but no one under my age really cares much aside from it being a mechanism that gets you from A to B.
maybe part of it is cars are way more complex now and not easy to fix or modify for the average person.