For those who do not know what happened, yesterday was the Xfinity 500 at Martinsville Speedway, which was one of the most blatantly corrupt races I've ever seen, but to give a TL;DR of the situation:
Chevrolet told several of the teams that drive its cars to make a blockade in order to guarantee that at least one of its drivers, this time William Byron, would be able to make the Championship 4 race happening this Sunday. This blatant collusion was recorded on several drivers' radios being communicated by their spotters and crew chiefs, which is bringing into question the validity of the current 'playoff' format.
It sucks, and god I wish we went back to the full season format, or at max, the 10 race Chase, because the 'playoffs' don't even boost ratings, which I'd imagine is NASCAR's goal.
NASCAR is just gone at this point.
Between Noah Gragson getting fired for liking a meme, the gay pride 48 car, and the Bubba Wallace worship it's been culturally captured.
The blatant race manipulation is nothing new though. Ever since the gimmicky playoff format there have been phantom debris cautions and drivers intentionally sandbagging or spinning out.
Byron is my favorite driver (love watching /r/nascar melt down when he wins) and I'm not even happy with the results. I probably won't even watch the championship race.
The drivers hate the playoff format, the owners hate it and the fans hate it, it's literally just the people that run NASCAR that like it, and the only thing that I think will change things is MJ and Denny Hamlin's lawsuit.
I hope MJ, Front Row, and Denny are able to win that lawsuit.
It could be what NASCAR needs to become even better and more stable in the long term.
NASCAR needs to follow the same rules as the food industry. It’s not racing it’s Automotive Entertainment Product. Look at some of this year’s highlights. A fist fight in the pits at your all star race that NASCAR posted all order social media then penalized people. The #3 just driving like a 12 year old playing Gran Turismo and just spinning and right hooking other cars for the win. Then I would also add the Chicago street race. I have always argued that NASCAR drivers were just as talented as F1 or Indy. But watching most of the field drive like kids playing GT and just driving into corners full speed and taking out someone like SVG who was showing what those cars can actually do. I don’t think they are among the world’s best drivers. They are a fair ground attraction that for a brief period were at the top of American sports. Now the stands are mostly empty… well the stands they didn’t rip out.
I made the switch this year to F1 and have enjoyed that a lot more. I will get up early to watch the Grand Prix live. I’ll turn on NASCAR… if I remember.
The last time NASCAR was interesting was 2022 when Chastain said "hold my beer," and tried the IRL wall ride. It wasn't smart and it deserved to get banned, but damn if that wasn't at least newsworthy.
Haven't heard a peep since then.
I know. When NASCAR tries to promote events tied to their emphasis on promoting it as entertainment rather than a sport, it gets talked about for a bit then quickly disappears from the public eye. It doesn't translate into real growth for the sport.
I thought the Hail Melon was cool too, but you really can't force Game 7 moments like that with a convoluted points format or rules. They're special BECAUSE they rarely happen. NASCAR is better off being run as just another motorsport rather than a direct competitor to stick and ball sports or as an entertainment entity, in my opinion.
The problem is NASCAR used to be bigger than the NFL before the 2008 recession and they’re constantly trying to chase the ghost of that, but don’t understand why they keep losing viewers, or they do understand and are being super stubborn about it
As much as I love NASCAR, I never liked the fights.
I think they're part of the reason it's been dismissed in the public eye as a redneck freak show for so long. The fights make NASCAR's fans and participants look like a bunch of impulsive, petty, and stupid psychopaths that can't use reason to sort problems out. I think there's a reason almost every other motorsport penalizes physical altercations and actively avoids promoting them.
The sport's dangerous enough without people putting their hands on each other. No reason you can't use your words to solve disagreements, especially since we're grown adults.
What made the all star event worse was that NASCAR’s social media was hyping up the fight even as they were saying fighting is unacceptable.
I know F1 has its own problems but they treat each GP like it’s a big event. While they occasionally show the crowd a lot more emphasis is placed on the location and track. Meanwhile NASCAR tv loves to emphasize fat shirtless drunks. F1 claims they are the pinnacle of motorsports then go and act like it is. NASCAR flops between pandering to the modern diverse audience and to a caricature of what Hollywood thinks southerners are.
Your point is why I understand where people who think movies like Talladega Nights indirectly ended up hurting the sport are coming from.
That movie was one of many pop culture pieces that made NASCAR look like some brainless hick freak show, and NASCAR went down the wrong direction responding to those stereotypes. It didn't know whether it should embrace or dispel them, and alienated fans and outsiders alike when trying to appeal to people who were never going to enjoy it just for what it is.
I think the answer to that conundrum was what Steve Bannon calls "focusing on the signal, not the noise". NASCAR should have just ignored how pop culture saw the sport and just focused on maintaining the quality of the core product and marketing what I think NASCAR's strength has been the whole time:
Badass drivers doing incredible things with very powerful cars at speeds most of us can only dream of.
It also doesn’t help with all the fairly truthful NASCAR / WWE comparisons. When they go to someplace like Talladega they play up the “big one” then will show 1000 replays of the giant demo derby. NASCAR has had a few amazing finishes this season where 1st-3rd finished thousandths of a seconds apart.
When NASCAR took that car to Le Mans last year they impressed everyone with the fact that it could keep pace. Even the pit challenge impressed when they won. Instead France is like McMahon and making an embarrassment of the sport because he wants to run it his way. They should focus on what sets them apart as the selling point. It’s not just “rednecks turning left” it’s three wide full throttle 190mph+ for 500 miles and it won’t cost you an arm and a leg to go see it.
You can’t bring your own beer into F1 races
I watch a little. I don't mind the playoff because it incentives the drivers to be aggressive and not just form a huge middle wad that stays the same for most of the race.
As a kid I occasionally went to races in person. After the Bubba Wallace worship I decided I was done. I think I’ll go to a dirt track
Same, that's when I stopped watching.
The thing is, if I wanted to watch people fight in traffic, and then turn occasionally, I'd just drive to work.
Haven’t seen NASCAR in a long time but I was told at one point they were really trying to push out their core fanbase. Is that still the case?
I think they've been heading in the right direction by largely staying silent on politics or social issues and adding older fan favorite venues back to the schedule.
A lot of the complaints with the current product come less from the evolution of core things like the racing or cars and more from the management's habit of doubling down on bad ideas like a playoff system, stages, or overtime that hurt the sport's reach among long time and potential new fans.
Good to hear. I remember with the whole Bubba Wallace thing thinking they were dumb for attacking their fans
Yep. I really haven't seen much "Bubba worship" lately. He doesn't seem to get any more attention than the other drivers (I actually think he's a solid, competitive driver in his own right and proved he can win in his Truck and K&N Series days), and I don't think NASCAR themselves give him preferential treatment when it comes to things like officiating.
They probably won't outright say it unless a second Trump term can create a better cultural shift, but I think NASCAR's management quietly knows they fucked up big time with the whole noose hoax and the Let's Go Brandon response. They've mostly just focused on promoting the racing itself over the past couple years.
Good to hear. What annoyed me most with Wallace was that he said he never thought much about race, so it wasn’t a big deal in his life. I have no doubt some agent convinced him or he thought it would be a good idea to lean into the blm crap.
All NASCAR had to do if they felt they absolutely HAD to do something amidst the manufactured racial divide of 2020-21 was release the following statement:
"NASCAR has made tremendous progress establishing ourselves as a sport for all. Our sport is open to all fans and participants alike regardless of distinguishing traits like physical characteristics or social classes. We welcome everyone with a love of speed and competition into the NASCAR family, and we will continue doing so well into the future."
That's it. They didn't have to do anything else to prove their inclusiveness, which they've had well before all the BLM madness. Instead, they handled it in the worst way possible and alienated everyone; fans and outsiders alike.
Thankfully, they've started to bounce back from that lately and no longer emphasize identity politics so much.
As for Bubba, I think some Democrat/globalist strategist paid his team and NASCAR's management to stage the noose hoax, and he probably leaned into it at the direction of some far left or just plain out of touch marketing or PR agent.
Once it started becoming clear that it was a blatant Jussie Smollet like hoax that was intended to start riots and only created more division; and didn't boost the sport's overall reach, I think the whole thing got mostly rejected and that level of Marxist political influence started getting shut down.
Which brings us to where we're at now, an apolitical NASCAR with good core product and far less of a need to cater to people who would never get into it on its own merits. It helps that Bubba and NASCAR as a whole have mostly abstained from forcing politics and social activism into the sport lately.
Exactly. Anyone who is interested in NASCAR can watch. They fell into the trap we’ve seen in comics or other nerd stuff where they see it as a problem that a lot of guys enjoy something so they seek to “fix” it. Glad NASCAR understands their audience.
When I was in the Air Force there was a master sergeant from Alabama who would always cookout and have beer for every race and he’d invite me over. Him and his wife gave me the rundown for each driver. He gave me a Jeff Gordon hat when I got out of the Air Force
The Bubba Wallace noose hoax is when I stopped watching NASCAR. I haven't watched or been to a race in years.
NASCAR is fun, but it’s hard to care about playoffs for that type of sport.
This is how I enjoy the on track action for all 3 of the major NASCAR series; I just ignore the playoff implications, fights, and don't even bother keeping up with how the points system works. I just enjoy seeing how the races play out because I think the base racing product itself is still very good.
Besides, it's hard to make a playoff format work when you still have all 40 or so of the participants on track at the same time. Playoffs only work in other stick and ball sports BECAUSE they don't have more than 2 teams play at the same time, better setting up an elimination format.
I agree, it's way more fun to treat each race as it's own thing.
I think there is plenty to like about current NASCAR.
The cars look great; we regularly see close, competitive racing with frequent position changes (lead change records have been broken left and right this year), there is far more parity in the field where the smaller teams have a better chance of winning than ever, and I actually like the diverse schedule that has a great mix of ovals and road courses (helps that my first love is sports car/open wheel racing on that last note).
Then situations like what you just described happen that make me scratch my head.
NASCAR has always been a product whose quality for me is defined by the on track action and driver skill alone. I don't think it needs any artificial gimmicks like a playoff system, "overtime", or stages to be exciting. Attempts to create fake drama like that can sometimes overshadow the good points in the public eye.
I don't think the rather manufactured the drama the current rules bring really helps the sport. It frustrates long time fans, doesn't seem to bring new ones in, and seems unpopular among everyone within the industry except for the higher ups that I believe are motivated solely by short term gains.
I think controversies like the one you describe may be a reason why we're seeing sponsors often leave the sport and why even the biggest teams have to struggle to make deals with like 5 companies to fund a full season. Why would I, as an executive, want my brand to be associated with a league that's so often shrouded in controversy purely because of its management's incompetence and unwillingness to listen to feedback?
It's like the polar opposite of F1, which is seeing far more marketing activation and investment than ever. That sport's management isn't perfect, either, but it must be doing something right if it's seeing all this success without needing things like playoffs or "overtime".
In spite of all that, I still watch NASCAR because when it's good, I think it's really good. I just ignore things like the championship or who's making the playoffs; it allows me to appreciate the on track action better. Unfortunately, the management's mistakes can be very glaring, too. Peoples' frustrations with their approach seem to have reached a boiling point (even from industry veterans and drivers), and I admit that at the top, it's time to see what some new talent can bring to the table.
TLDR; I think that current NASCAR is very good, but I think it's time NASCAR abandons all the counterproductive gimmicks they think makes it exciting and lets the already good on track action speak for itself. Perhaps it's also time we see some new talent take up the management and officiating positions for the long term health of the sport.
NASCAR is awesome to see in person.
Anything else is a waste of time, adult soap opera. Same as F1.