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 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