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.

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 is to just focus 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.