NFT: NASCAR fans: what has happened to the sport?

Dale Jr, Tony Stewart, and Jeff Gordon.

pander to the greater public to expand the fanbase and it backfired. With the relaxing of NFL rules to favor the offense, you could say the same. Expansion to tracks where racing has little hold hasn't helped. The difference between the two sports is that one has faces and personalities people root for and the other has laundry.

The drivers went from being personalities to being robotic and milquetoast. Dale Earnhardt might fight a guy at the finish line. Jimmy Johnson shakes his hand. The iconic drivers retired or died and the ones that replaced them weren't appealing. I personally know several Dale fans who never could find another guy to root for.

Ryan Newman, Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth and Joey Logano brought some hope, but Edwards quit, Newman never had sustained success and Kenseth and Logano are forgettable.

Harvick and Dale Jr. were about the only guys fans related to as being like the previous generation. The Busch brothers pissed people off and Tony Stewart fans existed more to piss off Jeff Gordon fans than anything else.

Without having drivers to build up excitement, NASCAR complicated the scoring and how to decide a champion. I could make a couple of cracks about the changes being too much math for the rednecks to figure out but the main point is that NASCAR didn't make things more exciting. It just made things confusing.

So that leaves a disenfranchised and confused fan base with nothing to draw in new fans.

My Dear Wife followed it closely, but she hated Jimmie Johnson. There was a year (2010?) where NASCAR found a way to get Jimmie Johnson one of his consecutive title wins. It didn't look right, she said it looked like the fix was in. A marketable name gets a big boost. I told her to look into the France Family to better understand what went down.

We watch Daytona in February, but that's about the extent of our involvement.

while older brother Brian is fighting his DUI charges who should be undergoing rehab.

works in the engine shop at Hendrick Motorsports, He's told so many stories of shady behavior. Based on what directive Rick or the crew chief gave each week, the motors for the different Hendrick teams were very different.

He told the story about Danica Patrick's qualifying attempts. The engine was out of spec, NASCAR knew it, and actually approved it.

He did say most of the "funny business" is kept for qualifying instead of the actual races though.

In comment 14032578 FatMan in Charlotte said:

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pander to the greater public to expand the fanbase and it backfired. With the relaxing of NFL rules to favor the offense, you could say the same. Expansion to tracks where racing has little hold hasn't helped. The difference between the two sports is that one has faces and personalities people root for and the other has laundry. The drivers went from being personalities to being robotic and milquetoast. Dale Earnhardt might fight a guy at the finish line. Jimmy Johnson shakes his hand. The iconic drivers retired or died and the ones that replaced them weren't appealing. I personally know several Dale fans who never could find another guy to root for. Ryan Newman, Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth and Joey Logano brought some hope, but Edwards quit, Newman never had sustained success and Kenseth and Logano are forgettable. Harvick and Dale Jr. were about the only guys fans related to as being like the previous generation. The Busch brothers pissed people off and Tony Stewart fans existed more to piss off Jeff Gordon fans than anything else. Without having drivers to build up excitement, NASCAR complicated the scoring and how to decide a champion. I could make a couple of cracks about the changes being too much math for the rednecks to figure out but the main point is that NASCAR didn't make things more exciting. It just made things confusing. So that leaves a disenfranchised and confused fan base with nothing to draw in new fans.

Well said.

There was a movement for the YOUNG GUN drivers, which was ok when there were a few of them. But when every driver becomes a young gun it becomes a sh.t show. The culture changed, you've got cocky, spoiled, whiny drivers, some with sustain abuse problems or whatever else outside the sport. Imagine the NFL with every player being a 21 year old TO, OBJ, Dez Bryant, Richie Ingognito.

It all boils down to identity. NASCAR stopped servicing their own fans in pursuit of people who weren't their fans. They didn't really bring any of those in, and in the process drove away many of their own fans. They shut down racing at classic short tracks like North Wilkesboro and Rockingham for dull mid-distance tracks like Vegas and Chicago, in regions where no one gives a shit about NASCAR. Short tracks are fun! Moreover, they help negate the tech edge big money teams have.

Drivers used to inspire intense devotion because they were often larger-than-life personalities. Now they're bland and mostly the same guy. They've been fiddling with the format for 15 years now which is supposed to fix a problem that never existed in the first place. The cars all look the same now, and NASCAR has gotten much more like F1 racing now - whoever has the money wins. NASCAR was always more driver focused than technology focused in the past, but now that's changed. And, because tens of millions spent on technology are necessary to be competitive, rich kids who can bring in money but aren't particularly good drivers get starting positions over more talented drivers who don't bring in $10 million with them.

Brian France. He's the NASCAR equivalent of Ray Handley - took control of a powerhouse and ran it right into the ground.

very good:

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They've been fiddling with the format for 15 years now which is supposed to fix a problem that never existed in the first place.

Exactly right. The scoring system wasn't keeping fans away. Just like seeing defensive football wasn't keeping NFL fans away. Too often these leagues fuck with stuff that isn't broken and leave the broken stuff to do the actual long-term damage.

If the NFL were more on the fringe, they'd probably be in a much worse spot today than 10 years ago.

Most of what made NASCAR popular has become politically incorrect. The roots of the sport link to bootlegging, Saturday night short tracks, fistfights (amongst both fans and drivers), cheap beer, greasy food and rebel flags. GoI miss the good old days.

The France Family owns over half of the NASCAR race tracks under the umbrella of International Speedway Corp. When they whack up the TV Revenue each season, the Famille gets a huge payday. The current TV Contract runs thru 2024.

I'm not sure they really care what the track attendance figures look like.

first NASCAR race I attended was in Rockingham. I brought in my own cooler of beer, and bought a gigantic bag of BBQ pork skins for $5.

Luckily I sat towards the top because gnawed chicken wing bones rained down on the poor saps in the lower rows for most of the race.

Nascar needs drivers with some interest/personalty. Who has that today - anyone. They also need drivers to like and dislike who win. They have none of that.

Losing manufacturers and making 'cars' for the races also was a big deal

They race way to much on similar type 1.5 mile boring tracks, in places that really don't care about racing.

Cost to sponsor has gone way up and return on investment way down

I'm old school enough to remember the days when you bought a car at the Ford dealer and got a little help from Ford Racing Division. You painted the horsepower numbers on your hood, taped over the headlights and went racing.

"Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday"

Now these race cars bear no semblance to the "Toyota" that's at the Dealership.

In comment 14032602 FatMan in Charlotte said:

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works in the engine shop at Hendrick Motorsports, He's told so many stories of shady behavior. Based on what directive Rick or the crew chief gave each week, the motors for the different Hendrick teams were very different. He told the story about Danica Patrick's qualifying attempts. The engine was out of spec, NASCAR knew it, and actually approved it. He did say most of the "funny business" is kept for qualifying instead of the actual races though.

A small handful of the guys who cover the races actually know what's happening at pre- and post-race inspection. Years back at Watkins, I stood next to a guy from the Charlotte Observer who laughed a couple times watching post-race inspection for the top 5-6 finishers. Boris Said was a frequent front-runner back then, and a solid finisher. I asked the guy what was funny ... in his drawl, he said that Boris skates through tech. I pressed a little more but the guy shook his head and walked away.

Tech inspection is all sorts of shady.

the helmet rule.

and Brian France took over the sport. Were the 2 biggest factors. There's more to it than that. Less interest in cars in general except as transportation, corporate dollars forcing bland drivers to not upset anyone, the engineering of the cars to the point that the drivers make very little difference it's 90% car 10% driver now. But Earnhardt Sr & Brian France are by far the biggest turning points. People who were attracted to the outlaw drivers and danger of NASCAR lost interest. NASCAR lost more people with a huge mistake of building so many 1.5 & 2.0 mile tracks to replace the smaller dangerous regional tracks in the south which took even more action of the sport. There's not anything exciting about watching a 1.5 or 2.0 race on TV.

After Earnhardt Sr died France focused NSCAR on safety and no one has died since which is great. But the car of tomorrow took all of the manufacturer identity out of the sport plus it seems like most of us could drive the cars the way they're built now. So that took away a certain excitement of danger and France decided he was a smart marketer on top of that which as history can show you is the furthest thing from the truth. He brought Toyota into the sport and that brought in money and a 3rd manufacturer after everyone but Chevy and Ford left but Toyota to the NASCAR fan may as well be ISIS.

At this point the closest "sport" to NASCAR is the WWE. No real off season (NASCAR does break for 90 days). No home fields, no geographical loyalties, a weekly traveling circus etc.

WWE is obviously pre determined and scripted. NASCAR is not. No matter what anyone tells you the sanctioning body is not manipulating who is winning races and who is not or Danica and Dale Jr would have won 90 times not Jimmie Johnson. The NASCAR fan base hates Jimmie Johnson.

But NASCAR does manipulate the product on the track or try to. Lucky dogs, wave arounds, stages, competition cautions, etc. There are much lees phantom cautions to bunch the field up then there were 5 - 8 years ago. I totally believe the qualifying manipulation rumors. Look at the Daytona 500 poles. Danica her 1st year. Jeff Gordon his last year, Austin Dillion when they brought the 3 back. Way too much coincidence to all that.

At this point they've lost many many sponsors and 50% of their live and TV fan base. They still pull about 2.5-3 million viewers a week which is right in line with WWE.

Losing Brian France might be the best thing that could happen to them at this time. Jim France is not Brian's brother he's his uncle and he and and Brian's sister Lesa owns the the largest shares of NASCAR. Brian owns 0. He sold to other family members when he was getting divorced. Part of NASCAR is public too. LESA runs International Speedway Corp which owns about half the tracks they race on and that's a public company.

The entire NASCAR story and soap opera is a great story to follow. I find it quite fascinating. Unfortunately most of the races aren't worth watching anymore.

About the music, are you telling me the people on those kinds of shows are the very best talent? Uh, no, because the really good ones are in bands, or making music already. It's manufactured to sell advertising.

Not exactly apples to apples, but I see a similarity in NASCAR today. When I covered auto racing in the 1992-2004 time frame, there was a huge push to appeal to "every fan."

Dr. Ian Malcolm nailed it in the original Jurassic Park: "You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox."

The sport had evolved rather nicely from its beach days in Florida, but the love of money was NASCAR's sin.

About the packaging of the drivers, as Fats talked about, there's just no personality there anymore. They've got the rhetoric, but it's empty. Instead of letting the best drivers come up, they need to fit an image now, and that was NOT what attracted people to drivers like Rusty Wallace, the Labonte brothers, Dale Jarrett and Mark Martin.

NASCAR should have just let NASCAR be NASCAR. There was plenty to go around, but they ate their own, so to speak.

I'm sure somewhere, someone with the organization would say it's bigger and better than ever. Someone would. Just before a T-Rex bit their head off while they took a shit in a porta-potty.

Heading to Jefferson, I often almost run off the road when I stare at that eerie abandoned segment you can see off 421. It always brings a sense of sadness. To the inexperienced eye, it almost looks open w a quick glance. But it just keeps decaying.

Adding to the points I feel were what I believe too

Something changed w the broadcasting of races in the mid 00’s that seemed to try to ESPNize it (glamorize). Maybe correlated to the death. I’ll never forget Waltrip announcing that moment unfolding btw.

The addition of night and weekday races is another kill shot to me. Like Thursday night football.

The cars don’t look like the cool stock cars you want to drive as a kid or teenager anymore. Boring like Indy cars. This can easily be fixed.

Just like baseball it was more regional.

They alienated the fans of the sport for that quick short term window of bandwagon fans like girl power crusaders big city trend setters, celebrities and California granolas.

When NASCAR went on its meteorical rise in popularity, it did so on the backs of late teen, early 20's fans. Most of whom would follow their favorite driver from track to track and spend the weekend camping and partying. As the natural evolution of life occurred - age, marriage, children, activities, etc., the amount of time fans could devote started to dwindle. Then all of the changes and driver retirements previously discussed occurred and there was not a younger generation of fan to take up the banner. I also believe the proliferation of social media and to a certain extent, the internet has contributed to many sports decline. When information is available 24/7, the natural quench for information starts to go away. There was a reason the Masters only broadcast the back 9 for so long - keep the fan wanting more.

The story line of that movie and what's being described here are very similar.

Tony George (owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway) thought it would be great to blow up CART and start a new series. Without the big names at the Indianapolis 500....that series just died and still has not recovered. I think a big portion of those fans jumped over to NASCAR and helped with the explosive rise of that series.

Then Dale Sr died. And the animosity between drivers and fans seemed to fade away. NASCAR is a bland shell of what it once was. I used to go to the Dover races. Half the seats have been ripped out or covered up. And the place is still not nearly full.

and the season is long. It seems like the younger generations prefer entertainment that doesn't require that much attention.

BAseball has been going through for a while and then a star will emerge for me it was Aaron Judge. Then you like it again. The NBA has struggled and now is making a comeback with younger viewers who don't remember how great it once was. For me I watch March madness and that's it. Football my guess is at its zenith and will begin to crumble now. Bringing politics into a sport will hurt the sport. Parents will push soccer and not push football. Nascar will find a new star and will make a comeback. Somebody has to win a race but they do need to get rid of the vanilla drivers.

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Watching cars drive around in a circle isn't fun?

Now demolition derby,why isn't that the national pastime?

But a few small things that have not help in my opinion and a Thing that has bothered me is the Team concept it seems counter productive to have a bunch of teams out on the race track working together when historically it was always every man for himself trying to come up with the fastest car possible using production cars. Then add in the era of restrictor plate racing and the dozens of other safety rules of speed limits in the pits and racing to the yellow flags all the excitement was taken out of the sport.

..don't make for good television, so as many have said here, there must be strong rooting interest for the drivers. There are also no compelling stories with regard to the equipment.

So Fatman, I bet you'd have no problem getting to 700hp+ in a play car for the street/track now, would you?

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electric stock cars? I know there’s already Formula E but it would be cool seeing a bunch of Teslas race a bunch of BMW i3s and maybe a few Nissan Leafs. The tv network could tack how much batter power everyone has left to add suspense.

...pack racing is about the most boring shit in the world to me.

But there was no real choice. Road course fans prefer Indy/Formula 1, and once Bill Elliot hit damn near 230 - insane flying wrecks in the 1990s - changes we're necessary, but God did it make the sport boring. I remember AJ Foyt once saying 'Restrictor Plates turned it into a Goddamn taxi cab race' or something along the lines of those lines.

Safety will be the death of NFL too, litigation will bring changes - I imagine inevitably it evolves the something along the lines of Sprint football, will the weight limits and strict rules on dangerous tackling.

and would clear my schedule to watch every race. I was a #24 fan but had great respect for the other drivers. I agree with the second post that once Gordon, Stewart and Dale Jr left, that was the nail in the coffin.

When Jeff retired, I was going to root for Dale Jr. He is a down to earth likable guy but almost right away he announces his retirement too. There are NO personalities anymore. The cars may as well be driven by robots.

The rule changes for "the chase" I was not thrilled with but understood that it helped to keep people watching in September and October. These all star races where nobody could understand WTF was going on including the drivers...ridiculous.

The race needs personalities, controversy and excitement. The personalities and the controversy help to fuel some of the excitement. It is gone and so am I.

Too many guys driving for points instead of wins. Plus now most cars are too uniformly the same as all the rest of them.