NASCAR's Kentucky weekend began with two surprising winners in Ben Rhodes in the Kentucky Truck 225 and Christopher Bell in the Alsco 300 Xfinity race. For Bell, it was his third win in twenty-five Xfinity races to date, atop seven wins in the Trucks. For Rhodes the win was only the second in his Truck career, both in Thorsport vehicles.
The Quaker State 400, in contrast, was the same script seen throughout 2018 - the fourth win of the season for Martin Truex and yet another near-monopoly by Truex, Kevin Harvick (with five wins), and Kyle Busch (also five). Not only that, the racing wasn't competitive and the rest of the field has gotten perceptibly weaker compared to the new Big Three - or as Dave Moody put it, "Hope is a lousy business plan."
It led yet again to pathetic social media condemnation of the track (best shown in hostile reaction to a Darrell Waltrip tweet about the track which he helped build), of 1.5-milers in general, of NASCAR, and advocacy of dragging the sport away from big tracks to the podunk bullrings - "get the sport back to its roots" is the catchphrase, always ignoring the reality that the short track model doesn't work for major league racing. Added to this was a ridiculous commentary during the Honda Indy Toronto weekend where NASCAR's Canadian tour ran, and where Andrew Ranger jumped when race-leader Alex Tagliani bobbled on a GWC restart for the only pass of the race. Some were advocating NASCAR add a street race to the major league tours - this even with a race as typically pathetic in competition as this was.
The sport's issues by now are universally known, yet credible solutions have been resisted and the entire debate has become ever-more absurd.
"Fans have long complained about a lack of competition.....And yet, after discovering a promising potential remedy for those complaints at the All Star Race, NASCAR waved it off under pressure from its athletes.
The hypocrisy of fans and drivers has long been a laughable reality of racing. As more than one observer has noted, fans who decried the crashes at Daytona were celebrating crashes at Chicagoland. Add to this that fans long raved for "the old Bristol" - the Bristol with just one groove where no one could race and tearing up over half the field was the norm.
"Fans have spoken. They want fewer "rubber stamp" 1.5-milers and more short tracks, more road courses, more new, more exciting."
Moody advocates adding four short track races to the Winston Cup schedule, such as Hickory, Nashville, Oxford Plains, Berlin Raceway, Myrtle Beach. But he notes NASCAR would have to basically throw away making any money off such weaker markets and venues and teams would have to accept seriously lower purses. And one has to ask - for what?
Fans are angry at 1.5-mile tracks yet are advocating going to tracks that are even less competitive? Bristol's per-race average of lead changes is a paltry thirteen, compared to 22-plus for Pocono, Michigan, etc (fans also still lament the passing of North Wilkesboro Speedway - which only averaged seven lead changes in 93 career Winston Cup races). The objective illogic should be readily apparent yet seems not to be for a lot of people - especially given the three short tracks on the Winston Cup tour have been hurt more in declining attendances (some recent Bristol races especially look like ghost towns) than the superspeedways. To further illustrate fan hypocrisy - would fans support dropping Richmond or Bristol or Martinsville for Iowa?
The sport's problems have solutions - those solutions just need to be implemented and all involved need to give up something worth giving up.............
Run the plate package with larger spoiler and perhaps also larger draft ducts -
Drivers need to give up complaining the cars are "too slow" or "too easy to drive" - what is needed is making the cars more secure to the track and making the draft stronger and thus more important, and thus opening up greater combat up front.
Add downforce, stop fighting against it -
If the cars have more downforce to where they are "slowish" at 190 at Michigan et al they can get back more power; basically find the draft-horsepower-downforce balance Indycar nailed with the DW12 car that exploded in lead changes 2012-17. Racing has to give up the myth that downforce is bad.
Eliminate the playoff format and adjust the point structure to make wins and most laps led paramount -
NASCAR has to give up the myth of "Game Seven Moments" because they don't exist in racing; also give up the myth of the 1992 Hooters 500; it was a once-in-lifetime moment, stop trying to replicate it. Instead put all incentive into going for the lead, going for the win. This is a championship format everyone can recognize without much complication and it makes the races themselves more important again.
Take more TV money out of Winston Cup and put it into NASCAR's supporting series -Instead of moving Cup dates to smaller markets, make those smaller markets worth their while to hold stand-alone races in Xfinity, Trucks, the Mod Tour, the Canadian tour, and the K&N/ARCA tours. This is part of the motivation for the Truck Series when it started - the goal was to make it strong enough that smaller tracks like presumably Rockingham and North Wilkesboro could replace their Cup dates with Truck dates and thus free up those dates for better tracks and markets. Iowa, Nashville, and Gateway for instance would benefit from more TV money and the lobbying for Cup dates at those places would be made unnecessary. TV networks shouldn't object, as such a change doesn't hurt them at all; Cup tracks, which make enough money, also should not object to a slightly smaller TV money slice.
Put some races back to 500 mile distances and earlier start times -
TV networks and the marketing hacks who work for them have to give up the myth that longer races are not what fans want - when challenged to lengthen their attention spans fans respond to the challenge well. Later start times have made it too inconvenient for fans to go to a lot of races. 500 miles is a better test of racecars and drivers than 400 milers.
No midweek races -This idea has gotten tossed about of late due to the Eldora Truck race, always run on a Wednesday. There has never been any evidence that running on a Wednesday has created any benefit for anyone. One wonders who thought this is a good idea and why this idea is being pushed.
Solutions are there to be had - everyone involved in racing needs to be more objective about these issues to find them.
1 comment:
Interesting you made a telling faux pas by calling the series Winston Cup. If you trace the Cup series (and today it's not even called the Cup of any kind) back to the moment RJR pulled Winston out of the NASCAR sponsorship and compare spectator and tv viewer numbers to the Winston era I'm sure you will see a decline starting slowly at first and then accelerating rapidly during the last two series sponsorships. What's the underlying difference in sponsor activity amongst the two eras, Winston and post Winston? RJR promoted the sport like no other sponsor of any sport had ever done any where in the world, and none has ever equaled Reynolds effort. What RJR did was unique, it was grass roots, it was all done in house (RJR's ad agencies didn't get involved in the sponsorship area until late in the game when they saw the dollars the cigarette company was spending). How many NASCAR Cup race cars, converted to the series sponsor's livery, does Monster Energy have cris crossing the country 12 months a year, setting up displays in malls and in front of stores that sell the sponsor's products? RJR had seven for the Cup series and two for the Camel GT IMSA series. The cars were actual race cars rebuilt and modified (detuned) for RJR's use. And, that's just the tip of the iceberg of Winston's massive, unprecedented, ingenious sponsorship. Ask Humpy Wheeler what the secret is to having successful auto racing promotions. He may well answer in three words: "Promote Or Die."
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