The DWI-drug possession arrest of NASCAR CEO Brian France serves as a vindication of the late Jack Flowers. Before his death in 2009 Flowers had covered NASCAR for Grand National Scene and from 1980 to 2005 he covered racing for Speedway Scene. He became very critical of NASCAR and the France family in that time and before his death he published a slim book called The Dirt Under The Asphalt where he examined how NASCAR had wronged him and several others - his primary target was Brian France and Flowers went into some detail about Brian France's drug use and how the France family covered it up. Brian worked at Tuscon Raceway Park in the early 1990s but was moved, and Flowers' reportage indicates it was to prevent arrest. France also had a DUI in Daytona in 2006 where police were unable to prosecute. Years back France supposedly was also checked into the Mayo Clinic under an assumed name.
So Brian France's drug use and drinking have been an open secret effectively ignored by the Race-Stream Media outside of the late Jack Flowers. The immediate question one should ask is - why was the France family enabling a relative they knew was a drunk and essentially an addict to take over the racing sanctioning body they'd run so well for decades?
The other question to ask is - how can anyone justify letting Brian France keep his job? As more than one wag has observed, Brian France should be getting the Jeremy Mayfield treatment, yet instead he is getting the Harvey Weinstein treatment - "rehab" and eventual return to normality, albeit without the loss of fortune Harvey Weinstein is now suffering.
Dave Moody notes the crossroad the sanctioning body now faces. That the sanctioning body faces this crossroad stems from the widespread coverup of France's drinking and drug use and resultant enabling of such behavior, and from the utter lack of credible debate as to whether Brian France ever should have been considered for the job - his successor, his uncle Jim France, by all evidence has far greater grasp of the nuances of racing than Brian ever has.
It is no accident that next to Roger Goodell, Brian France is the most hated CEO of a major sports sanctioning body in the US, and the hatred of both is for essentially the same reason - they are PR hacks lacking credible understanding of the inner workings of teams or the sport. Brian France's ignorance of the inner workings of racing has shown in his hands-off approach, his lack of interaction with racing people (his blow-off of Martin Truex at the 2017 awards banquet was the most egregious example), and in his bad decisions -
The top-heavy TV deal has not worked - Brian was a key in the centralization of NASCAR's TV deals beginning in 2001; the two deals negotiated over the last seventeen seasons amounted to billions of dollars, yet the net result is the sport is poorer relative to everything else than it was before centralized TV deals - "if there is such thing as too much money, we had it," the late Robert Yates noted of the dodgy business economics of DiGard Racing, and it's obvious Brian France's TV deals have made for the same result - more money, but far more overspending.
The reality was the old "hodgepodge" system where the tracks themselves negotiated their own media deals was fundamentally more effective for racing and was already netting ever-more money for tracks and teams. Brian's approach has kept out networks the sport now needs more than ever - notably CBS, once the strongest network covering racing. A revamped TV deal that decentralizes back to giving the tracks some more negotiating autonomy would allow CBS, MAVTV, and others into the sport, not limit it to just FOX and NBC.
This also relates to the absurd lack of TV money spent on NASCAR's lower touring series like Xfinity, Trucks, the Mod Tour, etc. Allowing more networks in will allow more money to go to the lower series and thus make them more viable, for the long-term benefit of the sport.
The Chase concept is a failure - This is the signature Brian France decision and the one decision above all that has harmed the sport's long-term popularity. The concept of playoffs in racing has corrupted the season, and the fact eight of the fourteen "Chase" championships to date - 2004-17 - would have seen a different champion in a season-long title format shows how the playoff format has crowned the wrong champion on a consistent basis.
The Car Of Tomorrow - Just one view of the car - a squat-looking top-heavy sedan body with a wing and grotesque gapped airdam - was enough to prove the concept would never work, and once it was shoved down the sport's throat it didn't work - it was dubbed The Quick Brick and instead it was the Sick Brick that wasted years of the sport's existence chasing a sham.
Moreover, areas where Brian France gets praise don't hold up -
He gets praised for making the sport safer - as if the sport's inevitable technology evolution was not already doing so.
He gets praised for pushing Diversity - a concept that is never anything but a dead end, shown in the failure of Danica Patrick, shoved down racing's throat for one reason - because she is a woman.
"But what justifies diversity? Nothing but unsupported assertions, repeated endlessly, piously, and loudly."
No one has ever made a credible argument that the sport being an all-male sport waving Confederate flags was ever relevant to anything and ignores how unmolested market forces create real mixture - Bubba Wallace success with Richard Petty illustrates unmolested market forces working.
In short there is no credible reason why Brian France should not step down. He's an addict - that's been known for a long time and quietly enabled by everyone. He's not qualified for the job he was given - he's proven that. There is no way around it - Brian France needs to step down.
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