Where Does NASCAR Go From Here?
At a crossroads once again, it's time to ask some of the hard questions.
NASCAR has a problem.
It’s a wound that has grown over a span of almost twenty years, some of it self-inflicted via poor decisions and an inability to stop the bleeding once it began, but some of it out of the sport’s control, brought upon by changing times and a world that wasn’t what it once was.
NASCAR isn’t blind to this issue. They know they’ve got to fix something.
Where I think they’ve gotten it wrong before – and what I want to try to establish before providing my angle to a solution – is what exactly they’re trying to fix. NASCAR can tell that it’s bleeding, but it’s trying to bandage a cannonball wound.
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NASCAR used to be the shit.
I grew up at the tail end of what people call NASCAR’s Renaissance – my first memory I still have is of the 2001 Daytona 500 – and though I never really had any recollection of Dale Earnhardt racing, I grew up with so many other iconic names that helped shape my interest and love for a sport that was designed around so many children’s coolest fantasies. I mean, who doesn’t love the idea of “fast car go fast”?
My driver was always Ken Schrader – he drove the number 36 M&M's car, and that was enough for three-and-a-half year old David to be sold. Had no idea who Kenny was, but I knew that he had to be the best driver because he had the best candy on his car. My brother, when I cajoled him into loving the sport like I did a couple years later, picked Bobby Labonte (Bonte DaBonte, in the words of a three-year-old). My mom, though mostly doing it to support the two of us as we ran wild, was a Jeff Gordon woman – thought he was handsome, and he had that Pepsi sponsorship – and though I was of the opinion my dad looked like Tony Stewart, he didn’t really align himself to any one driver. He was content to let us enjoy the racing as it was.
I had diecasts – back when you could find one for basically any driver on the grid with a quick trip to your local Target or Home Depot, that’s what the Tooth Fairy would give me. No dollar bills here, but I’d wake up to the slightly uncomfortable sensation of something plasticky and metal under my head, and I knew that I’d be greeting another addition to my garage area sometime soon. I’d run full racing series, poring over the points standings in the yearly almanac that I’d get from Home Depot each winter before Daytona. I’d learn all the names, all the numbers, try and nail down who was who in a time when there were still a lot of names to hold on to.
Those press guides, man, when I tell you that they were CENTRAL to my creative drive as a child. I first learned Excel so I could create my own racing series and track the little races I’d run with my diecasts on the carpeted floors of our basement and living room. I first started writing because I wanted to emulate the profiles and articles that were scattered throughout, trying to report like I was Steve Byrnes on pit road.
Footage of my interviews conducted with myself cosplaying as various NASCAR legends doesn’t exist anywhere, and for that I am both sad and mildly grateful.
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I wax poetic first not only because it’s really pleasant to think back on those memories, but also to establish some central facts here.
First, drivers were easily identifiable by their ride. Jeff Gordon drove the 24, and you knew which one the 24 was every single week. Ken Schrader was the M&M's guy, and he was the M&M's guy for years. Bobby Labonte’s Interstate Batteries scheme still comes to mind every time I see that telltale flash of green on the side of the road. Even further down the running order, there were a lot of guys running backmarker cars with full-time sponsorship from well-regarded companies.
The following companies sponsored a car that did not qualify for the Daytona 500 in 2002: Target, Georgia-Pacific, Hooters, Hills Bros. Coffee. In 2008 it was Red Bull, Little Debbie, Hefty, and Valvoline. These are big names!
There’s another point there: the companies and sponsors that comprised the field were brands you knew and often used. The fact that I was six years old in 2003 and could have, the week after my birthday, seen cars running schemes for Home Depot, Caterpillar, Lowe’s, AT&T, Tide, M&M's, Kellogg’s, Kodak, Target, Citgo, UPS, Cheerios, and Valvoline – just to name a subset – is insane. Those cars routinely carrying the same numbers only made it easier. I don’t have to check anything to tell you that the cars I listed up there were the 20, 22, 48, 49, 32, 38, 5, 4, 09, 99, 88, 43, and 10. Easy.
Third, there’s the publicity that NASCAR got as a percentage of the public eye. Not only was I scouring every press stand in every hardware store in the greater Twin Cities area every January for those press guides, but I’d also commandeer the TV every Saturday for a couple of hours when permitted to watch qualifying (because if you know anything about me, you know that my absolute favorite drivers were the least likely to actually make the field (love you, Kirk Shelmerdine)). I’d sit there, eagerly watching one driver at a time turn two laps, hoping that maybe this would be the week that Carl Long could sneak it in or that Hermie Sadler wouldn’t get turned away. The stories you’d hear as the broadcasters gave every driver their due time, each person getting an individual turn in the spotlight – that was my favorite part.
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This could never have lasted forever.
NASCAR, by the time the late 2000s rolled around, was beginning to fade. Without domineering personalities to capture the hearts of millions like they had had in Dale Earnhardt, and with the resurgence of baseball in the national eye, suddenly NASCAR more frequently found itself on the outside looking in. Big names in the sport began to drop away, and with it, too, went long-time teams. Morgan McClure, whose iconic number 4 ran the gold and red of Kodak film for decades, was the most notable fade of that time period for me – one of the first dominos to fall and a sign for many people that there was a very real problem.
The financial crash of 2008 and the subsequent recession only further intensified that. NASCAR is a sport long said to be the fastest way for billionaires to become millionaires, and when the stock market was taking care of that for them, there was far less incentive to be throwing cash away week in week out, especially if you weren’t building competitive cars.
Notable figures in the sport began to retire and draw themselves back, too. Names like Sterling Marlin, Terry Labonte, and Dale Jarrett were all in a reduced role or out of driving entirely by 2010, and by the time 2015 rolled around, the field was nearly indistinguishable from that of 15 years ago. While this isn’t inherently unusual nor a bad thing within the world of sports, NASCAR losing so many figureheads within such a short span of time, all while also dealing with the ramifications of global financial fallout in a sport where money is king above all else – that’s not easy to come back from.
Cars that were once week-in week-out recognizable were barely even visible, and the constant rotation of sponsors and - at times - drivers, meant that developing those same relationships with a driver was impossible sometimes. How can you love a guy for the car he drives when he drives it twice a year and by this time next year won’t be in the series at all?
It's even more challenging when you keep fucking up the fix.
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NASCAR, in an attempt to draw viewers in the early aughts, installed a playoff system called the Chase for the Cup – the idea being that the top [x] drivers in a season based on points would then be corralled into a bracket of their own atop the pyramid for the last 10 races, with slight point advantages paid based on regular-season performance.
Though the series did at times create excellent endings, it received at best mixed reviews and often negative ones, with people believing that the best playoff system was one that just… took the total points to crown a champion.
NASCAR would modify the Chase format a few different times, trying to fine-tune it, before settling on what we all knew – that it wasn’t that good – and moving to… another bad system. Awesome.
That bad system is the current playoff structure, which is a win-and-in format that takes the top 16 drivers, with winners inside the top 30 in points getting autobids and anyone after that qualifying based on regular season points into a ten-race final stretch that sees the field whittle down four drivers at a time every three races until the last four are left to duke it out at the final race of the year.
It doesn’t work. The contrived drama hasn’t done enough to make the championship battle truly exciting, and while wildcard winners add a little variety to the field, it’s never quite enough to solve for what NASCAR really wants, which is to grow the fanbase while maintaining their current following.
NASCAR also tried to make the cars look different. They tried a few iterations throughout the late aughts and early teens, settling on nothing as design after design failed. Dodge left the sport entirely after 2012, following in the footsteps of Pontiac in 2004, and though new blood Toyota was here to stay, there’s a shift there that – with or without reason – irked some fans.
The new Gen 7s look great, and there’s hope that, with it, they can usher in a new generation of fans. But there’s concern, too: is the damage done?
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There’s no easy answer to the problems that have plagued NASCAR. There’s not a simple fix to a global economic recession and the changing tides of interest that have flipped many a sport on its head and continue to alter the way we perceive the hierarchy of athletics in this nation and internationally.
I can’t claim to have all the answers for that reason and also because, despite my best intentions and all my love for the sport, I’m just one guy. I can’t speak for everyone. I’ve loved the sport forever and won’t give it up, so I’m a safe customer – I’m not who they’re looking to attract.
But I know people who do fit that profile, and we have referential material with the growth of Formula One in the United States to give us an idea of what can work and what might not work.
Here goes.
1. Your first priority has to be stabilizing your solid fanbase. You cannot keep fucking with playoff formats and trying desperately to gimmick your way into relevancy when it keeps shoving people away. There is a way to cultivate a fanbase without alienating the one you’ve already got, and holy hell is NASCAR bad at that.
a. Stop messing with the playoffs. If you have to have some sort of system, revert to the original Chase format – top 10 drivers over the last 10 races, all else equal. If not that, go back to no playoff at all. You’ll make a lot of people happier for it.
b. Gimmicks can be fun. Competition cautions are not. Group qualifying is a miss. There are structural components to a race weekend that are necessary to make things as appealing as they can be, and taking those out or constantly making adjustments isn’t going to sell those.
2. You want to draw new fans in? Capitalize on your opportunities to do so.
a. F1 found major success in Drive to Survive, and though I and others have critiqued the show for its dramatization in recent seasons particularly, it has grown the sport massively, especially in previously underserved markets. Giving people the ability to take an in-depth look at the inner machinations of a sport, getting to know the personalities and teams that run within – that can do so much to draw people in. You have winning personalities. You have to give them a chance to shine!
b. Play up your connections. Bubba Wallace should be E V E R Y W H E R E with the deals he has, and though NASCAR’s done an okay job of hyping him up, it’s gotta be a bit more built-out than that. Ryan Blaney and Chase Elliott are young guns that can make you a lot of money via winnable faces. Alex Bowman is a sweet kid, Ross Chastain is a cool story – there are angles you can take with any person in this sport, and continuing to grow diversity and tell more of those stories can only help with that.
c. UNDERDOGS. Though they didn’t often receive as much coverage as front runners, giving guys at the back their chance to have a moment was one of my favorite parts of the coverage of NASCAR from my youth – and while I realize that a lot of those types of guys have disappeared, there’s something very refreshing about covering anyone like them.
You can’t necessarily fix it all. I realize that. It’s likely no longer feasible for NASCAR to cultivate nor encourage the same longevity in brand-driver-team relationships that, in many ways, made the sport more accessible – but it’s undeniable that it helps. What I’ve listed above are the things that NASCAR can do.
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I’ve loved NASCAR for as long as I can remember. I’ll always love it. I want other people to be able to love it too.