1. Are drivers passionate enough?
It’s not that any driver, at any level, doesn’t want to win. Any competitor who makes it to the top level of any sport is hungry to win, to be among the best. So it’s not that any driver lacks desire. But it’s hard to deny that there’s something missing among the drivers at the sport’s highest levels. What happened between the time they first entered the sport, full of ambition and hunger?
Perhaps they reach a point where risk outweighs reward. They get older, have families. They’re not racing from paycheck to paycheck any more. Sponsors want them to act a certain way, and if you’re getting paid to act a certain way, that’s how you act.
It’s not about wrecking other drivers to win, or about racing hard when the race is on the line; they all do that.
But something is missing. Even drivers that come up as blue-collar seem to lose that when they hit the top. That wasn’t always the case. Perhaps the last of the blue-collar drivers, Dale Earnhardt, was hardly blue-collar by the time of his death, yet he was still recognized as such.
Today’s drivers too often lack that quality, and that makes them seem unapproachable. It’s hard to put a finger on, and maybe passion is the wrong word for what’s missing. But there are times when it seems like “something” is no longer there.
2. Is NASCAR passionate enough?
As much as passion might be the wrong word for what’s missing among drivers, it might be exactly the right word here. NASCAR has always been a dictatorship, and it’s always made changes accordingly. But it’s really hard to look at the sport’s history and say Big Bill France and Bill Jr. didn’t genuinely love the sport they ruled with an iron fist.
While Brian France may be proud of his family’s legacy, it feels different now. NASCAR has made so many changes, and it doesn’t seem as though they were ever made for fans but rather for corporate sponsors and their whims.
At the end of the day, it feels like the sanctioning body doesn’t deeply love the sport it’s charged with keeping. Somewhere in the shuffle, the joy of watching cars go around in circles seems to have been lost, and because of that, the understanding of the fans’ love for it has been forgotten as well, abandoned for… well, for what?
3. Do people watch for the wrecks? Seriously, do they?
I know people vehemently deny it. And maybe they don’t watch for the crashes, specifically. But with fans calling for more exciting racing, at some points, it seems like crashes are all that’s left. A race can have side-by-side racing throughout the field all day, be authentic in terms of not having questionable debris cautions and have two or more drivers in contention in the closing laps. Yet it’s still labeled “boring” if the two don’t bounce off each other half a dozen times coming to the checkers. They’re accused of not trying hard enough if they are unwilling to turn the other for the trophy.
On one hand, fans want authentic, unmanipulated races, but when one happens, with long green-flag runs, they don’t want that any more. I don’t care what era of the sport you’re talking about, there have been plenty of races in the last 70 years where nobody could catch or pass the leader. That’s not a new thing. There have been races where the leader finished on his own lap. But if those long green runs are too boring and nobody wants NASCAR to manipulate races with stage cautions or debris cautions, what’s left?
Do fans root for an engine failure to bring out the yellow? For a fuel mileage race to spice up the drama? No, of course not. Except…there’s nothing left except wrecks to break up those green-flag runs. And at some tracks, the wrecks are all but inevitable, and they’re some of the most popular races. So while nobody wants to see anyone get hurt, do most fans watch a race and really hope it goes green all the way?
4. How much of a good thing is too much?
There’s an old saying that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Another one claims that less is more.
And maybe they’re right. It’s not the races that are too long. Any real fan in the stands will tell you the events are never long enough, as that old familiar pang hits while the laps wind down and you realize it’s almost over. But the season is getting there. Before the boom when NASCAR and the tracks got greedy, the season was in the 30-race range, and slowly expanded to 32, 34, 36. We lapped it up at the time. It was racing, and racing was good.
But even for fans, 36 races is a grind. Cut five races and the season would end in early October, long before the NFL playoffs are on the radar and even before the World Series. Teams, drivers and fans need time to recharge and prepare for the season.
And there’s another way in which a good thing has perhaps become too much. While social media gives fans a way to interact with people in the sport, including the drivers, it becomes a 24/7 thing. There are no surprises and fans know every announcement before it’s made these days.
There was a time when fans eagerly awaited the annual media tour because it was as if the sport was awakening from its winter’s rest. There was news, real news of driver changes and sponsors. There were racecars, some with new looks. Racing was back and all was once again well. When the cars took to the track for January Daytona testing it was like rain after a long drought. It’s a little like finding out what you’re getting for Christmas while the other kids get to be surprised. When you have instant gratification, you no longer have surprises and lose a lot of excitement.
5. What made the “old days” better? No, really?
Sometimes there were better races. Sometimes there were not. There were unmanipulated races and full-season championship battles, sometimes close, sometimes not. What there was, though, was days not one among us can ever get back. Those halcyon summers when everything, not just the racing, was ripe for the picking, mark everyone’s life at some point. In our innocence, we believed, or wanted to, that everything would always be as it once was. Change hurt, especially change that wasn’t really for any reason other than change. Progress. Nobody can stop that change. Cars are different now than they were decades ago, and so is the way they’re seen in our culture.
In a day and time when getting a driver’s license was a rite of passage, people loved cars on a different level. Now they’re largely seen as utilitarian, sometimes as a status symbol, but not as the object of dreams and fantasies. Teens don’t save up from the time they’re 13 or 14 for a clunker they can fix up, but there was a time when doing so was a source of pride. Cars in general are no longer beautiful, no longer special. They just… are.
Add that to the lost youth we’re all secretly searching for, the friends we once spent race days with, at home or at the track, drinking a cold one and voicing dreams of road trips and garage passes and other wonderful things.
It’s not just the racing that’s changed. It’s us, too. And that’s why there’s no quick fix.
Amy is an 20-year veteran NASCAR writer and a six-time National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) writing award winner, including first place awards for both columns and race coverage. As well as serving as Photo Editor, Amy writes The Big 6 (Mondays) after every NASCAR Cup Series race. She can also be found working on her bi-weekly columns Holding A Pretty Wheel (Tuesdays) and Only Yesterday (Wednesdays). A New Hampshire native whose heart is in North Carolina, Amy’s work credits have extended everywhere from driver Kenny Wallace’s website to Athlon Sports. She can also be heard weekly as a panelist on the Hard Left Turn podcast that can be found on AccessWDUN.com's Around the Track page.
Why bother to watch every race when the only one that really counts is the last one, the winner take all ‘title’? When all the talk from the first race of the season is about the last race….
in that case why watch anything but the last lap? (And there have been times I have asked myself that question.)
Perhaps the summation of this article comes the closest to the truth. Its us, and our search for lost youth that is the problem – for us anyway.
For the young people who are staying away in droves its something else I suppose.
David Edwards – yep us older fans can’t erase the memories of the glory days of the sport or of life. i remember being 10 or so in the late sixties and looking forward to september when all the new model cars were introduced by the manufactures. big deal was made, glossy brochures were put in the sunday newspaper, and oh how awesome the all looked. use to wait to see who was the first in the neighborhood to get one of these new gems. but again, we didn’t have 24/7 entertainment as is commonplace now.
my grandmother use to say “yesterday is dead and gone”….boy was she right!
seems like all forms of racing are almost like iroc, everything looks the same. teams are penalized if they tweek something outside the rule book and get caught.
be real interesting to see if there is a na$car in 10 years.
“Yesterday is dead and gone
And tomorrow’s out of sight
And it’s sad to be alone
Help me make it through the night”
Kris Kristofferson
Janice, I’m a bit older came of age in the late 60’s and the road trips to the track with my best friend were so great, still bring a smile to my face. Then came Uncle Sam, Vietnam, return to a country that seemed a little different, marriage,etc. and the rest as they say is history.
But I was there to see it become the juggernaut of the sports world, and now its decline.
But you know it has never again been, nor ever will be like sitting in the stands that night in 1969,South Boston Va, watching Pearson and Petty in Torinos battling Bobby Isaacs in the K&K Insurance Charger.
Nor will I ever be the same again either.
Yep, the future’s not what it used to be.
Tell ’em, Mr. Milsap.
Amy.. I think for number one the word you might be looking for is relate-ability. Back in the “glory days” 60 -90’s the drivers and for the most part the teams were perceived to be regular folks very similar to those watching the races.
Now days this does not seem to be the case. Keslowski back in 2012 seemed to take that mantle over with his beer chugging in Miami but even that did not stick with the fans. Clint Bowyer could have been that guy but did not enough sustained success.
That’s part of it for sure, but I also think there’s more to it…something that carries onto the track as well. I find it hard to define. Perhaps it’s when you get to the top of the mountain, what else is there to climb for? More wins and titles yes, as no true competitor is really ever satisfied, but there’s no more insecurity about where the next ride is coming from, nothing to prove. It’s a different hunger even than they had in lower series or early in their careers.
There’s nothing wrong with the drivers. The fault is with the bloggers and NASCAR shills who have taken over the media and don’t even bother to go to the races. You and your peers at FS watch on TV and think you have an edge in analyzing the sport because you get paid a few bucks to write columns that reflect nothing but your personal biases.
And, almost needless to say, boring races where NASCAR attempts to achieve parity through gimmicks drives a stake in the heart of drivers who actually DO have passion for winning. “This is not what I signed up for.” That statement by Kyle Busch expresses the frustration of both the elite drivers and the fans. But you just don’t get it, as you favor participation trophies for every mid-pack driver who shows up.