Racing into Oblivion
Two decades ago, NASCAR — the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing — was enjoying explosive growth. Fortune 500 companies such as DuPont, Kellogg’s, and Procter & Gamble were bankrolling its expansion. The sanctioning body was stretching way beyond its deep Southern roots, opening tracks in the unlikeliest of places, including New Hampshire (70 miles north of Boston) and Fontana, California. In 1994, it conquered the capital of open-wheel racing: Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the Indy 500
But it all stalled in 2007.
Since the onset of the recession, NASCAR has been suffering a long streak of precipitously declining track attendance and TV ratings. And it hasn’t recovered.
NASCAR’s slump has been blamed on a number of things: a sluggish economy, a reliance on an older (and white) male fan base, cookie-cutter cars, the waning of American car culture, weak social media offerings, high gas prices, and boring races. In 2010, NASCAR Chairman Brian France ordered a five-year plan to stem the bleeding.
But on May 21, 2012, NASCAR may have choked off that five-year plan before it could get any traction. On that day, NASCAR inked a deal with the Obama EPA. Under the terms of the three-year pact, NASCAR will “stimulate participation in EPA programs” and “foster greater environmental awareness among NASCAR fans.” The EPA will identify the environmental “programs and messages that are best suited for promoting environmental stewardship and sustainable behavior.” NASCAR is charged with “encouraging greater environmental awareness and sustainable behavior by their fans.”
In other words, NASCAR is now an official EPA apparatchik charged with shoving the agency’s Orwellian propaganda down the throats of its fans in an attempt to change their behavior. NASCAR has essentially agreed to become a corporate crony of the EPA’s job and wealth shredding machine. For a sport that has always prized independence, raw power, and American traditions (invocations and military flyovers start each race), this may be too much for its core fans to swallow.
Yet the move follows a recent and steady progression. For the last couple of years, NASCAR has been drifting leftward, synching with the turns its drivers routinely make as they lap oval racetracks. On Earth Day 2012, NASCAR released its “sustainability white paper” that includes on-track “successes” such as a 25-acre solar farm to power Pocono Raceway.
In 2010, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) announced an agreement to sponsor Jeff Gordon’s No. 24 Chevrolet to promote its foundation. This is the same AARP that fights entitlement reform while it lobbies for greater federal largess. This is the same AARP that annually siphons tens of millions of dollars in federal grants as a registered nonprofit charity. This is the same AARP that vigorously pushed for congressional passage of the much-reviled Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). It was then granted a sweetheart waiver from the law’s mandates that regulate the Medigap policies AARP sells.
Then there’s NASCAR’s embrace of ethanol. Partnering with American Ethanol, NASCAR has launched a PR campaign touting the benefits of E15 fuels — that is, gasoline blended with 15 percent ethanol fermented from corn. There are promotions at the tracks and commercials run during races promoting the fuel. Cars in NASCAR races have been fueled by E15 since the 2011 Daytona 500.
NASCAR claims “renewable” ethanol is environmentally friendly, generates “green” jobs, reduces dependence on foreign oil, and improves engine performance and horsepower. NASCAR fans, the racing body says, are 40 percent more likely than non-fans to support using ethanol to bolster energy independence.
But NASCAR is just blowing ruinous PC smoke in the faces of its fans. The touted ethanol benefits are dubious at best and false at worst for at least four reasons. First, ethanol contains significantly less energy than gasoline on a per gallon basis: 78,000 Btu for ethanol versus 115,000 Btu for gasoline. So it’s difficult to see how ethanol can boost performance and horsepower.
Second, because ethanol contains less energy (lowering fuel economy) and is expensive to produce, it drives up the per-gallon cost of gasoline. Thus, ethanol can’t compete with gasoline on the open market without a portfolio of subsidies and tax credits. So NASCAR fans (and the rest of us) pay for the stuff twice: through taxes and at the pump.
Third, it takes roughly as much fossil fuel energy to produce ethanol (transportation, cultivation, fertilizers, pesticides, refining) as it releases. So in terms of energy inputs and outputs, you’re essentially running in place. How does that contribute to energy independence? And the ethanol production process consumes copious amounts of water and nonrenewable land resources. So the “renewable” designation makes a mockery of truth-in-advertising standards.
And fourth, ethanol isn’t “environmentally friendly” at all, at least in terms of carbon emissions, as even Al Gore concedes. The whole production process releases more carbon (assuming that’s bad) than do fossil fuels. The ethanol lobby is little more than a corrupt political machine, whose purpose is to reelect incumbent politicians from farm and ethanol-producing states by transferring wealth to those states from the rest of us.
Plus, because a significant and growing portion of corn production is dedicated to ethanol, it drives up food prices, as even the Congressional Budget Office concedes. Ethanol is also very corrosive — so much so that E15, the fuel NASCAR is pushing, will damage the very types of cars many NASCAR fans are driving.
Yet nothing shows NASCAR’s contempt for its fan base more than its pact with the EPA. The EPA’s war on coal and on projects such as the Keystone pipeline is costing NASCAR fans jobs as it squeezes them by driving up the cost of energy and food. That’s less money for race tickets. The agency’s destructive regulatory agenda is strangling innovation and job creation by heaping ever more burdens on small and medium businesses. EPA Regional Administrator Al Armendariz famously touted that the agency’s goal is to crucify oil and gas companies. This is the company NASCAR proudly keeps?
NASCAR once harbored and nurtured a fierce independent streak. The sport was founded by bootleggers who sped over dirt back roads in souped-up cars to evade the taxing and regulatory authority enforcers. It was the domain of mavericks, such the late engine builder and crew chief Smokey Yunick — the greatest rule-bender of them all. He once made inspection weight by packing his car’s roll cage with wet sand. He installed little plugs in the floor so that on race day, they could be popped to let the now dry sand run out, giving his driver a distinct weight advantage. There was no explicit rule against that.
That celebration of cunning and independence is long gone, replaced by centralized five-year-plans. NASCAR is now just another looped-in corporatist, working hand-in-glove with an agency that has utter contempt for this nation’s founding principals as well as its citizens. As a copious consumer of fossil fuels and big carbon emitter (not unlike “green” Hollywood), maybe NASCAR buckled under pressure. Maybe it thought it was better to enlist with “the man” than fight him.
We saw how well that worked out for the Catholic Church.
As a former Texas Motor Speedway season ticket holder and a regular attendee of the Brickyard 400, I have one thing to say to NASCAR: good riddance.
The Gramscian long march through the institutions has infected NASCAR amongst too many others.
Your attack on the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California is way off base. It tells me how much research you did for this piece and calls much of your thesis into question.
Yeah, based on NASCAR advertising, you probably believe Fontana is in West Los Angeles or nestled in the Hollywood Hills… But in reality, it’s fifty miles east and a world away from L.A., in a very conservative region of Southern California known as “The Inland Empire.”
Fontana is not “the unlikeliest of places” for NASCAR, nor “beyond its deep Southern roots.” Fontana is Sammy Hagar’s hometown, for God’s sake. The Hells Angels MC was founded in Fontana/San Berdoo. The track is built over an old steel mill that drew workers from all over the American south. So many southerners live there, it’s local nickname became “Fontucky.”
I appreciate your warning shot over the heads of NASCAR management – let’s be honest, it’s all lip service – but the Fontana expansion was utterly legit. March rain aside, the crowds are solid, the women are beautiful and the people are cool… In other words, the Fontana fans are NASCAR, incarnate
The crowds are not solid — they have never sold out.
all that aside: I hear comments below about how expensive the sport is and this that the other thing. I’m putting my comment here, not only as a response to you (on Fontana) but to all:
How many of you have raced cars on ovals? Well, I know one who has — for over 20 years. So I’ll make the following observations from experience:
1. You can race cars cheaply — in the lower divisions, but you have to put in a lot of hours, and find a good junk yard, and be capable of doing a LOT of repair work yourself. Then, you do not go on vacations, and limit your buying elsewhere.
2. Pursuant to #1, start on a small track… so you do not kill yourself.
3. It galls me that NASCAR has a “drive for diversity” program or any other program that puts people in cars that have not done #1 and #2.
4. NASCAR races used to be strictly on Sunday afternoons. Now, they are on Sat. nights.
5. No more N. Wilkesboro, Rockingham, and only 1 race at Darlington? You kidding me? that’s the hardest track to drive. So pump up ticket prices in places that traditionally can’t fill the stands, and even those places that always used to fill the stands (Richmod, Bristol, etc. will have significant unfilled seats. (NASCAR has help in raising the overall orice from Motels, restaurants that lift rates too when events roll into town.)
6. COT– Car of Tomorrow. Used to be that owners/drivers could coddle their own car together. Now, tolerances are so tight that only the richest can get into the highest levels.
7. Chase. A BS concept. I and many fans go to see a race of 43 drivers — not some event where the top 10 are glorified. Talk about a lack of diversity.
8. Lower divisions. NASCAR used to have many more. And the NorthEast Modified division used to have 20+ races. Now? whittled down to 11 races. But what can they expect? They hold many 3 day events that could be easily 1 day affairs (inspection day 1 and preactive, qualification day 2, and race day 3). who can afford that? Only the richest. And the payouts at the races stinks too: If you win, you get wht? $10k max. Further, they charge the track owners/promoters A LOT of money so that they owners cannot afford to hold races for these divisions. That’s why a lot of people go to other racing events in the northeast now: race of champions series and true value/valnenti modified series to name 2 on asphalt have many events. And plenty more on dirt in PA, NY, and VT.
There’s more, but that’e enough for now.
Seconded on the Fontana takedowns being ludicrous. This track is barely a mile East of the old Ontario Motor Speedway, (which was built as a replica of Indy-while Auto Club Speedway is a a copy of Michigan, sigh) & was home to many open-wheel & NASCAR races-nevermind the starting point in the original “DeathRace 2000″. It also lies about a mile South of Mickey Thompson’s old “Drag City” HotRod track on Route 66 home of the “Speedway Monster” Sasquatch sightings of the 1950′s-70′s. Any place that offers you Sammy Hagar, the Hell’s Angels & Bigfoot is not an unlikely racetrack location.
Quite simple, rally. It went mainstream.
Then the mainstream decided to “make it better” so the very things that allured people to it, the disorganization, the folksy down-home aspect, the REAL people the dirt, the simplicity, were removed.
It sucks.
Same thing happened to Home Depot – had all the same qualities you described.
“We’re not the audience you’re looking for.”
It’s “New Coke” all over again. I’m sure many recall Coca Cola abandoning its old recipe and adopting a more “Pepsi-friendly” formula in the mid-80′s. Coca Cola, despite being the largest soft drink supplier in the world, wasn’t satisfied with its customer base. It lusted after the hipper, cooler, younger Pepsi drinker. So it abandoned all those who made the company successful in favor of those who made another company successful. Coca Cola said “our customers are loyal to the brand and they’ll drink what we supply” but the customers said “we were loyal to the product that you just destroyed, enjoy your new smaller customer base”.
The same story plays out repeatedly as companies, and political parties, tell their existing customer/voter base “you’re a bunch of pathetic losers, what I need to succeed is a better class of customers/voters”. And they then wonder why their existing customer/voter base stays home. Rather than building on what they are, they build on what they aren’t.
Today it’s NASCAR, tomorrow it will be the NFL.
Then there’s the new Chevy commercial mendaciously attempting to take back the American “tradition” legacy it flushed down the toidy under Obama’s poisonous “rescue:”
Baseball – MLB is in overdrive trying to become the NBA by concentrating on PC promotions of all liberal stripes, especially in concentrating their youth outreach exclusively in the inner cities, ignoring anyy kids of “non-protected” classes.
Hot Dogs – Fat free, low salt, then eventually banned altogether if the new progressives get their way.
Apple Pie – If Obama is re-elected, we will be lucky if we will be allowed to eat it, let alone afford it.
And…..
Chevrolet – Screw you Chevy. You are now less American than Toyota or Subaru after your cynical, comunistic lying-ass sell out to the new bully-ocracy.
Well said. Call it Skybox Syndrome. 30,000 fans sit in the ionosphere and peer down at players looking like ants on the field while perfectly good stadiums and arenas are knocked down and rebuilt at taxpayer expense in order to add more luxury boxes (often two levels of the, further displacing open-air seats). Do some particular luxury box occupants i.e. the owners ever look around and consider who is buying the jerseys, the hats, the video games, etc.?
This is not a class argument sticking up for Joe Sixpack but an indictment of marketing gurus and their harebrained schemes – with another harebrained scheme waiting in the wings to compensate for the most recent disaster. I’m guessing the France family are not historians so the irony of having a ‘five-year plan’ is probably lost on them. But wait, isn’t this the same France family who have been saying that new markets, changing demographics, family friendly, etc. is the way forward? If so, why all the empty seats?
Yeah. Somehow, I don’t think Junior Johnson would make it today.
Instead, we have little boy, Brad Pitt lookalikes genuflecting at the altar of PC unto death.
I guess they were just stupid hicks, after all, to be duped by the Madison Ave scum who’ve destroyed everything else.
Now the average Nascar fan is a couch potato who probably teaches school…and who spends all his time wearing football jerseys and playing fanboy for their stupid pro teams, while dying from type II diabetes and heart disease because they never get up from their sofa.
I hope we’re not relying on them to fight the next revolution! Or the sissyboy Nascar drivers.
Okay, I love the cognomen. Nicely done.
Maybe people are just catching onto the fact that NASCAR is boring compared to other motorsports. Watching several hours of “go straight, turn left” gets extremely tedious. Rally cars, F1, etc. are way more fun to watch.
“Watching several hours of “go straight, turn left” gets extremely tedious.”
Hours? I’m bored stiff after several SECONDS of watching NASCAR.
Then again, I’m bored watching ANY sports. Watching other people participate in sports is just entertainment in the same way as watching a movie, a concert or a fireworks display. I don’t find watching other people do sports remotely entertaining.
Nothing better than a round of golf. I’m gearing up for one tomorrow – played yesterday – and will play in a scramble on the fourth.
A NASCAR race is boring only in the same way a baseball game tied 1-1 in the 13th is boring; boring to people who don’t understand it. Tell me, when was the last time there was an on-track pass for the lead in that oh-so wonderful and exciting Formula 1?
That said, even I, a diehard NASCAR fan, wouldn’t mind seeing some of those long, slow summer races cut to 250-300 miles instead of 400-500. Yesterday’s race at Kentucky was interminable, though the last 100 miles or so picked up. I enjoyed seeing Keselowski win it after being stood in the corner for not playing nicely with Montoya. You might have noticed quite a few former F-1 drivers giving NASCAR a try and not being particularly successful. Guess not having all the computers and paddle shifters and such makes it too complicated for them, and not having the pit road rev limiter did, in fact, cost Montoya a Brickyard win; something about having a shoe size greater than his IQ was involved I believe.
Actually, my favorite is Australia’s V8 Supercars. Not sure you can find it on American tv without a satellite dish, but it’s a hoot.
When I was growing up I was a Richard Petty fan.
One thing that I knew about watching a race where Richard Petty won was that the Dodge Charger Richard won the race in was available to me, right down at the showroom at Tacoma Dodge.
I could buy the exact same car, because Stock Car Racing meant that the cars were Stock. They were available to the public.
I remember watching how the Petty crew received 12 new Chargers off the assembly line from dodge and then disassembled them to component parts and built 2 Chargers for the Racing Season out of the 12 they had been provided.
But that’s not how its done any more.
And when that change took place, I lost interest in stock cars.
If you’re going to race unattainable custom built cars, may as well race Formula cars.
I believe what you are referring to is “win on Sunday, buy on Monday”. Today’s NASCAR “stock car” resembles what we can buy about as much as a Chevy volt resembles a Bugatti Veyron.
Just another nail in the coffin of American culture (real American culture, not the PC-faux variety) and greatness. No surprise at all here.
I agree with JD. I grew up watching the National Association of STOCK CAR Racers race Stock Cars! As a Ford Fan, I had some interest in the drivers, but what I really wanted was to see a Ford win. As I recall, they won sometimes, but faced a serious challenge from Pontiacs. Now, take away the fiberglass body shell and you will find nearly identical cars. I read recently how a new design valve spring gave some cars an edge (for a little while, at least). Clever stuff, but it is really hard to get excited over a valve spring.
I think the “Car Of Tomorrow” and its bland conformity, along with the boring cookie-cutter 1.5 mile d-shaped ovals, has more to do with NASCAR’s current problems than its drift to political correctness. That’s why I wasn’t too upset when my wife and I stayed longer than planned at a party last night, and I failed to DVR the race.
However, NASCAR’s toadying for the ethanol industry makes skipping races easier for me, too. Few government programs get my blood pressure up like the ethanol boondoggle.
I hadn’t heard of or noticed NASCAR’s embrace of eco-fascism (possibly because I watch fewer races due to the identical car template and those boring 1.5 mile d-shaped ovals?), but that is one more nail in the coffin.
NASCAR “going green” is especially absurd given its shilling for ethanol. The supposed “green fuel” wastes vast amounts of groundwater and encourages the cultivation of corn, which requires a lot of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizer. Cultivated in rows with bare dirt in between, corn also causes soil erosion. Combine all these factors, and ethanol is an eco-disaster, funded with our tax dollars…but the progressives and supposed conservatives like Chuck Grassley of Iowa just keep filling the trough.
It’s absolutely insane to burn a food crop as fuel.
Doesn’t anybody have any sense any more?
Pretty soon the EPA will probably only allow races to be held if they use electric cars. Can you imagine that? Only a Nissan Leaf will eventually be used at Daytona. They can’t use the Chevy Volt because of the risk of the battery exploding in an accident. Pathetic. The only way to stop this madness is to get rid of Obama AND the Democrats in Congress in November. As you can see by this article, our very way of life depends on it.
Getting rid of 0bama and re-taking the Senate is a good start, but definitely not the end. Winning back the White House and Senate while keeping the House would leave progressives in control of the old media, entertainment industry, and academia.
New media like PJ are one step in ending the left’s control of the narrative, but academia remains a progressive stronghold. Colleges and universities are the training ground for educators, administrators, film-makers, (old) journalists, and the legal professions. So long as the left controls the higher education process we cannot say they are defeated.
But, PJM, Rush Limbaugh, National Review, American Thinker, and Drudge, are considered threats to Amerika by the Homeland Security Politburo.
They shall be censured for injudicious expression.
Actually, an all-electric car race would be relay instructive to the public, because if you ran a 400-mile race, the cars would have to pit stop 5-10 times to change about a half ton of batteries that were about to go dead.
Oh no, don’t let them change the batteries. They have to recharge them. Like real people do.
And when the stadium lights dim and and surrounding neighborhood goes dark as the chargers overload the local grid…
But seriously, alternate power system races would be fun, and probably spur more technological development than Green Energy Grants. GM created at least two very successful engine lines in an attempt to compete on the old NASCAR circuit. And lots of the early 20th Century automotive development was done by racers.
But that was a less corporate, less crony-capitalist, set of racers.
Once white males are predominate . . . well . . . you know what happens next.
yup#9 “diggin the scene with the gangstalean,gangsta-whitewalls,tv antenna on the back”….
I can’t wait ’til they only are allowed to race solar powered electric cars. That way I don’t have to wear ear plugs. And the birds won’t be scared away from the tracks.
We can have tulips and fruit trees lining the course without worry of them being polluted by any hazardous fumes.
I get so excited every time I’m at a stop light with a Prius, listening to the crickets, and waiting for the “SSSSSSSSSS” of that thing sprinting away from the intersection!
I think the EPA should require mufflers on sail boats, too.
Politically correct Progressives can suck the fun out of anything. Welcome to the new AmeriKa.
The Politically Correct are a cancer. They infect anything they get their paws onto, and ultimately end up killing off the organism.
How stock were “stock cars” back when? There’s a story that makes the rounds about how one of the Ford teams after having blown up all their engines went down to the local Hertz car rental and rented a hot Mustang so they could “borrow” the engine.
There’s a story going around that pigs could once fly too. Even in the heyday of “stock” stock cars, they winning ones weren’t that stock. You could buy a Plymouth Belvedere or Dodge 500 in taxicab trim with a single four barrel hemi at the dealers and turn it into a Grand National (as what is now Sprint Cup was known in the ’60s), but you’d have trouble qualifying on a big track with it, you certainly couldn’t win, and you’d be lucky to finish. The Ford side-oiler 427 was a little more common but the one you got from the dealer wasn’t the same in anything but its basic layout as the one in the Holman-Moody Fords. And you couldn’t buy the Chevy “mystery motor” at all until the 396 c.i. version of it started to show up in a few Chevelles.
As the cars got more extreme in the late ’60s with the Chrysler Superbirds and Daytona Chargers and the Ford Talledegas, the manufacturers made just enough of the bodywork for sale to retail customers to qualify them as stock, at most a few thousand pieces. Matching numbers hemi powered Superbirds and Daytonas routinely go for a quarter million dollars or more and I’ve watched a lot of Barratt-Jacksons and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Talledega/Cyclone with a sideoiler 427 show up.
NASCAR was ALWAYS boring. Try the NHRA. You will find the majority are conservative with American flags and troop loyalty everywhere. Tony Schumacher does EVERYTHING for the troops. He drives an ARMY car even. So try NHRA. It still IS an American sport.
its fading too, fuel/speed/length restrictions, etc.
too many rules.
Umm, Al-Anabi? Arab Oil Sheikh?
“All American” my ass.
Agreed. But with Paul Page creaming his shorts every time a female driver lines up is getting sickening. Geez, I bet the day we have 2 girls in a final he will absolutely explode. ESPN is ruining that sport too. I heard the word diversity recently by Page and I know know the NHRA is dying.
Jeff Gordon pimping AARP is both appropriate and sickening.
I grew up listening to the “big” NASCAR races on the radio on Sunday afternoon and spending a lot of Friday nights at nearby 1/2 mile dirt tracks. I had Chrysler’s black and white promotional pictures of Richard Petty and his #43 ’64 Plymouth and its “hemi” engine on the walls of my bedroom – and since I was a dumb kid I glued them to the walls where they remained until I tore down my parents old house a couple of years ago.
I’ve been a part of building and racing “stock” cars. As late as the ’60s a few boys with the income from paper routes or part time jobs in retail and such could put together the money to field a car in the lower classes of racing. Since we were “country” kids, any work that didn’t require a machine shop or serious welding we could do ourselves and usually we knew the guys at the machine shop and welding shop and they’d either do stuff for us on the side or let us use the equipment. If you didn’t mind a long drive and sleeping in the car or in the pickup bed, $20 -$30 would get you to a race within two or three hundred miles and an infield or cheap seats ticket. I saw several races at Atlanta, Darlington, and even one Daytona in the days of the Dodge/Plymouth Hemis, the Ford 427 side oilers, and Junior Johnson’s quixiotic “mystery motor” Chevrolet. Then I got too cool, went off to college and then to work, then moved to Alaska where there was little if any coverage of NASCAR in the papers and almost none on TV. I read just enough motor sports press to know it was still going but without multiple manufacturers participating and few interesting personalities, but I paid little attention from the ’70s until the ’90s.
When we got good cable service and live coverage of NASCAR races in the ’90s, I got interested again and almost never missed a televised race, becoming a diehard Dale Earnhardt fan. Racing’s not been the same since the 2001 Daytona 500 and there is more than a little truth in someone’s quip that 9-11 is the only thing that stopped Dale Earnhardt’s fans from mourning him. But by those days I was well enough fixed to go to the Vegas, CA, or Phoenix races so we went to quite a few. Once you’ve paid for a ticket from Alaska to Seattle, anything else you do is cheap, so we went for the whole thing, pit passes, VIP lounges, start-finish line seats. We even ponied up for the ’08 Daytona 500, from which I have a lifetime supply of sweatshirts and stadium blankets because it was FREEZING. It’s a statement about todays world and NASCAR fans that we ran into a group of people I knew from a waterfront bar in Juneau, Alaska at an Olive Garden in Daytona Beach.
I know the lefties have their NASCAR fan sterotype, but there are no poor people at a Sprint Cup race, at least not in the front stretch stands where good seats will cost $3 – $500, and some much more. The parking lots are filled with Class A motor homes, and the redneck with his family in the bed of an old farm truck in the infield has been gone for forty years. In the good seats you have a bedrock Republican constituency of tradespeople and small business people and in the VIP suites while you have a lot of big corporations, you also have a lot of each state or region’s larger businesses represented.
I’m frankly amazed that the flyover by military aircraft during the National Anthem has survived this long in Comrade Obama’s reign and I know there has been pressure on military units appearing. The armed forces are withdrawing their sponsorships. The poverty pimps are lined up shaking down NASCAR for its “lack of diversity.” There must be tremendous pressure on the corporate sponsors that do any business with the government. You’re already seeing many of the Nationwide series cars and even some lesser Sprint Cup cars with nothing on their hoods and fenders or with a different smaller or regional sponsor practically every week. Chrysler is leaving next season and you have to wonder what NASCAR has to put up with from them to keep Chevrolet in. I don’t think it would break anyone’s heart if coverage of the whole season went back to FOX rather than being shared with ABC/ESPN and NBC, but you have to wonder how long the MSM networks will stay in if the Obama Junta remains in power.
In short both NASCAR as an entity and its fan base are anathema to the communist thugs and elitists running this Country. If NASCAR does a little of what the Nazis called “coordination” with the regime to stay in business, I’m willing to cut them some slack. That said, if everything is going to be about the drivers and teams rather than about the cars and manufacturers as has been the case for the last decade and more, how about some more interesting drivers and some more “spirited” competition? Earnhardt Sr. would have been black flagged and summoned to the NASCAR trailer in every race if they’d been run to today’s standard of “decorum.” Decorum is Latin for boring!
The poverty pimps are lined up shaking down NASCAR for its “lack of diversity.” There must be tremendous pressure on the corporate sponsors that do any business with the government.
I remember an investigative report on ESPN several years ago. The jist of the piece was that the lack of blacks at any level of NASCAR was proof that these rednecks were a bunch of racists. But, as your short essay here implies throughout, the presence of hardworking dads is the essential ingredient from the bottom up.
I grew up in lower middle class part of Indianapolis, and remember my admiration for a friend Steve’s situation a block from my house. Steve and his dad were always together, working on their quarter midget into the night. Then the whole family would travel every weekend to watch my buddy race every weekend. He was a good but not great racer, and a happy kid. The family was close.
The moron with his “investigative” report on ESPN would learn something about racing, and families, by visiting such a house (the garage, actually) at about 10pm on a Tuesday night, to see father and son working.
Even back in the days when the vast majority of those in the cars and the pits – and the stands – were rednecks and racists they made room for Wendell Scott and treated his as well as any other low-budget “also ran.” Blacks just never really had a racing or performance car culture. Even in my time, a black kid didn’t want a GTO or SS396, he wanted a Deuce and a Quarter or Cadillac/Lincoln and while I’ve saw black kids working on cars to fix or maintain them, I never saw them working on cars to modify them beyond fancy hubcaps, curb feelers, fender skirts, and such. There’ve been the “affirmative action” black drivers, but you can’t just put somebody in even the best car and expect him/her to be competitive without extensive, long experience. Mexicans and other Hispanics on the other hand are “car crazy” and do work on them, so it is only a matter of time before there are competitive Hispanic drivers in NASCAR.
Most NASCAR drivers have been driving competitively since they were six or eight years old. Producing a competive athlete in ANY sport takes a lot of time and involvement by either parents, coachs, or both. Since there isn’t much “coaching” in motorsports, it is almost the exclusive province of parents to bring up a racer. Maybe the lack of parents in the black community has something to do with the lack of blacks in motorsports.
We live in the South Jersey pines. Last summer my son and I stumbled across a local midget dirt track with 9/10/11 year old drivers. This could have been a little league game, with the parents and families barbequing and watching the races from under pop-up canopes. The fire suits and safety helmets these boys were wearing had to be worth a grand easy, somebody told me the cars started at $10k-$12k, but they were obviously father/son maintained. Ain’t no poor backward Jersey Pineys in that sport.
Yep; Early on I learnt that you had to kiss a lot of pigs to race a car. You had to be a whore to too many sponsors to get “big”.
I went to motocross; Had years of enjoyment with the whole family, and made life long friends.
One befriended racer was a motorcycle racer from the dawn of motorcycle racing. He was one of the few that raced on the sands of Daytona Beach. He was dedicated to it so much, he spent the last days of his life restoring motorcycles and vintage race cars near Daytona.
The sport of motocross gives you a certain respect for physics, and the fact that your body breaks easier than the bike.
And, the fitness was a disregarded benefit.
If my back could take the punishment at this stage, I’d be out on a motocross track every week. Man, what a sweet rush!
In sum, you have just described a culture as opposed to an event.
Statists like events because they are self-contained and everybody goes home to their code-compliant, green-agenda, energy star, government approved (and often funded) house.
Cultures are dangerous to statists because they lead to common ideas and beliefs, which lead to coalitions that might get ideas about having an influence on elections and power. Most cultures, including that of NASCAR and the South in general, are waning under the sustained, designed influence of mass media and national/global homogenization of everything retail (food, clothing, etc.). We’ve all met plenty of Yankees who are as ignorant as the day is long but the Southern redneck is still the go-to stereotype.
The most notable recent cultural phenomenon is the Tea Party and you’ve see the reaction to them: the left became absolutely unglued and trotted out every ‘ism’ they could think of to suppress this (not really) new culture.
The only “ism” the libruls missed is “ignorantism”, but they have the patent on that, with their own representatives in Congress.
The Darwin Awards has been dominated by Democrats from inception. Who’d a thunkit?
A quibble:
IMSA Supermodifed cars do an excellent job of making power on alchohol. I love to watch a super mod pull one wheel into the air powering out of a corner. smells good too.
And the fuel injectors are the size of a garden hose. Fuel mileage is horrendous with alcohol (which is what ethanol is). Expect about 34% less mileage. The reason alcohol is so popular as a fuel is its cooling effects on a motor.
Two of the four auto manufacturers that participate–GM and Chrysler–are owned in part by the US government. Think they played any part in this sudden swoon toward Washington?
Tell me, when was the last time there was an on-track pass for the lead in that oh-so wonderful and exciting Formula 1?
When Alain Prost passed Ayrton Senna on the last lap of the French Grand Prix, in about 1990. I was there and saw the pass. Looking over at my friend, I said, “Hey, we just saw the last exciting moment in F1 history.”
The late fifties, all the Army brats on the block would squeeze into Sgt. Forest’s car and go off to the races on a Sat. night. Mud track, chicken wire windows on souped up hot rods. I thought it cool our music teacher at Jefferson Elementary was married to a driver. We made our own cars from artillery ammo boxes. Each had a metal rod down the middle we used for axles. Maybe those were the glory days of stock cars.
With the advent of PC, the Cab of Tomorrow err…..Car of Tomorrow and cookie cutter drivers they have managed to turn something that was mildly entertaining into soccer (sorry about that soccer fans). I flip on a NASCAR race now when I want to take a nice little siesta on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Watch the start and about the first 15 laps or so, take nap, wake up in time to watch the last 15 laps. Done and done. Great race, and boy, do I feel refreshed. I guess they are really pushing Danica Patrick now. How’s that working out? Somebody who has never won anything, but hey, she’s great eye candy and there’s always the chance she’ll have one of her meltdowns. Back to F1 and open wheel racing for me.
Then there’s this:
“NASCAR driver Danica Patrick isn’t particularly concerned about the Obama administration’s dictate that religious employers provide health care plans that cover contraceptives.
“I leave it up to the government to make good decisions for Americans,” Patrick, a Roman Catholic, told The Daily Caller Tuesday when asked about the controversy.
”
Maybe NASCAR should lie back and enjoy becoming a sub-department of the EPA. They could live off of 500 million dollar loans from the Energy Department and wouldn’t have to worry about having any fans at all.
Acxiom Corp: The ‘faceless organization that knows everything about you’ An Arkansas company you’ve probably never heard of knows more about you than some of your friends, Google, and even the FBI — and it’s selling your data POSTED ON JUNE 20, 2012
http://theweek.com/article/index/229508/acxiom-corp-the-faceless-organization-that-knows-everything-about-you
NASCAR didn’t voluntarily do anything ….as per usual Obama took a page from Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Push shakedown crime family and extorted the White Boy’s of NASCAR to do their bidding. After Nov 6th, when almost every democrat running for office is defeated, we will see a slow turn around back to the good times when the market and fan popularity drove marketing decisions and the EPA will die a rather quick death…..hopefully.
November 6th – D-Day
Have not watched any NASCAR since they formed a agreement with Jesse Jackson ,
any company they associates with this guy is not worth following or watching.
Watch Le Mans Series races and they are super, 24 hour Sebring and Lemans are great races to attend and watch on TV.
Loved the old IMSA series, Road racing is the best.
Then there’s hardly a company or a sporting event in America worth watching or following; you’ll either pay Jackson off or you’ll have people singing songs and carrying signs in front of your buildings, it will rain lawsuits, and during Democrat Administrations, you’ll have the undivided attention of the USDOJ.
OK, it’s not in America, and who knows what kind of modified (as opposed to strictly stock) blood is pumping in the racers’ bodies, but the Tour de France is great to watch, just as a free armchair tour of European countryside. For the yin and yang of racing, you have Nascar and the Tour. 8:00 am EST today, baby.
ABSOLUTELY, BarocheDique;
D Day 2012.
Death of the Obama Regime.
Seconds to all the comments, and by the way, I always turn off NFL games as soon as I see those BS, pink ribbons.
Wonder why MMA has become so popular?
NASCAR lost me when they allowed Ford to run the Taurus, a car that lacks push rods much less a V-8 but they allowed it anyway. Then things got worse when they allowed Toyota to run in all 3 series even though they lack a production push rod V-8. Old man France would never had made such a short sighted decision – he would have told Jesse Jackson to get lost and would never have givin in to the EPA and would not give two red cents for the under 25 “Hip Hop” crowd that Brian pushed in the 90′s to pacify Toyota. It’s simple – the old man started with nothing and Brian started with everything. Put down the bottle Brian and start acting like a NASCAR fan.
I have lost considerable interest in Nascar since Sterling Marin retired, but his message board introduced me to redneck internet and obviously I am still hooked on that.
You can establish some NASCAR cred if you know Sterling Marlin’s dad’s name, or at least his nickname. Well, no you can’t because you could just look it up on Wiki. So, since you spelled Sterling’s name wrong, I’m thinking you’re just making stuff up.
Challenge my NASCAR cred? Oh my!
Coo Coo. (It did take me a second or two to remember, but I had heard that great name way back when I was just reading about Nascar in the papers through the Petty’s David Pearson, Cale Y, and others, whose names are on the cusp like the father son duo, which by the time I started watching it on tv, the father was announcing when the son won the Daytona 500. I can see both of their faces…but the names? Anyway, I started following more closely when I began to watch on tv with my kids. The first year that Sterling, who the hell knows how you spell it?) won Daytona, back when he was in the Kodak car, is when I became a fan. I was also new to the internet, so when I searched for Sterling Marlin, (after much longer searches for “windsurfing” and “Thoreau”) I found the website, which probably still exists in altered form with some of the originals like Piedmont and Sharon. It was fun for a while, but there got to be too much “howdy, neighbor” (a redneck Facebook) stuff which was good for those who liked it I’m sure, but… Anyway, who can forget the day that Ironhead bought it…and Stirling’s site got considerable hate from the Earnhardt fans that afternoon. So, although I never had grease under my fingernails as a kid or work with cars the way you claim to have, I did pay a lot of attention to Nascar from the time Sterling won under (who were those Kodak car owners, back then?) They were good supposedly with restrictor plates, and not much else, until he retired. Both my kids are big Jr. fans and were thrilled when he won again a week or so ago. They have both been to live races. I should go to Loudon, sometime, I suppose, but that’s a lot of sitting around in traffic. With Stirling gone, I will turn on the race if I think of it, but don’t really care who wins. It would be nice to see Gordon come back a little, but fans of the #3, probably still despise Jeffie. I have a camo hat with number 3 on it, compliments of one son or another.
As for Stirling, back in the day, he had a Chevy dealership, hunted for Civil War relics on his farm in or near Columbia, TN, and was supposedly a tightwad. For a year or two after he retired, or was retired, they would drag him back out to race at Bristol. And, oh yeah, I met him once at some promo event, in Providence, I think; not a life-altering event.;-)
You might have noticed quite a few former F-1 drivers giving NASCAR a try and not being particularly successful
So far only failed F1 drivers go to NASCAR. You can’t possibly compare the drivers of the two series. It’s like comparing Debussy to Lady Gaga.
Montoya was not a failed F1 driver. He won there for Ganassi and Ganassi brought him to Nascar, where he is competitive, but not great.
Never followed NASCAR. Grew up on roadsters, sprinters, midgets and burnt castor oil odor, and drivers who earned their stripes on dirt. Heard the roar of the NOVI as it screamed down the backstretch and the afterfire of an Offy as it let off for the turn. Remember the response of a guy named A.J. when asked by the track announcer why he had not qualified as well as expected…”the damn thing handled like a tub full of shit”. Those were the days and never shall they return. Men were men and they talked and acted like it. Pedro from Brazil who happened to have a multi-millionaire father had not entered the game yet. I wonder what the candy-aases at the EPA would think of a squirt of nitro-methane just to goose it up a little? A.J., Al, Parnelli, and Mario retired. So did I.
I’m a Nascar fan and I don’t plan to stop watching – I refuse to inject politics into sports even if Nascar has. I see it as a necessary evil for Nascar. I don’t like that Nascar has seen fit to buddy up to the EPA but it doesn’t surprise me since Nascar uses huge amounts of fuel and other resources – and (OMG) spews tons of carbon – an evil sin in the eyes of the current admin/EPA. I’m sure Nascar was looking nervously behind them and wondering when that tap on the shoulder was coming from EPA – so any opportunity to buddy up to that governmental arm that can be a real pain in the ass seems like a great idea. Keep your friends close – and your enemies closer is perhaps that is what Nascar has in mind. As usual the EPA doesn’t really care about the resources you use or abuse – they only care that you see things the way they do. Spewing the EPA propaganda makes them your friend.
I enjoy the occasional F1 race. I tend to avoid races on narrow tracks like Monte Carlo for the reason you pointed out – whoever is on the pole is probably the winner unless a pit stop is muffed. Monte Carlo is an antiquated track and needs to modernize or die. Maybe all of the tracks laid out on city streets need to die off.
Bring back The Rock! and North Wilkesboro! You idiots!
Boring races on 1.5 mile cookie cutter tracks. Regulating the racing to death. Let em race! Sanctioning Kurt Busch for no reason whatsoever, he smart mouthed a media bobblehead.
Plain vanilla aint cuttin it.
Kurt Busch will be back in a top notch ride – maybe even next year. Kurt certainly has shown his abilities in a less than stellar car this year. His Sonoma run was remarkable given he drives for a one car team with little to no sponsorship.
Nascar’s sanction of him for his remarks to a reporter seems out of line for an organization that has a ‘let the boys have at it’ attitude. But then Nascar has seldom meted out punishment in an even-handed manner. Chad Knous’s cheating ways is an excellent example. And Chad will keep cheating and risk being found out as long as it gets Jimmy an occasional win. A few hundred thousand in fines and a 1-2 week ‘vacation’ for Chad is a cheap price for a win. Just ask Junior (or any other driver) if he’d take that bargain.
Most great Innovators never attended the Prepie Colleges ,, they were just Good Old Boys ,, looking for the chance to make a better Product.
NASCAR management is just like all government ,, think from their asxs and speak through their Butt Cheeks ,, the Good Old Boys ,, use their Brain and Mouth for those functions.
“The poverty pimps are lined up shaking down NASCAR for its “lack of diversity.”
Funny, they don’t want to “investigate” the NBA. Wonder what they would find if
they did, a certain lack of diversity maybe?
Disease on both their houses.
the writer had it right about the decline appearing around 2007….there’s much to blame Obama for…but NASCAR’s public relations games are a result of its reinvention following the tobacco advertising ban…The kinder, gentler tobacco free sport…so to speak.
NASCAR has become too technical…with all of its mechanical and diagnostic seminar presentations during races…Not much emotional appeal to a guy standing with a pointer stick describing the interior of a piston…or treadwear on a tire….good information but not quite “boogety, boogety, boogety”….
Everyone wears headphones…including the bleacher fans now…when did that happen? Getting to video-gamish with the technology….fans watching on TV just don’t get it.
NASCAR has become one big infomercial…..everyone is there to serve the ultimate master….the sponsor.
Cookie-cutter cars? Thats an understatement….Which teams aren’t using a Rick Hendrick motor these days? Are their any? I mean….teams borrow motors from their competitors for a race? Thats like “da Bears” loaning their cleats to the Packers because the uniforms were delayed on a flight…That is not “competition”….
I used to be a NASCAR fan too…but tinkering with the ridiculous points system that it now has was the final straw for me….When a driver and win the championship without technically winning a single race…and the second place guy in the points total has four or five wins….how does that wash with the “champion” never having rolled into the “winners circle” all season?
NASCAR has lost its identity as a sport….thats what went wrong.
Yeah, it’s still Winston Cup (or should be)to me.
I also have drifted away the last few years but the last couple months I have drifted back.
I would agree the political correctness has hurt some. Less over the fuel and more that not letting drivers be people. There has been too many races added to boring tracks, 1.5mile ovals. There was too much monkeying with the points structures where the best drive not necessarily win the champ. The fact they had the same driver win the champ for 5 years sucked for many. The addition of Toyota did nothing for me.
I can say I have been watching some recently and it seems to be getting better. Of course some tracks are boring. They are little too childish with drivers and they ethanol push is silliness.. The one thing that has helped is there seems to be different winners this year, which is helping.
Money, political correctness, and dims whining have hurt the sport (like letting the military sponcer cars)… I hope it gets better. Track attendance is mostly a recession thing. Not just the cost of tickets bet getting there and home can be pricey if you do not live within an hour of the track.
Interesting that a sport bred and birthed by a culture committed to evading, or at least avoiding the LAW is now governed by some of the most nit-picking, obscure, technical, WTH*** rules, regulations and overly organized CZARS since WWII Washington.
Talk about mainstreaming, that has gone too far as well. When the live camera coverage carefully avoids showing the banks of unoccupied seats, and empty trackside condos, and censor the Boos and Catcalls on the Distaff WH Occupants appearance, the odor of corruption of principals outweighs the burnout smoke.
The ultimate insult to the sport will be the day Wall Street adds ‘Paid Track Attendance’ to the list of ‘Leading’ or more likely ‘Concurrent’ Economic Indicators.
The best memories, and the high point in racing are the stories of loading the family in the race car, after replacing the seats and street necessary equipment and driving to the next week’s track. Depending on the purse collected, gas, tires, parts and meals should get them there. A good finish position also paid for a motel, otherwise, sleep in the car. A poor race record and the driver farmed out the ride to a ‘Shine Bootlegger in the off season. Sponsors rarely paid for much more than the car’s paint job. A hard life for sure but a step up from scratching out a subsistance from farmed out vertical fields on the homestead.
And imagine my surprise when my son (after Junior’s victory) informed me that Michigan is now the fastest track. Michigan without restrictor plates is faster than Talladega or Daytona. How long will they let that go on? Good old boys/farts should want to let the boys race…and if they die, they die.
“France opened NASCAR’s New York City office in 1997, designed to enhance the sports sponsorship sales and marketing efforts.” — http://www.jayski.com/teams/billfrance.htm
Hmm. I wonder how they got in this mess. Could it be that the folks in NYC think this is how to market racing? It is how they think everything else should be marketed. I wonder how long it will take the Frances to figure out they have s–t in their mess kit.
Good job Mark, NASCAR has become booring.
If you keep nearly hitting the nail on the head you will end up with a dad gum sore thumb. NASCAR fans do not embrace the Ethanol stupidity, nor do they embrace the AGW stupidity. They are victimized by a useless third generation sanctioning family member named Brian France. He has never earned a penny of his own money, he is a drunk, he is very stupid, and he has bought the storyline from the EPA. That line is basically government extortion such that if you don’t support the government’s green energy agenda, you will be shut down by the slapping of fuel mileage and emissions standards on your so called stock cars. Brian France has capitulated and NASCAR has gone politically correct. Imagine that. Just like most of the large businesses in the United States. Please leave us alone, Mr Government Regulator sir, and we will support any of your completely destructive agendas, and we will support your Fascist candidate for President.
The racing is still very good, in fact as good as it has ever been. The number of wrecks and the carnage is down and that is what the fans will pay big money to see. The problem is Fascism, pure and simple. Get used to it folks, it is our collectivist future.
The diversity program has been around since the Clinton administration, and has yet to produce even one minority driver who has managed to succeed at the higher levels of the sport. The costs are too high for a poor kid to get into racing, and many of the poor are minorities. This effort will never deter the Democrat Party from messing with NASCAR though by citing a “lack of diversity”. As long as NASCAR fans are the biggest identifiable voting block who overwhelmingly support non-communists, the Dems will try to destroy the product. At the very least, there is constant derision aimed at the “typical NASCAR fan”, with the objective being to make people more reluctant to go to NASCAR events. It is now working. Get used to it folks, it is our collectivist future.
The problem is big government, not NASCAR. NASCAR is just one of many businesses doing what they have to do to survive in a Fascist economy. The only way to fix NASCAR(and a lot of other stuff) will be to throw these Communist dirt bags out on their collectivist asses this November! ABO2012
Watching cars drive in an oval for 3 hours??? No thank you. i feel sorry for the idiot tv hosts who have to find s**t to talk about for those three seemingly eternal hours. Nascar has kissed the ring of the liberal establishment.
Organizations get flabby when their creators move on, then drift to the left, then wither away. The interests of the people change over time, nothing wrong with that. Circle of life, baby.
But let’s agree that the Unites States of America, land of the free and home of the brave endures, right? Right?
And the other green scandal barely reported, NASCAR’s forced involvement in February 2011′s Chevrolet Volt 400 … http://placeitonluckydan.com/2011/05/nascar-pulls-plug-on-chevrolet-volt-400/
The reason why race car drivers prefer alcohol fuels (either methanol or ethanol) is that they are very high octane (over 106). Thus they can make use of high compression engines and generate a great deal of horsepower in a comparatively compact and lightweight power plant. In addition, alcohol fuels are much safer, because they are less flammable than gasoline and, unlike gasoline, alcohol fires can be put out with water.
It is not a matter of political correctness. Alcohol fuels are simply the superior choice for the racing application. That’s why many drivers have used them for the past half century.