Race tracks encompass facilities measured in miles, NFL surrounds a field measured in yards. You analogy would apply better to a place like Bowman Gray.
it will go over like a fart in a spacesuit! I'm wondering if NASCAR knew he was up to this stuff, so gave him the cease & desist; or if he's doing this stuff in response to the C&D. he mostly played nice with NASCAR up until this spring.
interesting to see that the only team whose value is on an upward trajectory is shr. shr can point to the danica effect! amazing!!! btw...babson was just rated the number one school value!!
Here is something that I've never understood about NASCAR. They'll fine a team and dock points for the slightest infractions, such as in this case with the Hamlin car at last weekend's Indy 400 because, as the Autosport article states "The car was seized for inspection after the series detected irregularities with the covers on the rear firewall of the driver compartment." Boy, this is a new one. Who knew that the covers on the rear firewall could help generate downforce? Sounds a bit ticky-tack but the infraction is so egregious that the JGR team is penalized 75 points and the crew chief fined $125,000. First, these fire wall covers theoretically are up out of the airflow, how could they possibly generate downforce? And, how could NASCAR inspectors possibly know to point this out after the car finished third? Here is the rub. We routinely see in NASCAR races after a "big one", notably at Daytonner and Talledegger cars virtually destroyed, taken back into the garages where the teams have a thrash, stripping away body work (and whatever else). Then, NASCAR allows these cars back onto the track where they run as virtual mobile chicanes 50MPH off the pace, dropping parts and pieces all over the track and causing further incidents but NASCAR has nothing to say about this. NASCAR draws a very jagged line when it comes to stuff like this. We must imagine that someone in the Hamlin JGR team must have threatened to step out of line and express his opinions to the hierarchy which never goes down well. http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/115203 BHW
A fun piece indeed, read though it twice. Andrew Maness has definitely dropped a hand grenade in the room as, no matter what anyone says or thinks, NASCAR does not take kindly to anyone opening their books for them in such a public way. The fact that he utilizes the information that is available through the SEC is telling though and he may even dig deeper if he so chooses into local licensing and permitting of events all of which should also be a matter of pubic record. Do we honestly think that by 2024 NASCAR will be able to demand upward of a billion dollars to sell their broadcast rights? There are going to be some revisions as if the current TV ratings and attendance figures continue to drop, there is no way networks will pony up that type of money. BHW
here's my prediction, follow up in 10 years NASCAR in 2025 will be buying TV network time in the way CART and IRL had to for most of the last decade. Indycar will have a ratings resurgance, probably nowhere close to pre-split days but well ahead of where they are now. Sports cars are the wild card...if they remain under NASCAR/France family ownership they will be held back to keep a gap to NASCAR (don't want a subsidiary upstaging the main show). if sports cars are bought by another entity, merged with FIA WEC, or something else, we could see a great period of sports car racing from 2017-2025 or so. GRC will become the new "emerging" motorsport and do very well. it won't be sustainable, look at MotoX and WRC, both of which had a ratings/buzz boost but quickly faltered. young markets are fickle.
There was a time when NASCAR was king of the hill. The Daytona 500 would sell out year after year and they kept adding seats to meet the demand. There was a time I wouldn't have been surprised if they had built stands all the way around the track. Then around 2007 the tide turned and the crowds and interest began to wane. When the bottom fell out of the economy many including NASCAR fans were hit hard. Stock Car racing's foundation is built on the working man. The guy's with little disposable income. Sure you can find the guys with the latest Prevost parked in the infield but its the guys at the other end in turns 3 and 4 sleeping under a tarp in the back of their 80s pickup that helped NASAR rise to it's glory days and their money became harder to come by and hardly disposable. Around the same time the digital age had firmly taken hold of the public masses. Everyone now has a cell phone and more importantly a " digital device ". It has changed our every day life and many people have become tethered to their device commanding their undivided attention. The attention part is key to the problem. There was a time when the Daytona 500 happened you either saw it live at the track or you sat in front of the TV and watched the whole telecast as it happens. People today have so many options to watch a race at their connivence they are no longer willing to attend a race or watch it live. They can record it, watch Race Buddy on the internet or catch a youtube highlight if they can pull themselves away from their Facebook. People also seem to have less of an attention span. There was a time when a race was a day long event and people were happy to spend all day watching it. Now people can't be bothered to sit through a taped 500 mile race fast forwarding through the commercials. The combination of the failing economy and the massive, attention diverting options the digital age has presented us plays a big part in NASCAR fading. That generation of die hard NASCAR fans is being replaced by a digital generation with little attention span and focused on their devices and social media. What I experienced at a big Rock concert in the 70s is far different than how people experience a concert with phones held up for a digital connection. Those growing up in the current digital age will have little desire to sit all day in the stands and watch cars go by. I don't believe NASCAR will ever reach the peak it once experienced. Not because they throw too many GWC or phantom yellows or too many commercials or whatever you think irks you. I think we are in different times now and old school can't sustain it any longer and our replacements won't care. If NASCAR fails there won't be anything different to replace it at the same magnitude. That organization is like a wind tunnel. You can change the body all you want but the wind will always bring you back to the fastest design. Any organization that makes big changes from the way NASCAR ran things would eventually find out NASCAR was on a better track. At some point the government and EPA and whatever else will get their hands on auto racing and it will change. Perhaps race cars will be electric or hydrogen powered so their racing on Sunday will sell the cars of that time on Monday. That may take fifty years but the shift towards that has already begun. Hate NASCAR all you want but it really is the barometer for all Motor sports in the US at least. If it does fail it won't be because it is a lousy show and it certainly won't be replaced by something bigger and better. It will be a sign of the times and those times are rapidly changing. The death of NASCAR is not a good thing for motor sports. Be careful what you wish for.
I disagree. NASCAR was a distant second to Indycar until the split (which some say was carefully engineered, or at least assisted, by the Frances). I do think that all traditional forms of racing have seen their glory days; but I don't think that NASCAR will drag American motorsport down with it. in fact, I think it hogs resources that would be much better used elsewhere.
I tend to ramble but the point I was trying to make is today there are so many ways to capture the public's attention the slice of pie motor sports enjoyed is shrinking. I put NASCAR at the top but I don't think it matters. Put Indy or NHRA at the top and they would fade too. Like you say the glory days are gone but at least we got to experience them.
your position on nascar and their ownership of sportsar racing is consistent with mine. you did forget to predict the sale of road a in the next 5 years to a real estate developer however...I will let that slide
that will be one of the most tragic things to ever happen although those rumors have been around for years and I still don't see it (there's not a ton of development in the immediate area, and a lot of that was Panoz-related-Chateau Elan, golf courses, luxury homes and support businesses). Sebring on the other hand will be around past the nuclear apocalypse, we'll have cockroach racing!
I personally don't hate nascar...I simply hate the way the france family has let their greed get the best of the sport. stra8...the only item you missed in your commentary preceded the 2007 decline. do remember that the first hit to the true core nascar fan came in the late 90's when the old nascar drivers guard were being replaced with young drivers with slick hair and sunglasses...the marketeers began to take over...the beginning of the end!!!
My personal experience with NASCAR only goes back to about 1992. As a kid I only watched the Indy 500 on Wide World of Sports. Most if not all of my time was spent chasing waves and bikinis at the beach. When Indy had the split I quit watching. When I moved close to Daytona Speedway I started going to the races and it drew me in. I didn't like sports car racing until I started driving them on all the tracks in videos games and that got me going to the Rolex 24 and Sebring. Now I like it all but the vintage stuff really interests me as I like to see how it used to be. You are right with the first hit to the core NASCAR fans came when they made a conscious effort to ditch the back woods redneck stereotype that still lives today and reach out for a broader audience. I'm sure the hard core fans took offense to it but the sponsors liked it and the money started rolling in. There are some great drivers like Ned Jarrett who's entire career winnings doesn't amount to the single purse for today's Brickyard 400. Junior Johnson was resistant to change and I bet he never imagined NASCAR would get as big as it did. Back then those guys were trying to break even and now we have multi millionaire drivers that own and fly their own jets to the track. NASCAR reached their peak and it's downhill from here.
Greed, for lack of a better word, has become NASCAR's undoing. As we've seen, the Frances (NASCAR, ISC, et.al.) see a dollar spent on any other form of racing than NASCAR as a dollar lost that they will stop at nothing to recoup. This is their unshakable attitude and rather than all forms of racing co-existing together and doing their own thing, NASCAR sees any other form of racing as an "Us vs. Them" situation which isn't an especially healthy attitude. The problem becomes when they control a virtual monopoly over all of motor sports in North America (which not only includes racing series but many of the tracks), the choices become less and less for the viewing public as it is obvious that they want to funnel everything back into NASCAR. From the advent of the COT, NASCAR has exerted its iron fisted grip on the teams and while negotiating stratospheric sums in broadcast rights from network partners, the teams have been left by the wayside to fend for themselves. There are ever rising costs to the teams that go directly into the NASCAR coffers and this is the major part of the blowback they'll be receiving in the form of this "union" they're forming. The teams want a say in matters and this is where they'll be at loggerheads as NASCAR is all about control. But, if (say) one or two of the participating manufacturers decide to withdraw, where will NASCAR be then? The attitudes need to be adjusted, they need to put cars on the track that are relevant which the average fan may identify with and, for goodness sake, knock off all the "manufactured drama" nonsense and just go racing already. BHW
On another note I am watching 'NASCAR RaceDay' and John Roberts brought up a question for Kenny and Jeff and the question was "Would you allow a teammate to pass you for a win and a shot at getting into 'The Chase' while still helping the team as a whole. Of course Kenny was torn and Jeff was totally against it but that was not the funny part. Both Kenny and Jeff said on air "Let the Champagne Racers of F1 do that" and just before they cut to break you hear John say "We have Bernie Ecclestone on the phone" and then they cut to a commercial. There was no further mention of it after the commercial break, Bernie must have chewed some ass.
Serious as a heart attack. I chalk it up to the delay they run on so they knew exactly when to say "CUT!!!!".
what a great prelude to the race today. by the way...of course there will be racers taking a dive shortly in order to get their teammates into the chase...just not done as obviously as clint bowyer and jimmy j did last year. yes...jimmy j was as bad an offender as clint. funny how his car just stopped performing after he had locked up his berth
