Detroit: Say "No" to NASCAR

[Overpaid Slacker]

This would be a real kick in the balls to NASCAR.

I'm all for it.

JP

*apologies in advance if this has been posted before, the piece is a week old.

[BlueSkyJaunte]

I love AE. The Cayenne trashing there is a high art form.

[cstreit]

Haha, I'm famous on Autoextremist.com!

Browsing around I found an old picture of myself on a hotrod!

This page: http://autoextremist.com/action/

[Jeff Higgins]

$225M spent between three companies to compete for one year. How many races? Thirty some odd? Doesn't Ferrari spend $500M all by themselves for 18 F1 races a year? I wonder what Cadillac was spending on the Le Mans effort. NASCAR sounds like cheap racing exposure to me. I'm not a big fan or anything, but it seems to me every fan worth their pinch of Skoal knows damn good and well who drives which brands. The mass audience NASCAR appeals to probably wouldn't know the technical differences between brands even if they were allowed to be any different. They probably don't even understand that the Monte Carlos, Tauruses, and Intrepids they are watching are not even close to what they can buy; they are actually a huge step backwards - the very finest in early '60's technology. And they probably wouldn't care. Detroit knows this and they know the market they are selling to with this exposure - a rather technically unsophisticated one.

[techweenie]

Hasn't this always been the way with the lower end of the racing scale?

I mean NASCAR is now the WWF of auto racing, so why should 'substance' matter? So what if there isn't a Chevrolet molecule in a NASCAR Monte Carlo?

Isn't drag racing the same? I seem to recall Chevy fans getting all puffed up and proud about fiberglass-bodied "Novas" that actually had Chrysler Hemi engines...

It's all the 'show' as AE points out. I wonder how much the car brand matters to NASCAR fans, really. I look at those races and I see Tide and Viagra and Coke more readily than I can discern what minor cosmetics distinguish the car brands...

[ronin]

this says it best:

NASCAR makes no bones about the fact that it believes it can get along just fine without Detroit, either. Moving closer to even more of a "spec car" series in the interest of "the show," NASCAR is contemplating building the center sections of the cars and only allowing teams to finish them off for their particular "brands" at their shops - all in the interest of making the cars as identical as possible. NASCAR has even discussed making and selling "spec" engines that remove any chance for a manufacturer to exploit any engineering advantage discovered. Heaven forbid a manufacturer be actually encouraged to use racing for what it has always been used for - to push the envelope, to innovate and to explore new technologies that end up improving production cars that we can all enjoy on the street.

most of my friends complain about the current state of F1, as it is wont to be dominated by one team at a time and supposedly therefore does not make for "good racing." they say, in comparison to F1, that NASCAR is exciting because it's anyone's game on any given weekend. to some this is viewed as a level playing field. to me it's incosistency

I'm not interested in a spec series where the win is mostly determined by luck in lieu of skill. I would rather watch a Schumi-take-all event repeatedly than one where the result is not the direct effort of the team, but one of the "fairness" of the rules. they contend that "someone else should win for a change." well, let those willing to put forth every last effort in the ways of the current Ferrari team rise to the top. as deLorenzo alludes, let the end result of the race weekend trickle down to my production car in the form of better technology instead of the cost of NASCAR branding

cool pick for a thread, JP!

[VaSteve]

I still think that the best way to run NASCAR would be to bring a trailerload of new Monte Carlos or Tauruses or whatever to the track. The drivers would then select their favorite color based on Points won and see who was the best driver. If a driver was lucky they could have heated seats or cruise control if it was installed at the factory.

[motion]

NASCRAP needs to revert back to the late 60's "Locomotive Racing". Showroom stock cars with 800 HP motors and DOT tires. Then we'll see who the real drivers are. And the fans will truly have something to identify with. Heck, if DJ wins on Sunday, I'll bet Taurus sales would be through the roof on Monday.

[dd74]

DeLorenzo speaks the truth. NASCAR is about NASCAR and little else. Because it wants to be the leading race series in the U.S., NASCAR has stomped out all potential challenges to its existence. Case in point: the European saloon series where the modified Audis, BMWs and Alfas, etc. run. That's like NASCAR in Europe - lots of paint trading, wrecks, etc., but with cars that run road courses, not ovals. This series wanted to come stateside, and NASCAR said no way. And it never happened. Incidentally, the Euro cars are much closer to what is bought on the showroom floor than anything which runs in NASCAR - not that NASCAR cares about that.

A long time ago, I was friends with a woman named Wendy Hewlett. She and her brother were the heirs to the Hewlett transmission company, and very active in motorsports. Wendy (who is British) talked to NASCAR about introducing their transmissions into their race cars. She was quickly escorted away with NASCAR saying they'd never consider anything foreign in their cars - or read differently, unNASCAR-like.

One thing DeLorenzo has wrong is Cadillac is becoming quite popular in racing once again. Their CTS with the Vette engine absolutely trounced the competition in the last Speedvision series (I think). It was such a sound beating that the Caddy teams had to add sixty or seventy pounds of balast to their cars to stay "fair."

But NASCAR - I'm leaning away from it. The racing is boring, the drivers act like NBA players, and "improving the brand" can never happen when NASCAR's typical race engine still uses a carburetor. As a matter of fact, NASCAR as far as it improving the breed (or failure to do so), could be a reason why the Taurus, Monte Carlo and Intrepid are such dull and often times lousy cars.

[Jeff Higgins]

I'll second that "WWF of racing" comment. It seems the racing highlight shows used to show nothing but wrecks from NASCAR, now they show the fights. Tony Schumacher is a real piece of work; how many times would Michael have to punch out some one before he lost his super license? NASCAR could stop that nonsense in a heartbeat, but the audience they cater to would object. Wrecks and fights; you mean there was a race, too? I remember Buddy Baker a couple of years back telling David Hobbs "well golleeeee, David we'se less'n halfway through the Daiyatone-a five hundert and we'se already had more lead changes than a whole yee-ar of F1". No racing, just lots of lead changes. It's like basketball vs. soccer; "action" means lots of scoring ("lead changes") and the strategy of the game is lost on unsophisticated American fans. They play to their audience.

[tchanson]

Originally posted by dd74
Case in point: the European saloon series where the modified Audis, BMWs and Alfas, etc. run. That's like NASCAR in Europe - lots of paint trading, wrecks, etc., but with cars that run road courses, not ovals. This series wanted to come stateside, and NASCAR said no way. And it never happened.

Well, as an aside, that overlooks the defunct NATCC that existed here '96 and '97, which, if I recall, ran to FIA specs similar to the BTCC at the time.



There was some great racing in that short lived series between Pobst, Donohue, Murry, Millen et al.

I would more heavily credit, among other factors, simply not enough interest (and the road racing audience being infinitely smaller) for its demise rather than the nefarious hand of the France family.

That being said, though, I generally agree with PDL's comments questioning the bang for the marketing buck that manufacturers get from their participation in NASCAR. And, NASCAR can be blamed for many things, but the Taurus, Monte Carlo and Intrepid achieved their mediocrity all on their own.


Tim

[dd74]

Tim - good point. I forgot about the BTCC. In fact, I pitched a story to the L.A. Times sports department about the BTCC with the angle that it was being forced out by NASCAR.

The irony was, no one, not even the auto racing editor, had heard of the BTCC, thus they passed on the story.