Nascar and it’s identity crisis

     For those of you that haven’t been following along, NASCAR has stepped up efforts as far as expanding the fan base and expanding the sport all together. This involves things such as bringing NASCAR to the streets of Chicago, running an exhibition race inside of the LA Coliseum, Garage 56, and talking to other countries about potentially hosting a NASCAR race there. While that’s going on, we also have a resurgence in international drivers as well as drivers from different backgrounds making more appearances, so you would think that NASCAR fans shouldn’t have any problems with this right?

     Well how about NASCAR also delivering some returns to the past and keeping its core fanbase in the south East happy. How about NASCAR reviving North Wilksboro Speedway for the all star race, or talks about bringing back “The Rock”, a track that last saw Cup series action in 2004 that has also been revamped and ready for a race date. NASCAR tried the Bristol dirt experiment and went back to concrete a few weeks ago and that race was, in my opinion one of the best races I’ve watched.  There wouldn’t be any problems with this fan base right?

     For the most part I think fans like the different things that NASCAR has been doing to grow the sport….well most fans. There are still a lot of fans out there or even people within the NASCAR industry that seem to want NASCAR to stay in the majority south eastern region, and scrap a few of the recent tracks and ideas for NASCAR to “return to its roots”. You have others that think NASCAR should be more focused on the future rather than giving fans a blast from the past nostalgic race dates such as the all star race last year, or the early opinions on NASCAR taking over Bowman Grey. 

   With basically two ideologies clashing, and this past weekend at COTA showing that NASCAR may have to do some tweets at least to one specific rule (track limits), and what’s looked at by the rest of the world as a very aggressive and sometimes classless association, NASCAR is going to have to clean up the edges a little bit to really help the sport grow. We’ve had at least 5 star talents in other disciplines of racing attempt a NASCAR Cup race in the last year with many saying how over aggressive it is. It seems like international guys get the same “welcome to NASCAR” moment but some contact has been a little mind boggling such was Ricky Stenhouse Jr versus international drivers Jenson Button and especially WEC superstar Kamui Kobayashi. The only guy successful for the most part has been Shane Van Gisbergen who came from supercars so he knows aggressive elbows out driving, but even he said maybe track limits should be a strike system instead of a pass through or 30 second penalty off of the first track limits. 

    However my biggest concern is with a very loud and rude while small part of the fanbase claiming every move that NASCAR makes that doesn’t involve a racetrack in the middle of no where in some south eastern county “woke” or “killing the sport”. You can argue that this group is in the minority which it is but it’s a slap to the face when the sport itself is trying to shake the stereotypes once and for all. People will say NASCAR is dead but tune in every race, or my favorite part, folks will say “didn’t watch” but somehow have all the know on what happened during the race. This same group doesn’t like a specific driver in the Cup series garage over a 2020 incident. This group didn’t like the Clash at the Coliseum, yet they want the clash to be at bowman gray or north wilksboro….in February, or return to Daytona….where they also complained. Or better yet, folks complaining about Chicago because 1. It’s Chicago, and 2. They claim that Road America cup should have stayed even though it was called boring. Again a small group of people but when you look under almost every NASCAR social media post, they are there by the 100s commenting negatively on the things NASCAR does to grow.  Add that in with the fact that one driver who was suspended for a slur seemed to have gained a lot of fans overnight from what he already had, just a few things to keep stereotypes alive and what’s probably hindering the sport from growing even more. 

    All in all NASCAR has made a lot of changes over the past few years that could be seen as good or bad based on opinion, but one thing that is a fact…this sport looks way better now than it did around 2015-2019. I also think now is as good of a time as ever to try to expand and get new markets and leave the stereotypes behind. Change is a necessity and expanding is definitely needed for NASCAR considering how many tracks are relatively close to each other. I hope the future stays strong as it looks bright now.