What Happened to NASCAR?? (Spinoff Thread)

Yep, nobody watches and no one cares. Good call

I've been a fan for 15 years and my interest in it has done nothing but increase

I think it's the most watched sport behind football and baseball.

I just can't watch cars go in a circle. I know it is much more nuanced and competitive than that and I'm not disparaging it at all. I just can't watch it for more than 3-5 min.

I stopped watching with the introduction of restrictor plates and crap like making all the cars the fricking same. This was a real race car.

Brian France happened.

quote:

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shortly after Dale Earnhardt died, NASCAR was arguably the second most popular spectator sport behind football in America

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oh for fricks sake

I'll say a few things, firstly the talk of NASCAR's demise has been wayyyyy overstated. People make the "decline" seem way bigger than it actually is

Now some problems I see that have happened is that the chase, while actually a good thing IMO as long as you realize it lessens the significance of winning a championship, alienated a lot of the older fans.

Used to be that NASCAR arguably had the mist legit champ in Sports bc the driver who win it had to run well the entirety of the season and couldn't just get hot at the end. Now NASCAR is much like the other big 4 sports in that while you have to perform well enough to reach the playoffs, you don't have to be one of the elite teams to win it if you get hit at the right time

Now as far as the product on the race track, they have increasingly added downforce and made the tires too good to where there is not much tire wear at most tracks. this makes it much easier to drive the car and takes much of the results out of the drivers hands and into the equipment while also making it harder to pass (being able to pass creates good racing).

Supposedly they have recognized this issue and had Goodyear make tired that will give up as a run goes on and have swapped to a package with less downforce. Fixing those two things will go a long way to improving the racing

Finally I'll say they messed up when they left tracks like Rockingham and went to tracks like California and Kansas. There is a place for a track or two of that style on the schedule but it became overloaded with them, the "back to its roots" meme is overplayed but this is a case where it's necessary.

The good news is they seem to have recognized the down force/tire wear problem and IMO the track situation will take care of itself over the next 10-15 years as those tracks fade in attendance (racing was more of a fad in those areas) NASCAR will be forced to return to tracks that can draw

3 minutes of race followed by 10 minutes of commercials was enough to make me turn it off.