re: NASCAR's Amazing Screwup

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Your Southern "good ole boys", who made up the largest fan demographic, aren't going to continue to watch a sport that abandoned the old Southern tracks

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Then there’s no harm in the decision they made.

If you’re mad about the Confederate battle flag being banned then you’re a fricking loser

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Your Southern "good ole boys", who made up the largest fan demographic, aren't going to continue to watch a sport that abandoned the old Southern tracks for one's in Yankee states, nor do they want to be told what flag they can or can't fly at a tailgate for a race they paid to attend.

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My good man, I do appreciate you capitalizing "Yankee" like that.

I'm not sure it's a proper noun (word play intended) but I appreciate it nonetheless.

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What was the cause of NASCAR’s initial decline in popularity?

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The govt banned tobacco companies from being sponsors.

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NASCAR declined for a couple of major reasons. For about a 10-15 year stretch the product they put on the track absolutely sucked. They tried to create parity and in an effort to do so they royally fricked the cars up.

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The triple threat of what you said, old fans' drivers retiring, and the recession was the bigger picture of the decline imo. It makes a lot of sense when the older fans can ask why watch when

1. my driver isn't around anymore

2. the product isn't as engaging as the 80s-90s, so hard to care about the field and get a new driver

3. I don't want to drop $500 I don't have for a family of four to watch something I'm not that interested in anymore

I love watching it now and while the 1.5-ers can use some serious work, the ST/super speedway package has been incredibly more entertaining than the couple seasons prior. Cautiously hopeful for the Gen 7 when they'll essentially be running V8 supercars

NASCAR shifting to a series focused on short track racing and more road and street circuits I think is a good plan. Run the short tracks on weekday nights for the TV ratings

Run super speedways and road and street courses on the weekends.

Getting some street circuit races in major cities is how they can attract a younger crowd. Bring the race to them (also applies to racing at COTA).

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People enjoy the drama and the politics, and I think the bleeding edge technology of those cars (even though they don’t care about street cars that much).

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And the amazing tracks they race on. It's not just a fricking circle for 4 hours

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And the amazing tracks they race on. It's not just a fricking circle for 4 hours

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This is getting into the realm of personal opinion but a lot of F1 tracks suck. I’m not going to compare them to ovals because the racing is so different.

America has better road courses than a lot of the F1 stops. Road America, Laguna Seca, Watkins Glen, Road Atlanta, Sebring, Lime Rock, the Long Beach Grand Prix street circuit are all up there or above pretty much all the F1 stops outside of Spa and Silverstone.

Just off the top of my head F1 tracks that produce boring races more often than not (wet races excepted):

China
Baku (not terrible but all the passes happen on the one straight, no defense when they’ve got DRS)
Abu Dhabi
Monaco
SOCHI
PAUL RICARD
Hockenheim
Australia/Albert Park
Barcelona (not terrible but outside of the first sector it’s pretty bleh)

Zandovort and Vietnam are probably going to suck as well


***all caps indicates totally unredeemable circuits, just total garbage

I watched nascar every week back in the day. I was a mark martin and tony Stewart fan plus I didn’t like Johnson or hindrixs motorsports I was a joe Gibbs racing fan.

Over the years as Stewart, martin, johnson, Gordon, Earnhardt jr, and other older drivers started being replaced by younger drivers I slowly stopped watching.

Now I’ll occasionally watch some of a race and will continue if I’m flipping channels

On a side note I’ve rode around the track at Daytona and touched the wall where Earnhardt crashed and burned. It’s a hell of a steep track more than I realized just watching it on tv. Then we got to go into the outfield building where they meet prior to races and to champions circle etc..... pretty cool experience.