^Yep, same old, same old. Racing shines in the boom times and suffers in the down years. With the novelty of the NextGen car wearing off, it'll take more than new aero parts to get the average fan excited.
Driver personality should be a distant 3rd on the list of reasons to watch racing. No amount of advertising is going to change how fans truly relate to a particular driver anyway. Should Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin's sponsors force them to make more public appearances? Probably, but at the end...
They still need another $5 million from the state for structural improvements before the notion of a NASCAR event can even be entertained, but sounds like it's going to happen.
It has more to do with the decline in NASCAR's popularity overall. Kyle Busch and Chase Elliott are close to "household names" and Ryan Blaney isn't far behind, but the complete corporatization of the sport will never allow driver popularity to return to the glory days of the '70s-early 2000's.
^It could have been a lot worse with only 5 streaming races on a platform most people already have. I'm sure the FOX/NBC races will be streamed on the Fox Sports and Peacock apps.