If the championship was already decided with five races still to be run, would any of you stop watching the remaining races? I'm betting you would still watch the last five races. So I don't think the championship has to go down to the last race. The way things are now, the first 26 races are mostly irrelevant, except to hardcore fans, and they will watch anyway. The last 10 races, are not relevant to casual fans, with the exception of races 3,6,9, and 10. I'm not sure races 3,6, and 9, really matter much to casual fans, because if they haven't been following the sport all year, they can watch the last race, and see the championship decided then. It would seem to me that casual fans would become more interested, if the core fanbase started to come back. The sport of NASCAR will never be as big as it was at it's peak. The fanbase grows by word of mouth, person to person. With that in mind, the core fanbase must be happy with the racing on the track, and it doesn't seem like hardly anybody is happy with what we have. So how does NASCAR expect to grow the fanbase, when the hardcore fans aren't happy with what we have? How do you expect your friends feel about the sport, when all they hear is how bad things are? I don't think it makes them more interested in following the sport. The bottom line is, things will not get better, until a true race fan is running the sport.
