Since I'm one of the few it seems that are against said F1 drivers giving NASCAR a shot, it got me to thinking today, something that is very unusual.
Anyway, I know that I have a prejudice on this in the sport, but what is that prejudice? I think that what it is is that those guys who are trying to come in and "take over" my sport is that English is a second language to them. There, I said it. What got me to thinking about this was the fact that while I'm a bit miffed at JPM coming in with a storm and to open arms all over the place, It didn't bother me in the least that last year Paul Tracy gave the Busch series a try and that Marcos Ambrose is learning the ropes from the bottom up. Both of those foreigners have English as their primary language, but what's more is that they didn't come in and are attempting to go for the gold at the top of the sport. Remember, it was JPM who said that he isn't just trying to do well, but that he is trying to win it all, meaning the title.
I'm not against new drivers coming into the sport from around the world, but what that does is to dilute the American pool of drivers. That's what happened in the open wheel cars and yes, you do get the very best, but I couldn't care less (notice I said it correctly because I
couldn't care less) about some foreigner taking home the big trophy.
We all live close to some sort of local racing and that is where today's big time drivers get their start. When the team owners began to look at more than just the southern states for hot shot drivers, it allowed for people from all over this country to hope that some kid from their local track can make it in the big time. Made it a bit harder for those southern boys when the rest of the country opened up though. Now it will be even harder for an American boy or girl to make it in the bigs, especially when more and more teams are being owned by open wheel owners. Also, it's obvious that NASCAR wants more of this because of it's diversity drive, so this isn't something that will soon die out.
Many people have been saying for a few years that this sport has reached it's peak and is heading back down again, but I don't agree with that. It's still growing and there's still plenty of room for growth all over the country. But I will say this though, when there are more foreign drivers on the track than American, the sport will begin to decline in popularity quickly. Call it prejudice, or what ever you want, but people will watch what they want and I believe that they will want American drivers.
