BREAKING: Majority owners explore sale of NASCAR

If anyone wanted to know the real reason I quit, the last 2 pages of exchanges (I can't classify them as conversation) show exactly why.
What a lovely display of snark, venom, and bile. I just got tired of asking adults to behave like adults.
This once was a fun place to chat and have civil discussions --- even when we didn't agree on a subject.
 
TexasRaceLady said:
If anyone wanted to know the real reason I quit, the last 2 pages of exchanges (I can't classify them as conversation) show exactly why.
What a lovely display of snark, venom, and bile. I just got tired of asking adults to behave like adults.
This once was a fun place to chat and have civil discussions --- even when we didn't agree on a subject.
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racing-forums.com has become a tough read these days for many I think. There was a day in time that you had to request access to the Podium. Now it comes with the price of admission.
 
If they keep after it long enough and are persistent enough they manage to insult just about everybody. When you can't post anything without a problem, oh yeah there are a whole lot of reasons that violate common decency.
 
TexasRaceLady said:
If anyone wanted to know the real reason I quit, the last 2 pages of exchanges (I can't classify them as conversation) show exactly why.
What a lovely display of snark, venom, and bile. I just got tired of asking adults to behave like adults.
This once was a fun place to chat and have civil discussions --- even when we didn't agree on a subject.
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I don’t think anyone thought it was anything else
 
Revman said:
Is this sport or entertainment? I know....another thread. Why is the world wide appeal of F1 a bad thing? We also have the WRC growing. Why? In some parts of this amazing world, people actually still like cars I guess.
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There are HUNDREDS of sports out there. Only a small handful are entertaining enough to have any kind of serious following or generate real revenue for those involved with it. Look at Title 9 in American colleges. Right or wrong, the colleges have to fund dozens of different sports so nobody gets "left out", but it's also true that in 98% of the cases, only 1-3 of those sports actually generate positive revenue for the university. If you want to succeed in the sports world, you damn well better be entertaining. I certainly don't think the worldwide appeal of Formula One or WRC is bad, I say Good for them. BUT, for the most part the American audience wants something different. I'm not going to suggest one side is right and one is wrong, just that like food, tastes differ. The American audience tends to gravitate to more highlight moments and constant conflict and action. Wire to wire F1 wins, no matter how technically impressive, don't offer much for the bulk of American racing fans.
 
I agreed with most of that, except the bit about constant action and conflict. It looks to me like Americans want sports they can talk (and now text) about during the game itself, with time for replays. Football has convenient pauses every 10 or 15 seconds; baseball even more.
 
Charlie Spencer said:
I agreed with most of that, except the bit about constant action and conflict. It looks to me like Americans want sports they can talk (and now text) about during the game itself, with time for replays. Football has convenient pauses every 10 or 15 seconds; baseball even more.
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Found this elsewhere...

11 minutes of action but it sure is entertaining.

The NFL's popularity is all the more remarkable when you inspect the fare it has to offer each week on television. An average professional football game lasts 3 hours and 12 minutes, but if you tally up the time when the ball is actually in play, the action amounts to a mere 11 minutes.

Read elsewhere that baseball has about 18 minutes of action as an average.
 
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Charlie Spencer said:
I'm sure the engineers get tons of experience, and that experience will stand them well if they are assigned to production models. My point was that little of the technology they develop or implement while racing will carry over directly to the production designs. Engineering stock cars is an expensive way to gain skills, compared to having them work on something with more practical applications: electric, self-driving, etc.
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Yeah.....now we are creeping into why a company goes racing which is an interesting one as well. There is no question that you will not see a part from a stock car on a customer car. That ship sailed long ago. However, there is something that draws a certain type of engineer to racing. The competition. In fact, it is my understanding, for example, that many TRD engineers take less than they could make on the consumer side to race. Engineer people are interesting. Their motivation is killed by limitations, but fueled by challenges. I think that the racing proposition is this.....You could work on the consumer side, and be bound by production numbers and budgets, or you could go racing and be bound by your own creativity. I believe that the best and the brightest come to racing. A company wants the best and the brightest.
 
StandOnIt said:
he was the crew chief for Brett Moffitt. They ran virtually the only Toyota motor left in the trucks for most of the season. I don't think he is a reliable source being though he was getting Yota help and when they had to switch to the spec motor they had to pay for them like everybody else. It was pretty strange that the spec motor they were using in the trucks was at the least supposed to have 40 HP more than the Toyota motors they were using, but the single Toyota motor won 5 out of 6 races Moffitt won. Zippadelli said it was because the Toyota truck cornered better this time. ;) Anybody following closely the truck series ever remembers when a very small almost bankrupt single truck team from Japan won the series title? Not me, one heck of an effort. hopefully that team will be able to get some decent sponsorship to continue next year, it looks tough at this point.
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NASCAR's timing was off on this. They were trying to be elegant in screwing Toyota, but they gave them too much, and Moffitt won. They didn't want it to happen this way. Sauter will be in their ear the entire offseason. They finally got it right, and put the final screws to Hattori before the Final, but it was too late. I find it very interesting that Zippy Light would say that the cost differential was BS given that--as you pointed out--this was a team with little money. If there had been a significant performance advantage KBM would have run the Toyota. There wasn't. NASCAR missed. Loved it, but would have loved it more to bring a Cronquist built Toyota into Victory Lane in Homestead, but NASCAR wasn't having that.
 
Charlie Spencer said:
I agreed with most of that, except the bit about constant action and conflict. It looks to me like Americans want sports they can talk (and now text) about during the game itself, with time for replays. Football has convenient pauses every 10 or 15 seconds; baseball even more.
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Look at it this way. The TV networks can take the most boring football game of the week and come up with a five minute highlight package for it. What kind of highlight package can you make of cars just going around in a circle with no passing or attempts to actually pass someone going on? There's hardly any wrecks for them to show anymore, so what do you show? If I want to see a parade of cars going by quickly without much going on, I can stand in my front yard. Too many people look at their favorite sport from a purist mentality. It was once only half jokingly suggested that to some baseball purists, even the fans in the grandstands were a distraction from the purity of the game. The problem is, there is NEVER enough purists to support these sports at any appreciable level. At least in this country, You HAVE to offer something to the average or casual fan more than Lewis Hamilton lapping the field and leading wire to wire.
 
Revman said:
NASCAR's timing was off on this. They were trying to be elegant in screwing Toyota, but they gave them too much, and Moffitt won. They didn't want it to happen this way. Sauter will be in their ear the entire offseason. They finally got it right, and put the final screws to Hattori before the Final, but it was too late. I find it very interesting that Zippy Light would say that the cost differential was BS given that--as you pointed out--this was a team with little money. If there had been a significant performance advantage KBM would have run the Toyota. There wasn't. NASCAR missed. Loved it, but would have loved it more to bring a Cronquist built Toyota into Victory Lane in Homestead, but NASCAR wasn't having that.
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not entirely right. The yota bunch ran two of their supposedly lower HP motors at Canadian tire. Ran away with the lead one two with their cheated up motors. It didn't work out for them though, Gragson took both of them out in the last corner. Karma came calling. I give credit to the one truck team of Moffitt's who were able to make do with a Toyota left over motor to out run all of the other large factory teams including twinkle toes 4 truck highly sponsored factory Toyota team. Great season.
 
dpkimmel2001 said:
Found this elsewhere...

11 minutes of action but it sure is entertaining.

The NFL's popularity is all the more remarkable when you inspect the fare it has to offer each week on television. An average professional football game lasts 3 hours and 12 minutes, but if you tally up the time when the ball is actually in play, the action amounts to a mere 11 minutes.

Read elsewhere that baseball has about 18 minutes of action as an average.
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baseball was described as 10 minutes of play crammed into 3 hours.
 
StandOnIt said:
not entirely right. The yota bunch ran two of their supposedly lower HP motors at Canadian tire. Ran away with the lead one two with their cheated up motors. It didn't work out for them though, Gragson took both of them out in the last corner. Karma came calling. I give credit to the one truck team of Moffitt's who were able to make do with a Toyota left over motor to out run all of the other large factory teams including twinkle toes 4 truck highly sponsored factory Toyota team. Great season.
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Well thank God for your crate motors as the Champion is left without a ride. Bravo.
 
Revman said:
Well thank God for your crate motors as the Champion is left without a ride. Bravo.
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no dude the MY stuff is all yours, don't lay that on me bud. I can't help it if YOUR Yotoetas can't afford to help out the champ. Their loss. They blew it all on twinkle toes 4 truck team.
 
Team Penske said:
baseball was described as 10 minutes of play crammed into 3 hours.
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And I'm still entertained by it. Could be one of the few on here but that's okay, I've always enjoyed the game. Grew up listening to Bob Prince calling the game on KDKA Radio. The Gunner brought me the game through my 'minds eye' night after night.

Like baseball, my following of Nascar started on the radio. Barney Hall and team took me to the race on Sunday's back in the day. Good stuff.
 
"I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out". That same line of thinking was true for new/casual fans during NASCAR's peak and also during the NFL's peak (pre-fantasy football craze). Viewers, especially new/casual, want ENTERTAINMENT and that usually comes in some form of conflict whether it be verbal or physical, and usually violent in nature. Just look at reality TV...the most viewed shows are the ones where conflict is maximized. The rise of political correctness and safety-mindedness in sports is what has made them less appealing to most fans. From a business standpoint NASCAR is doing the right thing in attempting to make the racing more exciting, but I don't think they realize that they will never be able to harness that once natural excitement. The world has changed whether we like it or not.
 
dpkimmel2001 said:
And I'm still entertained by it. Could be one of the few on here but that's okay, I've always enjoyed the game. Grew up listening to Bob Prince calling the game on KDKA Radio. The Gunner brought me the game through my 'minds eye' night after night.

Like baseball, my following of Nascar started on the radio. Barney Hall and team took me to the race on Sunday's back in the day. Good stuff.
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I had an old friend who would sit at the kitchen table with beer and radio to listen to "Hockey Night in Canada" while we watched the game on TV in the living room. He always had a better game than us. :D
 
StandOnIt said:
no dude the MY stuff is all yours, don't lay that on me bud. I can't help it if YOUR Yotoetas can't afford to help out the champ. Their loss. They blew it all on twinkle toes 4 truck team.
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Thank you for capitalizing YOUR. Well done.
 
dpkimmel2001 said:
And I'm still entertained by it. Could be one of the few on here but that's okay, I've always enjoyed the game. Grew up listening to Bob Prince calling the game on KDKA Radio. The Gunner brought me the game through my 'minds eye' night after night.

Like baseball, my following of Nascar started on the radio. Barney Hall and team took me to the race on Sunday's back in the day. Good stuff.
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I love a radio broadcast of a sport. PRN is awesome. MRN sucks. Grew up listening to the Indy 500 on the radio because waiting for the tape delay was unacceptable. Awesomeness.
 
sdj said:
Barney and gang made me feel like I was there over the years listening to him on my Radio. I sure miss him to.
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I should have qualified my hate for MRN. Post-Barney MRN sucks. All of those idiots on that channel now who claim to worship Barney have done nothing to emulate him. They should.
 
Team Penske said:
I had an old friend who would sit at the kitchen table with beer and radio to listen to "Hockey Night in Canada" while we watched the game on TV in the living room. He always had a better game than us. :D
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“Hello Canada and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland.” Didn’t get any better than that
 
Revman said:
At least they are spending money on your series. Chevy and Ford wait for the handout like usual. Didn't work out.
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yeah it goes to selling trucks by a manufacturer which you have a hard time believing. They are a distant third in sales so I think they will be around for a long time in the trucks if their sales increase. And again it isn't MY anything..This year it is called Gander Outdoors Truck series. I have been a fan of the Trucks since the late 90's when Kurt and Biffle were running the heck out of the Fords, and when Toyota and Datsun were selling the heck out of the little sheet boxes they made. They have come a long way since then.
 
StandOnIt said:
yeah it goes to selling trucks by a manufacturer which you have a hard time believing. They are a distant third in sales so I think they will be around for a long time in the trucks if their sales increase. And again it isn't MY anything..This year it is called Gander Outdoors Truck series. I have been a fan of the Trucks since the late 90's when Kurt and Biffle were running the heck out of the Fords, and when Toyota and Datsun were selling the heck out of the little sheet boxes they made. They have come a long way since then.
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Why do you hate Toyota so much? I bet you loved those Ford Couriers and Chevy Luv’s.
 
My sister had one, a Datsun. It was a great little truck, but it was a little sheetbox that rode like a buckboard, but it would go from A to B just fine and was a true half ton. I fixed the holes in the floorboards using old reality signs for her after she finished college.. I wish we could still buy machines that simple instead of the crap they sell now that for the most part that can't be fixed but crushed. It isn't saving any energy crushing and melting and then making another one in my book. They still make those in other countries.
 
StandOnIt said:
I wish we could still buy machines that simple instead of the crap they sell now that for the most part that can't be fixed but crushed.
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I'd love to be able to buy a car with most of the new safety features and none of the electronic gizmos I consider unnecessary. Automatic braking, yes; electric windows. no. Rear bumper camera, yes; electronic touch sound system, no. Side air bags, yes; $200 electronic key, no. You get the idea.
 
StandOnIt said:
My sister had one, a Datsun. It was a great little truck, but it was a little sheetbox that rode like a buckboard, but it would go from A to B just fine and was a true half ton. I fixed the holes in the floorboards using old reality signs for her after she finished college.. I wish we could still buy machines that simple instead of the crap they sell now that for the most part that can't be fixed but crushed. It isn't saving any energy crushing and melting and then making another one in my book. They still make those in other countries.
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Those were good times
 
StandOnIt said:
My sister had one, a Datsun. It was a great little truck, but it was a little sheetbox that rode like a buckboard, but it would go from A to B just fine and was a true half ton. I fixed the holes in the floorboards using old reality signs for her after she finished college.. I wish we could still buy machines that simple instead of the crap they sell now that for the most part that can't be fixed but crushed. It isn't saving any energy crushing and melting and then making another one in my book. They still make those in other countries.
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Datsun is now Nissan, nothing stays the same. I remember mine with fondness, went from A to Be and carried my tools. Imagine 2 spark plugs per cylinder. In those days Honda took a 283, made new heads and improved the gas mileage to 33 mpg.
 
Revman said:
TRD employs about 250 people in their Costa Mesa engine facility, and another 50+ in their Salisbury chassis facility that have absolutely nothing to do with marketing. If this was just about marketing, we would very much be into throwing crates into these things (@StandOnIt dream), badging them, and carrying on. The discussion about what engineers gain from racing is an interesting one. Stretching the thinking, etc. makes for similar creativity on the consumer side perhaps? ....Regardless, Toyota makes one hell of a commitment to engineering if the only purpose for racing is marketing....
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I don't think the marketing value is there with crate motors. True marketing value doesn't come without OEM input. "Yes, we built this, and it kicked everyone's ass. Buy our stuff." NASCAR fans are well aware enough to know what's really underneath the hood of the car/truck.

I think that just generally learning to reach peak efficiency, reliability, performance is important and can transfer to the road pretty well, but also personnel development in growing leaders, managers, etc. I am sure race personnel are attractive options for internal transfers for any OEM.

I agree with you that OEMs have a major role in NASCAR and it needs to remain that way, just how much is the question. A lot of difference race series are out there that offer different opportunities to different OEMs. Really just comes down to what they want out of a particular program. Sometimes an OEM will enter a series for a particular reason intending to stick around for only two or three years, some went somewhere decades ago and have never looked back.
 
FLRacingFan said:
I don't think the marketing value is there with crate motors.
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DGR Crosley (David Gilliland), another new Toyota factory team in the trucks who recently added darling Natalie Decker to drive part time in a Toyota truck next year proves that to not be the case. In the lower series below the trucks everybody runs a crate motor from what I can tell and it hasn't stopped factory backing from any manufacturer that I can see. DGR Crosley runs both the Arca and the K&N series. Can you see any other primary sponsorship below on the DGRCrosley cars with crate motors?

iur
 
I wonder how many times we will see Decker in ads telling us all that Girls like driving Toyota trucks? ;)
 
Charlie Spencer said:
I'd love to be able to buy a car with most of the new safety features and none of the electronic gizmos I consider unnecessary. Automatic braking, yes; electric windows. no. Rear bumper camera, yes; electronic touch sound system, no. Side air bags, yes; $200 electronic key, no. You get the idea.
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There are still base model cars made today that fit this description. For example, a new barebones Nissan Versa sells for about $12k and has all the necessary safety features (including a backup camera, as that is now federally mandated), but still has a manual transmission, hand-crank windows, a radio with knobs, and a real key instead of a push button.
 
StandOnIt said:
DGR Crosley (David Gilliland), another new Toyota factory team in the trucks who recently added darling Natalie Decker to drive part time in a Toyota truck next year proves that to not be the case. In the lower series below the trucks everybody runs a crate motor from what I can tell and it hasn't stopped factory backing from any manufacturer that I can see. DGR Crosley runs both the Arca and the K&N series. Can you see any other primary sponsorship below on the DGRCrosley cars with crate motors?

iur
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I don't know how many people were inspired to buy based on Truck or K&N races they saw this year, but it probably isn't many. Wouldn't manufacturer support at that level be more about driver development than anything else?
 
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