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http://www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080127/NRSTAFF/801270332/-1/SPORTS1202
Hardin: NASCAR runs from its fans, and they know it
Ed Hardin
Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008 3:00 am
CHARLOTTE -- Now comes the fun part as we watch NASCAR try to put the cow back in the barn.
The strange admission last week from Brian France that stock car racing's sanctioning body had lost its way in recent years had a lot of people wondering just what the sport is up to. NASCAR is not, nor has it ever been, in the business of looking back. So when France, the third-generation owner of the second-most popular sport in the world, said racing has seen all the change it can stand, you just had to wonder what he was really saying.
What sounded on the surface a lot like a concession to Southerners that he had screwed up their sport was more likely something far more insidious. This sounded a lot like a dreaded vote of confidence for someone about to be fired. France's rambling speech before a room full of media creeps Monday afternoon begged the questions: Just who are NASCAR's core fans now? And would France know one if he ran into him on the street?
NASCAR's core fans are from North Carolina, the state that now has lost two tracks to stock car racing's vision of the future. NASCAR's core fans are from Darlington, S.C., where the legendary track was left for dead three years ago. NASCAR's core fans work at north Georgia service stations and auto parts stores in Virginia and Tennessee. They drive too fast, drink too much, struggle to keep up with their bills and cuss a lot.
They are the very people NASCAR has been running from for about 10 years now. They've put up with a lot in recent seasons, and every one of them could clearly see that NASCAR was losing its way. France listened to no one. The sport kept pushing ahead, racing in places that any fool knew had no business hosting stock car races, and building racetracks that had about as much character as I-95.
Just last October he told reporters: "If we stay still, we fall behind."
In three months he has changed his tune? Not likely. It's far more likely that he took a good look at what's getting ready to happen this year and realized that NASCAR has never changed more in one season to the next than now.
The sport will start next month under a new brand name, the third in five years. It will race its entire schedule with the new Car of Tomorrow, which NASCAR officials were referring as the "Car of Today, or whatever," last week. The car is actually a kit with decals differentiating the makes and whatever. NASCAR's core fans figured that out last year right after Kyle Busch won the car's debut, then cussed it afterward.
Busch is driving for a different team this year, along with what seems like more than half the tour. And that includes the marquee name, Dale Earnhardt Jr., who will drive for Hendrick Motorsports along with his biggest rivals, Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson.
And all the while, the sport continues to attract the kind of drivers that appeal to absolutely no one. Among those going to NASCAR this year will be Dario Franchitti, Jacques Villeneuve, Dan Wheldon, Scott Dixon and Patrick Carpentier, open-wheel drivers who will join Juan Pablo Montoya and Sam Hornish Jr., open-wheel drivers who came on the scene last year. It isn't lost on NASCAR's core fans that these guys are taking the jobs once reserved for Saturday night racers from North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia.
The tour is becoming more like open-wheel racing than Saturday night stock car racing. Teams fear the sport is getting closer to Formula One than anything else, and that means racing with money instead of speed and guts. Ray Evernham thinks that would be the downfall of the sport.
"If this becomes a battle of money, then those people in the stands are going to stop watching,'' he said.
Evernham gave up control of his team in the offseason, selling the majority of it to the Canadian investor George Gillette.
Other than all that, nothing has changed since last year. NASCAR will start its season having undergone more alterations in one offseason than in its recent history, which has seen more upheaval than in the first 50-odd years combined. In this, the 60th season of the sport founded by France's grandfather, the changes have already occurred. NASCAR now must convince its fans to ignore the changes, to disregard the fact that they no longer recognize the sport they built with their own hard-earned money and pretend that nothing ever happened.
Attendance is down and TV ratings are down, but fans still pour into Darlington and cows still graze just outside the old track at North Wilkesboro, where grass is growing through the asphalt
Hardin: NASCAR runs from its fans, and they know it
Ed Hardin
Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008 3:00 am
CHARLOTTE -- Now comes the fun part as we watch NASCAR try to put the cow back in the barn.
The strange admission last week from Brian France that stock car racing's sanctioning body had lost its way in recent years had a lot of people wondering just what the sport is up to. NASCAR is not, nor has it ever been, in the business of looking back. So when France, the third-generation owner of the second-most popular sport in the world, said racing has seen all the change it can stand, you just had to wonder what he was really saying.
What sounded on the surface a lot like a concession to Southerners that he had screwed up their sport was more likely something far more insidious. This sounded a lot like a dreaded vote of confidence for someone about to be fired. France's rambling speech before a room full of media creeps Monday afternoon begged the questions: Just who are NASCAR's core fans now? And would France know one if he ran into him on the street?
NASCAR's core fans are from North Carolina, the state that now has lost two tracks to stock car racing's vision of the future. NASCAR's core fans are from Darlington, S.C., where the legendary track was left for dead three years ago. NASCAR's core fans work at north Georgia service stations and auto parts stores in Virginia and Tennessee. They drive too fast, drink too much, struggle to keep up with their bills and cuss a lot.
They are the very people NASCAR has been running from for about 10 years now. They've put up with a lot in recent seasons, and every one of them could clearly see that NASCAR was losing its way. France listened to no one. The sport kept pushing ahead, racing in places that any fool knew had no business hosting stock car races, and building racetracks that had about as much character as I-95.
Just last October he told reporters: "If we stay still, we fall behind."
In three months he has changed his tune? Not likely. It's far more likely that he took a good look at what's getting ready to happen this year and realized that NASCAR has never changed more in one season to the next than now.
The sport will start next month under a new brand name, the third in five years. It will race its entire schedule with the new Car of Tomorrow, which NASCAR officials were referring as the "Car of Today, or whatever," last week. The car is actually a kit with decals differentiating the makes and whatever. NASCAR's core fans figured that out last year right after Kyle Busch won the car's debut, then cussed it afterward.
Busch is driving for a different team this year, along with what seems like more than half the tour. And that includes the marquee name, Dale Earnhardt Jr., who will drive for Hendrick Motorsports along with his biggest rivals, Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson.
And all the while, the sport continues to attract the kind of drivers that appeal to absolutely no one. Among those going to NASCAR this year will be Dario Franchitti, Jacques Villeneuve, Dan Wheldon, Scott Dixon and Patrick Carpentier, open-wheel drivers who will join Juan Pablo Montoya and Sam Hornish Jr., open-wheel drivers who came on the scene last year. It isn't lost on NASCAR's core fans that these guys are taking the jobs once reserved for Saturday night racers from North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia.
The tour is becoming more like open-wheel racing than Saturday night stock car racing. Teams fear the sport is getting closer to Formula One than anything else, and that means racing with money instead of speed and guts. Ray Evernham thinks that would be the downfall of the sport.
"If this becomes a battle of money, then those people in the stands are going to stop watching,'' he said.
Evernham gave up control of his team in the offseason, selling the majority of it to the Canadian investor George Gillette.
Other than all that, nothing has changed since last year. NASCAR will start its season having undergone more alterations in one offseason than in its recent history, which has seen more upheaval than in the first 50-odd years combined. In this, the 60th season of the sport founded by France's grandfather, the changes have already occurred. NASCAR now must convince its fans to ignore the changes, to disregard the fact that they no longer recognize the sport they built with their own hard-earned money and pretend that nothing ever happened.
Attendance is down and TV ratings are down, but fans still pour into Darlington and cows still graze just outside the old track at North Wilkesboro, where grass is growing through the asphalt
