I've wondered why NASCAR and the manufacturers haven't replaced sedans with trucks in the Cup series. Why not have your top-selling, most profitable vehicles in the flagship series, instead of selling niche products?
It isn't a true meritocracy, but the TRD supported drivers in USAC need to excel or their career is going nowhere. If they had the money for a late model ride, they'd already be there.
Sounds like something else I should Google. I've never heard of it, or R1/R2 schools.
Indy is still suffering from it's civil war. The racing for the last three or four years has been outstanding. If current audiences really do have shorter attention spans, Indy races are right up their alley.
R1/R2 is how universities are delineated based on the level of research funding they bring in from external sources. I don't recall the exact threshold, but basically if you've heard of them, there's a good chance they're an R1. If you think you heard of the school but you're not entirely sure, then they might be an R2. Then there's a pile of liberal arts or religious schools that exist which aren't R1 or R2 because they're dependent entirely on tuition revenue. So like using NC as a guide:
Sure. Either way, the question remain: why do the manufacturers still run sedans in Cup, instead of their popular moneymakers? If @Revman is right and the vehicles are a big draw, why not go with what people have / want in the driveway? Switching would certainly take a lot of aero out of the equation.
Legitimate question: If someone were to ask you why NASCAR runs the Cup and Xfinity series and what the difference is between them (not just the wheelbase/engine rules, like "WHAT IS GRAND NATIONAL RACING AND WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT FROM CUP RACING?") what would you say?
Driver experience.
This.
In this description, Grand National racing is just minor league Cup. And that's what it is presented as, so it has been sliding towards being "minor league sport" in ratings and attendance for awhile. My take here is that it could be "A Different Thing" sort of like how college football, the CFL or the XFL/USFL are not simply presented as "NFL but not as good" but "A different thing." It and Trucks both have this issue. They need their own signature events and maybe some signature payouts that go with it. They need to be destinations onto themselves again like they both once were and not merely a place to go on your way up or perhaps to stay around when you fail at the Cup level.
They do, and they use USAC as part of it largely to parse out who they want to support in more expensive ventures. That happens through success in that series, and man, midget racing gets ugly as a result. Again, you don't see that same ugliness with USAC's other divisions nor do you see it with the 500 Sprint Car Tour nor any winged sprint car series or track title.
Local tracks lost local newspaper coverage and still haven't really figured out how to replace it other than post results on Facebook. You're absolutely right about this and I've been screaming about it for an eternity. The problem are that many promoters and track owners are old and looking to retire off to Florida and sell their facilities. They're not looking to learn how to do things a new way.
It IS minor league, although I wouldn't say 'Just'. It's always had minor league ratings and attendance. At my first Busch race, Rockingham literally gave the tickets away. For a couple of years after that, I got tickets free with an oil change at GM Goodwrench shops. You might as well try to make Triple-A baseball something it's not.
I don't know about CFL or USFL, but college football and basketball are minor leagues for the NFL and NBA. That's why the top players move up after less than four years. Convince me otherwise.
X has that four-race series in the summer with big payouts. I don't care much about the money but I like that Cup drivers can't participate.
This. I've thought the last few years IndyCar is a sleeping giant and is just begging for the right eyeballs to find it. The lack of a schedule with imagination, lack of marketing ( at least I've seen here where I live), a bad ass video game, and driver marketing are what is holding it back. I'm entertained every damn time I tune into a race, its my favorite racing currently. I think if other's discover it, they will feel the same way.... the racing is SO good. Not to take away from NASCAR though, NASCAR Is NASCAR, I dont think all is as bad as its made out here to be with the sport.
Back in the day, they had more dates where they were a headliner and brought big NASCAR names to markets that Cup didn't run. Truthfully, that position is now occupied by touring late model series now. Xfinity is just there to fill out the calendar for the race weekend. Same with trucks.
They are minor leagues in practical terms, but they're also "their own thing" that has it's own dedicated fanbase that invests a lot of money and time into those sports. Grand National can still be that, but it needs its own identity first. Weirdly, I'd say that Trans Am is closer to having re-established its own identity in spite of lacking the TV money that NASCAR provides the trucks and Xfinity. Long term, I think that'll pay off for them.
Xfinity now has a separate partner for telecasts from the rest of the series. Unfortunately the actual production is still NASCAR's and they're gonna cut costs as much as possible too as well as run events on their own personally owned circuits.
There needs to be collective action to create and maintain outlets and instead a lot of facilities are still acting as though FloSports or Racing America are keeping paying customers from paying the gate admission rather than see them as what they are (a conduit to promote themselves). It's a lack of creativity and inventiveness on everyone's parts: am I saying that the solution is cutting deals with streaming services for production and then getting distribution locally if possible on local digital substations? No. But that could be part of larger solutions to make people more aware of what is going on regionally and to make grassroots racing more popular and commercially sustainable.
But streaming also helps because some people like myself see a track on Flo and watch the racing so when I'm traveling I go check it out in person.
That's even worse for dirt racing. Put a slight chance of rain in the forecast and people make other plans because they assume a rain out.
) my house and sometimes, some of our racers will go in there and put replays of their races or put CARS Tour races on in there.
Just my last 0.02 on this specific subtopic: the pros of having something on live video streaming that anyone can watch in the country is just that. You have live telecasts anyone can watch. That also means you can have taped telecasts people can watch. If I were a promoter, I would work out a deal to get my weekly action on Flo or Dirtvision edited down to 2 hours and get it on a digital subchannel on, I dunno, Wednesday at 8PM or something. Use it to promote your weekly guys, use it to promote upcoming events, try and meet people where they are by using targeted advertisements on social media about the free telecasts, and also drive people towards your streaming partner. I'm not saying this is easy or that it would be super quick to have done, but it is plausible and would require not that much investment beyond what has already been made. It's not unlike seeing the Waterford Speedbowl appear on cable access at one point when I was a youngin'.
Big difference. Dale Earnhardt was an extremely relatable, likeable blue collar villain. Kyle Busch is not, and neither is Denny. Chastain is the only guy I see that MIGHT be able to pull that off, but it's going to take a LOT more than three Cup wins to pull it off. An unlikable villain is worse than no villain at all.
People that had come up with the old NASCAR, didn't take kindly to the changes made in the early 2000's. They stopped watching. They also stopped cultivating new fans and a gap opened. It's damn hard to fill a gap once it opens. When I was growing up in Indiana, IU basketball and Notre Dame football RULED THE STATE. Sports shows would devote entire shows to JUST those two programs. Every time Bobby Knight passed gas, it made the state news. But you know what? Go about twenty years of being mediocre at best, and a LOT of those people melt away. Now, the prime demographic audience has absolutely no recollection of either program being particularly relevant, so they could mostly care less.That doesn't explain millennials not watching anymore though.
When I was in high school, and not in the Confederate States of America, NASCAR was THE thing. Almost everyone where Dale Jr or Kevin Harvick coats at school.
It says more about the fanbase and the media than you think.
Reporter after reporter trashed the 2017 Daytona 500 in columns and on Twitter for the sole fact that Chase Elliott ran out of gas. If he had won that race, it would've been "the greatest Daytona 500" since Dale won. We've had commentators on network broadcasts lobby NASCAR on the air to manipulate the outcome of a race for Chase Elliott to make up for Rainbowghazi.
Agree with this, but I also don't think people realize the immense pressure Bubba deals with. It's hard to tune it out. Because of something he had nothing to do with, he became public enemy no. 1 for the conservative media machine. The President of the United States, at the time, literally woke up one morning, got on his golden ****ter, pulled up Twitter, and ****mouthed the man because he felt like it. The most-watched cable network in America trashes him, out of the blue, at least once a month. And that's not even touching social media.
I'm sure the dude would like to go out and race like the other 35 drivers and not have to deal with this crap.
Kyle Larson doesn't have to answer for HIS OWN ACTIONS every single week. And Noah Gragson is in line for a promotion after that little kerfuffle. Kyle Larson and Noah Gragson don't wake up to tweets from President Biden ****mouthing them and blaming them for the decline of America. They don't see segments about them on MSNBC and how they've single-handedly killed sports and entertainment in America. They don't have very influential professional instigators trying to unleash mobs on them.
Fixed.
I used to think she was most of the brains of the operation too, and then Dale died, and she showed herself incapable of even MAKING decisions, never mind good or bad ones.
The sport was at its height of popularity in 2006. The Chase and many of the other changes already existed at the time.
