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Not quite that simple, but a good article here IMO.
From the RacingReport:
TRR NASCAR Extra: NASCAR should be listening to the gospel in the Book of Mosley -- Reported by Bill Wood
February 27, 2003 - Thursday
For months now I've watched the economic changes in Formula One, listened to the arguments, observed the high-level fighting and now believe NASCAR could be blindly headed down the same road.
It appears little is being done to curb the headlong rush into Techland and there's no mechanism for the preservation of the fortunes being amassed by the elite within the stock car racing community. That means the money that's being converted to real estate developments or technology dreams eventually will be gone, held within the family fortunes of the people collecting it. In short, if you like what's happened to CART and F1 the past five years you'll love what's in store for NASCAR.
Briefly, F1's governing body, in the form of its President Max Mosley, has ordered changes in the sport that are aimed at increasing its popularity, cutting its costs and making sure F1's collective bottomless pocket doesn't bottom out. He has the support of F1 marketing genius Bernie Ecclestone in the changes.
On the other hand we have the principals from two of F1's most solvent teams, McLaren's Ron Dennis and Sir Frank of Williams, demanding arbitration while attacking Mosley. They say the new orders are a threat to F1 the way we know it. It would seem bullies never like it when their unfair advantage is removed.
To his credit, Mosley this week denied he's trying to "dumb down Formula 1" as Dennis and Williams wrote in a letter published nearly ten days ago. On Tuesday, Mosley suggested that F1 wasn't popular because of its technological whiz-bangs and damn-the-costs budgets and attitudes. He said the drivers are what make F1 the world's choice for motorsports entertainment and he implied it's the unbridled technology that's making that choice diminish.
"If you truly believe that the public wants to see computer-controlled cars guided from the pits by anonymous engineers, please think again. If you don't believe me, hire two halls in any city anywhere in the world and put, for example, Michael Schumacher, Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya in one, with both of you plus your electronic experts and your technical chiefs in the other. Invite the public to both halls and see what happens."
Preach Brother Mosley!!
"The FIA Formula 1 World Championship is primarily a drivers' championship and always has been. If you want an example of a championship which put technology ahead of drivers, look at the history of Group C. (The FIA's category for Sports Cars.) Despite the presence of very high-tech Jaguar and Mercedes-Benz racing cars, it drew smaller crowds than local touring car championships even in the UK and Germany. TV coverage was negligible for the same reason. The public are interested in drivers and sport, not electronics."
The gospel from the Book of Mosley! I couldn't agree more.
My fondest memories of motorsports are the original, loud and cantankerous Can-Am sports cars and the Formula 5000 series in which I personally dabbled as a team crewmember. I'm such a sports car nut that one of my favorite films of all time is the Steve McQueen epic Le Mans.
Watching the sport of sports car racing degenerate to the indefensibly moribund Daytona 24-hour offered three weeks ago has folded me nearly fetal. There was a time in this great land that the SCCA's Trans-Am was the pinnacle of American racing thunder and not Winston Cup. That's when Mark Donohue and Parnelli Jones banged fenders with more drama than anything appreciated at the climax of last weekend's Rockingham show starring Dale Jarrett and Kurt Busch. And Donohue and Jones did it while negotiating left AND right turns!
Without question, motorsports memories are built on personalities and not technology. People remember the drama of Donohue and Jones and not their respective Camaros and Mustangs. They remember Parnelli's heartbreak at Indy when a part broke on his turbine thus car jacking his certain victory. Is it important what part? Of course not! We related to his anguish not the technological failure.
People remember the backstretch fight between the Allison Brothers and Cale Yarborough and not the cars they drove. They barely remember the winner of possibly the greatest Daytona 500 ever; only the fight.
It was Dale Earnhardt sitting low and intimidating in a black helmet that made a black #3 Chevrolet Monte Carlo the baddest machine in NASCAR, not the other way around. It was the #43 Richard Petty Dodge, David Pearson in the #21 Wood Brothers Mercury, and several people in Junior Johnson's #11 Chevrolet. It doesn't matter who wears those number now. They belong to the originators.
Racing is about people and personalities and competition and contests. The machines are a conveyance, a tool that allows daring people to do daring things. Do we honor Michelangelo's brush? Rodan's chisel? Picasso's canvas? Spielberg's camera? Sinatra's microphone? Ray Charles' piano? Stevie Ray's guitar?
NASCAR understands full well that its stock in trade is the personality behind the wheel. And I'd like to believe it understands that cost reductions are of paramount importance to the sport's future. This Golden Goose won't be laying these golden eggs forever. At some point the television ratings will level off and, perish the thought, even diminish and threaten sponsor commitments - if they aren't threatened already from the sheer weight of team demands!
If the swelling costs of NASCAR racing aren't controlled, more teams will disappear in the dust of the majors: Ganassi, Penske, Petty, Yates, Hendrick, Roush, Evernham and Childress. Can these eight teams fill all 43 spots on the Winston Cup grid? Should they have to?
I've been super critical of the real estate development projects owners have built on the back of stock car racing and the fans who support it. They've become multi-millionaires through the fan's commitment to watch NASCAR programming on television and spend their money to buy NASCAR die-casts, T-shirts and drivers' autographs.
Harsh, maybe, but to this point: the money that's pouring into the NASCAR industry is filling private pockets. In addition, the NASCAR machinery is chewing up great gobs of roadway as it screams to the top of this marketing mountain. When it reaches the summit, what then? Has it built enough infrastructure to sail along a ridge at the top of the hill or will it ultimately face just the downslope of that same mountain?
CART's Chris Pook knows what that freefall is about. He's trying to salvage the once proud CART brand and the great racing it once represented. Formula One's Max Mosley appears to understand also. He'd like to stop short of becoming an international CART.
The France Family and Mike Helton must understand this battle between personalities, political power and deep pockets but do they know to stop the sport's headlong rush to further technomania? Seconds on a NASCAR grid already cost three million to five million dollars each. That's approaching F1's cost per second budgets.
Certainly the power structure understands that the future of the sport is in its drivers and not in millionaire, free-agent engineers who bow and sing chants at skunk works altars behind Oil Curtains in $100 million Garage Mahals and Palaces of Performance.
NASCAR's future lies in its ability to raise all boats - its teams and its drivers - in this same rising tide just as the NFL did in its explosion during the 1960s and '70s? As a racing fan, I hope that's clear.
From the RacingReport:
TRR NASCAR Extra: NASCAR should be listening to the gospel in the Book of Mosley -- Reported by Bill Wood
February 27, 2003 - Thursday
For months now I've watched the economic changes in Formula One, listened to the arguments, observed the high-level fighting and now believe NASCAR could be blindly headed down the same road.
It appears little is being done to curb the headlong rush into Techland and there's no mechanism for the preservation of the fortunes being amassed by the elite within the stock car racing community. That means the money that's being converted to real estate developments or technology dreams eventually will be gone, held within the family fortunes of the people collecting it. In short, if you like what's happened to CART and F1 the past five years you'll love what's in store for NASCAR.
Briefly, F1's governing body, in the form of its President Max Mosley, has ordered changes in the sport that are aimed at increasing its popularity, cutting its costs and making sure F1's collective bottomless pocket doesn't bottom out. He has the support of F1 marketing genius Bernie Ecclestone in the changes.
On the other hand we have the principals from two of F1's most solvent teams, McLaren's Ron Dennis and Sir Frank of Williams, demanding arbitration while attacking Mosley. They say the new orders are a threat to F1 the way we know it. It would seem bullies never like it when their unfair advantage is removed.
To his credit, Mosley this week denied he's trying to "dumb down Formula 1" as Dennis and Williams wrote in a letter published nearly ten days ago. On Tuesday, Mosley suggested that F1 wasn't popular because of its technological whiz-bangs and damn-the-costs budgets and attitudes. He said the drivers are what make F1 the world's choice for motorsports entertainment and he implied it's the unbridled technology that's making that choice diminish.
"If you truly believe that the public wants to see computer-controlled cars guided from the pits by anonymous engineers, please think again. If you don't believe me, hire two halls in any city anywhere in the world and put, for example, Michael Schumacher, Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya in one, with both of you plus your electronic experts and your technical chiefs in the other. Invite the public to both halls and see what happens."
Preach Brother Mosley!!
"The FIA Formula 1 World Championship is primarily a drivers' championship and always has been. If you want an example of a championship which put technology ahead of drivers, look at the history of Group C. (The FIA's category for Sports Cars.) Despite the presence of very high-tech Jaguar and Mercedes-Benz racing cars, it drew smaller crowds than local touring car championships even in the UK and Germany. TV coverage was negligible for the same reason. The public are interested in drivers and sport, not electronics."
The gospel from the Book of Mosley! I couldn't agree more.
My fondest memories of motorsports are the original, loud and cantankerous Can-Am sports cars and the Formula 5000 series in which I personally dabbled as a team crewmember. I'm such a sports car nut that one of my favorite films of all time is the Steve McQueen epic Le Mans.
Watching the sport of sports car racing degenerate to the indefensibly moribund Daytona 24-hour offered three weeks ago has folded me nearly fetal. There was a time in this great land that the SCCA's Trans-Am was the pinnacle of American racing thunder and not Winston Cup. That's when Mark Donohue and Parnelli Jones banged fenders with more drama than anything appreciated at the climax of last weekend's Rockingham show starring Dale Jarrett and Kurt Busch. And Donohue and Jones did it while negotiating left AND right turns!
Without question, motorsports memories are built on personalities and not technology. People remember the drama of Donohue and Jones and not their respective Camaros and Mustangs. They remember Parnelli's heartbreak at Indy when a part broke on his turbine thus car jacking his certain victory. Is it important what part? Of course not! We related to his anguish not the technological failure.
People remember the backstretch fight between the Allison Brothers and Cale Yarborough and not the cars they drove. They barely remember the winner of possibly the greatest Daytona 500 ever; only the fight.
It was Dale Earnhardt sitting low and intimidating in a black helmet that made a black #3 Chevrolet Monte Carlo the baddest machine in NASCAR, not the other way around. It was the #43 Richard Petty Dodge, David Pearson in the #21 Wood Brothers Mercury, and several people in Junior Johnson's #11 Chevrolet. It doesn't matter who wears those number now. They belong to the originators.
Racing is about people and personalities and competition and contests. The machines are a conveyance, a tool that allows daring people to do daring things. Do we honor Michelangelo's brush? Rodan's chisel? Picasso's canvas? Spielberg's camera? Sinatra's microphone? Ray Charles' piano? Stevie Ray's guitar?
NASCAR understands full well that its stock in trade is the personality behind the wheel. And I'd like to believe it understands that cost reductions are of paramount importance to the sport's future. This Golden Goose won't be laying these golden eggs forever. At some point the television ratings will level off and, perish the thought, even diminish and threaten sponsor commitments - if they aren't threatened already from the sheer weight of team demands!
If the swelling costs of NASCAR racing aren't controlled, more teams will disappear in the dust of the majors: Ganassi, Penske, Petty, Yates, Hendrick, Roush, Evernham and Childress. Can these eight teams fill all 43 spots on the Winston Cup grid? Should they have to?
I've been super critical of the real estate development projects owners have built on the back of stock car racing and the fans who support it. They've become multi-millionaires through the fan's commitment to watch NASCAR programming on television and spend their money to buy NASCAR die-casts, T-shirts and drivers' autographs.
Harsh, maybe, but to this point: the money that's pouring into the NASCAR industry is filling private pockets. In addition, the NASCAR machinery is chewing up great gobs of roadway as it screams to the top of this marketing mountain. When it reaches the summit, what then? Has it built enough infrastructure to sail along a ridge at the top of the hill or will it ultimately face just the downslope of that same mountain?
CART's Chris Pook knows what that freefall is about. He's trying to salvage the once proud CART brand and the great racing it once represented. Formula One's Max Mosley appears to understand also. He'd like to stop short of becoming an international CART.
The France Family and Mike Helton must understand this battle between personalities, political power and deep pockets but do they know to stop the sport's headlong rush to further technomania? Seconds on a NASCAR grid already cost three million to five million dollars each. That's approaching F1's cost per second budgets.
Certainly the power structure understands that the future of the sport is in its drivers and not in millionaire, free-agent engineers who bow and sing chants at skunk works altars behind Oil Curtains in $100 million Garage Mahals and Palaces of Performance.
NASCAR's future lies in its ability to raise all boats - its teams and its drivers - in this same rising tide just as the NFL did in its explosion during the 1960s and '70s? As a racing fan, I hope that's clear.
