I know this can be a sore subject here, but has anyone paid attention to what is going on in NASCAR? It looks to me like they really do have big trouble on the horizon. Defending champion Cup team, POOF! 2 major Busch (sorry) teams, POOF! No new major sponsor announcements, and lots of smaller teams with no confirmed drivers or sponsors. The 7 time champion had to scrounge for a sponsor.
compared to what?
…the airplane wreck of F1?
Who has a bigger deal? Indy? SCCA?
And for better or worse (and probably worse) NASCAR effectively owns IMSA and ARCA.
Local series? Probably shouldn’t go there, but Ross Chastain chooses NASCAR. So did your baby girl, Danica, because that is where the jack is, um, Jack.
I agree that they are all flobbed up, but then they always were. More so now that Big Bad Bill and Bill Jr are gone, but you know, they are gone.
The bigger issue remains our flaccid youth, for whom blue tooth (whatever that is) is far more important than horsepower.
IMO, it is good that NASCAR is getting lower on coin. Sooner or later it will drag them back to short tracks, which will be good for…me.
End of rant. Maybe.
I do see the latest goings-on as a positive. Maybe they will get bombed back to the stone age. I think that the Xfinity (In it’s current config) and the Truck series need to go away. Make the K&N series, or something like it the feed series and focus on short tracks. The money that is being spent in Cup is obscene. There is ABSOLUTELY no reason that these teams need 15-30 cars per driver!! How many did RP have when he won 27 races and ten in a row in 1967?
I agree that the xfinity series is redundant and could be dropped.
Further agree that K&N/ARCA could be the support series and should be short track oriented, particularly money wise.
And trucks? Perhaps a class similar to our local short track trucks. A step down again in money, possibly with crate engines.
Re: Cup money–It’s self leveling. Cup marketing coverage will dictate how much money a team is “worth”, and then how many cars they buy is their bidness.
True, big money wins and big money begets big money. But then, Petty Enterprises used to be on top and Hendrick had one Geoff piloted car.
So…enough work and talent will rise to the top.
As Jimmy Cope once said, “If you want to be the man you have to beat the man”.
Jacko–Keep in mind that the primary(and unspoken) reason that they run that redundant and largely un-watched stuff is so that they can get additional incremental income for their big ol boring 1.5 mile venues, which stand dormant for 350 days a year.
But, if the support class money drops the fields enough, they will be such a lousy show that it will be a poor reflection on Cup.
Additionally, it could be argued that if the support series were short track oriented, there would be more sponsorship money for Cup.
Again, it is all self-leveling.
In the Truck series, series champion Brett Moffit lost his ride to a kid who could bring more money. The CHAMPION! Then, he goes over and unseats Johnny Sauter because he could bring SOME money. Say what you want, but that isn’t a sport. I could not go to the Tampa Bay Rays and tell them I will give them 5 million dollars to let me play catcher for them. I guess I could tell them, but you could here the laughter all the way back to St. Augustine. Even back in the day, I could not go to the Woods or Junior Johnson and buy David Pearson or Cale out of a ride. There is no reason to be spending sponsors cash to build 30 cars for a season for one team. We ran 2 24 hour races, a 6 hour, and 4 250 mile events on one car and one engine, with one rebuild. I ran 30 plus late model races per year 1993-1999 on 2 cars.
Joe, would you let me drive the MGB if I brought 50K…?
Particularly if the MGB was part of a for-profit deal with a good, but unfunded driver?
ps–I HIGHLY admire your Rolex efforts. But did a Team win in those years that brought a ton more money and a tractor trailer transport? Was that “unfair”?
- Yes
- Yes
- No, it was not unfair.
D. You are missing the point. It is not about how much money they are
bringing to spend, it is how much it has driven up the cost of sponsorship.
It is exactly the reason stick and ball sports brought in salary caps, and the
exact reason NASCAR is considering something similar.
Look, there is no way on earth it should cost 30 million dollars to run a tube frame car with a stock block engine for a season.
I agree. Wholeheartedly.
Cracks me up every time NASCAR enacts a “cost savings” measure.
But let’s take Sportsman cars. Are they expensive? At about $20K for a complete and competitive car, imo, yes.
But cheap compared to a late model or modified engine.
Similarly, Cup rules could cut costs, but I would lobby against a cap per se.
Again, if the sponsorship dollars keep ratcheting down and the fields keep shrinking, they will have to do something.
Meanwhile, they are in denial, hanging out in their air conditioned towers at their boring 1.5 mile tracks, drinking champagne and telling each other they are “almost” as big as football.
Me? Gimme Showtime or Citrus, where the men are men and the women are good looking.
On the subject of sportman cars, I watched that video. Those cars are what late models should look like. Congrats to Patrick on the win and getting into great shape!
Again, we agree all the way around, sir.
Back to the topic, note that sportsman cars are essentially cheaper late models, achieved through the rules book, not a dollar cap.
I think you are trying to call me a liberal. This is a sport that has rules for everything, down to the color you can paint your car. They regulate engine size, gear ratios, fuel type, etc. There is no reason there could not be a rule that you can only have, say, 6 cars. If you want to spend 60 million them, go ahead, but know that when you run out of cars you are done for the year.
Label you? Hell, I am trying to keep you from heading down that primrose path/downward spiral!
But you know the deal with capitalism. You get whatever you can get, and you spend it however you likes.
Look at it this way, did Rick Hendrick get to be worth ONE BEELION DOLLARS by building more race cars than he thinks he needs?
Do you think he will be building more than he has to for Jimmie boy now that sugardaddy Lowes is leaving?
Given the dwindling car count do you think NASCAR wants to limit the number of cars for anybody that can afford them?
Ya have to be careful about those soap boxes. Save the trees? Whales? Baby seals? Mom has control of her own body? The poor from other lands are coming here for a better life? All tug at someone’s heartstrings, or have some basis in “right” for somebody.
Ironically, the libs have no real interest in any of it, they just want to keep more of our GDP for themselves and control the peoples. Period.
Apparently the rant has not ended…
ps–Big Mean E would have loved a car cap.
He would have taken Geoffrey Bodine out for the year in the first six races, and then Mr H. would never have made his billion.
It would do NASCAR well to find some way of getting on dirt in all venues and reformatting the show to include heats consy and a much shorter feature placing a premium on driver skills and lessening the pit crews role in the outcome.The empty seats are not staying home to watch it on TV they are trying to tell NASCAR their current format stinks. If the current situation persists our sport may be dying before our eyes.
EG–To your point, I think that in their current state, “stages” are nothing more than “competion yellows” (a clear oxymoron). And they are 
.
Much better would be to have them in a couple three shorter increments and a longer one at the end. “Heats” and a “feature”, if you will. The feature would carry a larger points benefit.
And in between each would be, say, a 20 minute break where teams could change a number of critical items–Springs, shocks, gear, etc.
Legality? At the end of the day everybody has to pass tech or face the usual ridiculously punitive NASCAR wrath.
Dirt will come when they need a last ditch (pun intended) effort when all else has failed. Remember, they are desperately holding on to “big time”, and we cannot have Brittany and Tad getting dirt on their blouses now, can we?
I think we can all agree that IndyCar is a far, far level below NASCAR at this point, but I think NASCAR would do well to look at their model. IndyCar is growing, adding more teams and keeping costs in check. I know it’s popular to hate on the “spec car” model, but it sure does work in IndyCar. Part of the egregious cost of operating a major Nascar team is that not only are you running a race team, you’re running an entire fabrication and manufacturing facility. And in the end they’re all building the same thing with slight variations that they hope will give them the edge. It would be vastly more cost effective if most of the parts were built at one central facility and then just sold to the teams to be bolted on. This concept is already proven to work in NASCAR! Stewart-Haas won 2 championships buying parts and cars from Hendrick, and Furniture Row did it on a smaller budget, with a smaller team by buying cars and parts from Gibbs. Plus when every car in the field is built with the same set of parts the tech process is easier. I don’t think the teams are ever going to want to do that, but it’s worth a look for sure.
Luke, Though not a bad idea in theory, in the various “Fix NASCAR Threads” that pop up from time to time, by far the most common (and uninformed, imo) suggestion is: “They should run stock stock cars, like back in the early days.”.
Clearly, the objection is that the cars are currently too much alike, and a spec car per se would further alienate at least some of the paying public.
And, like the Sportsman/Crate class, it just seems “right” that there is room for innovation somewhere.
Eb–“Say, Zeke, y’all reckon we ort to run the Riley or Dallara cha-seese in Cup this here year?”
Zeke–“Say whut…?”
[QUOTE=OldSchool+;177946]Luke, Though not a bad idea in theory, in the various “Fix NASCAR Threads” that pop up from time to time, by far the most common (and uninformed, imo) suggestion is: “They should run stock stock cars, like back in the early days.”.
Clearly, the objection is that the cars are currently too much alike, and a spec car per se would further alienate at least some of the paying public.
[/COLOR][/B][/QUOTE]
But that’s a ridiculous suggestion that isn’t realistic, so I’m ok with just ignoring it and doing something to make the actual product better. The chances are less than zero that NASCAR ever gets to a point where Joe Gibbs strolls on down to the Toyota dealer in Charlotte and buys up every Camry on the lot just before racing season. And I don’t think anyone actually wants to see the on-track product that would produce either. Even in IndyCar there are certain areas on the cars that the teams can tweak and engineer on their own, and I think that should always be there in racing. I’m just not convinced the finances of running a full production facility is going to be sustainable for these teams going forward.
I don’t think that is necessarily true. You should take a look at Australian V8 Supercars. They are heavily based on production cars, will go 190mph, and put on great shows. Take a look at this video and tell me that isn’t racing!