NASCAR's Entertainment Obsession
A fair bit of time has passed since NASCAR confirmed its rules package for the 2019 season. It is a dramatic
turn for the series with a combination of tapered spacers reducing horsepower,
aero ducts increasing drag and spoilers the size of billboards outside Ebbing,
Missouri increasing downforce in hopes to provide closer racing.
The changes have been met
with pushback from drivers, fans, media and a whole bunch of people. On all
fronts the worry is the package will depreciate the skill of the drivers out of the races
and the pack nature of the races everywhere from the mile and a half tracks to
the two-mile ovals to the short tracks will lead to more races being a
crapshoot and timing than not the best driver manhandling the car to the
front.
Brad Keselowski went off
the deep end, as he is known for doing, and said drivers will stop coming to
NASCAR. Jeff Gluck had a more civil approach.
Gluck tried wrapping his
head around the decision and was upset with the decision because he saw it as
"dumbing down the racing." But Gluck had an epiphany of sorts thanks
to the words of IndyCar president of competition Jay Frye when it came to the
series moving toward lower downforce and higher horsepower. "Every motorsports
series has its things," said Frye, "and we're going back to being
fast and loud. These cars are hard to drive and cool to look at."
Gluck tried to define
NASCAR's thing and he came up with entertainment.
"NASCAR is about
putting on a good show and trying to please its fans — which often comes at the
expense of concepts people consider 'pure' racing," wrote Gluck.
The whole concept of
attributing a "thing" to a series is flawed in its own right but
there is a hopelessness when it comes to the pursuit of entertainment.
What does it mean if your "thing" is entertainment? What is that? Entertainment is not defined. What is considered entertaining is constantly changing. What is entertaining today was not entertaining five years ago and will not be entertaining five years in the future.
What does it mean if your "thing" is entertainment? What is that? Entertainment is not defined. What is considered entertaining is constantly changing. What is entertaining today was not entertaining five years ago and will not be entertaining five years in the future.
A modern example of the evolution
of entertainment can be seen in the social media platforms that leached onto the culture within the last decade. A decade ago it was MySpace on top but it wasn't long before Facebook
usurped it while Twitter popped up and took its share of real estate. In the
last five years Instagram and Snapchat have emerged as the platforms of choice especially for teenagers and young adults but in 2020 or 2021 people will probably reach a point of discontent over the
scrapbook nature of Instagram and flash-in-the-pan style of Snapchat and
something else will be the location where youths ruin their lives over the
idiotic tendencies and filterless actions from pubescent brains.
If NASCAR's
"thing" is entertainment it is setting itself up to always fail
because the standards for entertainment is fluid. There is somebody that will
spin this as NASCAR forces itself to always be evolving but evolution is not a yearly process.
Evolution isn't radically changing the structure of the championship every two
or three years.
What makes it worse for
NASCAR is the inconsistency and the failure to recognize what it said within the
last five years. When speaking about the upcoming rule changes and where driver
talent falls into the equation, current NASCAR vice president Steve O'Donnell said, "To this I think
they'll matter more now. You've got to really think about different moves, and
you will have ability to make those passes."
However, in 2016 when
downforce was taken off the cars, then-NASCAR vice president Gene Stefanyshyn said,
"The objective there is to give the drivers, put the driving back in their
hands a bit more... take less aero dependence off the car."
NASCAR makes moves in
search of this mythical racing package that will draw 150,000 people back to
the racetrack and six million people to the television each week. It doesn't
exist no matter how hard it tries to make the races more entertaining with more
passes and more cars side-by-side.
The archenemy of
entertainment is redundancy and sometimes to figure out what you are you have
to do the same thing consistently for a period of time. The sanctioning body does
not let things rest. It does not let an identity form and it is not only in
terms of the aero package. In 15 years, the championship has morphed from the
best over 36 races to a pseudo-best over 36 races but with emphasis on the
final ten to winning is important to this playoff format where it is more
likely than ever the champions will be a driver that really doesn't fit but
that driver had the results fall at the right time and that will be enough to
be champion.
Changes continue because
NASCAR hopes to reclaim its place from the turn of the 21st century when it
arguably was the second-most popular sports entity in the United States. That
spot has vanished and will not be reclaimed with 47 lead changes at Chicagoland
or a half-second covering the top ten at Pocono. While NASCAR continues to slide, the National Basketball
Association has surged, soccer has grown and baseball remained firm.
The NBA evolved. The game
moved outside the paint and games have become a three-point frenzy while taking time
to move out from the shadow of Michael Jordan to a league where LeBron James,
Stephan Curry, Anthony Davis, Russell Westbrook, Kawhi Leonard and Kyrie Irving are all household names and all play across the North American continent.
Soccer has evolved as more kids play the sport growing up, start following the
sport at a younger age through video games and televised matches from around
the world that were not available to previous generations. Baseball has
remained what baseball has always been. It has been difficult to speed up the
pace of play and the evolution of the game has been toward bullpen battles from
the fourth inning on with defense shifts while the strikeout has been embraced
over small ball. Despite baseball's stubbornness and an aging fan base, the
sport has held firm, continues to bring in money thanks to local television
deals and the ratings have remained consistent.
NASCAR slid behind all
three and is a fraction of what is was. During this time NASCAR did not evolve
but constantly tinkered. Nothing has been allowed to develop. Rules were forced time
after time in hopes of improving the racing. Everything was done in hopes of
making things better but better has never been reached. NASCAR doesn't know
what better is. If it did, wouldn't the yearly retooling have stopped by now?
Instead of embracing what
it is NASCAR fights for what it will likely ever regain.
Instead of embracing what
it is NASCAR remains obsessed with entertainment even if the crowd has moved
on. NASCAR can continue chasing the goal posts but the masses found something
else that tickles its fancy.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Marc Márquez and Kimi Räikkönen but did you know...
Chase Elliott won the NASCAR Cup race from Kansas, his third victory of the season. John Hunter Nemechek won the Grand National Series race, his first career victory in the series.
Francesco Bagnaia won the Moto2 race from Motegi after Fabio Quartararo was stripped of the victory for a tire pressure infringement. It is Bagnaia's eighth victory of the season. Marco Bezzecchi won the Moto3 race, his third victory of the season.
Chaz Mostert and James Moffatt won the first race of the Gold Coast 600. The second race was abandoned due to weather.
The #1 KeePer's TOM's Lexus of Nick Cassidy and Ryō Hirakawa won the Super GT race from Autopolis and in doing so they are tied with Jenson Button and Naoki Yamamoto for the GT500 championship heading into the final round next month from Motegi. The #96 K-Tunes Lexus of Morio Natta and Yuichi Nakayama won in GT300.
Coming Up This Weekend
The Mexican Grand Prix.
MotoGP will be at Phillip Island.
NASCAR starts the semifinal round at Martinsville.
This weekend will be the California 8 Hours from Laguna Seca, the final round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge season.
