Michael McDowell won the Daytona 500... so that's something. Fernando Alonso suffered a broken jaw after an automobile hit him while cycling in Switzerland. The Asian Le Mans Series completed half of its season in two days. Charlie Kimball has himself a ride for the Indianapolis 500. Logan Sargeant, the American closest to Formula One, will not return to Formula Three or move up to Formula Two, and his career could be over. Marc Márquez is finally on the mend. Mazda is withdrawing from IMSA's DPi class at the end of the season. J.R. Hildebrand could be taking an IndyCar to the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, which we will need to discuss later. Here is a rundown of what got me thinking.
We Are Who We Are
Since about 2008, you can't grow unless you never existed.
I have been watching the world spin over this 21st century, an age of increased global connectivity where everyone spent the first 20 years fighting for an audience on a different continent and a fifth of the way through this century it feels like nothing has changed, especially in the motorsports world.
Has any series grown? Most series have shrunk.
Formula One is still on top, but a combination of increased pay TV broadcasters around the world and general malaise about the world championship has seen the audience decrease compared to the Michael Schumacher years and the late 2000s.
NASCAR has fallen to where it was 25 years ago after putting up incredible numbers in the early 2000s.
IndyCar is still where it was, but that's not a great place. On its best days, it gets a million people to watch, but for the most part it is a few hundred thousand viewers watching a race.
The one series that has grown is Formula E, but that didn't exist until 2014. It gets to brag about the number of manufactures it has in the series, all the new venues visited, and all the people watching the series because not relatively long ago it wasn't in existence. Everything was at zero. Any gain was going to be significant.
The last large influx of viewers will be Danica Patrick's Indianapolis 500 debut in 2005. Patrick's historic qualifying result captured attention of an early Internet world where most still turned on the television to learn about the day's events after eating dinner and didn't have countless programming options from a variety of streaming platforms.
It will be the last grand conversion in motorsports and in the 15 years since that day we have seen plenty who caught the fever over that Memorial Day weekend turn their attention to something else and haven't looked back. It doesn't even meet the definition of a fad.
Plenty will celebrate any growth that happens, but single-digit gains aren't worth an emotional output. A two-percent gain is not a shift in the tide, but rather a wave with a little more wind behind it. It might jostle you but it is not going to shift the landscape. It is not a sign of change. It is just more of the same.
There is no sign of attention turning anything soon.
In the United States, football will remain king. You may point to a decrease in viewership for the most recent Super Bowl but 96 million still watched, likely more than ten times what the Daytona 500 drew seven days later and lightyears ahead of what the Indianapolis 500 could possibly draw. The last 16 Super Bowl have all drawn over 90 million viewers. Trust me, football is fine.
Basketball will remain incredibly popular with children wearing shoes branded after LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Michael Jordan, a man who last played a decade before some of these kids sporting a Jumpman logo were even born. Basketball is the one sport that has gained international traction, and hopefully this July the best players will battle for an Olympic gold medal and we will see if the United States can maintain its stranglehold or if the likes of Spain, France, Argentina or Serbia will come out on top.
Baseball has lost its national allure, but regionally it remains a common thread for many communities. It is a summer gathering place for the generations. Some fanbases get to celebrate into autumn when night games force spectators to bundle up while gnawing fingernails with each pitch.
Hockey is in a similar boat as IndyCar. Big enough to survive but not thrive. While football, basketball and baseball make billions, hockey remains in the poorhouse... relatively speaking, making hundreds of millions of dollars.
The one exception to the 21st century American stunted growth theory could be soccer. It is a fragmented sport with all the various leagues and competitions around the world. International competitions remain a draw and the United States national teams, men and women, are rallying points during each World Cup and Olympic Games. After decades of ignoring the invite, the United States has finally joined the party. It sees the glory that comes with this global game. Success makes you a household name from the Atlanta to Addis Ababa for generations.
I have watched motorsports try to mean more culturally, and yet never connected with the greater population. It is out of grasp of the common person. Few stumble into racing, and with even fewer getting to participate in it, people cannot bond with it. Billions grow up kicking a soccer ball around and tossing a baseball. They play it on the youth level, some never exceed a recreational level, but they can empathize with the grandest stages in those sports. They have swung and missed on a curveball and walked back to the dugout disappointed. They have been cleared out on a slide tackle, left in a daze while play continues in the opposite direction.
When it comes to a race car, it is fantasy. Most have driven a car, but not like that, not in competition. The greatest competition most have behind a steering wheel is crawling at five miles per hour in search for a parking spot during the Christmas season.
The automobile has changed culturally. It is no longer a symbol of freedom and exploration. It is now another appliance no different from a refrigerator or washing machine that has a function and an expectation to work. It is a responsibility with a goal of keeping insurance premiums low, and increasingly requires an individual to take into consideration the carbon footprint left behind from its use.
People don't love their appliances. Most of the time the greatest response an appliance draws is frustration when it doesn't work, whether that is a fridge whose ice maker has crapped out or a gaming system that experiences a technical glitches. We fill our lives with items that we expect will let us down, taking for granted the 99% of the time they actually work.
Motorsports hasn't adapted well to these times and it will continue to struggle over the next 20 years. A fraction doesn't want to follow the automobile industry as production shifts to more electric vehicles. Not changing will only make motorsports more obsolete. It will soon become even more disconnected from the present and the average person that they will not understand why anyone would participate... like Civil War reenactments.
The slide in popularity does not cause people to embrace change but bunker into an identity that was suitable 50 years, but not today. The fear is change will only make it worse, not better, though the status quo is no longer sufficient.
People celebrate the 1960s but ignore what the 1960s meant to motorsports. It was an era of changes and chances. The cars didn't look the same. They didn't race the same. There wasn't this expectation that an IndyCar had to look a certain way, or a stock car had to sound a certain way. An automobile would turn heads and if it won on the stopwatch it became the favorite. Now, a car could be five miles per hour slower than what is setting records, but people get lost in the sound and the aesthetic of the slower vehicle and it is heralded as better though where it counts begs to differ.
Yes, motorsports cost money. Manufactures and privateers don't throw around money like they once did at improvements and developing a better vehicle. Everyone is afraid of motorsports spending itself into extinction but looking for the cheapest available option might lead to the same outcome.
If motorsports wants to continue operating with this one mindset that a race must look a certain way and the cars must look a certain way and the cars are powered a certain way, it will continue to be stuck where it has been for the last 15 years and slowly sink more out of sight. You can only change the label so many times before you have to realize the packaging is not the issue. The product is.
However, if motorsports embrace the future and becomes something that turns heads and inspires the next generation to take risks, it might rise out of its early 21st century funk and find it has life for years to come and into the 22nd century.
Champion From the Weekend
Matthew Payne won the Toyota Racing Series championship after winning three of four races from Circuit Chris Amon. Billy Frazer won the other race from Circuit Chris Amon.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Michael McDowell, but did you know...
The #26 G-Drive Racing Aurus 01-Gibson of René Binder, Ferdinand von Habsburg and Ye Yifei swept the Asian Le Mans Series races from Dubai. The #23 United Autosport Ligier-Nissan of Wayne Boyd, Manuel Maldonado and Rory Penttinen swept the races in the LMP3 class. The #99 Herberth Motorsport Porsche of Ralf Bohn, Alfred Renauer and Robert Renauer won in the GT class in race one and the #40 GPX Racing Porsche of Julien Andlauer, Alain Ferté and Axcil Jefferies won in the GT class in race two.
Cooper Webb won in the Supercross race at Orlando, his second victory of the season.
Austin Cindric won the NASCAR Grand National Series race at Daytona. Ben Rhodes won the Truck race. Kyle Busch won the Busch Clash. Aric Almirola and Austin Dillon split the Daytona 500 qualifying race.
Coming Up This Weekend
NASCAR remains in Daytona but will run on the road course for the second round of 2021.
Supercross remains in Orlando for another weekend.
Asian Le Mans Series ends its season with a doubleheader in Abu Dhabi.
