Fabio Quartararo waited until he clinched the world championship to have his first accident of the season. The Moto3 championship was decided way too early. Moto2 really is the middle child, as its championship will go down to the finale, but with little attention. Mercedes blew its chance to grab momentum in Mexico. Yuki Tsunoda is getting on the wrong nerves. It rained in Sydney. There was heartbreak in Motegi. Colton Herta has interest in the Daytona 500. Anthony Davidson made his final motorsport start, as the British driver announced his retirement ahead of the FIA World Endurance Championship finale. Porsche and Ferrari came to blows. NASCAR concluded another season. Here is a rundown of what got me thinking.
How Many Would Come Back?
We will find out in a few days how many people tuned into the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series finale from Phoenix, but it will likely pale in comparison to the audience from only six years ago.
In 2015, NBC's first year back broadcasting the season finale, 7.6 million people tuned in to what was a rain-delayed Homestead race. It was the second year of the current championship format with four drivers. It was Jeff Gordon's final race as a full-time Cup driver and he was alive for the championship, as was Kyle Busch, who had missed the first 11 races due to injury. Defending championship Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex, Jr., driving for the underdog Furniture Row Racing, were the other championship contenders for the title.
Last year, the 2020 finale, the first at Phoenix, had only 3.063 million viewers, as Chase Elliott won his first Cup championship over Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin. The four championship contenders were 1-2-3-4 in the final results. Viewership was down from 3.74 million viewers tuning in for the 2019 finale from Homestead where Kyle Busch won his second career championship. The 2018 finale drew 4.15 million viewers.
While professing this system as a success and creating championship drama down to the final lap, NASCAR has lost half its audience in six years for the championship finale, arguably the second most important race on the schedule behind the Daytona 500. Eventually, you must look at the numbers and say it is not working. You can have as many side-by-side, last lap spins and uncertain results until the checkered flag as you want, but if fewer and fewer people keep showing up each year it is not going well. It is not a success. It is a failure.
For nearly 20 years now, NASCAR has been making changes in hopes of increasing appeal to others, people who are not regular motorsports viewers. The mid-2000s and early-2010s might have seen an uptick, but the last decade has been a sharp decline. The short-term gain has turned into a significant long-term loss.
Now what?
NASCAR is firmly in an identity crisis. Its next generation car is coming for the 2022 season, there will be single-wheel nuts and the Cup Series is shaking up its schedule, but more now than ever the Cup Series does not know what it is, nor what it really wants to be. It wants to be big. It wants to be 2005 again with 100,000 spectators at over 2/3rds of the races, the rest having 75,000 people, and eight million people tuning in on a regular basis. But there is a long road back to the top.
There is a sense NASCAR has gone too far. It kept changing and abandoning what made itself stand out. People have walked away because of the changes because it is not what they fell in love with. After 17 years, I think we have enough data to prove this wasn't the answer, which has me wondering...
How many people would come back if NASCAR has an epiphany and undoes the last 17 years?
Drastic changes are nothing new to NASCAR, but every change has come with the guarantee it will be better. The Chase will make it better. Stage racing will make it better. Double-file restarts will make it better. Green-white-checkered finishes will make it better. If all these moves were for the best, fewer people wouldn't be tuning in. Things would at least stay the same.
NASCAR has an out. It has lost 99.9% of its goodwill. What if it decided to announce it is reverting to the past, a 36-race championship aggregate, no playoffs, no stages, no playoff points? It can keep a few things It can keep the points system with 40 points for a victory. It can keep double-file restarts and I guess it can keep green-white-checkered finishes, but the rest of it, the full season would change. Cutoff races would be gone. Winning a race would not guarantee someone a top 16 championship finish. It would come down to 36 races. No more resets. A champion would be based on every result from the green flag from the Daytona 500 to the checkered flag in the finale.
It would be a chance for a powerful organization to do something rare ever do, admit it was wrong. NASCAR could come out with compassion and say it sees some of its decisions did not work out. It did not make the series greater and in fact steered people away. This could be NASCAR's olive branch to those its lost, ask for forgiveness and invite everyone to come back to the racetrack and back to their television strategy.
No other entity would employ such a strategy, and it could be an admirable move earning NASCAR respect. It would get noticed for humbleness, recognizing where it had gone wrong, and wanting to make amends. NASCAR would not lose anything doing such a thing. It would stand to make a big gain.
How many would come back? One move like this will not double viewership. NASCAR would see a surge at first, but many would remain skeptical and be slow to return. Some are gone forever. Ten years of sliding would not be undone in one year. As for new fans, attracting them goes beyond what the championship format is, and this change could go either way. However, I bet NASCAR would take a bigger step forward embracing its past championship system than with its current championship format.
All these changes have been made to interest causal fans and keep NASCAR in the national discussion, however all these changes have done is eroded passionate fans while the series has lost any casual interest. People are not tuning to see who wins the championship. A motorsports series needs its tentpole events that people will watch even if they are not regular fans. They might not watch every week, but they know what races not to miss. NASCAR doesn't have that now. It is just the Daytona 500, and after the first race of the season, most are gone until the following February.
The format is not captivating people. It doesn't matter that there are four drivers alive and to the best finisher goes the championship. That isn't enough to make people tune in. People do not care about the champion and all NASCAR is left with is the same people who watch every week.
A base of three million people is a good thing, but if that is all that shows up for each race, then the format is not doing what it was meant to do, and if fewer people are watching, why keep it? Why not return to what was around when NASCAR grew?
NASCAR kept simplifying what was already simple. It was easy to understand that each race paid points and the driver with the most after all the races was champion. It wasn't always exciting, but everyone could understand it. But that was not enough for NASCAR. It needed to fulfill a desire to be thrilling and have the championship decided not just in the final race but on the final lap of the season. Deciding the championship via the best finisher among four drivers in the finale has stripped away drama. Every preceding race loses its meaning. No matter how a driver does in the first 35 races, he will be equal to three other competitors in the finale.
Being the best of four is simple, but what makes motorsports stand out is needing to make a comeback in a finale. Winning could not be enough. A competitor can do all that is possible and still fall short. At the same time, the championship leader is playing with a lead and faces the pressure of closing out a season on top. There is nothing worse than a blown advantage, letting a championship slip from one's hands and never knowing if that opportunity will come again. NASCAR takes out both those elements with its format. After eight years and half as many viewers than when it was first introduced, we have enough data to call it a failure.
It doesn't matter how great the races are or the championship going to the final corner if people are not tuning in. NASCAR has lost majority of its relevance and it does not have one driver the average American wants to see let alone a racing product and championship format of interest.
Reverting to a previous championship format likely will not double the audience. It might barely make a positive gain. The damage has been done but continuing down the current road will not make it better. Admitting some fault, saying it has been wrong, acknowledging it has strayed and reversing some of its past choices, could be the one drastic change that helps NASCAR rediscover its identity.
Champions From the Weekend
Pedro Acosta clinched the Moto3 World Championship with his victory at Portimão with his sixth victory of the season.
Kyle Larson won the NASCAR Cup Series championship with his tenth victory of the season at Phoenix.
Daniel Hemric won the NASCAR Grand National Series championship with his first career victory at Phoenix.
Ben Rhodes won the NASCAR Truck Series championship with a third-place finish at Phoenix.
The #7 Toyota of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José María López clinched the World Endurance Drivers' Championship with a runner-up finish in the 8 Hours of Bahrain.
The #51 AF Corse Ferrari of James Calado and Alessandro Pier Guidi won the World Endurance GT Drivers' Championship with its third victory of the season in the 8 Hours of Bahrain.
The #31 Team WRT Oreca-Gibson of Robin Frijns, Ferdinand von Habsburg and Charles Milesi won the Endurance Trophy for LMP2 Drivers with its third consecutive victory in the 8 Hours of Bahrain.
The #83 AF Corse Ferrari of Nicklas Nielsen, François Perrodo and Alessio Rovera won the Endurance Trophy for GTE-AM Drivers with its fourth victory of the season in the 8 Hours of Bahrain.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about many champions, but did you know...
Max Verstappen won the Mexican Grand Prix, his ninth victory of the season.
Chandler Smith won the NASCAR Truck race from Phoenix, his second victory of the season.
Francesco Bagnaia won MotoGP's Algarve Grand Prix, his third victory of the season. Remy Gardner won the Moto2 race, his fifth victory of the season, and Gardner enters the finale leading by 23 points over Raúl Fernández, but Fernández owns the tiebreaker with seven victory.
The #8 Toyota of Sébastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Kazuki Nakajima won the 8 Hours of Bahrain, its third victory of the season.
Shane van Gisbergen, Anton De Pasquale and Jamie Whincup split the Supercars races from Sydney Motorsports Park.
The #8 ARTA Honda of Nirei Fukuzumi and Tomoki Nojiri won the Super GT race from Motegi, its second consecutive victory. The #21 Audi Sport Team Hitotsuyama Audi of Shintaro Kawabata and Takuro Shinohara won in GT300.
Santiago Urrutia and Yann Ehrlacher split the World Touring Car Cup races from Adria.
Coming Up This Weekend
Petit Le Mans
MotoGP's season finale from Valencia.
Formula One's Brazilian Grand Prix.
Supercars' third weekend at Sydney Motorsports Park.
