If it ain't broke, fix it anyway: NASCAR 2017 Thread

I've been to Daytona only once, when I covered the 500 in my last spring as a writer. Boxed up somewhere I've got a picture someone made of me interviewing King Richard. I'm jotting down every word, and he's just standing there ... a front coil spring in each hand.

 

Drivers blowing off media surprises me. Didn't NASCAR always have a reputation for being very media-friendly? Did that start to change when everything else did in the 2000s?

 

There really is something to be said about drivers now never having the understanding of what NASCAR was like pre-90s. The corporate culture of current NASCAR is all they've ever known.

 

I was covering NASCAR (some) in the mid-/late-1980s, and even then you pretty much had to go through a PR person to talk to a driver. The access was great, don't get me wrong ... I loved getting to go to the Sunday morning drivers' meetings ... but you didn't just walk up to the "name" drivers and start shooting the shit with them.

 

There's a difference, though, between drivers being corporate sponsor-thanking robots not saying anything of substance (that's always been a stereotype), and them and their PR folks shutting out media entirely. I mean, lots of pro sports fall into the first category, but it's rare and even strange to have one fall into the second.
As tightly controlled as drivers and their schedules might be, as well as the team's desire to keep them on point, I can understand the need to go through a PR person. But is it hard to get regular access if you ask?
My limited experience with NASCAR PR was when some drivers made local appearances, mostly in the early 2000s. We never had an issue getting a few minutes with them and none of them were assholes that I can recall (I think the ones that came through were Kyle Petty, Bill Elliott and Steve Park; Junior came through early in his career but someone else got that assignment). I think we checked ahead of time to make sure they'd be available, but didn't have a set time. It was usually when they first arrived or right before the meet and greet.
Might be a lot different when you're on the beat, though.

 

Here's how it worked, at least through 2012.

As part of their broadcast agreement, the TV partner is allowed to have priority access to a driver one-on-one at some point over the weekend, a pre-race live interview and a wreck/post-race live interview with the top 10 finishers. NASCAR PR will usually run all other media out of the shot. However, intrepid reporters are known to stick a recorder just out of the camera's view. Usually that's how the manufacturers get their quotes for the post-race wrap. And sometimes the drivers will wait for one or two quick questions from us peons before jumping on their private jets. At Pocono, Kurt Busch was kind enough to tell me to F**K myself when I asked him about pit strategy after he ran out of fuel while leading.

NASCAR requires the top 10 in points to hold one avail early in the weekend, then brings the pole winner and the top three finishers to the media center, but the race winner won't get there until all photo ops are satisfied in victory lane. You can also stand in the line during qualifying and may grab something quick while the driver hustles to his golf cart.

And that's it. No special treatment for AP, the league website or any beat writers, local or national. If you want to speak with someone not on the avail list, you need to find their PR person, their manufacturer PR rep or in the case of a rules issue, NASCAR PR. For a 43-car field, that's at least 43 team PR people, three manufacturer reps and a dozen NASCAR PR folks.

So most of your time at the track is spent finding the right people just to set up time to talk to someone. It's the most frustrating and incomprehensible thing I've encountered. And it's why all the reporting is the same. Everyone in the media center is working off the same set of Chevy, Ford or Toyota quotes.

Imagine covering the Yankees if all 25 players had a different PR contact that required you to get permission, one for Judge, another for Sanchez, another for Ellsbury, etc. And if they didn't make Joe Girardi available after the game, but you got 10 minutes during batting practice.

Good luck trying to grab any of the top drivers if they finish out of the top 10. I tried to chase Junior once. His bodyguard is about 6-8 and slammed me into the side of the hauler until Junior was safely on his golf cart back to the RV. Oof.

 

As part of whatever NASCAR is calling their "Victory Circle" money distribution program, each driver is required to do local media avails leading up to a particular race weekend at a certain track. When Atlanta followed Daytona, the 500 winner always showed up at CNN and then did some goofy cutesy TV-related stuff at World of Coke, Georgia Aquarium or the like so the local stations would have a sports package for the lead-up.

Petty and Elliott were two of the gruffest SOBs I encountered. The worst? Mikey. He's as sour as a bitter lemon when the camera light goes off.

 

How many people inside the NASCAR bubble do you think comprehend that the series will take a severe hit when this TV contract expires, and that there's a non-zero chance it collapses.

 

If you'd told me when I took the job at NASCAR.com in 2001 that the sport had a 50-50 chance of surviving past 2030, I'd have laughed out loud. I'm not laughing any more. NASCAR as we know it must evolve rapidly because it's irrelevant to this generation of sports fans.

 

Jesus, that sounds like a nightmare. We were never near the track, though. Closest we got was seeing the parade of haulers pass by on I-20 several times a year as they made their way to and from the next stop. Think grocery store and casino appearances on Wednesday afternoon. And in those cases we might have been dealing more with the PR people from the appearance location than the driver's team.
Still, I can't recall any bad experiences with the drivers themselves. Kyle Petty even brushed aside the PR people and let me sneak in one last question when they were trying to rush him downstairs for a live shot with a local TV station.

I have noticed, a lot of times, reporters catching quotes from drivers either during the TV interviews or right after when they wreck out of a race. If you watch close you can see someone chasing the driver down or the driver turning his head toward a pack right before the shot cuts out.

 

I don't know how they limit costs - maybe launch an electric car division where they swap out batteries instead of filling up with Sunoco? It's really odd though - as it has chased more corporate dollars NASCAR has found it harder to attract corporate dollars because fan interest has waned. Initially the high cost of gas was the excuse of attendance slipping, gas prices dropped and the fans haven't returned. I really think the the thing that is missing is a connection with the drivers. Fans don't relate to them anymore. Drivers don't talk like the fans anymore or even in some cases look like them anymore (Jimmy Spencer reference).