Running 2019 Nascar thread

The question is, "What are you going to do about it?"
I honestly don't know if they'll regain the faith of the core fans. Most of us have stopped paying attention the way we once did.

 

I really don't care about any of the drivers. Johnson may be the most palatable, though he's pretty bland. And to be honest, it doesn't seem like a lot of the drivers really enjoy their jobs. Who wants to watch a guy complaining all the time?

 

Is it telling that the president of NASCAR gave a 35-minute interview to the N-J? No insult intended and NASCAR does rule the town, but I don’t think Mike Helton or Brian France would’ve done that.

 

"Probably"? Um ... well ... at least he was willing to say something neither Mike Helton nor any France family member would.

Brian France was changing up crap for change's sake. Bad. Then he took races away from places in the South where the sport was born and still thrives when the events are there (Darlington, etc.). Worse.

NASCAR was and is more arrogant than newspaper execs ... keep in mind these folks were actually talking of getting NFL-level deals (see also: delusion). Kept squeezing the golden goose until it ran out of air, then thought it could will its way out of it. Refused to drop ticket prices ... after all, NASCAR's calling card is the blue-collar fan. Now only the whitest of collars can realistically make it to events.

Drivers made good money. Sponsorships didn't see the return anymore. Winning teams can't acquire full deals. NASCAR won't cut the length of races, or the number of them. Drivers would rather retire than take less money to put their lives on the line, never mind to ever-increasing demands of sponsors who want more and more.

No sympathy for NASCAR. They did this to themselves. No news here.

 

Yup. I wish Richard Petty would lead a drivers meeting, and tell them of the days when fans - individuals, families and groups - would make the pilgrimage to his house in Level Cross and their shop (I think the shop ended up elsewhere in Randolph County for a while). He would go out of his way to make them welcome, sign autographs and make clear they were part of the bigger machine ... a sort of unscripted tour.

Now? Talk to someone in PR, and hope that the driver would eventually honor it. Had a colleague blown off for something scheduled at the track during a race weekend, and it wasn't because the driver was hurt/injured or other circumstances. He was just blown off.

I get that Richard Petty had a gift for communication, but it's worse than that. I hear and read too many stories that today's drivers and teams don't really try.

So, tell us, NASCAR ... is it really about the fans?

 

As a kid we went to the Petty shop. I was given a whole bunch of swag. I was 5-6 maybe ... don't remember. I would wear my own drivers suit - Petty blue with STP, Goodyear, Union patches - that my mom made me. Somewhere at my folks' house is the picture of Richard holding me in his arms because he got a kick out of my outfit. Lee was in the yard beside the shop hitting golf balls and stopped what he was doing chat.

I remember being in the pits after a race to get autographs and Bobby Allison bumming a drink out of our cooler because no flunkie was there to hand him a Coke as soon as he got out of the car.

Back in my newspaper days, I somehow wound up in the parking lot with Dick Trickle who gave me a couple of beers and burger he just got done grilling himself.

 

NASCAR is the WORST when it comes to PR. It does very little to advertise itself when it goes from city to city and does even less when the local media tries.

That is unless Paul Menard wants to go on local media to plug lawn mowers instead of the race that nobody is attending.

 

As recently as 20 years ago, that wasn't the case. I didn't have to call PR people back then; they called me. The SMI tracks treated us like kings. Things started changing in the mid 2000s, I guess.

The best ever day was in the press box at Bristol when Tony Stewart smarted off to Larry Woody about being "local" and Woody lost his shit.

 

When Loudon opened in the 90s NASCAR couldn't do enough for us Yankee scribes, they were, drivers included, so tickled pink to expand into New England. No idea what it's like now.

 

Has the PR falloff been the result of the decline of sponsorship dollars? I imagine much of the PR was from sponsors with some heavy duty flacks making sure their product got as much exposure as possible.