Running 2023 Motorsports thread

I want to go on record that I have not insulted Toto’s wife.

 

Has anyone asked whom she's starting a family with?

(Seriously... he has been dropping hints for a while about kids in his future. Good for him.)

 

Hell, I remember being shocked that Chad Knaus got married to something other than a race car a few years ago.

 

You are looking (not) LIIIIIVE at North Wilkesboro …

 

It's come a long way from the days of chicken barns and Winston signs in the background.

 

So ... how long until she suspends him for pushing rule boundaries?

 

Wow. Can't imagine the amount of asbestos and/or nicotine in those old infield buildings. But that's an amazing transformation. I would have laid serious odds on North Wilkes being plowed under well before anybody spent that kind of cash on fixing it up.

Good for them.

 

Quite nice dressed in lights. Which, granted, if they can do this to Daytona and Charlotte, North Wilkesboro can't possibly be as large an undertaking ...

 

I think the last time I was through there was almost four years ago, and (visible from the road) what wasn't falling down was overgrown.

 

"Hey, let's alienate our core fanbase by moving race dates from traditional venues to untested markets that don't care about stock cars, but we know they'll love it!"

Perhaps the dumbest marketing decision in the history of professional sports.

NASCAR spent a zillion dollars chasing its tail in places like Staten Island, Seattle, Denver and parts unknown because Brian Z. listened to Madison Avenue marketing SUITS (!) who had no idea what stock-car racing was but they were certain they knew how to make piles of money off of it. And Bruton deserves his share of scorn as well.

Moving the Southern 500 to California? If you want to pick the exact date NASCAR jumped the shark it's either that, the tire fiasco at Indy or paving Bristol. No matter what they do from here, they'll never see attendance or TV ratings like they had in the 1990s again because of short-term greed and lack of a sound business plan for steady growth.

Putting money prudently back into the product seems like such a no-brainer. Instead, the France family built office buildings and corporate headquarters (although Daytona's renovation was overdue). NASCAR had a license to print money and basically Brian trashed the place instead.

There were a lot of folks in the media center way smarter than me who all saw this coming, too. And nobody in Daytona Beach wanted to hear their website people tell them their emperor has no clothes.

 

They got greedy and stupid. Their proverbial eyes got bigger than their stomach.

They figured that if the markets they had liked them so much that everyone else automatically would.

Whoops.