NASCAR has real clouds on the horizon

Can Brian France stop the downward spiral of NASCAR

Despite a fantastic weekend defined by close racing and dramatic championship battles, the overall health of NASCAR isn't particularly clear right now writes Matt Weaver of AutoWeek.

As de facto leader of the racing body, NASCAR chairman and CEO Brian France has an obligation to set hearts and minds at ease about the state of the industry. He has to balance that need with honesty and grace, attributes he failed to show on Sunday during a "state of the sport" press conference prior to the Sprint Cup championship race at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

The media rightfully had a handful of questions born from public concern, and France uncomfortably dismissed many of them in a display best described as indignant and increasingly defensive.

Make no mistake, the sky isn't falling on NASCAR, but the landscape looks a little cloudy. There are three months until Daytona Speedweeks, and the Cup Series still doesn't have a title sponsor. Meanwhile, the new ownership model, introduced with much fanfare back in January, doesn't seem to be doing a heck of a lot for the back half of the grid, with Tommy Baldwin shutting down and selling his charter to Leavine Family Racing.

Meanwhile, it doesn't seem as if new investors are particularly interested in filling the void.

Attendance and television numbers are down, and yes, while that's a trend across most major professional sports, stock-car racing does seem to be suffering a legitimate downturn of interest rather than a shift in how fans consume the product.

France owes it to the media to listen diligently and offer both honest and hopeful responses. It wasn't so much the content of the press conference as it was the context in which the answers were presented that offered the most concern.

Again, France was dismissive, cutting off reporters, while insisting that everything was fine in the empire his family established 68 years ago. But there are real hurdles for NASCAR to overcome over the next few years, and France could have stood to acknowledge them rather than repeating "let me cut you off there."

The current championship format, while thrilling, has repeatedly compromised integrity for the sake of entertainment. The Chase has legitimately failed to resonate with a subset of the sport's traditional fan base — the building block for its future.

NASCAR has spent so long chasing millennials that it seems to have forgotten parents are the key to unlocking their children's' interest in stock-car racing. So many current fans were introduced to the sport through their parents, and that key demographic has been largely maligned under the current administration.

By making the sport less appealing (or unfamiliar through rules or presentation) to parents, NASCAR has damaged the bridge to children. All the pop music, television stars and Game 7 moments won't be enough to recapture their attention.

NASCAR isn't totally at fault because life is defined by change. It's unclear if all the modifications France has ordered up during his tenure were proactive or reactive in nature. An entity that fails to evolve ultimately dies. That's science.

But it's not clear if NASCAR needed to change or if France simply wanted it to change to establish his own legacy. Regardless of the reasons why, the NASCAR of 2016 is drastically different than the one of, say, 1996. The current NASCAR is very much an international brand, largely contested on identical D-shaped intermediate ovals with a wacky playoff format that runs antithetical to the root traditions of the sport. Xfinity has become a carbon copy of its Sprint Cup counterpart, while the Truck Series doesn't even remotely resemble its founding principles.

Change after change has ultimately put off NASCAR's traditional fan base, and the league risks losing an entire generation because parents are starting to show an indifference to taking their children to the track.

This brings us back to France, who attempted to draw from his father's authoritative persona on Sunday morning but came across as oversensitive instead. This is an important crossroads in the sport's history. The new Cup Series title sponsor will have a huge opportunity to help shape the evolution of NASCAR in the coming years.

These new executives will work hand in hand with France to evaluate the shifting marketplace while deciding how to package stock-car racing in the hopes of recapturing the imagination of lost fans. NASCAR needs a more visible leader, not one that meets with the media once a year or needs to be publicly coerced by Tony Stewart just to attend meetings between drivers and the sanctioning body.

Sunday morning was awkward and hopefully an aberration rather than the new norm. Matt Weaver/AutoWeek