Change in direction may hurt NASCAR
The author writes – People automatically gravitate toward things they're comfortable with and people they can easily relate to. That's a huge reason why stock car racing became so popular in the South to start with. And it's a big reason why people around here never watched open-wheel racing.
The guys in the garage in the old NASCAR were like the shade-tree guy down the block who could get 15 more horsepower out of a lawnmower. The guys behind the wheel were like the guys you could find any Friday or Saturday night at a dozen different dirt tracks. They all talked like the folks around here. They looked like the folks around here. We knew these guys.
And we knew their cars. Because they were the same kind of cars we could buy at the car lots on East Boulevard.
People in the South could relate to all of it. And on the backs of these fans, the France family built an empire.
But ever so slowly over the last several years, they've been moving the sport as far away from those loyal fans as they can get.
Mark my words: It's going to backfire.
All the nonsense that's involved now is turning off the sport's core constituency. Drivers jumping from team to team, the crazy owners buying up half the field, the closing of historic tracks, it's changing the average NASCAR fan, a guy who used to be so loyal that he grew an Earnhardt-like mustache and shopped only at NASCAR sponsors, into the casual NASCAR fan.
That's just a step away from being an indifferent NASCAR fan.
The sport is eventually going to need these fans. When all the newcomers have tired of stock car racing, when the novelty has worn off, NASCAR will come looking for the people who will fill the stands here today.
And they'll be off somewhere trying to figure out what they can do with $8,000 worth of worthless Budweiser No. 8 memorabilia.